Fr. John Kavanaugh, S.J./Merchants of Cool

        In watching both Fr. Kavanaugh’s presentation and PBS Frontline’s “The Merchants of Cool,” I learned much about the American consumerist culture. Advertisers care nothing about the people they are selling to and how their advertisements influence society, but rather care only for money, and consumers willingly give up their money for the products they so desire to have. To an extent, these videos opened my eyes to our advertising and consumerist culture, and how evil it can be.
        That our entire economy is based on marketing that can be focused on such a small group of people and work with almost guaranteed success truly amazes me. In looking at ads and the way I see the product they sell, it is definitely true: these companies are not selling the product to consumers, but are selling a lifestyle, an idea, a feeling. This doesn’t create an environment advantageous to the consumer, but it certainly helps boost sales and profits, which seems to be all society cares for nowadays. In the introduction “The Merchants of Cool,” I remember someone saying that marketing is all about what works fastest, most effectively, and most profitably, even if the standards of the product are compromised. This line alone, I think, took away some of my youthful and ignorant belief that everyone in the world deep down does want to help others.
        I also now see and am more aware of how I am being marketed to. I now see, although I did somewhat before these videos, that the sex and partying shown on advertising is meant to bring out certain emotions in me, and that they want me to associate those emotions with that product. Becoming more aware of this reality will make me more selective and thoughtful when I choose products in the future, although to some degree it is still difficult because we honestly don’t know which product is better, but rather just know which is marketed better.
        The “giant feedback loop,” as “The Merchants of Cool” called the media, just plain scared me. The fact that media and advertisers watch us to see what we like, then sell our wants back to us, and then we imitate ourselves and what is “cool” on the advertisements, causing the media to sell us more “cool.” As we change, the media is always one step ahead, ready and willing to tell us what is “cool.” The fact that MTV can make anything and sell it to teens and it will immediately become cool is scary. They have enormous power to peddle anything from music to water to tangerine-flavored horse hooves. And the worst part is that so many of us tag along on the ride, ignorant of how we are being controlled by the giant puppeteer that is MTV.
        According to advertisements, our possessions should be how we identify ourselves. As I said earlier, the portrayal of the product changes our views of the product, and if we identify objects with human qualities like life, lust, love, care, and hope, objects can attempt to take the place of human relationships in our lives. However, we are caught in an ironic cycle. We look to these objects for the very thing they cannot provide: human qualities and fulfillment. We think we feel unfulfilled because we don’t have enough objects, so we buy more, even though our empty feeling is due to our lack of deep human relationships. Meanwhile, the advertising executives watch from above, making more and more money on our emptiness.
        One line from Kavanaugh really touched me. Kavanaugh said, “Having been deprived of the joys of personal existence in our interior life and in our interpersonal worlds, we come to see no reason to care for the world of persons around us.” This really struck a chord with me, because I think that the point of life is to help others whenever we can. A truly terrible world would be one where no one cares for anything but him or herself. This would be, in my opinion, a complete and total absence of good. In advertising, people never relate to one another; rather they always relate to the product and the product only. This sends a message to us that there is no need to care about one another, and no need to relate to one another as long as we have our precious and trusty objects. Once again, this leads to a world of indifference to others, a world of despair, a world of selfishness. Unless society and advertising change, we are most certainly heading in the direction of a most indifferent and selfish world, and some would say we are already nearly there.