Happy Birthday, 3/29

In class on Thursday we discussed Jameson’s view on multinational capitalism. Jameson believes that postmodernism and multinational capitalism are the same thing. He stresses the fact that our culture is currently dominated by corporate need for profit. This idea can be related back to Horkheimer and Adorno when they state, “Mechanically differentiated products are ultimately all the same” (43). Everything nowadays is created for a profit—nothing is valuable to us anymore unless someone else wants it and then it becomes worth something. I know we’ve used this example millions of times in class, but it’s just like television shows! Identical television shows are made in order to make a profit, the reason why they are the same as every other show is because no one wants to make a television show that’s “new”, for the fear of it failing—so everyone just re-invents a show that has already been made (the bachelor). Jameson states, “depth has been replaced by surface”. (490) Jameson is saying that we have evolved into a society which is driven by want instead of need and craves the newest, fastest, $$ product. Also, Jameson touches upon this notion that nothing is scandalous to us anymore, and nothing shocks us. Jameson stresses that all aspects of our society once shocked people, but as time progressed these shocking behaviors became normalized and part of mainstream culture. A good example of this seen today all over Rollins campus is men wearing “womanish” clothing. For example, bright colored v-neck tee shirts, tight bright colored pants, scarves, and jewelry are seen quite frequently nowadays. However, this was not the trend ten years ago. This trend has become normalized and part of our everyday life—but I can remember thinking how weird it was when I saw a guy wearing tight skinny purple pants (11th grade in high school)….now though, it does not even phase me. I think our society will begin to normalize things much quicker and accept new looks, ideas, people, and pretty much everything a lot quicker because we are so different than any generation.