'All Consuming Images\r'

'What is Ewen trying to generalize in regards to the ‘politics’ of zeal and what be his seek questions? Which methods does he use to conduct this analysis? Ewen in his study of musical mode is trying to visualize how this came to be of â€Å"utmost” importance in our partnership. Obviously, considering himself a student and trying to make an impact on his students, Ewen is perplexed, when aft(prenominal)(prenominal) reviewing the impact of the press media on our society, the most big question a student can take him, is â€Å"Where did you get your shoes? ” Why does it matter? This is what Ewen wants to understand. When did call drive representative of each(prenominal) that we be?And how did be make out tied to amicable fountain. Ewen, although able to recognize the symbols of style in our society, through chassiss on magazines, fashion, interior design, put in it difficult to circumscribe what style is, and the â€Å"universal assim ilation” with style in this society. Ewen believed that understanding this preoccupation, would ultimately result an understanding of this modern culture. Ewen was curious of this notion, that made much(prenominal) an impact on our society, yet lacked concrete understanding. call is elusive, yet craved by everyvirtuoso. â€Å"This conception of style is both perceptive and confounding. The idea that styleis a port that the human values, structures, and assumptions in a given society are aesthetically expressed and received is a regent(postnominal) insight. ” Ewen found that the concept of style was much determined by current fads or modes of behavior. dash can be defined by its currency, and as well defined by its consumption. â€Å"One of the main points of a style is that it bequeath not remain current. ” Ewen asked his students to spell out an essay entitled â€Å"What Style Means to Me. ” He established the ground rules: • No dictionar y definitions • No academic or research papers • coerce on your own experiences and feelings about styleEwen believed that each of their essays would circu slowly how their definition of style was essentially part of their score and experience. â€Å"Every story could be pursued to announce many things about the particular iodin-on-ones and conferences that are speak for: the elan throng express themselves, the port they conform, the way they rebel. ” Ewen found through their essays that their were similarities in that at about point, most of them equated style with consumption and the power of the surge media to define and influence popular notions of style. Ewen wants to determine the pith of the prominence, significance andconsumption of style, and how it has come to be a contemporary phenomenon. Ewen is concerned about the king of the slew media to define style and its ability to create a way of look. â€Å"The people we view apparently inhab it a universe of bounty. They wear dresses costing thousands. They live in castles. Their encounters with interior designers lead to unrestrained flights of fancy. Their desires, their fantasies, their whims are painlessly translated into verifiable forms. There are no conflicts. In the name of â€Å"good taste,” there is no give ear of cost. There is no anxiety about affordability. ”Style, in contemporary culture, appears to offer the opportunity to have all that one desires, without ever even questioning if it what should be desired. Question 2 Using THREE EXAMPLES from the book, rationalize at least two ways that ad hominem experience (and/or identity) is related to the politics of style. agree to Ewen, the power of style has become an increasely gasconade in the lives of individuals. â€Å"Style is a visible bring up point by which we have come to understand life in progress. ” Take for example the invitation that an individual may receive from America n Express, to receive their sweet specious rally.â€Å"Only a select group will ever apply the Gold Card. So it instantly identifies you as someone surplusâ€one who expects an added measure of courtesy and individualised attention. . . . The Gold Card says more about you than anything you can buy with it. We specify its time you conjugated the select group who carry it. It is a gesture that speaks volumes. It says you are someone specialâ€whose style of living requires very special privileges. mortal whose financial credentials rank among the nations highest. Someone who appreciatesâ€indeed, has come to expectâ€an extra measure of courtesy and individual(prenominal) attention. In fact, the Gold Card in your namesays more about you than almost anything you can buy with it. ” This is a secure of â€Å"unspoken prestige. ” You will be seen. You will be noticed. The symbols you display, your most valuable possessions, will stick out you to stand ap art from the crowd. You will be noteworthy and honored. You will be someone. You will have â€Å"joined the select group. ” Only the faint remnant of perforationsâ€at the top and bottom edges of the personalized letter†projects that this promise of individual identity is beingness made, simultaneously, to a mass of others. This is a typical manner in which the mass media and consumerism do define style, as set by Ewen. It speaks to the quality of life that will be held by the person who has the â€Å"Gold Card,” as though being identified as royalty. This person not single has style and power, exactly already has the American Dream. â€Å"When a emerging in-between tell apart of merchandisers began to appropriate the marks of style from the late Middle Ages on, it was a tangible expression of their increasing power, both locally and globally. When they took on the vestments, titles, and properties previously monopolized by the aristocracy, it was becau se they had assumed a central, increasingly decisive put in the world.While political structures took time to acknowledge their franchise, these merchant capitalists were becoming men of power. ” According to Ewen, this middle class claiming of power, was a mask, to let them feel as powerful as the elite that claimed mixer power. â€Å"Its symbolic appellative with power, this â€Å"middle class” performed, and act ups to perform, a political swear out; it effects divisions among people who other than might differentiate with one another. ” Ewen cites the impact of the mass media and its ability to change over the American public of their personal worth as evidenced by their style. â€Å"By the late 1950s, Fortunemagazine asserted, more or less all Americans had the option of â€Å"choosing a whole style of life”: A skilled mechanic who earns $7,500 after taxes may shoot to continue living in â€Å"working class” style, meanwhile saving k empt sums for his childrens college education; or he may choose to live like a junior administrator in his own $17,000 suburban house; or he may choose to live in a city apartment house otherwise occupied by business and professional men. When the American â€Å"masses” have options of this breadth, . . . it is scarcely an exaggeration to suggest that we have arrived at a landmark in all the history of human freedoms.(1) people evermore express their personalities not so much in words as in symbols (ie: mannerisms, dress, ornaments, possessions); (2)most people are increasingly concerned about what other people think of them, and hence about their tender status. therefrom the taste of many Americans is expressed in symbols of non-homogeneous social positions. . . . people tend to buy things that play their aspirations. Our social status and hence our social power are identified by our belongings and those personal possessions that we choose. Question 3 In the closing ch apter, Ewen begins by suggesting that â€Å"In American Society today‘ film management’ has become both a compensable business…” and a necessity. He concludes that â€Å"in multitudinous aspects of life the powers of appearance have come to overshadow, or to shape, the way we comprehend matters of substance. ” What are his conclusions regarding this form of social control? What do you think of his argument? What began for Ewen as a quest to understand why one student found more importance in his shoes than his message, Ewen uncovered what is perhaps our failing in contemporary society. figure management in contemporary society is a billion dollarbusiness, with people being willing to do whatever it takes, to achieve the perfective tense status and the perfect image. The perfect image sells! Image is created by an individuals style. For most individuals, style is created by what is identified in the mass media as valuable, status enhancing, and im portant. Our priorities are in great part determined by what the mass media determines as important. This is a belief that is upheld by not only the commercial industry only when our main sources of news: â€Å"If the news helps to promulgate an on-going cognitive confusion, closely related are the rife channels of political influence.As far back as the presidency of Andrew Jackson, when the vote was extended beyond the property-owning classes, political style makers have negotiated between the objective power and interests of ruling elites on the one hand, and rising popular democratic aspirations on the other. Social inequalities of wealth and opportunity were transformed, by the hoodoo of political promotion, into a consensual notion of â€Å"common interest. ” I absolutely agree that the perception or attitude represents â€Å"the controller of politics as pure public relations. ” If we continue to reduce all social issues to simply matters ofperception, that i s the only place where we will see change. If that is how we address social needs, we will only see an image change, sort of than real change that is needed. â€Å"The impulse to dissociate images from social experience, or to present images as a refilling for experience, is reiterated throughout our culture. The perpetual repetition of this dynamic†touch on our sense. ” Ewen represents a compelling study of the effect of image and style on contemporary society. The value of individuals in this society is determined by their image and their ability to project that image to others.\r\n'