As I was going through the original pamphlet I couldn’t help but notice the consistency of many of the issues carried through to today. While the context of the issues has changed, the base is still the same. The escapism of reality through consumerism is still persistent in our times, and I would argue that is has gotten considerably worse. Through contemporizing the images that accompany the text, the ridiculousness of the issues becomes more apparent. In the original pamphlet the dominance of living for the future was paramount. In contrast, I find that there is an emphasis on living in the now, exercised through the dominance of consumption supported through advertising.
Today’s encouragement to live in the present is not well intentioned like the carpe diem philosophy. Our living in the moment isn’t based in being fully aware of all our senses and encouraging self exploration. We live to consume. We don’t live for experiences, but to possess. Our desire to live in the now has caused us to loose ourselves and be distracted by objects. While in the times of the original pamphlet people were encouraged to indulge in consumerism, they did not have access to our ever present “Buy Now! Pay Later” slogan for life. If we follow this ideal to the full extent, we can no longer live in the present the way that marketing desires. If we keep buying and paying later, when the later comes not only will we not be able to pay, but our credit will be poor and we will no longer be able to buy now and pay later.
*Everything that we should want costs money.*
By going through the newspaper and cutting up headlines of articles and advertisements the ridiculousness of our life seems more of a spectacle. The people who are in charge of the companies that want us to spend in order to be happy don’t necessarily prescribe to the same philosophy. They’ve planned out their life in order to create security through money. The more money that you possess the more that you can have. The rich certainly do not buy now and pay later. They pay now because they know how ridiculous a scheme it is to buy without money.
For those who understand this last part we may be inspired to go and get a higher paying job. These jobs are usually found in the market that dictates consumption.
Through the changing of the images with contemporary images, it has become paramount to me the desire for our society to project an appearance of perfection—you must live in the right place, furnish your house with new furniture, look young and rich. Even if you are not wealthy, you should make it appear as if you are. Even if you have to sell off your family heirlooms… did you know that they can be traded in for cash? No longer do objects necessarily mean that you have worked hard for them. You intended to, but you needed to buy them now.
What doesn’t make sense is that people know that this is not the way to live, and that’s why there is such a pandemic of anxiety disorders. I guess that it is human nature to repress and we weigh ourselves down with debt caused by objects we can’t afford.
1.In the case of my particular page selections, some of the images were in text form—that is, it was text that was portraying the exemplifying tableaux. So in these cases I selected to replace with text with text to portray the same intent or an image with text accompanying.
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