Straw Men and the Popular Press

I was doing a bit of research this week about anti-consumerism, since part of my dissertation has to do with the consumption practices surrounding a culture (rock music) that has at times at least paid lip service to anti-consumerist sentiments. I stumbled across the wikipedia article for "anti-consumerism" and was amused to find that the section "Criticism of anti-consumerism" consisted of exactly two sentences. Those two sentences reference an article by James Twitchell (a great name) from a 2000 issue of Reason magazine. And, sorry to beat on something so old, but Twitchell's arguments were outdated even in the year 2000.

I think that much of our current refusal to consider the liberating role of consumption is the result of who has been doing the describing. Since the 1960s, the primary "readers" of the commercial "text" have been the well-tended and -tenured members of the academy. For any number of reasons--the most obvious being their low levels of disposable income, average age, and gender, and the fact that these critics are selling a competing product, high-cult (which is also coated with its own dream values)--the academy has casually passed off as "hegemonic brainwashing" what seems to me, at least, a self-evident truth about human nature: We like having stuff.

In place of the obvious, they have substituted an interpretation that they themselves often call vulgar Marxism. It is supposedly vulgar in the sense that it is not as sophisticated as the real stuff, but it has enough spin on it to be more appropriately called Marxism lite. Go into almost any cultural studies course in this country and you will hear the condemnation of consumerism expounded: What we see in the marketplace is the result of the manipulation of the many for the profit of the few. Consumers are led around by the nose. We live in a squirrel cage. Left alone we would read Wordsworth, eat lots of salad, and have meetings to discuss Really Important Subjects.

So, a couple of things. This isn't vulgar Marxism. And vulgar Marxism isn't vulgar in the sense that it's "unwashed" or "unsophisticated." I'm not anything close to being an expert on all the various strands of Marxism, but I can at least tell you what vulgar Marxism is: it's Marxism that assumes a 1:1 ratio between base economic conditions and superstructure (the shape of institutions, artistic forms, etc.) with no mediation involved.

And secondly, if you go into any cultural studies class, you will not "will hear the condemnation of consumerism expounded," as Twitchell suggests. In fact, if anything, you might hear the opposite. You'll hear about "remaking," "remixing," "appropriating," items from consumer culture to express personal and cultural meanings. I mean, even 9 years ago when this article was published, how many years after Dick Hebdige and Henry Jenkins was Twitchell writing? These have become accepted ideas. I think that just about every scholar of popular culture (professor or grad student) hangs onto this fundamental tension: that there is a "culture industry" that exercises enormous control over consumers but that the act of consumption can (at the very least, seem to) be an act of empowerment for consumers. In my teaching of themes of globalization, technology, and popular music to a classroom full of undergards, I always try to hang onto a bit of ambiguity in my lectures and our discussions. And I think this sort of humility and an unwillingness to preach to our students is pretty common in liberal arts classrooms, in general. (But maybe things are really THAT BAD and we should be preaching to our students, screaming at them to get out there and make a difference. I don't know. But I don't think I'd make a good preacher.) Twitchell's account of what is happening in the academic study of popular culture is unconvincing, to say the least.

So what's at fault here for such a shoddy argument? Is it Twitchell? Reason magazine? The inherent space and style limits of writing for the popular press? As a blogger, consumer of the popular press, and someone not entirely satisfied with the way the academic press works, I hope that there are alternative forums available for important and serious discussion. The internet, as they say, should hopefully be one of these places, since concerns over space and money should be drastically reduced here. I'll refrain here from philosophizing about the promises and challenges of the internet, because I think that most of that writing (probably any that I would attempt, as well) is so light that it will just float away in the breeze of our collected laptop fans. But what I mean to say is that if you're looking for an interesting negative look at anti-consumerism, it ain't in this article.