James B. Twitchell,
Lead Us into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism. (Columbia University Press, 1999)
ISBN 0 231 11518 0
310pp
US$28.50(paper)

(Review copy supplied by Columbia University Press)

Uploaded 1 March 2000

“THINGS R US”

James Twitchell is very excited about consumption, and he has done us the service of writing a book so that we can be excited too. It could be called “Idiots guide to consumption”, along the lines of the popular series with (oxymoronic?) titles like “Idiots guide to self esteem”.

This book is well written and a good read. It is modelled on the genre of celebratory texts of American capitalism that provided ideological justification for the excesses of the 1980s – when “greed was good”, as Gordon Gekko explained in Wall Street. It carries the argument along via anecdotes and uncritical accounts of various aspects of American consumer culture. It offers many insights that one might not find in more academic treatments of the subject.

It also has a dreadful fascination: if Twitchell is correct, human destiny has been finally revealed – “a new material culture, a “mallcondo” culture.” (18) Under an earlier world empire, all roads led to Rome, now they all terminate “at the Mall, the heart of our new modern urbia.” American civilization is based on “Mallcondoville,” “a vast continuum of interconnected structures and modes of organizing work, shopping, and living, all based on the principles of enclosure, control, and consumption.” (18) And, for Twitchell, this is a “good thing”.

It is also a sad book, not only because Twitchell really seems to believe what he is saying, but because other people apparently believe him as well, judging from the success of his earlier books such as Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture. He is like Vance Packard in reverse. Packard became famous in the 1950s denouncing “The hidden persuaders” and “The status seekers”, while Twitchell is covering the same type of ground, but in a celebratory mode.

Twitchell denounces Packard, Thorstein Veblen, J.K.Galbraith and other earlier critics of consumerism as “evangelical clergy”, “snobs” “eccentrics”, “greenies”, and “scolds” (35-7). The latter is a telling sexist touch as scolds are “railing, nagging women” for whom special bridles were constructed that kept their mouths shut.

Certainly, Twitchell would like to silence Cultural Studies, “vulgar Marxism”, and the Frankfurt School, all of whom he accuses of holding a simplistic view of consumer society. He believes he can sum up their argument in one paragraph: consumers are the mindless masses manipulated by masters of the media and maniacal marketeers. Twitchell comments that “some ideas are so preposterous that only intellectuals could believe them.” (41) The truth, according to his own very rudimentary anthropology, is that people “live through things. We create ourselves through things. And we change ourselves by changing our things.” (19) So there, that’s sorted out: “Things r us.” (286)

But strangely enough, despite its fervour, this is also a self-cancelling book, because at key points Twitchell quite openly concedes that the key processes he is celebrating are running out of steam. For example, at the end of his chapter on the joys of shopping, he laments that “the bloom is now off the flowering mall … malls are fading.” We are suffering from “mall atrophy” and “let’s face it, the mall is boring.” (267-8) Moreover, “the consumer has been, in the jargon of merchandising, maxed out.” (269) The first great consumer generation in history has gotten old and jaded, increasingly concerned with health and aged care: “in fact, if you’ve looked recently, the conglomerated hospital is behaving suspiciously like the mall.” (270)

So, what are we left with? Basically, a text to get people thinking. Twitchell writes well,synthesizes a lot of other work in an engaging fashion and regularly tosses off insights and starter-thoughts. Unfortunately, his own evangelism consumes any critical analysis and his work is radically, perhaps wilfully, undertheorized and naive. Twitchell denounces the “Voluntary simplicity movement” that seeks to avoid consumerism and he sneers at “new age” texts like Chicken Soup for the Soul. Unfortunately, his book is “chicken soup for the wallet”.

Mervyn F. Bendle