While watching the Macy’s Parade today on NBC, I couldn’t help but wonder about our culture. It may be that I was simply more naive as a child, but I seem to remember a time when the parade was more than a few balloons ushered quickly past followed by an impressive display of hidden advertising for Broadway, Disney, and whatever television show the station feels like plugging. “Hey we have a guest with us today from “Law & Order”. Wow! They just happen to pop in AND also happen to be from the same network? It’s pretty interesting how that seemingly unplanned/joyous event seems to work out like that.
So on we go. Two minutes of a dancing donkey plugging Broadway’s proof that imagination and innovation are dead in the world of musicals, followed by a guest appearance of some actor that is mostly known for a stern look and badly written threats, and then it’s time for a commercial on the newest razor. And tomorrow? We get to look forward to Honda, Nissan, Lexus, and diamond jeweler commercials designed to guilt trip each man into going into MASSIVE debt for the sake of his wife’s approval. We all know that you don’t REALLY love your special someone unless you hide a huge rock under the tree or buy the biggest bow possible for the most overly-hyped vehicle that you can find. After all, what’s a remembrance of Jesus’ birth without first indulging in gluttony?
And so the holidays are ushered forth, from gluttony to extravagance, from an action figure when we’re five to a $3,000 big screen TV when we’re adults. It’s a pattern ingeniously set up two generations ago. Didn’t you ever wonder how we managed to go from the great depression “use it all up and do without” mentality to the “Ya know what! I can’t afford it but I DESERVE it!” attitude that we see today? Even in spite of the recession sending warnings throughout the nation to slow down, conserve, and save we rush along. I am currently taking a modern American history course for college and was stunned to find the answer to this one.
The textbook that we are reading from, “America: A Narrative History” puts it succinctly in regards to the post WWII baby boomer period of the late 40′s through the 60′s. “To perpetuate the postwar prosperity, economists repeated the basic marketing strategy of the 1920′s: the public must be taught to consume more and expect more…many people who had undergone the severities of the Depression and the rationing required for the war effort had to be weaned from a decade and a half of imposed frugality…” Here we find the beginnings of the “I DESERVE IT” attitudes, hidden in advertising. It goes on:
“Young Americans especially participated in the consumer culture. By the late 1950s the baby-boom generation was entering its teens, and the disproportionate number of affluent adolescents generated a vast new specialized market for youth…Teens in the postwar era knew nothing of depressions or rationing; they were immersed in abundance from an early age and took for granted the notion of carefree consumption.”
There it is. As an “X-er”I find that my parents were raised on commercials selling them hula hoops, records, and any other bauble a teen and “tween” could hope for. Being raised to believe this is normal they obviously raised my generation after the same fashion. We get Presidents in office from these generations that don’t stop to think that not everyone can’t afford a house (or they choose to ignore it for political and personal gain) and they lower the requirements because “that’s fair”. At the same time my own generation (now the second generation to be raised on gluttony as everyday fair) begin buying our first homes and, instead of going for the 700 sq ft “cottage” we rush out to buy the “2,000 sq ft starter home”. In a few years the bubble bursts and voila! We’re modern America! A country based on purchasing and nothing else unless you include jobs that appeared with the growth of the military complex. Now that we’ve defeated our dread foe, the Soviet Union, and the wall has since tumbled, we find a country whose military spending is no longer so vital (one part of our economy destroyed) followed by a new feeling in the air of many people that aren’t so interested in being consumers any more; and thus our economy has imploded from within.
But wait! There’s another bubble coming!! Just give it time and I’m sure that the next big thing will come along! After all, you can’t go wrong when you buy real estate, now can you?
Very nicely put. I, too, have had the same musings as you on this very topic!