Commodity Culture

Capitalism has similar relations to Commodity Culture. Capitalism depends on production and consumption of large amount of goods that has a tendency to be a overload to a consumer. Capitalism also relies on the desire and need for those specific goods in order for consumers to keep coming back. What a Commodity Culture does is when something is changed or adjusted amongst a social society, it adapts to that change. A good example of this was in the mini lecture called "Urbanization, Industrialization, and Commodity Culture". When men and women started to work more together in the workforce the commodity culture took advantage of this and started to market different gender products. I believe the similarities of the two is that they both is trying to market a product and relying on the consumer to purchased that product.

In consumer societies, there is a constant demand for new products and old products are being revamped to look new again to appeal to the consumer. In this society consumers must be able to afford the goods as well as possess leisure time to purchase these goods. At one point consumer societies relied on larger sectors of population living to get their goods out. Now with the rise of online commerce everyone has access to these goods.

Visual pleasure was a great concept for department stores. The idea to display goods in the window translated to consumer curiosity and increased attention to the store. Flaneur is a figure who moves through the city with a certain type of fashion and enjoys the activity of looking. The similarities between the two was to expose fashion to the public eye. The mobility affected this concept in a positive way. The gazing and visual pleasure of portraits and fashion increased in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with patrons.

In my own words, the presumption of relevance means when you are advertising and emphasizing the importance of that product. A good example is when you see commericials about getting hard rock abs in ten minutes. We all know it takes hard work and dedication to be in good shape, but the image of the man or woman with a "six pack" or "eight pack" on there stomach distorts that reality to consumers.

The statement "Advertising asks us not to consume products but to consume the signs in the semiotic meaning of the term" generally means that when a product is being advertise don't focus so much on the product at hand, but focus on the connotative meaning of the message that is being presented with the product.