Themes: • In this project I look at how advertising, marketing and consumerism rule our culture, and the effects of this on the individuals existing within this society. The effects on the individual’s life such as freedom, happiness and identity. • The majority of most of our lives is spent working in order to make money, to purchase consumables. Consumables have become the indicators of status, rather than leisure time, or rank at work. For example what car you drive and labels you wear has become of incredible importance. • We now build up our identities through what we consume, and find a sense of freedom in the consumer arena. We feel that we are free to buy what we want and make personal choices, when in fact we are brainwashed and seduced by advertising and the mass media. • Is the world in which we are living a reality? Have we become so obsessed with objects and image that we do not know our real desires or what real fulfilment is? Consumer fulfilment is just postponing the emptiness of our lives, which is why we continue to consume, to constantly fill this void. Sources: I shall focus on three main thinkers, two sociologists Bunting and Bauman and the philosopher Debord. I shall also be comparing these thinkers to other philosophers throughout. • Bunting: I shall look at her book Willing Slaves, How the Overwork Culture is Ruining our Lives. She examines how we as a culture work exhaustive hours in order to consume, this desire to consume is installed in us through the media, advertising and marketing. • Bauman: I shall mainly be looking as his book Identity, and how our society saturated with the media and advertising has a huge effect on our identities. • Debord: I shall be looking at his book Society of the Spectacle, in which he critiques our culture. I shall be investigating what he means by the spectacle, and how he suggests that the society in which we live is not real due to advertising and the media. Our society is fake in a sense, and we have lost contact with our true desires and selves.