The Role Of Consumerism In American Beauty

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Furthermore, American Beauty challenges common sense views such as how money and wealth is seen as the measure of success, and that through commodities individuals will find happiness, however this is often a fallacy perpetuated by the mass media. By subverting the ideology of consumerism Mendes condemns how worth of an individual is determined by what they consume and own, rather than the qualities of them. He refers to how the mass media uses propaganda in advertising to indoctrinate individuals into adopting consumerist values such as hedonism, which restrains freethinking and choice. American Beauty demonstrates how reality can often become synonymous with simulations, and that through capitalism individuals are controlled to consume commodities

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