billboard photo essay number three: ephiphanies of consumer desire
The billboard's territorialization of public space for the cultivation of consumer desire rests on an increasingly pithy symbolic vernacular. The consumer is hailed as a savvy interpreter of the symbolic universe who is able to recognize and decode the barrage of images and text that circulates around us. We become putative members of consumer society via our capacity for aesthetic proficiency. We could say that we are no longer "mere" consumers but active producers of the very apparatuses that guarantee our integration into consumer culture in the first place. This billboard poster seems to suggest that a visit to the Mall of America is a cultural event akin to visiting
The epiphany here is the "realization that there is a sweet sale” at the Mall of America “on your day off." Hence, we find delectable personal reward if we realize that consuming can sweeten our leisure time (which is implied to be somehow empty otherwise, much like the sky that provides the backdrop for the poster).
One has epiphanies when encountering the profound. Are we being asked to contemplate an afternoon of trudging round the Mall of America as a profound activity?
posted by . at
3:10 PM
8 Comments:
And yet we go and buy things we don't really need so we can save. We are responsible also, yes, definitely. We are willing participants.
I couldn't stop thinking about this now. When I went back to Japan after 7 years in Minnesota, I couldn't stand the consumerism there. I couldn't stand the judging and being judged by the stuff you have - and having wasn't good enough, you had to update it annually. And I didn't even know one-tenth of the brand names even little kids knew about. Yikes. That's one reason why I love living in NZ over living in Japan, but consumerism is coming here, too, in different ways. Though people still exchange hand-made gifts and Christmas isn't over the top here. Sigh.... Sigh.... I was so good at being in denial about this..... Sigh....
Yes, we are asked to consider their commercial sale an epiphany, and we are so often complicit in this departure from clear thinking. We have the ring in our noses, and we are happy as Flossie the cow when we are led around by it. I'm no exception, but it's less severe with me than most. But it IS everywhere, isn't it?
hey M and P:
thanks for stopping by. I wonder though: many people would argue that consumerism isn't as controlling as we sometimes think. We do have the choice not to go along with it all, after all. Anyhoo, I'm off out to get some new pics.
Flossie, now that's a nice name. I know we have the choice to not be seduced, but it takes a little will power, no? Or a really bad bank balance (as in just now, for me, for the last 9 or so months....) to make it just not feasible. I pay everything by credit card, but even I can imagine how easy it would be NOT to overspend if I paid everything by cash, withdrawn monthly or fortnightly. I would be able to see the money literally disappear from my wallet. But I haven't done it. Yet...
By the way, Carol (www.stpauldailyphoto.blogspot.com) says there were spaghetti-and-meatballs-on-sticks at the State Fair - did you happen to catch that one by any chance? How on earth did they ... solidify it? Have you ever eaten one? It sounds like the type of food one would eat only at the State Fair.
In a way, I think with the retro and delapidated things nomad and I tend to put on our blogs, we are celebrating the things that are not shrink-wrapped into slick new packaging, but instead are left in their original state. I think it's best if these grand old things are not allowed to deteriorate, but I think they are beautiful even in states of decay. This early in the morning I'm not quite wrapping my brain around how this relates to consumerism, but I think it's in there, somewhere.
Phlegmfatale,
yes, decay is interesting, isn't it? I suppose it has to do with the fact that the culture around us insists so much upon the "new." I sometimes think that people (self included) fetishize decay too much. On the other hand, old stuff does make for interesting pictures.
Meg: I did see the spaghetti and meatballs on a stick. I'm a veggie so I didn't try it but it certainly looked interesting.
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