nsumer Culture" (Scribner, 2004).
Kids aren't required to disclose that "I get free stuff if I say this." And that's the point:
"It's more effective if people don't know they're a target of a viral marketing effort,"
Schor noted. "Advertisers prefer that. The premise is that it's natural buzz, not
orchestrated by the company. That's the basic deception at the heart of it."
The Seattle Times story is linked in the Rogue’s Gallery.
3. AC640 reading: Peter Grant and Chris Wood, “Curious Economics”
a. introduction to the article
The media culture that we know, love and loathe is characterized by a staggering variety of
products, images, sounds and experiences. What unites Tony Bennett and Grandmaster
Flash, Disneyworld and the Playboy Mansion, is the commodified nature of these cultural
phenomena. By “commodity” is meant a product that has been made available for sale on
the market—or as the dictionary has it, “an item that has been bought and sold.”
The media and cultural commodity is a “curious” commodity, in that it behaves differently
from all the other many commodities on the market: cars, mattresses, chocolate bars. It is
singular in that we buy the media commodity not for its concrete utility—we can’t drive, sleep
on, or eat it—but rather for its intangible value. It entertains and amuses, educates and
staves off boredom. Yet, it is also bought and sold like any other commodity, and takes its
place in the marketplace among 英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】all the other things for sale.
The curious nature of the media commodity is of particular interest as a flashpoint in a
culture that is increasingly defined in economic terms. In other words, through the dynamic
play of the cultural and the economic captured in the media commodity, we can read other
and larger patterns in the contemporary economy at large. Our lives are increasingly
defined by economic criteria rather than political considerations. We rate quality of life by
gross national product; assess a government’s success by its ability to manage the
economy, lower tax rates, and pay off debt; and feature bumper stickers on our SUVs that
proclaim “those who die with the most toys win.” Ours is not merely a materialistic culture; rather, it is one that has translated many of the things it has historically valued at the
personal and the societal level into economic values.
In this chapter, the core of their book, Grant and Wood provide a technically oriented
assessment of the cultural commodity and the media marketplace. The article is committed
to building the reader’s economic literacy, and while it lacks the entertainment value of other
readings in the 640 package, it is very helpful in freeing us from our typical consumer’s
experience of media culture. That is, outside our professional roles, we normally look at
media in terms of aesthetic criteria—is this book or movie entertaining? Is this CD or video
game well-produced?
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