How We're So Made to Spend - Consumerism and Hyper-Reality pt. 3

Theodor Adorno

Capitalism Doesn't Sell Us the Things We Really Need 

  "Because of the huge range of consumer goods available in modern capitalism, we naturally suppose that everything  we could possibly want is available-- the only problem if there is one, is that we can't afford it. But Adorno pointed out that our real wants are carefully shielded from us by capitalist industry so that we end up forgetting what it is we truly need and settle instead for desires manufactured for us by corporations without any interest in our true welfare. 

 Though we think we live in a world of plenty, what we really require to thrive, namely tenderness, understanding, calm insight, community-- all these things are painfully in short supply and utterly disconnected from the present economy.  

  When they're trying to sell us something, advertisers show us the things we really want, and then connect it to something we don't actually need. So, we can see an advert showing a group of friends walking on a beach chatting amiably, or family having a picnic laughing warmly together. These adverts show these things because they know we crave community and connection but the industrial economy prefers to keep us lonely and consuming. So at the end of the adverts we'll be urged to buy some 25 year-old whiskey or a car so powerful that no roads will ever let us legally drive at top speed(Alain de Botton- The School of Life)".

How We're So Made to Spend - Consumerism and Hyper-Reality pt. 2

The Consequences of Hyperreality

  Jean Baudrillard, the media theorist who coined the term, "hyperreality", has expressed concerns about the effect hyperreality has on the society. He has referred to Disneyland as an example of hyperreality, where a fabrication of reality is represented and people's fantasy of reality is satisfied by artificial constructs. The cartoon world where everything is perfect and happy is created "real" to touch with plastic replicas of animals, princesses, and princes in every corner of the park. Adult visitors know that these are fake, but nonetheless keep silence to refrain from shattering the fantasy of the mass around them. Maintenance of this hyperreality is kept systematically in Disneyland, as the participants of this awesome play all abide by the rules obediently. They look where they are told to look, walk along the predetermined path as they are supposed to, and abstain from breaking the queue line. When one participant goes out of line to point out the superficiality of this game, he or she is looked upon with distaste, and quickly and politely asked to stop. As order is restored, the crowd returns to their imaginary world as if the minor disruption never happened.

Baudrillard states:

“[Disneyland functions] to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation"(Baudrillard 1983).

 He states that Disneyland is the real America, because the real America is actually a hyperreal phenomenon divorced from the once genuinely real place called America that has now vanished from human experience.

  In his essay, "1984"(1949), George Orwell paints a dystopian society in which the citizens are made to obey the totalitarian government, the Big Brother. Certain aware individuals which pose threat to the status quo of the society is suppressed through fear and by force. However, most live in that society quite nonchalantly, believing the lies they are told, and behaving as they are commanded. The manipulation of the Big Brother strongly gives the smell that quaintly reminds us of our own mass media(hypodermic needle theory). We are already told what happiness is, and made to pursue it in the illusion of free-will.

 In a way, what Orwell illustrates is the world where the hyperreality has escaped the confinement of Disneyland boundaries. The consequence of hyperreality is far more insidious than the thought of mere empty wallets.

How We're So Made to Spend - Consumerism and Hyper-Reality pt. 1

The term “hyperreality” was coined by Jean Baudrillard in the ‘80s, to describe that which a person might perceive as real when what he is actually experiencing is a copy, a simulation of reality. Hyperreality manifests widely in our time. One instance is the great amounts of commercials that present a recreation of reality where everything is perfect. We enter the hyper-real world when we copy the fashion style of celebrities imagining the superficial rise of status as we wear the same clothes as those whom we aspire to be. We purchase and consume the advertised products not for what they are materially, but for what they represent. 

The price of hyperreality is well displayed by the consumerist culture in supermarkets. In supermarkets, the product lines are filled with dazzling display of material items for purchase. It is where we go to spend more time entranced by the superfluous array of things we don't need, but nonetheless in our reach for purchase. The superfluousness, the quality of the rich and wealthy, is what we psychologically crave. For the time we spend shopping, we are surrounded by the wealth that is there with us, and when we check out we wake up to reality dejected and filled with futility. We then return after a short while, for the high supermarkets provide. 

Indeed, consumerism is the opium of the people.