There is an unswerving chorus of pundits in the media today, with the backing of big business, espousing the virtues of stainless steel appliances. We are told that they are sleek, modern, easy to clean, stylish and will be the envy of all our house guests. Purchase stainless steel appliances and be someone you’re not, a master chef in the culinary castle of your kitchen. Each da
y I turn my television on to a show on how I should decorate my home, or what I should or shouldn't do to my home to get the most resale value for it. Stainless steel appliances are always on the list of what one should do. Shelter magazines, a publishing trade term for the segment of the magazine market with an editorial focus on interior design, architecture, home furnishings, and often gardening, show kitchen photo layouts with stainless steel appliances prominently featured. But will stainless steel appliances be just a fad, the gold and avocado appliances of the 60s and 70s? Do consumers really find them attractive, or do they just want to keep up with the Joneses after being programmed by the incessant media hype? The American populous in general has become a society of conformists who no longer can think on their own but look to the media, politicians, or whoever crosses their path, to tell them what they desire, how they should act, and what they should think.Popular culture is democratic as Ray B. Browne (2005) posits in that if the public doesn't purchase
what big business and the media feed us a steady diet of, then they circle their wagons to try another backdoor assault on our freewill. Popular culture may encompass all that surrounds us by providing society with a common palette of likes and dislikes, behaviors, beliefs, customs and tastes (Browne, 2005) to interact with each other. In an American society, self-consumed and neurotic about keeping up with the Joneses, there are unfortunately too many of us that prefer to see the emperor’s new clothes. In that framework , pop culture does not universally represent the overwhelming mindset of society, but is the fabrication of a few, malleably accepted and advanced by a duped public that fears being seen as idiosyncratic. It is then that popular culture becomes the diametric opposite of a true democratic process and is a hyperbole of what is acceptable and desirous to society as a whole.I will not be made to feel guilty for purchasing black appliances for my home. I won’t wear my pants precariously close to succumbing to gravity and falling to the pavement. I won’t watch reruns of Will & Grace, Sex in the City, nor programming on ABC or HBO in general, two networks rated the most pro-homosexual by The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Society cannot afford to be led by our noses, or our pocketbooks, by companies using popular culture as a vehicle, to do whatever it takes to sell their products of mass consumerism as a pretext for a way for us to find happiness and a better more interesting life. Symbols that glamorize, condone, and advance a particular agenda, be it stainless steel appliances, same sex marriage, gaudy bling, sexual promiscuity, the list goes on, may float within that common body of water that that is popular culture as Ray B. Browne (2005) describes it, but we must resist floating to the top as long as we have a breath left inside us and the will to be individuals. We cannot be sheep and accept for fact what is glamorized in the media and contorted into popular culture as acceptable behavior and the way most people live. We must swim against the current and be free thinkers to recapture a more wholesome popular culture of yesteryears, or be relinquished to continue on our journey to anarchy.
References
Browne, R. B. (Ed.). (2005). Profiles of popular culture. Madison, Wisconsin: The Popular Press.
When we bought our house a few years ago, we also looked at the stainless steel appliances. But we did not look at the appliances just because it was popular to do so but because my husband actually liked the look of the appliances and thought they would go well with our decor. But that aside, why shouldnt the companies make and promote what the consumers are buying at the time? Wouldnt it make good business sense to follow what the consumers consider to be pop culture?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am one of those people who will tend to pay attention to what is currently going on in the world of pop culture and from there, I will determine whether I actually like what it is or whether I will just ignore it. I think that this makes me an individual in this era but that I am also one of the people who likes pop culture and looks to see what others are doing. I think that this helps me even more to be my own individual because I know what others are doing and I may try to do something else just to show that I am different. But then there are those times that I will follow the masses and go along with what is popular. I think that people can do both and still not be considered one of the "conformists".
Personally I think we all have the capability to make decisions based on our own personal preference. Companies do research to find what is popular among the people and do promotions and advertising based on our preferences. I don't believe that we are influenced by them as much as they are influenced by us. How can we blame them for promoting what we as consumers are more likely to purchase?
ReplyDeleteTheresa, I completely agree. There are employees within a company that do only research on consumers and what they want. That is there only job. Whatever they then pass on to research and development is what they have found to be popular among the public and therefore what would sell.
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