Why Lana Del Rey Makes You Hate Yourself, Essay Example

In the new Digital Era (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) we have become a society defined by our consumerism. Consumerism has been put upon us through these media conglomerates and marketing brands. We may think that we have a choice because there are so many options but options and choice are very different. We walk into a supermarket and see various brands and types of deodorant for example, but there’s no choice here because a lot of these brands are under the same company. Buckingham argues that “who we are—or who we perceive ourselves to be—is far from a matter of individual choice; on the contrary, it is the product of powerful and subtle forms of “governmentality” that are characteristic of modern liberal democracies” (10).We think that our identity is so tied up in the things that we buy and how we represent ourselves by what color our hair bands are, what car we choose to drive, or what shoes we wear but really these are finite identities that offer nothing into the inner workings of what defines a person. We may choose to hate a musical artist because they don’t speak a truth to us, or we may feel as a musical artist doesn’t have anything important to say and therefore nothing important is being said, and this in turn may make us feel depressed for the state of the human race but instead of looking at this scenario as a dichotomy between loving and hating Lana Del Rey, there’s a third option: don’t listen. That’s a choice. Identities should be fluid, choice can also be seen in the power to change one’s mind. In this culture, dictated in large part by social media, there’s so much information to process that new thoughts about certain music or products are being presented at faster and faster rates (new iphones, new music, new products) that in order to keep up, opinions, or choices, have to be fluid.