Fed up with consumption

Monday, November 3, 1997

Fed up with consumption

CONSUMPTION Entertainment not merely a harmless amusement

We’ve heard the adage "you are what you eat" countless times.
Most of us can recognize this point and understand that our food
has a profound effect on our health. It is said that 80 percent of
health problems are related to diet. Consequently, health-conscious
people tend to scrutinize their diets, carefully choosing their
foods on the basis of nutritional value or harm.

We filter out harmful foods in order to keep our bodies healthy.
Clearly, there are some things that we have little or no power over
– the effects of air pollution and toxins in our school and work
environments, for example. But at least there is a conscious effort
to purify the body through abstinence.

But it’s not just food that affects us. Everything we perceive
and are subject to affects us. What we see affects us. What we read
affects us.

What we hear affects us. Even what we feel, or don’t feel,
affects us: Infants deprived of sensory stimulation (i.e., talking,
hugs, affection) become maladjusted children.

The people that want to sell us things seem to understand this
fact quite well. There was a report on "60 Minutes" last week about
the Nike and Adidas basketball camps for promising middle- and high
school-aged athletes.

These two shoe-makers spend tremendous amounts of money trying
to create "brand loyalty" among 14-year-olds. They figure that if
they fly these kids around the country, take them to Las Vegas,
provide them with all the shoes and clothes they could ask for,
these kids will repay the favor when they are NBA stars and sign
endorsement contracts with them.

It’s good business, they argue. And it creates a nice
advertising niche. The kids have earned the right to be walking
billboards for their respective shoe companies. You can even call
it a symbiotic relationship.

I just find it interesting that people today also share this
sense of "brand loyalty." But what has Nike or Adidas done for you?
Or Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger or Armani? The basketball kids
are prepped for multimillion-dollar promotional contracts, but why
are everyday people so proud to be someone else’s billboard?

What propels us to want someone’s corporate identity displayed
on our body? I remember people in high school that used to say
things like, "I only wear Guess." This artificial identity, based
on someone else’s desire to fill their pockets, makes us symbolic
"pawns in the game." One obvious source of these influences stems
from what is appropriately labeled the "idiot box."

Jerry Mander, author of "Four Arguments for the Elimination of
Television," maintains that "since 1945, 99 percent of the homes in
the country had acquired at least one television set. The average
household had the set going more than six hours a day. If there was
a child, the average was more than eight hours. The average person
was watching nearly four hours daily. And so, allowing eight hours
for sleep and eight hours for work, roughly half of the
non-sleeping, non-working time was spent watching television."

The harmful effects of television are widely discussed. Apathy,
materialism, stupidity, ignorance, aggressiveness and hyperactivity
are some of the more obvious effects of too much television. You
can read all about it in the library.

One study analyzed MTV videos and found that "women engaged in
significantly more implicitly sexual and subservient behavior and
women were more frequently the object of explicit, implicit, and
aggressive sexual advances."

Another study analyzed both misogynous and non-misogynous rap
music and found that "misogynous music facilitates sexually
aggressive behavior."

Attitudes fostered through these media have pervaded a whole
generation’s mentality. We’re not called the "MTV generation" for
nothing. One effect of the media’s objectification of women is the
general public’s objectification of women. Obviously, this isn’t
the only factor involved, but it does influence us. Just ask your
friends who listen to Snoop Doggy Dogg for some descriptive terms
for women.

One out of every five college-aged women are raped. Children
grow up imitating their parents, peers, and role models. We end up
imitating what surrounds us. People in Boelter Hall would say
"garbage in, garbage out."

We need to understand ourselves and our place in the world and
stop worshipping entertainment. It doesn’t even take time or effort
to "tune out." It actually frees valuable time to do productive
things. We don’t need other people’s advertisements or propaganda.
Mander says: "Only by realizing that the image carried in the mind
is real and implanted is it possible to disconnect oneself from the
cycle of taped replay and subvert an otherwise inevitable process
whereby the image is transformed into reality."By Ather Ali