In thinking about this new consumer society that is being illustrated by Marchand, I couldn't help but think about the Greek sea monster Charbydis. Marchand writes about advertisers convincing this newly enfranchised "mob," whose tastes they intended to uplift, that these commodities (established in a hierarchy of class and "style"), when bought in greater and greater quantities harmonized their lives and created a sense of elegance and luxury. "In some industries, the ensemble provided a welcome solution to the problem of inducing people 'to use more and more, in order to escape the bugaboo of market saturation.'" (137) This is hardly in tune with the model of utility that was once prevalent in American society. "Once accepted, the ensemble idea profitably increased the average size of each consumer's purchase." (137) So consumerism (or perhaps the consumer) became this whirlpool, sucking in ship after ship, product after product, "satisfaction" after "satisfaction" - never to be satiated. If we can learn for their [the advertiser's] model for the construction of our own concept how can we construct it so that it would almost be impossible (for our readers - people on the internet) not to get sucked in. Is it through the digital image, the empathy/sympathy for the conceptual persona? Or maybe the whirlpool imagery is too violent - perhaps a siren's song? Either way, our purpose is different - which why we place the Marchand text in the contrast slot of our CATTt. Maybe this is a tangent, but the image was so striking to me I thought I'd share it.
I'm now about to do something fun for a change and watch a movie - ah, but not just any movie - a documentary about pirating music called Good Copy Bad Copy.
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