The Media and Consumer Culture

When asked to pick either a text, an event or a phenomenon that I think exemplifies consumerism one thing sprang to mind.

Fashion Magazines.

For me they are the epitome of consumer culture all wrapped up in a neat package with a glossy front and shining celebrity staring at you from the cover. Depending on what fashion magazine you buy, whether its considered a more high end one like Vogue or a high-street one like Look, can affect your social ranking and status amongst other fashionistas. Which in my opinion is just plain silly. However everything about fashion magazines screams consumerism and highlights our ever growing consumer culture because they tell us what clothes to buy and which celebrity styles to admire which subsequently lead to the 'advise' of more clothes to buy in order to 'get the celebrity look'. Not to mention the 'what's hot and what's not' sections of these 'bibles'.

As for key features:

- Glossy cover with a well-known celebrity on it entices you to buy the damn thing.

- Sub-heading on the front cover outlining the best bits of the magazines contents, usually relating to the latest fashions, tips and sometimes fashion nightmares. (All 'juicy' news to us females)

- 'How to' pages. How to get the latest catwalk look or celebrity look by buying clothes that are affordable.

- Tips on make-up for different skins types, how to dress for your body shape etc. the things to buy for said shape and skin type, where to buy them, how much they cost and how taking their advise on what to wear and buy will help you look your best.

I'm sure there's countless other features, but these are the ones that jump out at me and well, to me one fashion magazine is very much like the other and they all seem to follow the same format and say the same things just the clothes featured are more expensive in some than others.

The media text I've chosen offers a form of escapism for the consumer much like most media texts. By being a regular buyer of fashion magazines you can keep up to date with the latest fashions, get tips from people in the know and find out the latest celebrity news/gossip. All in all, they appear to contain everything a woman would want in a magazine and contain some of the things that we seem to be more than marginally obsessed with within society, celebrities and the way we look.

As for how I relate to this type of media text, I'm afraid I don't. For me, fashion magazines are just something you skim through to pass the time while you're waiting at the hairdressers.

Joshua Gamson - 'The Name and The Product: Late Twentieth-Century Celebrity' and Holmes and Redmond - 'Understanding Celebrity Culture'

'Celebrity has become industrialised'

Gamson talks about how we separate fame from achievement and how the link between the idea of status and excellence has never truly been absolute. Throughout the text he explores the idea of celebrity and out fascination with celebrity culture looking at reality TV stars and how they help to create the 'illusion of intimacy' and make us believe we are really viewing someone else's world.

He also looks at the idea of how stars are 'made' and the notion that 'those who posses star quality have it onstage and off'. Celebrities are used to sell things to us because they are instantly recognisable and this helps to a certain degree to boost their celebrity status.

Celebrities are a 'powerful elite: the media, the industry, the star-makers, are able to control images and are able to direct mass attention through marketing machinery'. In other words, beware...

Holmes and Redmond state that 'if you are not famous then you exist at the periphery of the power networks that circulate in and through the popular media' and the idea that if your not famous your largely responsible for making the famous so ridiculously famous by being fans.

The relationship between fans and celebrities is something Holmes and Redmond go onto explore in order to analyse fame and the idea that stars and celebrities stand in as surrogate friends and family to their fans.

They go on to talk about how we, as a society, talk about fans and how celebrity talk/gossip becomes part of our everyday activities where we often talk about them as if we actually know them based upon the information we gather about them from magazines, TV appearances, photos and interviews.

On the whole they explore out relationship with celebrities and the surrounding culture and how 'fame, like power, could be evenly distributed'. However this thought becomes void because 'if everyone were famous then no one would be famous' and the power relationship between fans and 'celebritisation' wouldn't exist.

Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright - 'Consumer Culture and the Manufacturing of Desire'

Sturken and Cartwright talk about modern consumer culture and the use of imagery is used to sell things to us through advertising.

Advertising images are often use to construct cultural ideas about self-image, lifestyle, self-importance and glamour by presenting whatever is being advertised as things one should desire, people one should envy and how life 'should be'. These constructions based around consumerism can lead to capitalism ideologies, commodity fetishism, and images becoming ISA's or Ideological State Apparatuses to be exact.

Sturken and Cartwright examine how what we now recognise as consumer culture started, looking at the development of department stores in Paris in the 19th century and the invention of mail-order catalogues meaning converted items were readily available to the masses for the first time. Consumerism wasn't just for the cities anymore, it was spreading to the rural areas.

They go onto explore many different aspects of a consumer society and how consumerism can spark desire and envy and help create subcultures depending on what's being marketed and to whom its being marketing to. However this can have a reversed desired effect too. For example band merchandise is obviously marketed at people who like the band, but it's marketed on such a level that it often becomes desired not just to fans but to people who don't even like the band. In this sense it becomes a brand. A good example of this would be Sex Pistols merchandise, thousands of people buy bags, t-shirts, notepads etc with countless recognisable Sex Pistols imagery on such as 'Never Mind The Bollocks' and 'God Save The Queen' when they neither like the band or follow the associated punk culture.

In conclusion the line between what we really need and what we simply desire has become blurred and 'the boundary between the mainstream and the margins is always in the process of being renegotiated'.