Consumerism

BBC film [|The Men Who Made Us Spend] episode 1, 58 minutes: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20j885_the-men-who-made-us-spend-episode-1_creation Open University support page http://www.open.edu/openlearn/whats-on/tv/ou-on-the-bbc-the-men-who-made-us-spend Guardian review (which notes that the film "deconstructs" IKEA) http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jul/14/the-made-who-made-us-spend-review

list of anti-consumerism films -- @https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080310093204AAxar4Y Most of them I haven’t seen. But of them I could imagine working with these two: The Gods Must Be Crazy Network And not listed are two movies by the same film maker that are really great: Local Hero Comfort and Joy If you want to go with allegory, then you might pick Invasion of the Body Snatchers—the 1950s version. It was a deeply disguised treatment of McCarthyism, but it could read as being against any unthinking mass movement. If I was going to show one anti-materialist, non-documentary movie in a class, I think I’d pick Local Hero and talk about capitalism’s destruction of social capital. (It has a happy ending—the social capital of a small coastal Scottish town prevails against Big Development.) If I could show two movies, I might go with The Gods Must be Crazy and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and ask students to find/explore their common thread.

I think its also worth while engaging the students in the start of (global) consumerism which is America in the 1950s

(one example "lecture" is here: @http://homework.uoregon.edu/pub/class/climate_change/1950.html)

Students should be better aware of the subversive movement of the Advertising Council (see http://www.jstor.org/stable/3114050?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) - The Selling of America: The Advertising Council and American Politics 1942-1960.

Also see (attached image)

Finally, here are some useful quotes about all of this:

==== //But even in the much-publicized rebellion of the young against the materialism of the affluent society, the consumer mentality is too often still intact: the standards of behavior are still those of kind and quantity, the security sought is still the security of numbers, and the chief motive is still the consumer's anxiety that he is missing out on what is "in". In this state of total consumerism - which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves - all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.// ==== ==== //This is the postmodern desert inhabited by people who are, in effect, consuming themselves in the form of images and abstractions through which their desires, sense of identity, and memories are replicated and then sold back to them as products// ====

==== //We seldom consider how much of our lives we must render in return for some object we barely want, seldom need, buy only because it was put before us...And this is understandable given the workings of our system where without a job we perish, where if we don't want a job and are happy to get by we are labeled irresponsible, non-contributing leeches on society. But if we hire a fleet of bulldozers, tear up half the countryside and build some monstrous factory, casino or mall, we are called entrepreneurs, job-creators, stalwarts of the community. Maybe we should all be shut away on some planet for the insane. Then again, maybe that is where we are.// ====

Greetings from the UK, Leeds!

Check out a mockumentary called Propaganda (2012). According to IMDb, it is "an anti-western propaganda film about the influences of American visual and consumption culture on the rest of the world, as told from a North Korean perspective". I cannot really say that this is my favourite film on the topic as it made me feel physically sick both during and afterwards, but at least it is thought provoking.

Here's the link the IMDb site description and film details: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2279306/ Full movie available on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQLfkhwkEbo

I would echo Eric’s vote for Local Hero. It’s one of my favourites.

I’ll also suggest:

They Live @http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/ Wall-E @http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/