Consuming Inequality: The Phenomenon of Consumption as Entertainment Among Mad Men Viewers

1 The historical shift from a producer to a largely consumer-based economy, coupled with increasing socioeconomic stratification, has renewed and massified the significance of Thorstein Veblen's (1967 [I 8991) 100 year-old observations. Veblen put consumption into a social- and class-context; consumption in his work is more than just a matter of desire-it is the symbolic act of separating master from slave. In consumption Veblen saw the ultimate evidence of socioeconomic inequality in a society of strangers: consumption (for instance, clothing or a vehicle) is a way of visibly indicating one's class standing. It is an aggressive act insofar as it represents one's class "superiority " over others. But Veblen could not have at the time predicted that the public, person to person relationship that characterized conspicuous consumption in Theory of the Leisure Class would eventually undergo a conversion into the viewer-object relation of modern media and entertainment. Far from the hostile image Veblen painted in 1899, popular entertainment today broadcasts the lifestyles of privileged socioeconomic classes that fail to represent the everyday situation of their audience