Monday, November 29, 2010

CCA DR Blog Post #11

Response to Pricing Beauty: Reflections on Aesthetics and Value, an Interview with Virginia Postrel.


For an independent study I pursued in college I read Virginia Postrel's book, Substance of Style. It's something that I should definitely return to and read again because I don't remember much from my first reading, only that she mentioned Starbucks quite a bit, and this article is re-peaking my interest, particularly Postrel's view on value and aesthetics. She claims that aesthetics are a source of value~economic, personal, or cultural and that while aesthetic value might have once been all about status, in our contemporary mass-market fueled world, that idea of status is disappearing and moving horizontally instead of vertically. Aesthetics as a value is reaching a larger population and because there are so many aesthetic choices to be made today, diversity becomes a key factor in self-expression. From the clothes we wear to the coffee we drink, we have multiple options and can form an identity through these consumer choices.

Postrel believes that aesthetics are a source of value, but they are also a source of conflict, which Postrel claims, "is where it leads into politics." Much of Postrel's sense of aesthetics is based in consumerism, and I can't help feeling that she also believes our personal identities are created by consumerism. Yes, we may have a wide variety of choices of items and gadgets and clothing to purchase, but it's a scary (albeit sometimes fairly true) thought that we express who we are through the things we buy.

Our economy is based on consumerism and while we might develop smarter and more clever and more aesthetically pleasing ways of being consumers, I truly hope
our ability to buy interesting products is not what ultimately shapes our sense of identity. If one preached that we should buy more aesthetically pleasing products that we would want to keep for years and years, that would be a different story, but consumerism is an extremely political and charged subject. We are now telling the emerging middle classes in China and India that they should consume like Americans but to what benefit? All I can see is a quicker deadline for the impending doom of our planet. It's one thing to write a book concerning an approach to aesthetics like Lawrence Weschler's book, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees about Robert Irwin and his career as an artist; Irwin's value of aesthetics brings an interesting approach to the table, which in a sense is what I think Prostel is getting at. However, when your value of aesthetics is tied into a company like Starbucks, I think you are treading a very thin line between asserting that aesthetics has a strong cultural value and the idea that our cultural identities are merely built on our ability to be great consumers. Ultimately I think Postrel is trying to assert that aesthetics in our society has a permanent value, but her illustrations of this point are at times a bit scary and could be easily misread.

1 comment:

  1. very good post, Kristin. The concern over rampant consumerism is valid and worth worrying about, but you might want to make a distinction between excessive consumerism and the daily commerce that we all both need and want (and that provides a fair part of our identity whether we like it or not). Consumerism doesn't have to be bad for the planet. I can "consume" music from Pandora, I can "consume" this post, I can "consume" fair trade coffee, etc. In doing all these things, I'm in a sense "trading" with other humans who produce these things/services and making it possible for us all to live.

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