Two Cheers For Materialism Analysis
Two authors that have written about American consumerism, James Twitchell and Ian Frazier, have two different ways of expressing their thoughts in their essays even though the two topics are similar. In Twitchell’s essay, “Two Cheers for Materialism”, he expresses his views in a different way than Frazier does by taking a more serious approach. Frazier on the other hand, attempts a more comical view of the issue in his essay “All Consuming Patriotism”. However different their essays may be, they still both bring attention to our nations obsession with consumerism. Twitchell criticizes consumerism, or as he would put it, a “mallcondo culture” using a series of facts and quotes from multiple sources. Mostly everything he argues is not just
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He does not just give his opinion and hope the reader will accept and agree with it. For instance, he takes facts from anthropologists and historians, quotes Karl Marx from The Communist Manifesto, and comments on Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. What makes his argument so alluring is the fact that he does not shoot down consumerism completely but views it as misunderstood and a compliment to the problem, not the cause. He does not make the reader feel selfish about feeling the need to buy things to validate where we stand in society but says that “commercialism has lessened pain”, meaning we have more pleasure in our lives compared to discomfort in our lives than most people throughout history. He goes on to discuss another work of literature, Pursuing Happiness, by Stanley Lebergott. In regard to this, he agrees that Americans buy their way to happiness. Also within this book, he remarks on the statistics of American consumption on a wide range of products which the reader can identify with considering everyone has bought something at some point in their lives. Perhaps the most defining argument within his essay is the fact that he believes our consumer culture is so powerful because it frees us from the strictures of social class. Because it is so possible for many Americans to acquire goods, it is hence possible for everyone to be a part of the “in
He does not just give his opinion and hope the reader will accept and agree with it. For instance, he takes facts from anthropologists and historians, quotes Karl Marx from The Communist Manifesto, and comments on Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. What makes his argument so alluring is the fact that he does not shoot down consumerism completely but views it as misunderstood and a compliment to the problem, not the cause. He does not make the reader feel selfish about feeling the need to buy things to validate where we stand in society but says that “commercialism has lessened pain”, meaning we have more pleasure in our lives compared to discomfort in our lives than most people throughout history. He goes on to discuss another work of literature, Pursuing Happiness, by Stanley Lebergott. In regard to this, he agrees that Americans buy their way to happiness. Also within this book, he remarks on the statistics of American consumption on a wide range of products which the reader can identify with considering everyone has bought something at some point in their lives. Perhaps the most defining argument within his essay is the fact that he believes our consumer culture is so powerful because it frees us from the strictures of social class. Because it is so possible for many Americans to acquire goods, it is hence possible for everyone to be a part of the “in