Consumerism

Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase commodity goods in ever greater amounts. Many agree that it has most certainly become the spirit, or zeitgeist, of our age. Popular music has the capacity to reveal this. Both, “She’s leaving home” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney (1967) and “Don’t Stop” critique consumerism and consumerist society. “She’s leaving home” concentrates on attitudes to consumerism in the late 60’s, while “Don’t Stop” covers more modern aspects. To fully understand consumerism, we first need to explore why we consume. It is in human nature to be acquisitive, to gather and store supplies for the future. There have been many attempts to pinpoint an exact date of its origin, but most agree that, for the western world, a great turn in consumerism arrived just before the Industrial Revolution. Agricultural commodities, essential consumer goods, and commercial activities had developed to an extent, but members of the working classes worked long hours for low wages, which left little time or money for consumerist activities. Pioneers in consumerist culture like Henry Ford concluded that mass production would inevitably lead to mass consumption. Frederick Winslow Taylor brought this theory to other industries. This jumpstarted mass productivity and availability of goods previously unattainable by the lower classes. So began the era of mass consumption. Body 2: “She’s Leaving Home” “She’s leaving home by the Beatles, written in 1967, was composed in a time of political and social upheaval as the conservative consumer values of the 1950’s gave way to the “peace” and “free love” of the hippy era. The song reveals how entrenched consumerism is through the dilemma of a young girl who rejects her parents’ values as shallow and meaningless. The conflict of their respective values in the song is portrayed through a dual narrative structure. The parents’ first person point of view, “we gave her everything that money could buy” demonstrates that they equate material possessions as evidence of love. Further highlighting the zeitgeist of consumerism the parents can’t understand why the daughter rejects their “love”. “Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly'” The tension caused by the juxtaposition of the hopeful trepidation of the young woman and the grief and pain of her parents is resolved in the last stanza. The girl is having the time of her life and, despite the pressure to think that money can be used to procure fun inducing goods and services; it is not because of money. Body 3: “Don’t Stop” “Don’t Stop” by Innerpartysystem criticizes consumerism by taking on a persona that embodies its values. The lyrics of the song focus on celebrity culture, and lie within the media and celebrity scene. The lyrics are sung in first person from the point of view of a “celebrity” who may have no specific talent or is famous purely because of his/her wealth “I’ll buy my way to talk to God/ So he can live with what I’m not” (famous for being famous) and this person is only interested in the attention to which a celebrity may receive. “This is entertainment/ Lies are entertainment” these lines suggest that society hangs on “exciting”, yet meaningless drivel to make up for the boring lives they lead, ending up “down on (their) knees begging…for more”. The song portrays these celebrities as the public's entertainment, and even though they are often petty and superficial, the public wrongly feed these celebrities with their attention. The song criticizes the news reporting more about celebrity's personal lives than actual news. It outlines the changes and growth in consumerism up to the modern era, but also parallels the views from the 60’s against consumerism still being developed by many people today. The meaning of the song fits into the social background of the name ‘Innerpartysystem’ (the supreme class of George Orwell’s “1984”) and is similar to a lot of the issues and outlook on ‘celebrity culture’ and the pessimistic outlook on society. You need more specific information on consumerism in this section. In conclusion, these songs reveal that consumerism is the zeitgeist of society by highlighting key issues inherent in consumerist culture and how they are still relevant to society today, through an effective and widespread media.