The Commercialization of Culture
Advertisements, mass production, sacrificing quality for time and quantity, the desire for bigger and better, these are the problems of commercialism. Commercialism has been advancing nearly unnoticed by most consumers even since Babylonian times. But, what makes it harmful enough to be explained in a paper? Everyday we sit in our homes desiring goods and services that we do not need or may not even want, and discussing issues that have little or no importance to our lives other than to make small talk. Everyday we work hard to buy stuff that is better or at least equal to what society considers normal. As our former president Herbert Hoover even stated prior to the Great Depression, what he would have liked to see in every American household is "Two cars in every garage" (The American President: Herbert Hoover, 2002). We are fashioning ourselves to be boringly equal cogs in one giant corporate machine, and in turn, are losing our culture to business and propaganda. When a new "hipper" culture appears, commercialists explode the culture across the United States like a plague. What average adult would not know what a skateboard is, what reggae music is, or what Middle East tension is. We have all been commercialized by the news,
Such cases can be observed on the purchase of a television; for one more inch diagonal width the consumer may pay out an additional fifty dollars, whereas the consumer could rather invest this money for something that may be vital to the person in the future, such as a doctor visit. " It also commercializes children and brainwashes them to what they should be, rather than letting them ultimately deciding for themselves, such motives cause children to be less original and more bounded by the limits of commercialization (Fox, 1996, p. Hours per year the average American youth watches television: 1500 Violence 1. In fact in the early 20th century, many papers would make up fake stories of horrible acts and scandal committed only to sell more papers, also known as yellow journalism, until this was deemed as illegal. ) on a clown punching bag, and later these same acts were demonstrated by both male and female children (Morris & Maitso, 2001, p. If words are not enough just look how crime has increased ever since the development of the television, the mass media, and even crime related advertisements. As of 1997, ninety-nine percent of American homes had a television with the average number of TV's per household standing at 2. In 1915, in the Supreme Court Case: Mutual Film Corporation vs. Most of us suffer from some form of debt, and any of us can suffer from a money hungry criminal, but why? Are there ways of escaping commercialism? In the next section I will attempt to find ways to escape or at least limit the negative effects of commercialism. Channel 1, the education channel used by many schools for further education to students, has been accused of being even more commercialized than public television. " Violent acts and symbolism were even depicted in cave paintings in somewhere around 15,000 to 10,000 B.
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