In North American culture we are raised with the mentality that the value of each individual person comes from the things they buy. The more you can afford to have, the better you’ve done in life.
Little reference tends to be made to the price we actually pay for this corporate, consumer culture. I have lived in it for twenty years and still don’t really understand why we buy buy buy.
While frolicking around Toronto this weekend I tried to get this point across to my consumption whore family (I still love you) as they attempted to buy me a $60.00 pair of shorts. The fact is that the price we pay for consumption goods doesn’t reflect the *real* cost of society a whole.
I will attempt to explain the theory of the $60 dollar shorts by using a cheeseburger as an example. Like the shorts, that $0.99 cheeseburger is subsidized and produced by exploiting fast-food new-age slaves at sub-humane wages, and by the many slaughterhouses and immigrants doing some of the most dangerous work there is. Not to mention all the corners cut by meat processors or factory owners, but that’s another story.
It is important to note here that these big-ups of the corporate/consumption world are generally owned by several increasingly-large global media empires. Here is a small list. Keep in mind this includes a very small slice of the pie and doesn’t include the numerous shares these big guys hold in clothing companies, food chains, etc:
DISNEY – ABC, ESPN, History Channel, A&E, E!, Lifetime, Disney Channel, Miramax, Touchstone Pictures, Fairchild Publications, Chilton Publications, Hollywood records, 10 television stations, and 21 radio stations
AOL TIME WARNER – CNN, WB, Headline News, CNNfn, TBS, TNT, Turner Classic Movies, The Cartoon Network, HBO, Cinemax, 50% of Comedy Central and a controlling stake in Court TV, Warner Brothers, New Line Cinemas, Castle Rock Entertainment, Time Magazine, People Magazine, Sports illustrated, 22 other magazines, 50% of DC Comics, Warner Music, the largest cable system in the United States, and the second largest publishing business in the US, America OnLine, Compuserve, Netscape, MoviePhone, and interests in Hasbro and Atari
NEWS CORP – Fox, Twentieth Century Fox, 132 Newspapers including the New York Post, fx, fxM, Fox Sports Net, and the Family Channel, TV Guide Channel (44%), National Geographic channel (50%), HarperCollins General Book Group, Regan Books, Amistad Press, William Morrow & Co., Avon Books, theStreet.com
VIACOM – CBS, UPN, MTV Network, MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, TV Land, CMT, TNN, VH1, Noggin (joint venture with Children’s Television Workshop), Showtime Networks, Showtime, The Movie Channel, Sundance Channel (joint venture with Robert Redford and Universal Studios), FLIX, SET Pay-Per-View (sporting and entertainment events), BET, Comedy Central (joint venture with AOL Time Warner), Paramount, Spelling Entertainment Group (80%), Big Ticket Television, Viacom Productions, King World Productions, Simon & Schuster, MTV Books, 16 CBS-affiliated stations, 19 UPN-affiliated stations, Paramount Pictures MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies, Infinity Broadcasting (owns and operates over 180 stations)
SONY – Columbia TriStar Domestic Television, Columbia TriStar International Television, Sony Pictures Family Entertainment, Telemundo Group
That list was probably long and tedious to read if you read all of it. If you didn’t, there are 8 growing corporations who act as gatekeepers which essentially control what you buy, eat, watch, wear, and pay for.
Since these companies won’t tell you what’s really going in the companies they own, advertise or promote since it’ll only hurt their sponsors and advertisements, think about what you are actually doing the next time you bite into that $0.99 cheeseburger from McDonalds.
We have ended up with an informational corporate world that subconsciously manipulates us – the mindless consumption whore drones for profit.