Made To Break- II

It’s all about cycles… One day a guy wants to eat duck, the next day lobster. The bigger picture of American Consumption is no different. Herbert Marshall McLuhan described “all of human history as a process of change in which successive media technologies rendered preceding modes of human consciousness obsolete.” (Slade 182) And, he continues “if a technology is introduced either from within or from without a culture, and if it gives new stress or ascendancy to one or another of our senses, the ratio among all our senses is altered. We no longer feel the same, nor do our eyes and ears and senses remain the same.” (Slade 183) There it is… People like to feel good!


At one point during the timeline in the auto industry, what made people feel good was they liked to drive a Cadillac. Then, in the 1960’s, what made them feel good was not driving a Cadillac. Theodore Levitt described Henry Ford as the “most brilliant and most senseless marketer in American history.” (Slade 181) The point is… people like to feel good, and they get bored with what makes them feel good. Now, we can complicate that by saying that ‘death-dating” is wrong or evil or not environmentally sensitive. But think about, nobody says anything until the cycle is in full swing… and then they get a conscious.


In the 1960’s the Volkswagen gained popularity because it was “utterly dependable and trouble free.” (Slade 173) VW ran an advertising campaign illustrating that they did not make “superficial model changes” (Slade 174) which led to more sales. In the previous decades making superficial changes sold more cars. Interestingly enough, however, apparently it was ok for men to change their wardrobes more often. At the same time counterculture was telling Americans it was wrong to purchase cars with superficial changes, it was saying it was cool to buy more clothes. Esquire columnist George Frazier called it “The Peacock Revolution.” (Slade 178) Colors and different changes became acts of rebellion in the clothing in this industry while buying a non-superficial VW was also an act of rebellion. Madison Avenue caught on, and engaged in “cycle after cycle of rebellion and transgression, marketing new goods, new fads, new symbolic gestures of defiance” (Slade 179).


Slade attempts to say that the VW ad campaigns were the impetus for change because he embraces the “anti- death-dating” liberal mind-set. However, what he fails to understand or admit is the utter hypocrisy of this thinking. Lets protest by buying Volkwagens because they last longer, but lets throw our perfectly good clothes away to make a fashion statement. The very act of changing one’s style of clothing is an embracing of the death-dating one is supposedly defying. People were trying to feel good long before the 1960's and the emergence of the VW. Innovation makes people feel good, and the downside of innovation makes people feel bad... 


It’s all about cycles.