GangrapingOfCulturalEnergy

From UoWiki

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency. (Raymond Chandler)

See http://www.popguide.com/ and similar.
See the endless array of consumer magazines that feed you dreams of techno-utopia.
See the telly (all channels, but especially the commercial ones).
See Hollywood remakes of anything that seems to touch people.*
See the appropriation of children's stories.
See the commoditisation of youth culture.

The sums of money that are spent on advertising are so enormous that it is impossible that they are simply spent on informing consumers of products for which there is already a demand. Rather, this activity (which, disturbingly, is surprisingly similar in its techniques to much of applied chaos theory , especially the focused release of energy and total indifference to outcome) is designed to increase demand as an abstract quantity. Having pushed growth fetishism beyond sanity or sustainability, the system turns its attention from physical to spiritual resources in an attempt to enclose and commoditise everything.

The distinguishing mark of cultural sites thus raped is that they change from dynamic, mutable topoi to dead, quarried ground whose signification has been fixed by the obligation to make money. Then, once a site's commercial power has been exhausted, the money machine moves on.

An interesting sub-field of research, however, might be into the half-life (or, to continue the metaphor, the by-blows) of such forced intercourse between money and the meme. For example, the Elvis topos is a fine example of religiosity erupting far in excess of what can comfortably be tapped by the memorabilia industry.

*e.g. Hook - Peter Pan

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