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Commercialism Essay, Research Paper

1. Like a highly contagious virus, Culture Industries are transforming the world with a corrupting influence on the most unlikely of cultures. The corrupting influence of commercialism has all but destroyed the sacredness of the religious counter-culture and symbols of the Church. For many years, the religious heritage of the Church played a counter-cultural role in American and transnational cultures. It countered the evil aspects of contemporary pop cultures within American and transnational societies. Many of the religious symbols, signs, stories and information once held sacred by the faithful as artifacts of worship are now very much the shared property of culture industries. Volvo sells cars that will “save your soul,” MCI uses priests to vouch for the trustworthiness of their promised long distance rate savings, the Vatican entered a partnership with IBM to digitize the entire holdings of the Vatican Library, and “?like Mickey Mouse, Batman, and the Rolling Stones the Pope has his image licensed to makers of hats, mugs, and T-shirts,” (The World Journal, Michael Budde.)

2. The culture industry includes commercial interests like the media conglomerates, Time-Warner and Disney; information and communication firms like Microsoft, IBM and AOL; and market research giants like Equifax and TRW. Make no mistake; these huge multinational conglomerates are ‘closet neocolonialists’ of the aggressive kind. The culture industry is loosely defined as “sectors that use symbols, stories, images, and information to generate profits,” (Michael Budde, The World Journal). Their message is a gospel of contemporary commercialism and multinational capitalism. Their symbols, signs, stories and information are broadcast to multinational households and are euphoniously designed to make disciples of all who sit in front of their great electronic pulpit. They preach thousands of messages through a daily barrage of accurately timed 15 and 30 second commercial spots. “Their products and activities occupy more of people’s time in the United States than anything else except work, school, and sleep; by some estimates, Americans take in more than 16,000 commercial messages, symbols and reminders a day. It is much the same in Japan and many West European countries, and the globalization of culture industries is expanding the list of countries whose cultures are being transformed.” (Michael Budde pg.2, The World Journal)

3. It was reported that “?each person in the United States spends three to four hours a day watching television and 20 hours a week listening to the radio’ (Commercialism-The World Journal, spring 1998). Add to this the amount of time devoted to movie-going, home movie rentals, computers and the Internet, and it becomes very clear that commercialism’s corrupting influence has transformed American culture and the way it spend its time. By contrast, some estimates suggest that only 3 percent of parish-registered American Catholics spend as much as six hours per week on parish activities other than attending Mass-(Commercialism-The World Journal, spring 1998). Those individuals who watch television rent videos, go to movie theaters, purchase print media or breathe air are the potential converts of culture industries. Including, but not limited to, your infant children and pets; they’ve discovered that pets (especially felines) has a huge influence on consumer spending. Why this blatant discrimination against canine mammals? One supposition would be that the culture industry might need more time to gather the various pieces of datum on our four-legged friends; perhaps those nice people at Alpo could give them a hand.

4. Adorned in the negligee? of capitalism, culture industries are seducing the church to the dive of Commercialism. These industries are luring religious leaders from the cold hard grasp of the vow of poverty to the silky, warm, alluring embrace of contemporary commercialism. They promise that the hypnotic power of their commercial messages will bring lucrative profits to church coffers. Conveniently, the culture industry fails to point out that this profit simultaneously provides their commercial interests with economic and political fuel. So that they are able indirectly to maintain their transcontinental campaign to extend their influence into multinational cultures. If that sounds like neocolonialism, it is. Their sagacious attempts, to help church leaders fill their half-empty coffers through joint use of the church’s sacred symbols and to bolster the sagging economy of governments like Mexico and Russia through lopsided trade treaties are neocolonialism incognito.

5. The venal-like symptoms of commercialism are easily detected as some of its victims are tempted with lucrative opportunities to make astronomical amounts of money in relatively short periods and non-profit organizations are overcome with an excessive impulse to make profit. Other symptoms are strange insatiable desires seducing its victims to consume everything from ‘Charman’ toilet tissue with lanolin, and cologne that smells like Michael Jordan to beer that will bequeath unto you sex appeal, popularity and athletic adeptness. Strange huh? Wait, it gets stranger.

6. The culture industry thoroughly scrutinizes American and multinational cultures through covert information-gathering activities. The information enables them to effectively tempt their victims with a virtual marketplace-an haute couture of commercial products, which seems to have life-giving qualities. Our products, they tout, have innate attributes and personalities that “?may not add years to your life, but will add life to your years.”

7. The corrupting influence of commercialism has had a hypnotic effect upon people and institutions across transnational cultures. They have led consumers to believe that products will

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