Cold War and Consumerists Mass Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Cold War and Consumerists Mass Culture - Essay Example . The constraints resulting from World War Two and Great Depression led to a frustrated consumerism situation even more than the capitalist system rejection. The new consumerism had led most Americans and policy makers to believe that the under consumption situation in the country was the main cause of the slump. The government policy after the war had encouraged mass purchasing power instead of coming up with measures to equalize the wealth distribution. Consumer society had become a positive communism answer during the cold war. Despite the relations between freedom and consumption in these years, consumerism of the post war era was domesticated rather than hedonistic. It focused more on the nuclear family and suburban homes (Chafe 107). The period between 1960 and 1980 witnessed a number of challenges and changes making the consumer society stronger than ever. Among the challenges included the counterculture challenge on consumerism premises. The specter scarcity brought into question the cornucopia performance upon which the consumer society depended on. The consequent of this challenge was that consumption ended up being more ubiquitous. The socially and individualistic fragmenting consumerism existing today is believed to be rooted on the critique of consumerism that took place in 1960’s. The countercultural figures critiqued idealized and conformity indicates that most Americans preferred to achieve the authenticity through consumption (Breines and Breines 78). Consumerism began to modify its mass production practices in favor of segmented and flexible production in the demographically distinct markets. Consumerism has since then become adoptable to the hip and green. A good example of this is the energy situation crisis in 1970’s when politicians considered the shortage as being as a result of over production. This was rebuked as being naysayers. Consumerist trends toward fragmentation and individualistic consumptions have accelerated in the recent years leading to market triumphant. The resulting radical faith in the market virtues led to politicians to put moral gloss on the market culture unfettered growth in the 1980s. Consumerism also helped in the integration of the diversity of the inhabitants youth mass culture and cynical marketers through the equal division of multicultural segmented demographic units. This led to the shift from a spirited and integrative public popular culture to an increasingly solipsistic and privatized commercial culture in the early twentieth century (Bloom and Breines 142). Consumerist during this era adopted an ideological medal that adopted an unquestioning approach towards the production uses. This resulted to an increase in self-conscious ness in the manipulation