The Media Education Foundation’s film Shop ‘Til You Drop: The Crisis of Consumerism is a refreshing, contemporary, and interdisciplinary look at the machine of American consumerism and advertising. While he doesn’t see an end in sight to our appetite for overconsumption, he documents the end of our planet’s ability, with its limited resources, to sustain that appetite.
To set the stage, we listen to a giddy, breathy recitation from Juliet Shor, author of Born to Buy, as we kaleidoscope through things.
The first half of the film focuses on the psychological impacts of consumerism: how the media and advertisers bombard us and how their techniques manipulate our desires, making us believe that we need much more than we really do.
If you play soft music to the cows, they give more milk. If you play music for shoppers, they buy more stuff. The many talking heads in the film—teachers, authors, mental health professionals, and leaders of the Voluntary Simplicity movement—suggest that we need to get out of the Matrix and learn to make decisions for ourselves. Otherwise, even if you win the rat race, you will still be a rat.
Once upon a time, we ostensibly used because we wanted our neighbors to see what we had; the paradigm was local social comparison. Today, the frame of reference has been expanded. It has gone from the more or less egalitarian neighborhood of the people on your block to the national “neighborhood” of televised opulence. There is growing anxiety in our culture as people continually compete to live like the rich.
The second half of the film shifts to a more ecological perspective, directly addressing the issue of how the consumer drive in developed nations is depleting or damaging, even destroying, our most precious resources. In the process, we may well be sowing the seeds of our own destruction.
Shop ‘Til You Drop is more than just a helpful tool for binge shoppers; is a much-needed wake-up call for all of us. The film encourages us to see that the habit of “keeping up with the neighbors,” whether they live next door or in the fantasy world of television and other media, misuses our lives and our planet. It offers us some perspective and invites us to step back and reassess our values and goals.