Visual Essay

My theme that I picked to represent Feed was one) confusion in consumerism and two) the fact that people buy and buy and buy.

The skull represents the thought of many americans yet tells the truth. It seems that america is in competition with itself for who can own the most stuff ( yet most people dont own half the crap that is in their house.) The picture next to it and the one in the lower left corner represent that the media is purposefully confusing one so they think they need the product now, or to fit in or because a celeb has it. I find the last picture funny. The trees are our world and us, humans, are eating it away like were animals. To me that picture is saying we will eat away our world even if we know its not good, we cant stop our consuming ways, its how the world was "meant to be". These two themes I decided to do my visual essay on are things I have learned to recognize through peoples habits and even my own. I could go in to a store and a sign would say 50% off, so im drawn to it and then you get up to pay and the deal wasnt what you thought because you didnt realize that in really really really little letters it says like when you buy a shirt at regular price get the 2nd half off. Thats a purposeful confusion, theres a reason the text was super small, to confuse the consumer. The second theme I can personally identify with. My whole life I have gotten basically everything I wanted ( besides a car!!!) Honestly when me and my mom are bored we go shopping, its like entertainment, we just buy and buy and buy though we have everything we need. Consumerism has become a past time in America. Yet one must  remember our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we satisfy our selfs with consuming... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever accelerating rate. This is america, this is consumerism.