On the corner of the cardboard insert that comes with batteries was a little cartoon and a caption reading, “Cat in the Hat / See the movie!” Prior to its release this movie has already received high profile promotion on numerous entertainment channels, hosted shows, and television commercials, in movie theaters though trailers, posters, and displays, in newspaper advertisements, reviews, and informational blurbs, and doubtlessly through some toys offered by a fast-food chain.
The advertising of a totally unrelated consumer expense on this product is unnecessary and excessive, serving more as a simultaneous patting on the back between Rayovac and Hollywood. As consumers become numbed to the level of advertisements at the current moment, the commercial world ups the ante by further infiltrating every aspect of an average citizen’s life with its presence. There is no opportunity for individuals to avoid the extraneous contact employed, and so many get used to it, even expect it.
Ive known people whose sole source of conversation was repeating segments of commercials and sitcoms from TV. It becomes a way of life-just like letting the faucet run, leaving multiple lights on in the home, or driving when the destination is within walking distance is a way of life for many. There is an affluent notion that what we want is what we need, and what we need is what we deserve. And with a consumer driven economy-what we deserve is either things or money.
In the third case of which I was a prospective juror, a young woman accused her middle-aged employer of sexual misconduct. She allegedly experienced continuous humiliation and shame during her employment, and yet did not complain about it or seek a minimum wage job elsewhere. Now she wants monetary compensation for feeling embarrassed. Now, I understand that not all lawsuits are frivolous, and that inappropriate behavior in the workplace should be addressed. But, youd be hard pressed to find any young woman who hasnt been ogled by a superior or heard a joke she didnt like. I worked briefly for someone who repeatedly called me honey in a way that was obviously meant to be derogatory and degrading, but how would collecting some of his cash right that wrong? Money can not help you regain a sense of integrity or restore lost confidence. Money isnt going to prompt a revelation on the part of the employer about the appropriateness of his actions. There is just no correlation between financial restitution and psychological amends. I think that if that young woman working at the doggy daycare really did suffer from her employers treatment what she should have wanted was a contrite apology.
Maybe this is why I was dismissed as a juror. If the claimant suffered no financial loss from the situation, whether due to injury and medical bills or damaged property, I cannot feel that monetary compensation is justified. The caliber worth of money has slid liberally into the judicial system from a society that values money even when no tangible thing is damaged, ignores what would be sufficient redress for that intangibility, and feels they deserve that money wad to excess. I mean, think of all the things she could buy with her victory. Or maybe she really believes a new wardrobe will repair her roughened self-worth. It won’t. It never will.
On that thought, that’s why these makeover shows are really disturbing, especially ones where other people nominate an individual. If that person doesn’t care to think about the presentational aspect of clothing, who are we to make him or her? From ones I’ve seen, the person (almost always female) sometimes doesn’t even like the style she’s been told to wear. Why should we impose this standard on someone, just because what we see of her initially is her outward appearance? Then after we’ve dressed her up, tousled her, made up her face, we say, “Now you’re okay. Now we enjoy looking at you,” and think that this is just the kind of self-esteem boost she needed. What if we enjoyed looking because we are all human with strange quirks, nostril hair, wrinkles, scars, moles—which says something about the history of this body we all inhabit, what it has lived and sustained. The human body is endlessly fascinating as it is, but it requires knowing how to observe.
It’s not so much the pervasive qualities of advertising that gets me—it’s the merchandizing. It may be that my age is coloring my perceptions, but I don’t think that, were I ten to fifteen years younger, I’d have been so moved by Jimmy Neutron that I needed Jimmy Neutron toys and Jimmy Neutron dinner ware and Jimmy Neutron party supplies. Am I wrong for thinking that it’s a mistake to slather your everyday miscellanea in the icons of the latest entertainment brand?
And yet, this seems a ridiculous question since I do it to, although perhaps not to the degree that entertainment investors would prefer. Just today I changed the background image on my desktop to an image snatched from a recent bit of web flotsam—if that’s not preserving the ephemeral well beyond its natural lifespan, (and so on).
(Exhaustion seems to make me gleefully wordy.)
If this is Post-Feminism, count me dead.
Not that I haven’t been dead to the Phallus-worshipping masses since about 1974 anyway . . .
Your conjecture that what the poor womyn needed was mere contrition is simply naive. In an ideal world, perhaps that would work, but money is the only thing that speaks to the Powers That Be, and any apology would be far from genuine anyway. Once a pig, always a pig. Paying will at least punish: a pound of flesh is not politically kosher, but cold, hard cash is the lingua franca.
Further, monetary settlements allow we 70 per centers a more equal footing. We’re just getting back some of the 30% that is literally owed to us anyway, dollars that can be plowed back into subverting the hegemonic forces lashing us in the sub/dom sickness that is American life.
Money may not be everything to us, but it is to Them, so it’s the only way to make a slap sting.
I agree it is an unpractical ideology to espouse, nevertheless, that seems to be where I stand.