Post Class

On Tuesday in class we discussed Jameson’s essay, “The Culture Logic of Late Capitalism.” A quote that Dr. Cummings highlighting in the class power point that caught my attention was, “The underside of culture is blood, torture, death and horror.” We this we discussed the privation of history behind products that we consume in our everyday lives. The culture industry has hidden the efforts of what goes into products so well it is something that many people do not even think about when on a trip to the mall. For many products there is most definitely a dark underside to what went into creating them. After talking about the example of using sweatshops to create goods I thought I would do some research on what companies use sweatshops because I thought it would be interesting to know what products I have purchased that have been made in sweatshops. Some of these companies are LL. Bean, Walmart, Gymboree, Hanes, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Kohl’s. I found this information on the International Labor Rights Forum website. On the site they also provide a link to a site that gives you a “sweat free” shopping guide.

Something else that we discussed in class was a quote that finished up our discussion of Horkheimer and Adorno’s piece, “The Culture Industry” was the quote, ”That is the triumph of advertising in the culture industry: the compulsive imitation by consumers of cultural commodities which, at the same time, they recognize as false.” I think it is interesting how the brand name of some consumer goods have over time become its “real” name. Just a few examples of this are Kleenex, Vaseline, Band-Aid, Xerox, and Scotch Tape. Names like this make us complacent in a consumer world, which we don’t really care that we are now using these terms as generic. This is something that is probably used every day and not even realized.