Baudrillard about consumer society Part 2
At the same time, the status character of consumption can become aggravated to the point of indecency, worthy of Nikolai Gogol’s pen. So, Baudrillard gives an example, when the chief sacked a subordinate only for the fact that he bought himself the same Merc.
Of course, this is an anecdote from the “Western” 60’s (and the current “our”, probably). But the very upbringing in the family lays the inequality of consumption of goods, their quality: some read comics, others study classics, some go to football, others to opera, some breathe the miasma of a metropolis, others listen in bed to nightingales. And, finally, some of them, sticking out their tongue, run after fashion, while others carelessly do not follow it.
In place of the immodest luxury of the nouveaux riches comes the demonstrative modesty of aristocrats. And here, the subtlest shades and characteristics in the style of consumption serve as a reliable dress code, consolidate “their own” and weed out “strangers.” If everything seems to be more than that, the refined audience will come up with a new move in order not to mingle with the crowd, because in the total CS only the elite has a real right to individuality. So, the most famous French model (the daughter of the Marquis) is perfumed with perfume, which has been withdrawn from production for 20 years. In the chests of the grandmother, she had it, or,
Finds? Well, and thirdly, Baudrillard pointed out that the CS is a society of the social contract, whose members (well fed, but still well fed and sufficiently protected) do not want to lose their status in principle. Why priori and tend to conform. Nobody wants this cozy cocoon to collapse, so with all the openness and democratic inclination to yell in principle, they will look through their fingers at the obviously unjust but useful things for the prosperity of Western society – for example, the war in Iraq or the policy of double standards in (For a look at the essence), these are not just some annoying troubles, but manifestations of the general patterns of the functioning of the CS, which cannot be subject to moral assessment, simply because they are its generic traits. In the fourth x, Baudrillard insists that it was the reduction of reality to its Office enables then to build from these signs, labels completely different, a convenient reality for lazy souls.
Remember, every night on the news reports from the battlefields and disaster alternate with serene advertisement “Colgate” and tights. Or, as one western journalist remarked venomously, judging by the advertisement, in Russia in the 1990s there were no burning problems than dandruff and menstruation. But in fact, thanks to the black magic of the blue screen, then social shocks were avoided. Alas, fifthly Baudrillard (as an honest man) to state that this is almost perfectly balanced social system is susceptible to corrosion, – and above all, psychological. Members of the “happy” CS are in a state of chronic stress – on the one hand, because of the fierce competition in this society (needed blood from his nose, always “fit so as not to lose”); On the other, because of the ever more tangible pressure from outside, on the part of all of these who did not fit in and / or “poured in”. Hence the average European has a sense of guilt and insecurity, which allows homeless people and Parisians to behave as if they were all here for a long time.
I another important aspect. The CS (Baudrillard, in any case) replaces real human relations with purely “smile” smiles on duty, simulating care for you (the heartfelt whisper of the slogan: “L’Oreal, Paris, because you are worth it!”) So, Happy member of the CS always feels that his needs and even his intimate desires are formed for him by advertising in a certain direction (that he needs, not to him personally, but to production), that he is a doll for some manipulation. Hence the so often encountered feeling of melancholy, fatigue (Baudrillard calls it the form of a hidden strike, a protest against an unspoken but persistent coercion). Here are the roots of the sad statistics of suicides in the safest, quietest Sweden. That’s where the causes of individual and mass outbreaks of vandalism in Denmark or the USA. It is curious: the translator EA Samara in his epilogue suggests that traits CS were in the late Soviet Union.
Of course, standards of consumption of western differ, but the basic features of CS – still there. The existence among the weakened but still comfortable signs of socialist ideology, the pursuit of signs of social prestige – the “deficit”, the meltdown in everyday life, the loss of the historical perspective (well, FIG. Would be lived), total control (“the manager is a friend Man”) and a deaf protest against all this stifling cotton wool in the form of general drunkenness and demonstrative marginalization of bohemia. In short, as in the old joke: there is nothing in the stores, but the refrigerators are bursting. True, today it is hardly possible to talk about the existence CS, as the bulk of the population is reduced to a biological level of consumption”, – says EA Samara (. 262) this can perhaps be sensitive to argue: the elements of CS due to rain again hatch through the asphalt native cities. That’s just the feeling of shakiness, the fragility of this pleasant status for us today, the status quo and teases. I do not know to what extent we still have time to sip all the pros and cons of the society, which Jean Baudrillard described.
The words of the French ex-premier J. Shaban-Delmas sound for us as long as the words from the fairy tale sound: “It’s about dominating over the CS, giving it an addition in the form of a soul” (pp. 244). But included among the lucky ones, we It is unlikely that we will plunge into the euphoria of a bright fairy tale. For even in the late 60’s the French sage barked: “We are waiting for rude invasions and sudden destruction, which is just as unpredictable, but it is obvious, as in May 1968, they will be destroyed”, a warm cocoon around us (p. ). Or does history have options for us?