What Do We Really Want?

Michael Budde, in his The (Magic) Kingdom of God, claims that “global culture industries” invest heavily in stimulating “consumers’ desire to consume” (49). So … what’s so bad about that? The heart of Budde’s critique of this activity is not directed at the production of consumable goods, but the creation of the desire for things. Global culture industries bank on their audiences “learning to want things” (49). This acquired aptitude for consumption is hidden behind “a false deference paid to consumer rationality” and perpetuated by a manufactured “asymmetry of information” (39, 42). Yet, this asymmetry is used to covertly seduce their prey, not assault them (42). We, as consumers, are not forced into wanting. Rather, culture industries massage their message into our skin through slick and ubiquitous advertising, always getting us in the mood to want things.

Budde, a catholic educator, is not alone in his assessment of these temptresses. Douglas Rushkoff (www.rushkoff.com), a media and culture critic, has produced several persuasive pieces investigating such sirens: “The Merchants of Cool” and “The Persuaders” (see below for links to these documentaries). His most chilling conclusion in “The Merchants of Cool” is a description of a positive feedback loop of created desires. Put briefly, youth watch TV and learn to want things. Marketers watch youth to find out want they are buying. Then, like a distorting mirror at a haunted house, marketers create and film shows and events where youth are consuming their products at artificially inflated levels. Yet, they make this heightened level of consumption look authentic and normative by plastering these images everywhere a kid might look. Youth feel inadequate as they watch artificially enhanced versions of themselves consume more stuff than they themselves consume in reality. This cycle constantly undermines the contentment of youth and proffers buying things as the panacea. What we need, in Budde’s words, is a healthy dose of “media literacy,” illumined by the light of the gospel, to demystify media and reawaken true and good desires informed by God.

“The Merchants of Cool”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/

“The Persuaders”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/