Revolution Through Consumption

“What we thought was really eerie, though, was the way mass culture reflected the high critics’ priorities. While they spoke proudly of their own subversiveness and turned out account after account of the liberating potential of each act of consuming, the culture industry itself grabbed with both hands at the golden promise of rebellion-through-consumption. The more closely American speech was brought under centralized corporate control, the more strenuously did our advertising, TV sitcoms, and even our management literature insist on the virtue and widespread availability of revolution. In economic terms, the nineties were years of unprecedented consolidation; in terms of official culture, they were years of unprecedented radical-talk” [Frank and Weiland, editors, Commodify Your Dissent, (New York, W.W. Norton and Company, 1997), p. 14.]