Week 2 – Cobb Chapter 2

This chapter is one of the most interesting and well-written texts that I’ve read in some time. The focus on consumption as a factor in producing meaning was particularly interesting. Cobb used some very aptly chosen contemporary examples to illustrate what Eco called “semiotic guerrilla warfare.” What’s interesting is that even in reading about the “magical appropriation” of goods and symbols by consumers, I found myself secretly “rooting for” the consumers. It’s an easy-to-embrace image: the “bad guys” try to force their ideals on society, and the “good guys” take those idealogical symbols, turn them upside down, spray some paint on them, and use them to portray something entirely different.And yet, one wonders if this image is entirely complete: we are quick to jump on the bandwagon with the anti-consumerist “cool” subgroups, who choose what and how to appropriate into their “style.” And yet, in doing so I think we unconsciously romanticize contemporary culture. It seems to me that the focus on the this triumph over commercialism begs the question: what subcultures are we actually analyzing? I would argue that those most likely to respond to capitalism in the manner describe in this chapter are necessarily those with spare time and disposable income (i.e. the young and the middle-class). Does this analysis, therefore, minimalize other parts of society?

Cobb’s discussion of “hyperreality” was also very thought-provoking. His description of “images of images” and the “simulacrum” of society seems to illustrate with extraordinary insight certain peculiarities of today’s culture. And his conclusion that cultural studies thereby ends up with something “flat” and lacking depth finds particular resonance in my own perspective. Indeed it seems that the “simulacrum” leaves us with something less than substantial, a seemingly attractive world that, when actually held, ultimately slip’s through one’s fingers and leaves one grasping at air.