In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, ...and freedom through consumption. The dictatorship of consumer goods has finally destroyed the barriers of blood, lineage and race.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Advertising could not be understood as simply another form of salesmanship. It aimed at something new--the creation of consumption... communities.... The primary argument of the salesman was personal and private: this hat is perfect for you (singular). His focus was on the individual; he succeeded when he cajoled, flattered, managed, and overwhelmed a particular buyer's ego. The primary argument of the advertisement was public and general: This hat is perfect for you (plural). While the salesman persuaded the customer that the item was peculiarly suited to his unique needs, the advertisement persuaded groups of buyers that the item was well suited to the needs of all persons in the group. The advertisement succeeded when it discovered, defined, and persuaded a new community of consumers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sick man must follow his illness to the place where it is treated.... He is set aside in one of the technical and secret zones... (hospitals, prisons, refuse dumps) which relieve the living of everything that might hinder the chain of production and consumption, and which ... repair and select what can be sent back up to the surface of progress.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase produ...ction while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption ... is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has b...ecome banal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
TV's exploration of the game of consumption and sociability is, by the nature of the medium, on a far more subtle level than anyth...ing ever done by the movies. It can dramatize and expose and suggest ways of transcending social banality that are impossible to the screen, largely because of the very "actuality" and "interview" format of TV that at the same time produces so much of its rubbish. It is terrible but true that TV has probably elevated ten times as many family conversations in Sourwater, Georgia, as it has degraded there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Television was far more pervasive and radicalizing than printing had been. It was massive. When Riesman and others spoke of books,... magazines, and radio as mass media, they could not imagine the size and shape of television. There never had been a medium that could reach everybody, and reach them with images of behavior as behavior without the rationalization of words. The audience for its programs was drawn from every social class and every social element. By the mere act of watching television, a heterogeneous society could engage in a purely homogeneous activity. Television images are more rapid and transient than the printed word. They make no demand on us to remember or reflect on them. This impermanence and the time of consumption cause us to spend extended hours with the medium but significantly less time with any one image or sequence of images. Television is instantaneous and simultaneous: Everyone gets the message at the same time and, at the same time that an event is happening. There is no lag time between a reporter witnessing an event and reporting it, and no time for reflection and analysis.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is held to be no surer test of civilisation than the increase per head of the consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Yet alcoho...l and tobacco are recognisable poisons, so that their consumption has only to be carried far enough to destroy civilisation altogether.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So it is with books, for the most part: they work no redemption on us. The bookseller might certainly know that his customers are ...in no respect better for the purchase and consumption of his wares. The volume is dear at a dollar, and after to reading to weariness the lettered backs, we leave the shop with a sigh, and learn, as I did without surprise of a surly bank director, that in bank parlors they estimate all stocks of this kind as rubbish.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »