Thoughts on Canclini's "Consumers and Citizens"

Since this is my first blog post, I think it would be more constructive to the class discussion if I compare the readings with the films we have watched so far, and from there, I wish to raise some questions I have when I was reading the articles.

While reading Nestor Garcia Canclini's article "Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts," I found the concept of class in consumption particularly interesting. Canclini mentions that scholars have been actively looking for ways to investigate consumption patterns and the rationalities behind consumption, and one way of researching is to look at one's class and group distinctions. It is certainly true that people from different upbringings and backgrounds might very likely to consume differently. Some forms of consumption specifically create major divisions. On one hand, cannibalism, for example, in many media platform, is often performed by people from upper class e.g. foreign movies such as The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, and Hollywood productions like Silence of the Lambs. On the other hand, cannibalism is sometimes portrayed as uncivilized and grotesque, one example being the Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd. Canclini believes that consumption is motivated by an interactive sociopolitical rationality, does that mean consumers from different classes reproduce different rationalities during consumption? While Canclini does mention that the shortcoming of this research model is that it understands consumption primarily as a means to creating divisions, I think it's worth discussing if consumption can be influenced by these differences and distinctions? Or in other words, do these divisions make consumerism and capitalism work?

Going from Canclini's article, he also devotes the last part of his essay to transnational consumption and identity. He says that different cultural subsystems often generate different complexity and capacity for innovation. I agree with this statement, especially after seeing that different regions in the world have such different patterns of consumption, yet I find it fascinating that the West is often portrayed as consumers, whereas the East as producers. Frank Trentmann touches on this issue by talking about how, ironically, China had been the major consumer in the world just one to two centuries ago. The shift of consumption patterns from East to West is quite intriguing to me, and I'd love to invest more time on discussing why this trend might have appeared. Industrialization certainly has something to do with that, but I believe consumers from both cultures must have contributed to this unequal participation in production and consumption. Relating this back to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatball, it is quite certain that the film is making fun of waste and excess the West has created, yet I can't seem to find a film or a fairy tale from the East that touches upon these issues on obsessive/ excessive consumption.

Until then, I think Cloudy does not provide an ethical lesson on the danger of excess as it refuses to face the consequences of Flint's action. What do you think?

- Pearl