| Subject: Interesting view on commodities |
Author:
Matt
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Date Posted: 11:47:26 11/07/02 Thu
Here is a paragraph from one of my student's journal entries. I thought it was an interesting take on the power of the commodity and, of course, advertising. I'm not sure what to do with this from here or where to go, but maybe some one else will be able to relate this to theory in some way. I suppose it can definitely relate to _Noise_ in that she talks about stockpiling commodities just in case she wants them in the future. Anyway, here it is:
"The best example of how a commercial influenced me was for the DVD version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I hated that movie so much as a little kid. The evil stepmother scared me, I had nightmares for days, and I could
not watch the movie again until years later. My parents did buy it when it came out on VHS because it is a classic, being the first Disney animated movie. Yet I only watched it once. I still had no love for that movie. Yet when the DVD came out, I wanted to buy it. All those commercials made it sound so cool. The interactive menu section, the special features, the games, all made me want to buy this product. For instance, the commercial made it sound like it was the first and only DVD to have that interactive
menu, and I wanted to see what it was like. I had visions of the DVD talking to me, and it looked so cool on the commercial. Another reason why I wanted to buy it was that the commercial made it sound like it was only going to be around for a limited time. If I didn't buy it now, I might never have the chance too since they will 'lock it up in the Disney vault.' They built up scarcity, or at least they made it sound like there was scarcity, with the hope to increase demand. This worked for me; better to have the movie and not watch it then to not have it and want it later. In other words, I did not want to lose the ability to buy it. One more aspect as to why I wanted to buy this DVD was the repetition. The commercial was played repeatedly throughout a show I was watching. Even though I hated the movie, I still considered buying it because of these aspects of the advertisement."
PS. She ended up resisting the urge to buy it and thus escaped mastication in the foul jaws of capitalism. (Or something like that . . .)
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