Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Shopping as Resistance
I know this might be a bit late but I thought I’d see if anyone felt the same as me regarding this topic.
When we discussed shopping as resistance, can it really be seen as resistance? How do we know if we are truly resisting what we are meant to conform to? How do we know that it is just the act of purchasing that we are to resist? Going to the mall alone would be a form of conforming, would it not? Although the woman did not keep anything she purchased, she still did conform to society’s idea of what a women’s place in the mall should be; she should browse, spend time and inevitably, she will buy something, thus, conforming. Theoretically, even if she never bought anything, her refusal to buy is so that she avoids conforming to what pop culture wants, so pop culture continues to have an influence on her and her resistance should be seen as a form of conforming. Can anything be seen as resistance?
I believe that the idea of “resisting” comes from pop culture. So if society says that one way is correct, I think that ‘it’ knows that there are people that will “resist”*, but I also think that the people resist because the culture itself expects them to. So in a sense, they are conforming. For example, I don’t see that gothic individuals directly fall under pop culture the way the average person in society does, however, because they are attempting to be different (because society pressures them to be different), to resist pop culture, they are still conforming to some extent. Those same individuals that are gothic right now probably would not be gothic if the gothic culture was “pop culture”. So really, everything is pop culture. It influences us all whether we admit it or not. We are all conforming regardless of how resistant we think we might be.
It kind of reminds me of real and reality in a weird way. The way that language and myth are said to take us away from the real, I think that pop culture takes us away from what we really think we want. What we may really want, we might resist because we feel that we'll be comforming. So we will never really know if we are resisting or conforming because we are unaware of thedegree of influence that pop culture has on our lives.
It’s difficult for me to get across what my idea’s are, but I hope I have displayed some idea of what is in my mind. It is also possible that I am thinking of these terms in a way that differs from its intended meaning, thus, making my idea void but I still wanted to share it…
* that form of resistance is what they’re looking for, making it a form of conforming.
When we discussed shopping as resistance, can it really be seen as resistance? How do we know if we are truly resisting what we are meant to conform to? How do we know that it is just the act of purchasing that we are to resist? Going to the mall alone would be a form of conforming, would it not? Although the woman did not keep anything she purchased, she still did conform to society’s idea of what a women’s place in the mall should be; she should browse, spend time and inevitably, she will buy something, thus, conforming. Theoretically, even if she never bought anything, her refusal to buy is so that she avoids conforming to what pop culture wants, so pop culture continues to have an influence on her and her resistance should be seen as a form of conforming. Can anything be seen as resistance?
I believe that the idea of “resisting” comes from pop culture. So if society says that one way is correct, I think that ‘it’ knows that there are people that will “resist”*, but I also think that the people resist because the culture itself expects them to. So in a sense, they are conforming. For example, I don’t see that gothic individuals directly fall under pop culture the way the average person in society does, however, because they are attempting to be different (because society pressures them to be different), to resist pop culture, they are still conforming to some extent. Those same individuals that are gothic right now probably would not be gothic if the gothic culture was “pop culture”. So really, everything is pop culture. It influences us all whether we admit it or not. We are all conforming regardless of how resistant we think we might be.
It kind of reminds me of real and reality in a weird way. The way that language and myth are said to take us away from the real, I think that pop culture takes us away from what we really think we want. What we may really want, we might resist because we feel that we'll be comforming. So we will never really know if we are resisting or conforming because we are unaware of thedegree of influence that pop culture has on our lives.
It’s difficult for me to get across what my idea’s are, but I hope I have displayed some idea of what is in my mind. It is also possible that I am thinking of these terms in a way that differs from its intended meaning, thus, making my idea void but I still wanted to share it…
* that form of resistance is what they’re looking for, making it a form of conforming.
# posted by Rosie @ 6:57 PM 
