medialifemagazine.com
PopcultSelling America: Why we are unhappyBy Heidi DawleyFeb 6, 2006, 01:10
People have been customers since the invention of stores. But it used to be that being a customer was confined to shopping, as the one on the buy side of a business transaction.
Alas, now people are customers wherever they turn. Students are customers of schools, patients of doctors and hospitals, parishioners of their churches.
The thinking makes sense, of course. It's about accountability, or rather the search for it in an increasingly unaccountable world. If institutions see Americans as customers, they will be more responsive, providing better service. The Whopper arrives sooner, the car's engine runs smoother, the water bill is more readable, the lecture or sermon somehow more insightful. Or so the thinking goes.
But if all this seems too pat, too comfy-feeling, if it rings a bit false to the ear as you ponder it, you should be talking to Jim Hutton. An academic in New Jersey, Hutton himself began pondering this issue some 15 years ago after hearing a university president describe students as customers. Remembers Hutton, who teaches marketing: “Something about it struck me as so wrong on so many levels.”
Wrong indeed. It's a flaw in reasoning, and the flaw is that God is not a bar of soap and the church not a retail establishment whose mission is to satisfy us as customers by bathing our souls as if we were at a spa. The university does not exist to satisfy us, nor does government. We are not their customers, and to be told that we are is dishonest and cheapens those instititutions, trivializing them.
Institutions have a larger, grander role, or ought to, Hutton reasons. They also demand of us. Citizenship demands that we participate in government and that we stay informed. Education demands that we work at learning. The church, religion, demands that we confront often hard moral choices.
Hutton calls this customer chatter the customerization of America, and he describes its effects in his book “The Feel-Good Society.” He argues that customerization, in an attempt to make our institutions more relevant, has stripped them of their fundamental role as pillars of the social order.
"Marketing has run amok, and consumerism has infiltrated our basic institutions. The result is that people have lost faith in institutions,” he says. “Institutions are not providing leadership.”
Institutions are becoming more responsive but to the wrong things, pandering as they do to win approval. The effect, contends Hutton, is that Americans are less happy. He points out that opinion polls show happiness levels have fallen since the 1950s, despite America's ever-increasing affluence. And that, he argues, directly reflects their declining faith in institutions, which is also evident in polls over the past 40 years.
Hutton believes the rise of customerization began in the 1960s during the cold war and the us-versus-them mentality that arose. The western model of consumerism, in contrast to communism, evolved into something patriotic. The eventual collapse of the Soviet Union affirmed not just our political system but our economic presumptions. The market, and marketing, became the answer to every problem.
Hutton sees the damage all about. In education, cheating is on the rise and standards have fallen. Professors tell students what will make them happy rather than teaching them. Education is no longer about learning but getting a degree and a good job.
In religion churches pander to parishioners to keep them coming back. But as Hutton observes, “Church isn’t to make you feel comfortable with what you are, but instead it should transform you by degrees into something that you are not.”
In health care, doctors prescribe the drugs patients ask for over the most effective drug. In politics, leaders are guided not by ideals for fundamental beliefs but public opinion polls. The media, Hutton believes, panders to advertisers.
We are being told what we want to hear but it’s not what we need to hear. Says Hutton: "We have all this consumerism and a good economy, but none of it is making us happy.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in popcult, the new thriller “When a Stranger Calls” topped the box office over the weekend, bringing in $22 million. That dropped last week’s No. 1, the Martin Lawrence comedy “Big Momma’s House 2,” to No. 2, with $13.4 million brought in.
In home movies, the Vince Vaughn-Owen Wilson comedy “Wedding Crashers” fell out of the top spot on Billboard’s top video rentals chart for the week ended Jan. 29, giving way to the Nicolas Cage action adventure “Lord of War.” “Wedding Crashers” dropped to No. 2 after two weeks on top.
In music, Il Divo’s new album, “Ancora,” topped the Billboard 200 album chart for the week ended Jan. 29, its fist in release, with another new release, “Your Man” by Josh Turner, coming in at No. 2. Last week’s No. 1, Jamie Foxx’s “Unpredictable,” fell to No. 2.
And in books, Stephen King returned to the charts in a big way, with his new title “Cell” topping both the New York Times’ hardcover fiction bestsellers list for the week ended Jan. 28 and USA Today’s book chart for the week ended Jan. 29.
She listed the top movies, books, and albums of the last week but that didn't copy very well. I'm not sure whey she posted those, maybe to show what it is we're consuming that's not making us happy. If you're interested the article was at
http://medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_2668.asp
