09 Jun 2010
The archives of David McRaney's blog on self delusion are well worth
picking though. A post from April:
In the 1960s, it took months before someone figured out they could
sell tie-dyed shirts and bell bottoms to anyone who wanted to rebel.
In the 1990s, it took weeks to start selling flannel shirts and Doc
Martens to people in the Deep South. Now, people are hired by
corporations to go to bars and clubs and predict what the counter
culture is into and have it on the shelves in the cool stores right
as it becomes popular.
The counter-culture, the indie fans and the underground stars they
are the driving force behind capitalism. They are the engine.
This brings us to the point competition among consumers is the
turbine of capitalism.
Thomas Frank tackled this subject in his first book, The Conquest of
Cool. Long excerpt here. Dan Geddes reviews:
Frank's purpose is to demonstrate that Madison Avenue and
consumption-based industries such as soda bottlers and men's wear
welcomed the counterculture, realizing that the cult of instant
gratification would make the Baby Boomers better consumers than their
thrifty parents. Frank even suggests that the Creative Revolution in
advertising anticipated and in some ways precipitated the
counterculture. Historians of the Sixties have long described the
"co-optation" of the movement by the advertising industry: its use of
countercultural symbols. Frank's thesis that Madison Avenue's
critique of "mass society" predated later critiques of the
countercultural can warm the hearts of critics of capitalism: That
capitalism could could generate a critique of itself in order to
fashion a more turbo-charged consumer becomes as satisfying as any
conspiracy theory, especially in light of Frank's meticulous scholarship.
.
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