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Why Madison Avenue Is Over
The ethic of deserving is rooted in a concept that began metastasizing in the 1960s: The notion—most notoriously trafficked by Mister Rogers—that we are all intrinsically special.
I can pinpoint the seminal cultural moment when YOU DESERVE IT overwhelmed Delayed Gratification. It was the film, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which was released, ironically, in 1971, the same year we were all buying each other Cokes.
When sweet, poor, Charlie Bucket mopes that he hasn’t won one of five golden tickets that would grant him admission to Wonka’s mysterious factory, his mother sings a song called “Cheer Up, Charlie,” in which she incants the curious phrase, “Up on top is right where you belong.” Exactly why Charlie deserves to be “on top” isn’t made clear until the last line when Mom concludes, “Just be glad you’re you.”
Charlie, of course, finds a golden ticket as the creepy Oompah-Loompahs carry out his pig-dog competitors and is awarded Wonka’s entire factory—just for being him, the central teaching of “Wonkanomics.”
As a doting parent, I find this good-wins-out fable appealing. As an unapologetic capitalist, however, I see a big problem: You get neither a golden ticket nor an entire confectionery firm because Mom told you you were special.
The yang to the whole YOU DESERVE IT yin is that corporate communications are constitutionally anchored in good news. My friend, the esteemed chronicler of capitalism’s shortcomings, Barbara Ehrenreich, refers to this as “mandatory optimism.”
“As promoted by Oprah,” Barbara recently wrote on her blog, “Scores of megachurch pastors, and an endless flow of self-help bestsellers, the idea is to firmly believe that you will get what you want, not only because it will make you feel better to do so, but because thinking things, ‘visualizing’ them—ardently and with concentration—actually makes them happen.”
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Hi Eric,
i�m portuguese and saw in a national newspaper (P�blico) a good reference about this blog, so decided to check it out and the first article i've read was your's and you've got me hooked. Liked the direct aproache, with no decorations added and tottally agree with the exageration of the "feeling good society", it may have started with the best of intentions, to make us a more positive, because nevertheless we are what we think, but it became a commercial product. We should learn the ability of living in the midlle, not with too much nor with too little.
Fabulous!! I love your tone and dissection of "the secret" and "Oprah" mantras whose messages encouraging the development of inherent greed and selfishness have subsequently led to the rampant global economic crisis.
Balance of both success and defeat, demonstrated by the purest forms of nature, are a lesson for all of us.... and echoed so brilliantly by the Rolling Stones.....
"You Can't Always Get What You Want.....But If You Try Sometimes, You Get What You Need..."
this is a tremendous article....maybe a call to short IACI, however? I'd be curious to hear the author's view of online advertising specifically.
Nice commentary. Back in the 1920s, '30s and '40s there was social engineering, the idea that people have aptitudes and skills and thus need to find their fit in society - and vice-versa. Then in the mid 1960s the best part of this was supplanted by the Pepsi Generation. Dovetailing with the Civil Rights Movement and later feminism, Madison Avenue picked up on the fight against arbitrary discrimination and turned it toward the very different idea that one could be anything they wanted to be. However, collective action still largely ruled the day. Until the mid to late 1970s, that is, when the individualist impulse made its comback and the archconservative book, Looking Out for #1, helped catapult the "Me Generation" into front page news. Before that, virtually no one talked about "being positive" outside of science class; since then, it's been the dictatorship of the "Have a Nice Day" brigade. Hopefully, the era of inidividual and collective self-fulfillment is coming to an end.
Fantastic piece...I've been bemoaning the ''I'm so great, I deserve everything attitude" since my days as an academic. It's interesting to return from travels abroad to more communal cultures and watch the bloat, waste and selfishness here. As I tell my daughter when she comes home from her Hollywood private school complaining about some rich kid bragging...it's all changing, at the speed of light.
Thank you.
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