My Own Producer/Consumer Identity and Raining Shoes

As Annie, Kate and Kelly have already aptly pointed out, this week’s articles trace the history of (feminine) consumption and spectatorship. While reading the Lipsitz article, I found myself, like Annie, interrogating my own relation to consumption and its role in my identity. Although, as a filmmaker and budding theoretician(?) I like to think I am situated more on the production edge of the divide, yet when it comes to basic everyday life, Lipsitz article is right on the money. We have all been successfully reprogrammed by television to be consumers at heart. When stress overwhelms me, I inevitably turn to the comforts of consumption, Starbucks, Diet Coke, buying virtual property in my Facebook application. Just as White tries to argue that HSC consumers participate in their own hegemony by buying cheap, knock off goods under the guise of quality, thus placing themselves firmly in the lower class, I consciously allow my stress to be alleviated through habitually purchasing comforts. For me, this gives me a feeling of control, which I think is what is at the heart of many of the articles for this week. Marketing and TV situate consumption as the means to have control, and by extension, power and agency in your life.

I must say though, that 2 weeks ago, when my car was broken into and attempted stolen, I felt completely helpless and just stunned that someone would personally attack me in such a way. I was powerless and had no recourse to recover my stolen property. What I did next, surprised me. I spent 2 hours making, with my hands, a crazy wired futuristic gadget for my film shoot. When everything spun out of control for me, it was my place as a producer, actually having the satisfaction of creating something tangible, that exists in the world, that I could feel (rather painfully) come to life of my own volition, that gave me back that sense of control I needed. In this moment, it was my role as a producer as opposed to a consumer that gave me the greatest sense of power and control over my life. So, are we really so dependent on consumerism for our sense of identity and worth as these articles suggest?

Of course, given what bits of my own research that I have presented so far in class, Berry’s article about “mass customization” and micromarketing on the internet was fascinating. The-N website is already tracking consumer opinion by having kids post on threads and vote in polls and rewarding them with “creds” for their time, which then, in turn, encourages virtual spending. Sites like Second Life, further blur production/consumption because you can produce virtual objects and then sell them, within the realm of the game for real money. Whether you are playing with an in-game/site currency or real money, virtual consumerism is the new landscape.

Ok, I have to derail for a second because I just looked up at my muted TV and caught a car commercial where it was raining shoes. The point of the commercial is that you should buy a giant SUV because you never know when you will need the extra space Like, for example, when it rains shoes and you, as a woman consumer, are literally in heaven stuffing as many shoes as you possibly can in the back of your brand new Chevy Traverse.



This commercial speaks volumes to what all of the articles danced around, Haralovich, Rabinovitz, White and Lipsitz in particular are specifically speaking of the woman as a consumer. The notion of the male consumer is almost entirely absent. The one male in the commercial is eating a hot dog and looking at all the rabid, shoe-mongering women as if they were aliens from mars. Vapid consumerism is feminine and always has been, a silly, yet necessary past-time.