.
“I’m thinking of becoming an expatriate. I swear the other day I almost got on a plane to France.” My friend was only half-serious. She wasn’t going anywhere. But the disgust she felt for her own country was real.
“Why?” I asked.
“Smothered-covered.”
Apparently, she had recently seen a television commercial advertising a “smothered-covered” burger at a chain restaurant.
I wondered what topping could be offensive enough to send a person fleeing from the land of her birth. “Smothered-covered with what?”
It didn’t matter what. Cheese. Sauce. Whatever the case, the sad truth was that we lived in a society that wanted its food smothered-covered. It was enough to drive some people to live in France. Almost.
I was then treated to the familiar litany of objections to American consumer culture: Americans were materialistic, greedy, cruel, crass, tasteless, gluttonous pigs who lived only for the next chance to stuff themselves with burgers dripping with cheese. (Or was it sauce? I never did learn what exactly was doing the smothering-covering.)
My friend was sickened at the “excesses of a nation” where so many people were “living in poverty.” She was tired of seeing bad movies at the top of the box office and bad books in windows of bookstores. She’d had it with grotesque daytime talk shows and the popularity of professional wrestling.
Why couldn’t Americans be more sophisticated? Why couldn’t they watch smart television shows and read good books and ignore Britney Spears? In other words, why couldn’t they be more like my friend?
I suppose she figured I would commiserate and add my own snappy remarks about the horrible sensibilities of the American middle class and the debased state of our consumer culture. It would have been easy enough to rip into reality television and the latest self-help book flying off the shelves, and I reserve the right to critique these and more in the future. Today, however, I write not to bury consumer culture, but to praise it.
My recent experience with a chain steak restaurant was different from my friend’s. Sitting at the next table was a family of three: a man in a mechanic’s jumpsuit with his name stitched on the pocket, his wife, and their son. I am sure there was something on the menu that was smothered, or at least covered, but that isn’t the point. This mechanic was a “working man,” as my friend would say, yet there he was enjoying a moderately priced steak with his family on a Friday night. And he and his family were not the exception but the rule.
Look around the local mall or discount store. People, who only a generation or two earlier would have been poor and unable to enjoy a meal out, are now consumers, purchasing services and products that they need or want. Fewer and fewer Americans live in anything like real poverty, judged by any reasonable standard. In our consumer society, the majority of people “living in poverty” are also living with a car, a microwave, a VCR, a color television, a washing machine, and air conditioning. Not only are poor people living better than ever before, but we are fortunate to live in an exceptionally mobile society. Although some politicians like to talk about the “top one percent” and Americans “trapped in poverty,” many of the people categorized as rich were in fact poor at one time, and, overwhelmingly, most of the people considered to be poor today will not be poor in the not-too-distant future.
Many incorrectly blame consumer culture for poverty. The reverse is true--consumer culture is responsible for prosperity. People, after all, have to make, sell, and deliver all those products that others want to consume, which increases employment and material wealth for all (
including people in other countries). And it is that very prosperity that leads to a more assertive consumer culture. The lack of a permanent underclass, the continual escape from poverty, is actually the cause of what some would call “our debased consumer culture.”
In
The Revolt of the Masses, Ortega y Gasset saw the coming reality of culture being determined by the mass man. Empowering the masses economically and politically would naturally have cultural implications. No longer would there be an elite with the proper breeding and education to direct the culture. Because of the ever-improving standard of living our capitalist system creates, even laborers now have disposable income and time to spend it. Many whose parents had been laborers find themselves able to acquire an education and a white-collar career. Many have become wealthy. A college degree has been transformed from a rare achievement to a common stepping stone. Everything my friend would want for the “poor uneducated masses” is becoming reality. They earn more money, live longer and better, and refuse to have their tastes dictated from above.
But that empowerment also means that Americans enjoy their Danielle Steele novels and soap operas and don’t care who knows it. They’re loud and sure of themselves, and the power of their dollars affects us all. The people want smothered-covered burgers, and the people, in a consumer culture, always get what they want. It is not my purpose to sing the praises of the smothered-covered burger. There is plenty to be critical of in our society. Consumer culture has allowed public opinion to be determined by sound bites and catch phrases (because, of course, countries with other kinds of economic cultures never elect bumbling bureaucrats or enact stupid policies). It has led to millions of conversations over the details of Tom Cruise’s love life (though as long as I’m not forced to participate in such conversations, it isn’t really my problem). It has given birth to television shows and books and songs that--in some people’s opinions, which means,
the absolute truth that everyone should agree with--cater to the lowest common denominator, because in entertainment that is often where the money is (fortunately, televisions, books, and radios do not yet have the power to demand my attention. I have figured out how to use the off switch).
However, aside from the material benefits it provides, recent consumer culture has also produced brilliant movies, inventive pop songs, and satire in the form of television shows like
The Simpsons and
South Park, which are hardly less sophisticated in their humor than
The Canterbury Tales or a Shakespearean comedy, based on the number of bathroom and sex jokes alone. It is true that popular consumer culture often elevates the simplistic and the crude, but it can produce the clever and even the profound as well. And our consumer culture has also made room for a thriving high-art community, with some of the world’s finest orchestras, writers, and museums finding their own audiences.
Those who want to denounce consumer culture wholesale must be confronted with its benefits and its cause. Improved material living standards for millions of people, self-confidence, political freedom, more leisure time, greater health, and longer lives are the direct results of a society that is built on a consumer economy. They are, in turn, the direct cause of the popularity of James Patterson novels,
People magazine, smothered-covered burgers, fad fashions, and primetime game shows that are painful to watch. The two cannot be separated. If the snobs among us would wish away our consumer culture, they would also have to do away with its genesis--a greater improvement in living standards than any of our grandparents could have conceived.
The popularity of trashy books was inevitable with the invention of the printing press. We would not condemn the printing press and ignore all of the good it has fostered, would we? Of course not. And for the same reason, we shouldn’t condemn consumer culture. It would be nice if Americans, many only a generation or two removed from poverty, would throw aside trite entertainment, at least once in a while. It would be a true joy if movie stars weren’t fawned over by journalists. But that’s wishful thinking. What exactly should the people be doing with their time and money? Millions have been economically empowered in the last few generations; could anyone really expect that they would all be reading sonnets and studying Latin and attending symphonies? Is this the standard they are failing to meet when we look down on their tastes? We need to evaluate consumer culture honestly and in a more historical context.
People, who in earlier times would be illiterate, now choose to read romance novels and self-help books. Should we blame consumer culture for their bad taste, or recognize how lucky they and we are to be living in a society where so many can and do read? People, who in earlier times would be blocked by poverty from attending the opera, now relax by watching the latest action movie or television hospital melodrama. Should we blame consumer culture for their lowly interests, or recognize how lucky they and we are to be living in a society that has given them the time and technology for such entertainment? People, who in earlier times would be unable to afford a steak dinner, now drive around the corner, still in their work clothes, and get filet mignon for an hour’s wages. Should we blame consumer culture for their lack of formality, or be thankful that in this society a working-class family can have a meal brought to them with dignity, cooked to order?
Those claiming to care about the working class should be consumer culture’s loudest cheerleaders. Of course, it is only natural for artists and writers to challenge the status quo and be critical of what they think is the worst in their society (though in some "artistic" circles, loathing American capitalism
is the status quo). My comments above do not mean I don’t have critiques of my own. But any honest critique of American consumer culture should be tempered by the reality that it has resulted in more improved lives than any other kind of economic culture in the history of the world.
It might indeed be a case of either-or. Either people are poor and not free,
or they have money and freedom and as a consequence the rest of us can’t avoid the new Britney Spears song on the radio. As one who, a generation or two earlier, might not have attended college or been in a position to look down on the literary tastes of the masses, I gladly praise the consumer culture that creates freedom and prosperity and opportunity. And if Britney Spears truly cannot be avoided, I will be happy to turn off my radio and television and read a good book. After I’ve had my smothered-covered burger, of course.
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This essay was first published on the
Drexel Online Journal in 2002. A few cultural references have since been updated and other minor changes have been made.
