[PEN-L:7422] Re: Zeitgeist

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Craven, Jim wrote:

>What does it say about the Zeitgeist when we see over and over on national
>TV in primetime, the Monster.Com add showing young children saying "I want a
>brown nose", "I want to be under appreciated", "I want to be forced into
>early retirement", "I want to be a yes man or yes woman" etc. Does this
>represent merely yuppy angst or does it represent new forms of
>anti-business/capitalism filtering into mass culture? The add goes on to
>suggest that at Monster.Com one can presumably find jobs and positions that
>do not require brownnosing or bringing the old kneepads and chapstick to
>work every day.

This has become pretty standard capitalist propaganda - if you pick the
right job, the right employer, the right sneaker, whatever, then you can be
cool, independent, and revolutionary. For more, see any issue of The
Baffler, or check out the Baffler collection, Commodify Your Dissent,
edited by Tom Frank and Matt Weiland, and published by W.W. Norton, or Tom
Frank's book on 1960s advertising, the Conquest of Cool, published by the
University of Chicago Press.

Doug