Sin and Salvation in Advertising

In my Critical Theory class we were talking about sin and salvation concepts in advertising. It's from the book How to Watch TV News by Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death) and Steve Powers.

"The Seven Deadly Sins, in other words, are problems to be solved through chemistry and technology. On commercials, there are no intimations of the conventional roads to spiritual redemption. But there is Original Sin, and it consists of our having been ignorant of a product that offers happiness. We may achieve a state of grace by attending to the good news about it, which will appear every six or seven minutes. It follows from this that he or she is most devout who knows of the largest array of products; they are heretics who willfully ignore what is there to be used." (125)

Shoot! For some of my classes, I've had to write papers on postmodern consumerism and I've talked about how the old metanarratives of society (nationalism, religion, etc.) which is what people used to find meaning for their lives and events within, have gone away. To replace them, capitalism has come in and created a type of religion for consumers.

For instance, there are little cults around different stores. In high school, it meant something very definite if you shopped at Abercrombie & Fitch vs. Aeropostale. Why? Because there was this whole narrative and meaning surrounding the brands that people wanted to be a part of, to identify with.

The same thing with Starbucks. People are die-hard fans. They love sitting there, the community found there, the music, the caffeine, everything. But it is also an image that has been carefully constructed by Starbucks. They give us something that we want, and it's almost a spiritual experience (ritual) going there and taking part in it. But, at the end of the day, it's just COFFEE. or is it?

Blogging Ourselves to Death

I am reading 'Amusing ourselves to Death' for my Intro to Critical Theory class with Ronci. A lot of stuff in this book pisses me off because it seems too extreme, too apocalyptic. Life has gone on after TV and even the Internet, things are still kind of good and kind of bad.

However, this quote jumped out at me because of its relevance to blogging (the book was written in 1984, btw).

"The telegraph made a three-pronged attack on typography's definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. These demons of discourse were aroused by the fact that telegraphy gave a form of legitimacy to the idea of context-free information; that is, to the idea that the value of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action, but may attach merely to its novelty, interest, and curiosity. The telegraphy made information into a commodity, a "thing" that could be bought and sold irrespective of its uses or meaning."

Blogs, anyone? And yes, I grasp the irony of me blogging about this. Neil Postman, the author, makes use of some Biblical imagery earlier in the book. He brushed against the idea that perhaps what God was saying when he outlawed graven images was that humans can't handle too many images, we need words. I don't know...

But speaking of Biblical imagery. Does this make anyone else think about the tower of Babel? That too much unfettered communication can be bad for a people?