Phantom Culture and Desire Construction--Ideological Strategy of Packaging and Consumption

As the process of the global movement of cultural economy accelerated and expanded, a society dominated by consumption came in silently. Those who live in such a life cannot avoid or resist the rule of consumption ideology. Ideology, according to general understanding, is a set of "system of representations" with unique logic. The so-called consumer ideology is the “characteristic system” of the lifestyle that is dominated by consumer logic. In the negative sense, it represents an imaginary relationship between the surviving individual and the living state; in the affirmative sense, it shows the reality of a material relationship; in the symbolic sense, it also represents a structure and order. With the strong involvement of capital culture and media technologies, consumer ideology has penetrated into life in an all-round way, and has increasingly expanded its territory of rule. Now we see that consumption is not a passive acceptance but a positive dynamic process; the object of consumption is not only a specific physical product, but a symbolic relationship; consumption activities are not biological activities, but a culture. It not only satisfies the desire to consume, but also constructs a larger, deeper desire.

To introduce the concept of consumer ideology, we may consider packaging as a splendid link in modern craft design as a rhetorical practice, a way to satisfy and construct desires, and a strategy for consumer ideology to implement its power. In short, packaging in the modern sense and in a broad sense is the aestheticization of the everyday world. Therefore, packaging is not a narrow commodity decoration behavior, but a symbolic practice formed by the logic of the global cultural economy, the participation of modern media technologies, and the interaction of producers and consumers. As the symbol kingdom has expanded its borders, consumer culture has infiltrated its living space, and the modern media has undergone a dramatic transformation of life forms, we have seen that any kind of decoration is not external to being packed. Just as the media is the message, the packaging is the object itself, and the form is the function. This is because the protagonists of circulation in today's economy are not commodities and the value they imply, but symbols and images made up of symbolic networks. Between the image and the real value, there are two layers: the symbol obscures the reality, and the image obscures the symbol. Therefore, the image obscures the true lack. After the images of interest and circulation, the consumer witnessed an abyss that was truly lost, abyss, hue, and surging desires. Possessions, misappropriations, games, squandering, etc. The desires derived from secretive instincts have been met from the flow of mutatis mutandis, and they have been repeatedly constructed.

This illusion movement, which satisfies desires and constructs desires, leads the consumer society toward a "culture of the simulacrum." Phantom culture is a global cultural phenomenon. Product packaging is a symbolic practice that uses modern media to mobilize social capital and mobilizes technological resources to construct illusions. At first glance, the illusion is a copy of the symbol, the symbol is the real imitation. However, once the modern media is used and the power of capital culture is spread, the illusions are stripped from reality and become empty symbols of self-sufficiency, self-discipline, and self-referentiality. Baudrillard said that illusions have no origin, no reference, no foundation. Modern packaging has a deliberate phantom pursuit. It transforms the “occupied” relationship between people and things into a “showing” relationship. After undergoing the decline from “existence” to “occupation,” it goes further from “reality” to The "empty" fall. The packaging turns the item into a symbol and turns the symbol into a phantom. Thus, what is being consumed madly is not an object, not a commodity, not a value, not a labor condensed in a commodity, but an illusion. Among the illusions, abstract values ​​as human labor are killed.

Let's look at the packaging design of Marlboro cigarettes. First of all, the product of cigarettes is an illusion. It is negative in its value for life. Smoking is harmful to the body, which is the intrinsic value of cigarettes. However, this harmful item has a rather peculiar position in the cultural system: it becomes a illusion of the mood of life, a symbol of gray demeanor, and a gray on gray. The musing belief of the meditator. Here, the concealing effect of packaging cannot be said to be bad. Second, its packaging dispatched considerable image resources with the charm of Romance. In English, the English name "Marlboro" is a combination of the initials of a romantic speech: "Men always remember ladies because of romance." Here, the lyrical effect of language can be described as wind-fuelling. Once again, its advertising image is a picture of the western United States: in the glory of the setting sun, the cowboy leans against the horse, looks brooding, and is a knight. Here, the image's infiltration of humans can be described as a mercury spill. Finally, TV advertisements on "Marlboro" also used the image of a transnational movie star to incarnate a strong desire for illusion. Here, the idol's exemplary role is subtle. The romantic tenderness of the words, the richness of the image, the general trend of the media, and the company's strong financial strength, constructed an illusion with no entity, became the target of human desire for consumption, and repeatedly copied this desire. Consumers think that they agree with a kind of life ideal, but they actually agree with a kind of illusion.

The illusion, in a certain sense, not only engulfed objects, but also faded emotions. Commercial advertising, which is full of charm and magic, was once a subject of exclusion in the purely aesthetic elite culture. However, the global capital culture and modern technology will be aesthetically generalized. From the design of commodities to the marketing, from advertising to operations, aesthetics must be used to pave the way. Consumers' consumer goods, just as they interpret literary texts from their readers, must be provided with an aesthetic scene in advance, which is accompanied by fascinating flavors, sensational and connected, eloquent, and thrilling. The boundless Gobi, the yellow sand, and the magnificent symphony sound in the ear, urging people to fend for the infinite desert, but through this illusion, you want to identify with the refrigerator. Feiliu, waterfalls, Qingshan Baiyun, guitar girls sing sorrowful soft songs: "The moon represents my heart", but the wandering people still endure suffering from dandruff in fatigue. But immediately, "Hai Fei Si" sent a happy and refreshing, the scenery is still charming, the song is still intoxicated. Here, "Haifei Silk" is not recognized as a commodity, but it is constructed as a patron saint of love and beauty. The beauty of illusions leads to a concept of life, which is an impressive record of consumer ideology.

Phantoms, driven by visually-driven video streams, drive global culture. The so-called global culture is the intensification of global awareness and the complex connection of global relations caused by the intervention of capital and media. Phantom, as an empty signifier, is turning the world into a unified world system. However, after all, the symbolic practices of various ethnic groups and their products reflect the individual differences in the way of life of the nation. In this way, product packaging must reflect the tendency of “globalization”, that is to say, the packaging must have the content of cultural capital, and show the aesthetic personality of the symbolic practice of certain regions and certain nationalities. We present this as an example of a moon cake package that best shows our national lifestyle and ethical personality. Light smoke locks a bright moon, and the moonlight shines on the wet lake of autumn dew. Albizia julibrissin blooms like a smiling face, and a long-necked crane looks like a dream. It is like a song. The atmosphere of the whole school is quiet and peaceful, and the atmosphere of a home is rich and prosperous. The traditional spirit of worshipping the moon and the sense of homeland have been transformed into such an illusion and become the object of annual Mid-Autumn consumption. There are not many people who actually eat moon cakes. People are consuming a cultural memory. A phantom image that has been circulated for thousands of years as the moonlight shines through the millennia.

Drive people to recognize illusions, consumption illusions, and guide life concepts and reconstruct cultural memories. This is an achievement of modern consumer ideology. However, how did the consumer ideology accomplish this miraculous thing? The words have to start with the way in which the consumer culture guides. According to the American Sociologist David Riesman, there are three guiding methods in history: the traditional guidance corresponding to the agricultural society, the internal guidance corresponding to the industrial society, and the guidance of others corresponding to the post-industrial society. Others are unfamiliar strengths that cannot be inherited through traditional inheritance and cannot be grasped through personal identity, a traction that cannot escape. It is not difficult to see that modern packaging, as a rhetorical practice to create illusions and construct desires, reinforces the power of others to guide. However, unlike the arbitrariness of ideological barbarism in the era of totalitarianism, packaging design uses a strategy that will charm the alien power of others. This strategy is very suitable for public psychology in the context of consumer culture, or that the consumption ideology implements its domination and adopts a special strategy.

What kind of strategy is this?

A kind of charm temptation strategy that gave up violent conquest. The totalitarian ideology conquers the public's strategy through violence. In a multicultural environment of consumer culture, it not only has no effect, it also stimulates resistance. Instead of consuming ideology, it is better to use ingenious disguise techniques to hide the terrible aspects of possessing everything and engulfing everything, and to use good, seductive images to guide the public into the illusion culture. Just like the omnipotent god Zeus hides his catastrophic face, Yirong is a young gentleman who has a passionate gentle manner and successfully conquers countless beauties. Consumption ideology disguises the immense desire and power will to possess, devour and show off, and seizes the hegemony of the living world through temptation. As a result, consumer ideology spread widely, expanded widely, and expanded its territory with the global movement of cultural economy. The disappearance of violent faces, the sublimity as gentleness and gentleness, is precisely the technique of consumptive ideology.

However, the authority and violence of consumer ideology as the guidance of others to individuals should be regarded as guilty of identifying emptier illusions. Is this a cruel reality? Or is it a ridiculous truth? It is undeniable that when things are transformed into symbols, symbols become illusions, reality is so cruel, and the truth is so absurd! Moreover, the lives that are dismembered into pieces and those who are trapped in the symbol prison cannot shake off the shadow of fatality—submitting to the inevitable of illusion. However, the truth has not disappeared, and the truth has not died, but it has been obscured and forgotten. Looking at modern packaging in this realm of consumer ideology, we feel that it is too much of a true, obscurity, and it is too long to forget the truth. Here, I, working in the field of literary studies, can not help but think of the Italian bloodless Knight Agilulfe (Italo Calvino) - he is a Don Quixote fighter But in his life world, there is no more chivalry, no romantic story of a knight, and he himself becomes an empty symbol, representing "a ritualized, methodical Pharisalism, a Since then no longer a valuable class." This is obviously the time that the capital culture and technology culture are strongly involved in life, and the broad package—the aesthetics of the daily world—is facing difficulties.

It is difficult to rescue the fragments of life that are aestheticized and to recognize the cruel truth that illusions are emptiness and emptiness is hyperreal.


Author: Hu Jihua