Rumbo, Joseph D. 2002. Consumer Resistance in a World of Advertising Clutter-- The Case of Adbusters. Psychology & Marketing 19.pdf

(1564 KB) Pobierz

Consumer Resistance in a

World of Advertising

Clutter: The Case of

Adbusters

Joseph D. Rumbo

University of Notre Dame

ABSTRACT

The pervasive influence of advertising and consumer culture is

examined in relation to a postmodern condition marked hy

increased speed, fragmentation, and the decentering of the suhject.

This condition often prompts the consumer to develop ad-avoidance

strategies that protect his/her psychic space hy filtering out excess

advertising clutter (which also colonizes the puhlic and discursive

space of consumer culture). The struggle for these cultural spaces

resembles a war of position between the ideology of consumerism

and its opponents, who attempt to cultivate alternative worldviews

toward consumerism. Although some perspectives see consumption

as a means for self-expression and the fashioning of multiple

identities, this position valorizes consumption practices irrespective

of their environmental and social impact. An evaluation of the

antiadvertising magazine

Adbusters

illustrates the obstacles

inherent in launching challenges to consumerism, and the difficulty

of resisting consumerism given advertising's control over cultural

spaces. Marketers have converted resistance efforts from some of

consumption's most ardent critics into market segments by targeting

Inc.

The cultural landscape of contemporary life has witnessed a marked

increase in advertising clutter (Goldman & Papson, 1994, 1996;

Psychology & Marketing

Vol. 19(2):127-148 (February 2002)

127

McAlister, 1996). The average American consumer was exposed to an

estimated 3600 selling messages per day in 1996, compared to 1500 in

1984 (Jhally, 1998). This daily regimen of advertising messages may

exceed the information-processing abilities of most consumers, requir-

ing them to filter out excess visual and aural marketing stimuli (much

of which consists of messages targeted at different demographic and

psychographic groups). Although the range of consumer goods and ser-

vices that advertisers promote offers consumers a multitude of modern

conveniences and means for self-expression and empowerment, expo-

sure to too many selling messages can alert cognitive defenses and foster

resentment. Consequently, in order to avoid being oversaturated by ad-

vertising messages, today's postmodern consumer is often forced to em-

ploy "ad avoidance" strategies (Speck & Elliott, 1997) that can help to

maintain some measure of sovereignty over his/her psychic space.

Extending to envelop public space (e.g., sites of consumption) and

discursive space (e.g., mass media and fora for social and political de-

bate), advertising and consumer culture have become inexorable parts

of everyday life. Collectively, all of these spaces can be considered cul-

tural spaces wherein advertising is the main propagandist for the per-

vasive logic of consumerism. This cultural logic—and the unexamined

assumptions upon which it rests—typifies Gramsci's (1971) notion of

hegemony, or the myriad processes through which the

forma mentis

(or

worldview) of a social group or class is disseminated to procure the con-

sent of governed subjects. The cultural, intellectual, and political im-

peratives of a hegemonic order are said to encompass the "whole area

of lived experience" (Williams, 1977, p. 23) to play a pivotal, multifac-

eted role in shaping public consciousness.

For Habermas (1962/1989), the public sphere is a hypothetical non-

governmental arena where private citizens can meet to engage in ra-

tional discourse designed to reach a consensus over issues of mutual

importance, thus empowering citizens through active political partici-

pation. The democratic ideal of this model rests on participants being

able to bracket their respective social and economic differences in order

to deliberate as peers with equal "dialogue chances," or "a symmetrical

distribution of chances to select and employ speech acts" (McCarthy,

1978, p. 306). "Distorted communication" is said to take place when the

information exchange between marketers and consumers does not ex-

hibit "general symmetry" because marketers have greater information

about—and control over—the communication process^ (Ozanne & Mur-

ray, 1995, p. 520). Because advertising revenue gives the vast majority

of television, radio, and print media the license to do business, any pub-

lication or program that is critical of advertising or consumerism places

itself at an enormous competitive disadvantage (Herman & Chomsky,

'McAlister (1996, p. 63-92) cites the rise of "place-based advertising" as evidence of marketers'

desire to control the advertising communication process.

128

RUMBO

1988, pp. 14-18). Essentially, advertising messages legitimate consum-

erism by controlling a mass-media industry that is virtually devoid of

space for the articulation of dissenting views.

As evidenced by the shift toward service-oriented, consumer-based

economies, the commercialization of public life has eroded the public-

discursive spaces in which rational debate could conceivably occur. The

20th-century transition from a "culture-debating" to a "culture-consum-

ing" public is evidenced by the demise of substantive, literary discourse

and the rise of the "pseudopublic" world of privatized consumption (Ha-

bermas, 1962/1989). To wit, Langmann (1992, p. 40) locates the shop-

ping mall in a "pseudo-democratic twilight zone between reality and a

commercially produced fantasy world . . . ." The modern public sphere

thus serves as a "platform for advertising" (Habermas, 1962/1989) in

which the rights and responsibilities of citizens have been reduced to

their rights as members of consuming publics. In terminology subse-

quently developed by Habermas (1984), the increased "colonization" of

airwaves (discursive space), physical landscapes (public space), and

lived experience (psychic space) by marketers permeates the fabric of

our cultural "lifeworld" and hinders the exchange of rational discourse.

By colonizing public, discursive, and psychic spaces, advertising be-

comes a central part of our commonly held cultural repertoire, one

whose hegemonic control over these spaces poses enormous obstacles

for those who wish to reclaim them.

THE POSTMODERN CONSUMER

A useful concept for understanding the effects of advertising saturation

on consumer culture is the notion of the fragmented and wary postmod-

ern consumer. This notion follows from critiques launched by postmod-

ern social theorists against the totalizing discourse of modernity and

the reasoned Enlightenment philosophy upon which its knowledge

claims and "regimes of truth" are said to rest (cf. Foucault, 1977/1984,

1977/1995). Postmodernism derives its moniker from what Lyotard

(1984) dubbed the "postmodern condition" of contemporary society. This

atomizing, fragmentary condition is seen as one in which modernity's

inability to truly liberate individual subjects has undermined faith in

progressive, goal-oriented modernist narratives of unity and progress,

thereby exacerbating the decline of society (Lyotard, 1984; cf. Venka-

tesh, 1992, p. 201). The main identifiable themes of the postmodern

critique

^Although the themes of the postmodern condition presented here borrow from the work of Firat

and Venkatesh (1995), they have been rearranged into a sequence that better lends itself to the

analysis at hand. The description of the themes enumerated herein summarizes the most rele-

vant features of Firat and Venkatesh's more exhaustive list. Additionally, the order in which

they are presented does not represent any specific chain of causality.

CONSUMER RESISTANCE

129

1. The quickened pace of postmodern life engenders a condition of

"hyperreality" in which "the real becomes not only that which can

be reproduced, but that which is already reproduced: the hyper-

real" (Baudrillard, 1976/1988, pp. 145-146). This postmodern cri-

sis of representation constitutes a "blurring of the distinction be-

tween real and nonreal" (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995, p. 252) whereby

reality is not merely given but constructed through "replication"

(Venkatesh, 1992, p. 202) and/or "simulation"^ (Baudrillard, 1981/

1988, p. 170). In postmodern advertisements, marketers simulate

"the creation of

real than real" (Firat & Venkatesh, p. 252,

italics in original), casting the postmodern consumer's perception

of reality adrift in an endless sea of multireferential symbols and

captivating spectacles designed to cut through the clutter of com-

peting selling messages.

2. In opposition to the notion of a unified, knowing Cartesian subject,

the postmodern consumer is a "decentered subject" whose authen-

tic self is said to be irrevocably splintered and displaced by a

"made-up self (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995, p. 252; McCarthy, 1987;

Venkatesh, 1992, p. 199). In response to the stultifying demands

of maintaining selfhood in contemporary society, the postmodern

consumer "embraces the confusion between the subject and the

object" and is liberated from having or seeking a centered, inte-

grated self (Firat & Venkatesh, p. 254). Postmodern consumption

offers the decentered subject a wide array of products and services

to enhance the "presentation of self (Goffman, 1959), often in or-

der to seek recognition and empowerment in everyday life (cf. de

Certeau, 1984; Langmann, 1992).

3. Relatedly, the postmodern condition is marked by "fragmentation"

in which the divided self is absolved of "seeking or conforming to

one sense or experience of being" (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995, p. 254).

Although the fragmentation of postmodern society has wrought

social dislocation, disharmony, and atomization, the fragmenta-

tion of the individual is seen by some as an empowering site of

resistance (Hearn & Iloseneil, 1999). Having been emancipated

from the constraints of maintaining a rigidly proscribed, norma-

tive social identity, the postmodern consumer is able to cultivate

multiple, situation-specific self-images by engaging in a variety

of disjointed consumption experiences (Firat, 1992, p. 204;

Firat & Venkatesh, 1995, p. 255). Under postmodernity, "market-

ing . . . fragments consumption signs and environments and re-

is Baudrillard's (1981/1988, p. 170) "simulacrum," which he describes as follows: "Whereas

representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation

envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum. These would be the successive

phases of the image: 1. It is the reflection of a basic reality. 2. It masks and perverts a basic

reality. 3. It masks the

absence

of reality. 4. It bears no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is

its own pure simulacrum" (italics in original).

130

RUMBO

configures them through style and fashion" (Firat & Venkatesh, p.

252). This "aestheticization of everyday hfe" (Featherstone, 1991)

situates the consumer in potentially liberatory spaces in order to

pursue emotive, sensual, and other experiential pleasures (Firat

& Venkatesh, p. 253; Fiske 1989/2000). As Gabriel and Lang

(1995) point out, the many "faces of the consumer" correspond to

certain social roles in which the consumer is empowered; such as

"chooser," "communicator," "identity-seeker," "hedonist," "rebel,"

"activist," and even "citizen." Consequently, the terrain of hegem-

ony is said to shift to one in which postmodern consumption prac-

tices enable the fashioning of multiple identities in opposition to

dominant meanings.

4. The postmodern consumer redefines the roles of producer and con-

sumer by actively producing his/her own "symbols and signs of

consumption" (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995, p. 252) and deriving un-

intended meanings from advertising messages (Schroder, 1997).

Inverting the Cartesian subject/object dichotomy, marketing ob-

jectifies the consumer and products "become active agents" (Firat

& Venkatesh, p. 252).

5. The postmodern condition embraces a "juxtaposition of opposites"

in which "fragmentation, rather than unification, is the basis of

consumption" (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995, p. 252). Postmodern con-

sumption thematizes social differences and paradoxes in order "to

allow them to exist freely" (Firat & Venkatesh, p. 252). Consumer

culture becomes a way to differentiate oneself by constructing

unique identities without fear of reproach from the binding infiu-

ence of social bonds and moral obligations.

PSYCHIC SPACE IN AN AGE OF ADVERTISING CLUTTER

Although consumer markets can offer numerous advantages to the

many faces of the postmodern consumer, limits inevitably arise as to

the amount and types of liberation that can be realized through con-

sumption. Finite disposable incomes and dwindling leisure time con-

strain our ability to consume, and cognitive limitations at a given time

dictate that it is impossible to pay attention to each and every selling

message (Jacoby, 1984; Malhorta, 1982). The Socratic adage that says

"our awareness is selective" aptly describes the limited amount of psy-

chic space each consumer reserves for advertising messages. Informa-

tion saturation (and advertising clutter in particular) requires the post-

modern consumer to develop coping mechanisms and ad avoidance

strategies (cf. Speck & Elliott, 1997) in order to guard against being

overwhelmed. Again, when confronted with too many ad messages, the

consumer must filter out the excess stimuli, paying attention only to

those messages that pass through his or her internal screening criteria.

CONSUMER RESISTANCE

131

Plik z chomika:

VkV

Rumbo, Joseph D. 2002. Consumer Resistance in a World of Advertising Clutter-- The Case of Adbusters. Psychology & Marketing 19.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: