So while I was running this evening, the song "If You Buy This Record Your Life Will Be Better" came up on my iPod. Now I realise that this song has some dodgy lyrics somewhere around the second verse, but it is the chorus that I like:
If you buy this record your life will be better
Your life will be better
Your life will be better
If you buy this record your life will be better
If you buy
If you buy
If you buy
I don't know what the songwriter's point was, but it makes me smile every time I hear it. This is so the point of all advertising. Sadly, I think we are all far too convinced and pulled in by advertising. So in that way, this song makes me more aware of the tact.
So after this song came on, it made me think of the line in Ten Things I Hate about You, when Kat is lamenting the "meaningless, consumer-driven lives" of her peers. Now while Kat is hardly someone I would choose for an ideal role model, her attitude toward the "everybody's doing it" mindset is great.
Now of course Kat comes round to some extent before the end of the movie, although not quite in the same way as Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. Chad and I saw that as a "Shakespeare in the Park" production a few years ago, and during Kate's speech at the end, Chad poked me and asked, "Are you listening to this?"
Anyway, my life is not better for having bought whatever record it was the song was on. I haven't quite hit the level of hostility of Kat or Kate. I don't go running out and buy everything I see on TV. So I don't really know what that all says about me.
3 comments:
I guess I believe in moderation and balance in most things. Having is not wrong, but not giving to those in need or worshiping our stuff is, you know?
I do think our culture is very likely drunk on having, though. It seems like the advertising tries to target either how "you MUST have this!" or "oh no! you're going to DIE if you don't have this!" The medications commercials especially seem to imply it's wrong and not normal for you to have to suffer with this. Those make me wonder what they would think if they ever had to set foot in a poorer country where things aren't so available.
I am really struggling with ideas to keep my children in reality, without them getting too sucked into the "must have" lifestyle. It's easy enough (relatively, anyway) to throw out the TV, homeschool them, and rarely let them see the world outside-- and then they leave our protection totally unable to cope with the world around them. But I don't want them to buy into the "But Mum, everybody has one and I'll be so left out etc. etc." outlook, either.
So, I'm thinking: mission field. :)
Hey sounds like a good plan to me. :)
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