After being thoroughly confused while reading Thorstein Veblen's, The Theory of the Leisure Class, I decided that I wanted to try and find some easier, more relevant examples to help all of us better understand the idea of Conspicuous Leiuse as well as Conspicuous Consumption. First, I simply Googled both of these terms to see what funk images I could find to help us better understand these upper class "societal" terms.
Here's what I found...
Conspicuous Leisure:
I think this one speaks for itself...
Not so sure how this one fit in with "Leisurely Consumption," but Google Images did...we talked about pets in class?
People have been doing nothing for as long as we can remember.
Modern day Leisurely Consumption-she doesn't have to do anything but look good and drink that nice alcoholic beverage....
Conspicuous Consumption:
(these pictures seemed to fit the definitions we talked about in class much better)
Everyone needs a pink Hummer, right?
I think this cartoon represents Conspicuous Consumption so well! It exemplifies the pressures to show off wealth that the upper class were sure to face as well as their excessive, lavish spending and lifestyle.
I think that Veblen would have to agree with this statement.
I thought that these pictures did a pretty good job helping me better understand these two terms, but then I found this You Tube video and I don't think that even Veblen did such a great job at explaining conspicuous consumption...see for yourself...(also, I really think that this applies to a lot of what we've learned and studied over the semester-except maybe the cocaine part?)
As the last line of this gem of a song so aptly puts it, "it's over for most of the characters we've read about in their towns"
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