W.B.3 - Television and Advertising

"Television is the greatest disrespecter and exploiter of sexuality that the world has ever seen; even if the network executives decide to promote 'safe sex' and the use of condoms, they will not cease to pimp for the exceedingly profitable 'sexual revolution.'" (P. 124)

I think we all know the first phrase is true, but it is interesting to see him accuse the media executives philanthropy (in donating air space and money to educational commercials for safe sex) as fulfilling a further purpose of furthering our national sexual addiction ... and that he even comments that the musician led sexual revolution of the 60s was a welcome addition to the ad industry.

This reminds me of something I read by Fredrica Matthews-Green about the troubling conformity that was happening during the fifties. Goods were being mass-produced and were cheap ... so everyone was buying, turning us into a nation of mere consumers. The term for this was conformity and there was much talk about what to do to stop it. Fortunately (read: unfortunately) this dilemma is forgotten because it was resolved.

"Advertising developed the brilliant solution of presenting the consumer as rebel. Customers could prove their independence by buying goods that demonstrated defiance of fashion. Such fashionable goods were akin to talismans, keeping the specter of conformity at bay. Especially fashionable were those products that appeared to repudiate fashion, implying that you were too cool to care whether you were cool. Yet because these goods could still be identically mass-produced, they remained affordable and of reassuringly familiar quality. The goods had never been the problem; anxiety about consuming them was the problem. This problem was eliminated through the magic of marketing, by invention of the consumer-as-rebel persona."

Think about that next time you are shopping for something unique and stylish.