Does Pop Culture Turn Us Into Consumer Slaves? - Stephen Sewell

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/02/09/Popular_Culture_Weve_Seen_the_Future_and_Its_Junk

Screenwriter Stephen Sewell rails against the social effects of consumerism, stating that modern pop culture serves to "enslave" people in a endless cycle of insatiable desire. "Popular culture isn't culture at all," argues Sewell. "It's commerce."

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The first of the 2010 season of the ever-popular IQ2 debates took the crowd-pleasing topic: "Popular Culture: We've seen the future, and it's junk." Some big-name thinkers and writers lined up to do battle. Is popular culture an annoyance that keeps the masses in a state of stupor? Or does it shape our society in an important and entertaining way? - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Stephen Sewell is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, whose works include "The Boys," "The Secret Death of Salvador Dali" and "Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America - A Drama in 30 Scenes."

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• consumerism
• consumerist
• capitalism
• capitalist
• culture
• society
• america
• western
• buy
• buying
• money
• slaves
• slavery
• advertising
• fora.tv
• foratv
• fora
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• stephen
• sewell
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• australian
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[Slavestorms]

The Circus owners & their Clowns are turning everything to junk

POP CULTure, junk bonds junk food light beer light cigarettes light rock like they're now suddenly good for you everything we eat & drink is processed pasteurized & packaged in plastic made from the bones of our dying planet

Our flashy baubles & Gucci gizmos are made by economic slaves in third world prison colonies

A child starves to death every 5 seconds while McDonalds throws out enough food every day to feed the entire planet

[WVorganstudent]

Ha!!! No wonder all the shitty pop songs of today all sound the same to me. old has been ground up and reprocessed into something "new". Our culture of today is like over planted fields--planting the same thing every year--until all the nutrients is gone from the soil, until it blows away and settles as dry, colorless, powdered dust over out heads!

[Uberloinvongenchler]

Don't forget, if you don't buy pop music, it can't make anyone any money. But wait a minute, isn't it called pop music because it is popular?

[80sOGRE]

wonderfully spelled out. 

[townofed]

Raise a glass to that man right there!

[Chocolatmenthe]

@SuGarWeReGdOwN : What's with this antisemitism ?

Btw, Einstein was a Jew.

[pepintheshort100]

@SuGarWeReGdOwN Don't do anything. Just sit back and watch the regime (whorehouse) collapsing. It is happening :)

[pepintheshort100]

@SuGarWeReGdOwN Be careful! Saying this about the jews will be criminalized!!!

Look up the so-called "Ottawa Protocol". CBC has a good article on it's website.

The Ottawa Protocol announcement is on youtube.

[utinomen]

@lickthestarr A dictator might have absolute autonomy (or near to it) and his unethical behaviour would be restricted by laws, and rightly so. Ethical laws are not restrictive of freedom to ethical people.

Businesses are not completely ethical. Nor are laws.

Not sure what your point is.

[utinomen]

@lickthestarr Usually when a person refuses to do something they disagree with, they get the sack. A great deal of what happens in employment is objectionable, and the chances of avoiding it altogether is slim unless you run your own business. (and refuse to do business with untrustworthy people)

A person who disagrees with any one aspect of the law *and* that law is contrary to his wishes is not free, yes. A law against the using a time machine isn't going to upset anyone without one

[lickthestarr]

@utinomen

They might tell you to do disagreeable things, but they can't make you. You're absolutely 100% free to reject their ideas.

But the law is inflexible. By your definition anyone who disagrees with any one aspect of the law - it's stance on marijuana for instance - cannot truly be free.

And if freedom is absolute autonomy, must we say that freedom is then necessarily 'good'? We do not, for example, consider psychopaths to behave in accordance with their own desires.