45
1.5 Contemporary Youth Culture Under Neoliberalism
Lastly, neoliberalism has also significantly shaped the youth cultural sphere that contemporary young people are predominantly exposed to, and voluntarily
engage with. Facilitated in large part by a combination of neoliberal deregulation and trade policies, as described above, and economic imperatives, transnational
corporations have conglomerated and become so massive that they are now themselves part of the cultural zeitgeist. The McDonalds arches, the Nike Swoosh,
or the Apple logo, for example, are now permanently embedded into the collective cognitive framework of the majority of Western and increasingly non-Western
consumers Beader et al., 2009; Jun et al., 2007. And, to be certain, even a casual read of the last fifteen or so years of the leading business newspapers, magazines,
and academic journals, e.g., the
Wall Street Journal, Forbes
, and the
Journal for Consumer Marketing
, will indicate that this has been a deliberate marketing strategy on the part of corporations and marketing firms. As Klein 2000 argues,
the 1980s neoliberalization of the US and I would add the UK economy and accompanying recession, forced hitherto prominent corporations to compete with
cheaper big box stores who were selling their own generic products. As a result, marketing companies restructured their approaches, and promoted their corporate
clients not as producers of everyday commodities, but as unique sellers of dreams, experiences, and lifestyles Klein, 2000. Many commercial industries like fashion,
sports, car, and food corporations operate under what economists refer to as an oligopoly: a competitive market condition in which a handful of firms produce
nearly identical products as that of their competitors. Therefore, to stay in business, individual corporations have to differentiate themselves through brands, labels,
and mass advertising. For example, HM, TopShop, Zara, American Apparel, and the Gap all sell relatively similar clothing to youth demographics: what is different,
however, are mostly the labels and marketing approaches. For, in order to maintain their market share, these companies have to keep the costs of production
low, but also have to market ideas and identities, not products; the manufacturing of which is outsourced and contracted out to elaborate networks of second and
third parties, e.g., free trade or export processing zones Klein, 2000. Thus, Starbucks, for example, does not sell coffee like Dunkin Donuts or Pret does; it
sells community and ambiance, i.e., ‘the third space’. Nike does not sell shoes; it
sells athleticism and competitive drive. Furthermore, while financial investment in
46 traditional forms of manufacturing and infrastructure has dramatically declined
during the neoliberal era, Harvey 2005, p. 158 points out that “interestingly, the
main arenas of production that gained were the emergent cultural industries films, videos, video games, music, advertising, art shows, which use IT as a basis for
the innovation and the marketing of new products”. What this all means for youth culture is that contemporary culture industries
have merged to labyrinthine extents with a plethora of non-media commercial industries to create an omnipresent consumer media culture that relentlessly
targets youth demographics Kenway Bullen, 2001, and co-opts all forms of youth styles, trends, and music. From sponsoring art exhibits, music concerts, and
fashion shows, to enforcing legal restrictions over the use of trademarked cultural artefacts, to deciding on the content and distribution of music, films, books, and
television shows, there are fewer and fewer spaces left in contemporary UK and US society where youth cultural production is not controlled or mediated by a
handful of transnational corporations McGuigan, 2010a. Correspondingly, the discourses
disseminated by
this corporatized
media-culture tend
to overwhelmingly valorise self-interestedness, competition, upward mobility,
individual wealth, entrepreneurialism, and consumerist forms of political and civic practice, all of which are congruent with neoliberal political-economy McGuigan,
2010. As a result, today’s young people are subject to a constant bombardment of branded sounds, images, and even tastes and smells that entice them to consume
and tell them what to aspire to and believe in, but not to question the night-time production of those branded commodities or to examine their underlying
ideological discourses. With perhaps some hyperbole, it can be claimed that most young people are literally immersed in this culture. As Klein 2000, p. 131
describes: The Kinkos, Starbucks, and Blockbuster clerks buy their uniform of
kakis and white or blue shirts at the Gap; the “Hi Welcome to the
Gap” greeting cheer is fuelled by Starbucks double espressos; the resu
mes that got them the jobs were designed at Kinko’s on friendly Macs, in 12-point Helvetica on Microsoft Word. The troops show up
for work smelling of CK One except in Starbucks, where the colognes and perfumes are thought to compete with the “romance of coffee”
47 aroma, their faces freshly scrubbed with Body Shop Blue Corn Mask,
leaving apartments furnished with IKEA self-assembled bookcases and coffee tables.
This is not to suggest that young people are shaped inexorably by this rampant and omnipresent corporate media-culture. The 1930s hypodermic needle
or magic bullet model of the media has been largely discredited, but that said, at least two things need to be taken into consideration. The first is that contemporary
corporate media and advertisements are unprecedented in scope, size, space, and scientific development and in no way resemble the corporate advertising of the
past. By conservative estimates, Western populations are now exposed to anywhere from 1500-3000 scientifically honed corporate messages a day Fogel,
2006, while corporations continue to research, enhance, and use psychological marketing and publicity strategies that target individual consumers at the
unconscious and subliminal level so as to incite desire, and override their rationality in order to mold them into eternal and loyal consumers Crisp, 2004;
Olson, 2009; Patel, 2010. As Rowan 2008 reports, corporate-sponsored neuroscientists are in hot pursuit of the holy grail of marketing; the buy button.
Researchers are using MRI machines originally meant to scan for tumours and brain damage and other sophisticated tests and instruments to carve out the most
objective ways to predict which logos, sounds, and adverts will most trigger an unconsciousautomatic cognitive response from consumers. Given that advertising
and these types of research cost corporations billions of dollars, an Occam’s razor
deduction would conclude that corporations would not spend billions on it if it did not work to gain them a competitive advantage and satisfy their bottom line. In
other words, modern advertising and media does not work like a magic bullet fired from the media gun directly into the consumer, it works more like a sawn-off
shotgun, scatter shooting multiple messages in the direction of the consumer with hopes of hitting a target. Hence, the potential socializing effects of media-culture
should not be underestimated.
48
1.6 Political Messages: There is No Alternative
Kategori