The Emergence of a Cloned, Detached, and Problematic Society

With the rapid advancement of technology, the way through which the world operates has dramatically changed. Popular culture, which is fueled by mass media outlets like the television, now largely influences individual purchasing decisions and lifestyle choices. Instead of relying on our own intuitions, we now rely on the news, data, and education communicated by the media to make informed decisions. However, its influences are often so large and elusive that we need to take caution and become aware of its potentially debilitating consequences. In Culture Jam: How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge—And Why We Must, media activist Kalle Lasn discusses how the corporate-driven mass media has become a major gateway to influencing and taking over American popular culture. He begins by analyzing how problematic this has become because, through its powerful and manipulative influences, the mass media has branded the American society and killed off its diversity, spontaneity, and creativity. It has encouraged a consumer binge that is slowly damaging the ecology and depleting the Earth’s limited resources, leaving a mass of problems for future generations to deal with. In addition, due to the looming presence of the television and electronic mass media, Americans have become so detached from reality and psychologically threatened by its excess noise and information. Because of these dangers and challenges, Lasn believes that it is important for people to become aware of their destructive behaviors and initiate change. He follows up, in the second half of his book, by producing a list of solutions composed of specific strategies and actions that individuals can engage in to help resolve these aforementioned problems. He then paints a picture of a life or world that could exist if Americans were to unite and revolt against the heartless and soulless corporate machines. Based on Lasn and other popular culture critics and researchers, the American society has become a puppet of the corporate-driven mass media. The media has affected the American popular culture in such a way that we are now witnessing the emergence of a cloned, detached, and problematic society.

Conformation, group compliance rather than individual uniqueness, is now valued and considered “cool”. A large portion of the American popular culture can be attributed to advertisements, which not only appear on televisions, newspapers, billboards, and stores, but also in public bathrooms, at the ATMs, and on the very food we consume. Due to its pervasiveness, ads can be seen as a tool that molds and shapes our thoughts and behaviors, as well as our consumptive decisions. These advertisements essentially tell us what we should wear, what we should eat, and how we should live and think. We have been recruited into a cult that has taught us to “wear uniforms—not white robes but, let’s say, Tommy Hilfiger jackets or Airwalk sneakers” (Lasn 53). Because of the ad industry’s pervasive and powerful influence over our consumptive behavior, we have become primed to seek and purchase specific products that we do not consciously choose ourselves. The omnipresent Tommy Hilfiger and Airwalk ads create a feeling of familiarity that encourages consumers to buy its product. With everyone buying their products, it only makes sense that we join in on the hype and purchase them as well. We rationalize that there must be a good and valid reason why everyone is buying these products. This kind of behavior, buying what others are buying, is very common because, as Lasn states, “the most powerful narcotic in the world is the promise of belonging. And belonging is best achieved by conforming to the prescriptions of America” (xiii). Ads tell us that if we buy their product, we will have the security of belonging. The need to belong, to be accepted by and have close relationships with others, is innate in humans. However, due to this want and need to belong, we have to conform to the corporations’ rules and regulations and purchase certain products. This means we have ultimately fallen into the trap of corporate advertising. We have been manipulated into buying their products, which is exactly what corporations want us to do. By buying their products, we have contributed to their income and helped them meet their expenditures. As a result, the corporations live and continue their “unwavering pursuit of growth, power, and wealth” (Lasn 158). With more power and money, corporations are able to further dictate what we should or should not buy. This is problematic because “the human spirit of prideful contrariness and fierce independence has been oddly tamed. In this way a perverted sense of cool takes hold of the imaginations of our children” (Lasn xiii). By conforming, we have lost our identity. We have sacrificed our spontaneity and uniqueness in exchange for the “cool”, new popular thing. The American society has become branded by the media and its creativity and imaginations have died off. Now, there exists a manufactured world wherein everyone conforms and seeks the latest popular product or brand.

In a similar fashion, Americans have also become detached from the natural world and disconnected from their human spirits. Nowadays, technology has become so prevalent that it is hard to find an individual who does not interact with technology at least once a day. According to the A.C. Nielsen Company, the number of TV sets in the average U.S. household is 2.24 and the average American watches at least 4 hours of TV each day. Time spent on the Internet is comparable, if not more. With the vast amount of time we spend watching TV and surfing the Internet, we have lost both our connection to the natural world and our desire to interact with others. Lasn claims that because personalities and cultures are now being shaped entirely by the electronic mass media environment rather than by nature, our mediated selves, “when disconnected from the urban data stream, cease to function” (4). We do not know what to do with ourselves when we are cut off from technology. We do not know how to interact with nature nor do we know how to enjoy ourselves out in the natural world. We have grown to be so dependent on our electronic distractions that we even experience withdrawal symptoms when these distractions are taken away from us. Mass media can therefore be seen as some kind of addiction that Americans need to free themselves from. Lasn goes on to talk about how some people have become so consumed by the Internet, to the point that they have forgotten to eat and become reluctant to sleep. As a result, these individuals have inhabited “a world somewhere between real life and virtual life” (45), where “emotions have become substituted by emoticons” (47). Technology has become such an invasive part of our lives that when we are not eating or sleeping, we are most likely watching TV or browsing the net. We no longer live the natural and interactive life, but succumb to the lavish comforts of the American lifestyle, within our home. Instead of choosing to be an active participant in the world, we have decided to barricade ourselves in our home, like hermits. There is no longer speech, but words and texts. There is no longer laughter, sadness, or anger, but emoticons. This has created a world where “we watch nature shows instead of venturing out into nature. We laugh at sitcom jokes but not at our spouse’s. We spend more evenings enjoying video sex than making love ourselves” (Lasn 11). In the world of unreality, we have become so consumed with ourselves and our shows that it is easy to forget that the world is an interactive place. Technology, therefore, represents a non-interactive and stationary life spent within a virtual world.

Robert Samuels, a lecturer of the Writing Programs at UCLA, shares similar views in his essay, “Breaking Down Borders: How Technology Transforms the Private and Public Realms”. Samuels discusses how he believes the development of highly mobile and accessible technological devices, like the iPhone or MacBook, has caused people to isolate themselves and spend progressively less time interacting with others. It has blurred the public and private borders and caused people to become “so involved in their own mediated worlds that they forget where they actually are and what they are supposed to be doing”. While new technology allows people to “personalize their own media and decide on their own what culture they want to consume”, it also prevents them from “seeing culture as a social and public activity” (361). It has become extremely easy for people to set up their own little private space, with their laptops, iPods, and earphones, within the larger public area. This allows them to express individuality through their “personal culture”, but also few opportunities for public interactions. Items, such as the laptop, represent cultural artifacts that are manufactured, advertised, and sold by big corporate businesses. With all the hype built up around these products, everyone wants to become a part of this new trend. However, over the years, the advances and successful advertising of these new technological devices have promoted an increasing act of isolation. By allowing people to carry their personal culture wherever they go, such as the coffee shop, bus, or library, it has encouraged a lack of interpersonal communication and created a sense of detachment from the rest of the world. Rather than interacting with others in public areas, many people end up keeping to themselves, within their own little world. This negatively impacts the human lifestyle because human beings are social animals whose thoughts and behaviors are primarily shaped through social learning and imitation.

In addition to promoting group conformation and a sense of disconnection from the natural world, the pervasive advances of technology and corporate-funded advertisements have introduced “mental pollutants and information viruses” that have threatened our “ecology of mind” (Lasn 13). The excessive information, images, and data absorbed by our minds from the commercial mass media may be affecting us in a similar way to the chemicals and toxins absorbed into our bodies. In his book, Lasn questions, “could it be that all of these things together—the curse of plentitude, the image explosion, the data overload, the hum of the media that, like Denny’s, are always awake and bustling—are driving us crazy? I lay my money here. More than anything else, it is our mediated, consumption-driven culture that’s making us sick” (11). Although many psychological disorders are caused by genetic, physiological, and environmental factors, to a degree, the commercial mass media and America’s consumer binge can also be seen as major contributions to its rising incidence in the U.S. Plentitude is a burden that has placed us on the hedonic treadmill. The more we have, the more we crave and need. Eventually, we reach a point where nothing satisfies our hunger anymore and we suffer from anhedonia.

Similarly, the warped images, messages, and values conveyed by the media have eroded “our ability to empathize, to take social issues seriously, to be moved by atrocity” (Lasn 23). Strikingly morbid ads—dying AIDS patients, dead Bosnians soldiers, and starving, suffering North Korean locals—are meant to arouse our sympathy and move our souls. However, due to its excessive and pervasive advertising, they have actually done the opposite by desensitizing us and making us feel indifferent. A study conducted by Berger et al. showed that habitual media violence exposure led to decreased or negative skin conductance levels in subjects, which is a quantitative measure of body arousal (630). This suggests that incessant exposure to TV violence has observable desensitization effects. The more advertising companies bombard our minds with their emotionally arousing ads, the more numb and unsympathetic we feel towards these acts and images of violence and suffering. Furthermore, Lasn claims that the “ten years of conditioning” that “have taught [us], at an almost cellular level, that Elle McPherson and her ilk are what desirable women look like” has lowered our self-esteems and distorted the way we think about ourselves (74). According to a study conducted by Anschutz et al., preadolescent girls showed greater body dissatisfactions and greater desires for a thinner body figure after watching a movie clip explicitly focused on the thin ideal versus those that indirectly focused on the thin ideal or were neutral in content (26). These findings imply that television exposure to unrealistically thin celebrities and models affects what girls perceive as the ideal body image. This not only encourages dangerous eating habits, but also increases the incidences of eating disorders that may lead to life-threatening health problems. The “mental pollutants and information viruses” have caused us to grow immune to violence and become hyperaware of our body images, leading to psychological cases of narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial behavior, anorexia, or depression.

Through Lasn and other popular culture critics and researchers, it is evident that the technological era and commercial mass media has negatively impacted the American society by prompting the need to conform, eliminating any uniqueness or differences that define each individual. It has also created a sense of detachment between the self and the world and thrown many of us into a virtual world that lacks any form of physical interaction. Lastly, the excessive noise and information from our surroundings has meddled with our minds and led to an increased incidence of psychological problems. Like Lasn says, we need to stop this madness propagated by the corporate-driven mass media. Otherwise, an alternate world of cloned, detached, and crazy individuals will emerge.

Works Cited:

Anschutz, Doeschka J., et al. "The direct effect of thin ideal focused adult television on young girls' ideal body figure." Body Image 8.1 (2011): 26-33. Academic OneFile. Web. 23 June 2013.

Berger, Anja, et al. "Desensitization to media violence: links with habitual media violence exposure, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive behavior." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100.4 (2011): 630-646. Academic OneFile. Web. 23 June 2013.

Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge—And Why We Must. New York: Eagle Brook, 1999.

Samuels, Robert. Common Culture: Breaking Down Borders—How Technology Transforms the Private and Public Realms. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2009.

Reflection:

For this final out-of-class essay, we were told to write a book review for Culture Jam. I thought this was a particularly hard task to accomplish compared to the other essays because while this assignment was very broad, the other ones were more focused and narrowed down. Not only did I have a hard time choosing my stance, but I also had a bit of a hard time choosing my topic. Because Lasn is extremely passionate and, at times, exaggerative in his writing, it was hard for me to decide whether I wanted to write for or against his views. While I agreed with the majority of the things he said in his book, he was so pessimistic and patronizing at times that it made me scoff and strongly disagree with his views. Also, because Lasn goes over so many interesting topics in his book, it was very hard for me to decide on what I wanted to focus on in my essay. I have to say, writing an essay in response to a book critique is very different from writing an essay in response to a book that tells a story. Through this course, though, I was exposed to something I always took for granted—the American culture. I never really thought about what exactly popular culture is but I can say I have a pretty thorough understanding of what it is now. This course has taught me to become aware of and think critically about our culture.

In regards to my writing, I feel that I have grown more confident as a writer. I had always dreaded taking English courses in the past and, in general, dreaded writing. However, I have written so much over this past quarter that writing is just not that big of a deal for me anymore. In fact, once I get into the flow of writing, it becomes strangely fun and addicting. One thing I noticed is that I have a tendency to use quotes as the backbone of my essay so, at times, my writing becomes overfilled with quotes. As a result, this leaves out the more important personal thoughts and explanations. I tried to remain conscious of this as I was writing my last essay so I hope, in the end, I provided sufficient analyses. In addition to learning much about the American popular culture, I have also learned a lot about sentence level writing and essay organization/structure. With the lesson on body paragraphs in mind, I made sure that I had a solid topic sentence followed by an organized explanation/analysis.