T H E S P E C T A C L E
This project asked me to choose a cause I care about and design to increase awareness about the issues that come up while researching that said cause. I chose consumerism, scanned the internet for it’s history, causes, problems faced due to it, and what the future would hold with consumerism still a part of it. This project took a different turn after doing this research as I decided the solution to the problem is to enlighten people and compel them to educate themselves.
Thus I came up with this GIF series : The Spectacle
(Inspired by the book ‘The society of the spectacle’ written by Guy Debord)
The GIF’s display a hand “grabbing” things in the supermarket and the GIF displays a holographic glitch sensation throughout the pictures suggesting that this consumerist lifestyle is a lie created by the people in power and consumers are mere projections of their ideas. The GIF’s read “ARE YOU SURE?” questioning the grabbing hand and it’s lack of decision making capabilities.
In the background a voice reads the essay I wrote for this topic;
Consumerism is a social ideology that promotes an ever increasing acquisition of goods and services. This order was infused in the society after the WW2, when the American government and the corporations needed to ramp up the economy as there was an abundance of energy resources in the form of coal and oil.
Retail analyst, economist and author Victor Lebow wrote, “Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats, his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.
These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only “forced draft” consumption, but “expensive” consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption.”
Their ultimate purpose became promoting consumption through planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence which was achieved by advertising; the genius strategy to influence a desire for a different (in advertising terms; better) lifestyle. It spread like wildfire through newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and now the internet. The content used wasn’t always to promote a product or services, it was designed to create desires in people, desires for anything that was new, anything that was expensive and people were led to believe that upon fulfilling these “needs” they would in return feel happier. Consumerism is promoted to an extent that people are exposed to it upon birth and live their entire lives in this bubble of an ideal world; be it our need for food, clothing, views, aspirations and lifestyles.
This way of living has now started to crumble, disorder is starting to take course, and people are loosing their freedom of choice as well as their identities, while simultaneously the planet is reaching it’s biocapacity. We’re playing a game where everyone loses.
Upon in-depth understanding the conclusions comes as no surprise; people need to increase their sense of awareness to resist such influences and make progressive change. Change doesn’t just come from buying expensive organic produce, or buying reused clothes and protesting against big companies. Instead people should take a positive approach to illuminate themselves and people around them and spend money by donating to organisations that support our environment and start to take a keen interest in the bills being passed in their countries.
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