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March 15, 2013

329. Media Culture in Equal Money Capitalism

By Marlen

A softer modality of imperialism exists in the seemingly innocent way we entertain ourselves, an ever expansive desire-driven consumerist empire in the instant-image world where everyone aims to be a star and ignore the reality that implodes in every second of our supersized glamourized lifestyles.

Continuing from:

307. CapitalismUS: Pursuit of Happiness

308. Might Makes Right: CapitalismUS

 

 

 

 

Problem                                                                 

 

In cultural studies, media culture refers to the current western capitalist society that emerged and developed from the 20th century, under the influence of mass media.Media culture is associated with consumerism, and in this sense called alternatively “consumer culture.”

– Jansson, André (2002) The Mediatization of Consumption, Journal of Consumer Culture, March 2002 vol. 2 no. 1 5-31

 

 

Soft Imperialism by Culture and Media

The reason why it is important to be aware of  Neo-Colonialism as the deployment of massive consumerist propaganda by Multi National Corporations  is because there is no regulation from government or any other institution that decides ‘what is acceptable to offer’ to people to buy.  This is the ideological imperialism that we have adopted under the name of culture, fashion, music, arts, the  ideas of humanity ‘evolving’ somehow through the changes in images, pictures, artifacts, technologies, internet, audiovisual arts – yet, what we consume is precisely an outflow of an ideological apparatus that leads us to continually seek  have the experiences reproduced in our TV shows, movies, street ads, the ‘values’ that our celebrities represent –  but it is only yet another vulgar display of power wherein we learn to idolize and venerate people that make millions while telling people to ‘be free’ and unlimited’ and ‘seek their own happiness/ follow your dreams!’ and all this positive outlook toward life wherein there is not a single consideration of inducing people to question the system, why not? Because that would simply lead people to stop consuming and actually re-consider what is it that we are really ‘living’ for nowadays, wherein one learns that buying clothes, going to parties, seeking to get high, get drunk every Friday night and then repeat after 24 hours is our idea of freedom.

 

Our freedom and ‘right to life’ has been sold by our  governments who have become only the ‘executers’ of corporate desires to justify the intervention, subjugation, coercion  and injection of culture and ideology around the globe,  which is also a vital aspect to consider here since that is what is ever present in any country where entertainment is also an export from the United States, becoming part of our dear globalized forms of entertainment in our digital era.

I would dare to say this is quite a ‘glamorously disguised’ form of imperialism seen as ‘benevolent’ due to its ability to infiltrate and install within individuals an entire ideological  and moral conditioning as a new  engineered lifestyle based on consumerism sold as entertainment – movies, TV series, cartoons, commercials, news networks, advertising and marketing campaigns,  wherein all that we ‘learn’ is to enhance individualism, the sense of specialness and personal enhancement through acquiring products that make us feel like the stars on TV, create a general ‘good feeling’ about what we see and that makes us feel like we want to have the same clothes, hair, looks, attitude, perspective about life and in general, have a Lot of money to buy all of that and more.

 

It is also difficult to gauge the level of diffusion or control it, since it mostly exits in the form of websites, audiovisuals that are salable and accessible for a very small amount of money – or non at all -covering the walls and billboards in our cities, on every TV screen and popular media that is accessible even to those that have little to no money in our current societies. The same goes for the actors within such industry such as celebrities, music/musicians, unfortunately arts  that have also become another form of propaganda wherein post-modernism states that ‘anything goes’  and our true art has become only the reflection of our own decadence in terms of lacking any form of common sensical values to promote a self responsible human being; instead we’re shaping our minds and the minds of our children from the moment they are placed in front of a TV as life-long partner wherein we develop our special needs and desires every single day that we don’t realize how we are adopting the way we think, speak and behave from the people on the screen, and we like it.  This is the corporate capitalist principle, the candy given to the kid so that it keeps coming back for more and basing our entire economic, political and social structures in order to feed the profit motive, nothing more and nothing less.

 

The ideas of a luxurious home, a perfected body image, the ideal attitude that can ‘trump’ everyone else, being always fresh and ready to ‘break the rules and break free,’ get the latest trend clothes, buy the latest car, the biggest house, through the wildest party, consume exorbitant amount of drugs and alcohol and you shall be Free.

 

What no one realizes is how it is the most Perfect way to maintain individuals occupied with how we look, how we feel about our bodies, each other, our relationships – sex/love – seeking ways to have more money so that we can continue enhancing this image that must be ‘the best’ and most-expensive look to get the most respect and become a celebrity for a day. King for a day, fool for a lifetime of chasing the ideal image that was only ‘ideal’ the moment it became the standard one in our TV screens and magazines.

 

Our ‘stars’ have become the spokespeople to advocate a society of glamour, grandeur, rebellion, an ‘anything goes’ attitude, of ‘whatevers’ and nevermind the human decay, where great apathy for any social matters is embedded, making it an ‘uncool’ thing to be aware of, no one wants to see misery, to read what people ‘far away’ are going through,  everyone wants to feel good, to be happy and perpetuate the idealized perfection in image and ‘soul,’ learning that guarding your Nation’s security is part of your good deeds to get the most of this life and hopefully get a piece of Heaven to continue avoiding to see the actual hell that is avoided in bubbles of feel good experiences.

 

 

Solution                                                                

Letting go of these ingrained images, desires, wants and needs is going to be an arduous job, more so than implementing a single policy at a political level. We are talking about the images, stories, sounds that fill our lives every single day. I can speak from my perspective where music filled my days and how it felt like dying the moment I stopped making of music and the cult of artists an addiction to escape from the world.

 

We have to support each other to develop enough awareness about everything that we have consumed with no awareness, the reasons we have equated ourselves to the clothes that we wear, the shoes that we use, the way we do our hair, valuing the food according to the cost of it instead of the nutritional aspects of it – valuing friends according to how we look with them instead of developing actual communication skills, valuing a brand over the realization of the people that have no option in life but to be a slave to confection our ‘perfect clothes.’ We all wear sweatshop abuse made in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia and China,  we cannot possibly  keep ignoring the dark side of our beloved beautiful people where all wealth has been built upon abuse.

 

We  have to re-evaluate what our media will be used for. We will still have TV shows, fashion, music, movies, etc. and they will in fact play yet another great role in promoting living values that have not been present yet, because no one wants to actually make people re-consider the world, because that would breed a major awakening in our society, destabilizing the feel-good bubbles of our experiences   – however we will have to let artists and media people know about a new set of considerations to be implemented within everything that they do. It will be like a ‘green revolution’ though this won’t only mean caring for the environment, but also the entire way we think, and conceive reality as ourselves, how we treat each other, what they write about in songs, how they present themselves, what they buy, their private wants, needs and desires that will certainly have to be re-evaluated once that wealth in such display is what drives people to seek to make the most money in order to be ‘just like their favorite star.’

New values that honor life will have to be embodied, written and spoken about  by those that one professed the opposite, that life was all about buying and consuming images that have to be bought and experienced.

 

The solution will have to be implemented in multiple levels in our society as explained in the blog 317. Equality in Equal Money Capitalism wherein we would have to proceed to use the Media as a means to educate, inculcate the principles of life in equality, giving as you would like to receive, understanding that Life is not an unlimited journey to pursue happiness but a physical expression to learn how to coexist and enjoy oneself and our relationships with others in our families, education, work and general social endeavors that benefit the majority, it is the reinsertion of the communal sense of belonging by physical interaction rather than mind stimulation, it will be the integration of a physical lifestyle that we have been so alienated of by staring at screens endless hours a day. It will be a communal effort to implement living values and expressions that will develop in consequence what is best for all life.

 

 

Rewards                                                   

Integrity, dignity, self respect, honor, justice, people that learn to stand equal to who we really are as equals instead of honoring images and starving oneself or over feeding a body that will not be reduced to an image, but will exist as the physical that confirms our existence, we are alive and our actual freedom of choice will exist when we stop feeding our minds with values of ‘who we have to be’ according to values acquired at a global level.

Life after God, Life after Money as a cult in itself will mean the redesign of life as a living principle, a deliberate act of instigating an interest to become a living example of an honorable being that doesn’t only serve a nation or lives up to perpetuating a perfect self-image, this is about embodying for the first time an actual living acceptance, a consideration of each other as equals and not rivals to compete against in dreams of specialness and glamour – of fastest gadgets, trips, clothes, jewels, cars, houses, giant wardrobes but a single consideration that Life is a physical living act of coexisting wit everyone as equals, Not being any longer a coin-operated consumer bot in the name of happiness.

The ability to give an end to this soft-imperialistic tactic of the ideal American lifestyle resides within each one of us: honoring life instead of the ego.

 

For further reference, read  the Equal Money Wiki

 

 
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Artwork by Matti Freeman

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