David Carr says the news media would do well not to wag its collective finger at the shopping-mad mob that trampled the poor zhlub at Wal-mart. Excerpt:
Just a few days ago, the same newspaper writers and television anchors who are now wearily shaking their heads at the collective bankruptcy of our mass consumer culture were cheering all of it on.
He's talking about all the pre-Black Friday puff pieces and service journalism helping pump up the consumerist excitedment in advance of the big day.
It's convenient to point a crooked finger in the wake of the tragedy at some light coverage of some harmless family fun. Except the coverage is not so much trite as deeply cynical, an attempt to indoctrinate consumers into believing that they are what they buy and that they should be serious enough about it to leave the family at home.Media and retail outfits are economic peas in a pod. Part of the reason that the Thanksgiving newspaper and local morning television show are stuffed with soft features about shopping frenzies is that they are stuffed in return with ads from retailers. Yes, Black Friday is a big day for retailers -- stores did as much as 13 percent of their holiday business this last weekend -- but it is also a huge day for newspapers and television.
In partnership with retail advertising clients, the news media have worked steadily and systematically to turn Black Friday into a broad cultural event. A decade ago, it was barely in the top 10 shopping days of the year. But once retailers hit on the formula of offering one or two very-low-priced items as loss leaders, media groups began to cover the post-Thanksgiving outing as a kind of consumer sporting event.
Very solid hit against the media, I think. Carr's ending is a jolt, suggesting a consumerist version of Nietzsche's Last Man:
Even consumption may have limits. Mr. Cohen said that in his 32 years interviewing consumers in malls during the holiday season, he had never heard what he did this year. "People really have no idea what they want," he said.
They don't even want anything. They want to want. Our popular culture, driven by news and entertainment media, and advertising, has stimulated their appetites, such that all they know now is appetite. I don't know whether it's more pathetic or frightening. Maybe it's frightening because it's pathetic: the Last Shopper.
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Taking some of your own advice John Agn Stoic, maybe you should stop haunting Rod's combox? If you want him to close up, what the hell are you doing here?
Steve K., I don't want Rod to close up - far from it - I want him to do his blogging from a safe location - possibly his ancestral home in Louisiana.
When (not if) Dallas eventually goes up in flames and riots, I would feel sad knowing that, because I recognized the dangers of the impending collapse, I was safe in my rural compound while Rod hadn't gotten out in time even though he recognized the danger he was in by remaining in the city.
They don't even want anything. They want to want. Our popular culture, driven by news and entertainment media, and advertising, has stimulated their appetites, such that all they know now is appetite. I don't know whether it's more pathetic or frightening. Maybe it's frightening because it's pathetic: the Last Shopper.
Well, I take it as a good sign. It means, like all the other signs around it, that this corruption of ego-driven wasteful consumption on credit that began to spread downward from the very top socioeconomic ranks of the society 35 to 40 years ago has reached the very bottom ranks that can take up credit at all. And is ironically, though not quite coincidentally, near satiety is reached at nearly the same time as its credit limit.
The driving need, for the illusion of feeling prosperous and powerful and ascendant in a dismal, unpromising and impoverishing Cold War reality and its hangover period, is, thankfully, waning along with that reality.
The forbidden question of the Enlightenment: What if I would rather have integrity than be autonomous?
Choice always devours itself.
This reminds me of something I read by a Buddhist convert, Marco Pallis, to the effect that our desires are potentially gurus or spiritual guides IF we trace our dissatisfaction, our want, to its source--or, rather, Source. "Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee."
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