Anti-Consumerism in Media

We were talking earlier on in the course about how media is used to teach us how to consume, but I also remember receiving a lot of anti-corporate and anti-consumerist messages in my youth, too. You could say that while we are being bombarded with advertising messages to consume, we are also being bombarded with messages that tell us to resist or that promote anti-corporate messages. I suppose whichever takes root first causes the other to fall on deaf ears... anyway, I'm going to give some examples from my memories, even from when I was a kid.

Big corporate businesses, lawyers and businessmen are often made into villains or heroes that must rediscover their "human" cores. In the 1997 film, The Game, an arrogant and corrupt business executive is given a hyper realistic adventure game that seemed to be designed to strip him of his identity and sense of reality, but ultimately served the purpose of him casting off his arrogant persona and rediscovering his true self.

Bangarang, dudes. Bangarang.

The same type of character is the main character in Steven Spielberg's Hook, where the adult Peter Pan's identity as a cutthroat and job-obsessed lawyer and distant father are presented as diversions and distortions of who he really is...

...regardless of what anyone else says, I really enjoyed Hook, ok!?

Chickin Lickin good.

Sometimes corporate expansion and executives are portrayed as obstacles and villains. I remember an episode of Arthur where the main conflict was that a large corporation somewhat akin to Kentucky Fried Chicken was looking to buying the building housing the local soda shop and hang-out of our protagonists. One of them organizes a campaign to save their local business.

I also noticed quite a few Christmas movies are like this. In Frosty Returns, the villain is an entrepreneur sells a chemical in an aerosol can that can get rid of snow. In Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer, said Grandma's family-owned store is the last of its kind and is in danger of being bought out. A little ironic, since Christmas time is the most lucrative time of the year for businesses.

Or, sometimes, saving the environment is a goal presented in a positive light, and destroying it in the name of advancement is a bad one. A really obvious modern example would be Avatar. In it, a businessman and military big shot attempt a hostile takeover of the indigenous population of an alien planet in order to gain access to the planet's natural  resources as a parallel to the treatment of Native Americans by European settlers and explorers. No more complicated is Captain Planet, in which 5 youths of different ethnic backgrounds are called by the spirit of the Earth herself to combat a league of dastardly villains who have nothing else better to do but cause oil spills and other assorted environmental disasters.

Both are blue people who face off against villains of similar character and intellectual depth.

DINKLEBURG

And occasionally, greed and envy caused by consumerism is used to establish pitiable characters who sometimes (but not always) throw aside these feelings, which are insinuated to be manufactured and detrimental. For example, Timmy's Dad's envy of the material success of his neighbor Dinkleburg as an indicator of his immaturity and was played for laughs in Fairly Odd Parents...I can't believe I just typed that semi-seriously.

You can say that from when we were kids, we've been getting a lot of mixed messages about our role in society and our relationship with the Earth. I personally think pro-environmental and anti-consumerism stances are more intuitive, since it promotes sustainability and discourages negative and detrimental emotions such as greed and envy, so it's easier and more common for a person to categorize these themes and goals as "good", even as they exhibit consumerist behavior.

As a final treat, I'll post a little video featuring misguided entrepreneur and tumblr darling: The Onceler from the recent 3D animated revamp of The Lorax