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'.