![]() Just as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four intensifies the ideologies and politics of 1948, so The Space Merchants extrapolates from the business life and patriotic fears of 1950s America. ![]() ![]() While passing as upstanding members of the consumer society, the Consies are actually determined to overturn the established order and build what they deludedly regard as a better, more equitable world. Most of all, people in power worry about the clandestine World Conservationist Association, regarded by all right-thinking Americans as a terrorist group that opposes everything that a commercial society stands for and believes in, from subliminal marketing to the fullest possible exploitation of the earth's natural resources. By this time, cities have also grown so overcrowded that people rent bedspace in stairwells, water is a precious commodity, organic foods have been replaced by artificial substitutes, and corporate rivalries can lead to legally sanctioned feuds and assassinations. Sometime in the distant future-the presidency has become an inherited position-the United States is largely controlled by two rival advertising agencies, Fowler Schocken Associates and B. Advertising Age is the name of Madison Avenue's trade magazine, but it also neatly sums up the world of The Space Merchants. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |