全新版大学进阶英语综合教程第3册unit 2 conspicuous consumption.pptx

2ConspicuousConsumption1In America today, it seems like we are always striving for something. To be bigger, better than who we are. We’re never content with what we have. But why? Where did this sense of not being enough come from?2 As it turns out, the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses”derives from a cartoon strip of that name that launched in 1913 and ran for 26 years. In the strip, creator “Pop” Momand poked fun at our need to do things in order to impress other people. I’d love to say that need vanished when the last episode of that comic strip ran, but alas, it seems to have only gotten worse. These days we don’t care about the Joneses, we’re trying to keep up with the Kardashians. (Thank God I don’t have cable TV!) 3Which really gets to the core of the matter? Who is telling us that we need to keep up with the Kardashians? The media. Until the late 1880s, magazines were not widely read. They were for the rich, who could afford both the time and money to read them. But toward the end of the 19th century, two events happened that forever changed our world: second class mail came into being and the rotary printing press was invented. This dropped the price of magazines so that they were affordable for the working class. Mass media was born. And this opened up a whole new world.4 Prior to the late 1880s, most of us were so busy trying tomake a living that we didn’t care what the Joneses were doing, nor did we know, for that matter. But with the birth of mass media, suddenly we were being told in no uncertain terms that not only were the Joneses far better than we were, but also that we should do something about it. You see, we didn’t know that we weren’t good enough until someone told us. And much of that assessment was, and still is, based on a perceived lack of things we’re told we should want or have. “Fortunately,” those same magazines provided us with ready solutions in the form of advertisements for products that would “catch us up” to the Joneses.