Just Finished Reading: The Rebel Sell – How the Counterculture became the Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter (FP: 2005)

This was one of those all too rare books that confounded my expectations – in a good way! I was expecting the authors to explain how our culture (basically western Capitalism) co-opts rebellion and repackages it in such a clever way that it hoodwinks the masses into believing they’re rebelling whilst actually making lots of money out of bamboozled idiots. Although the authors mention this ‘theory’ in passing they give it little more than very short shrift indeed.

No, what the authors put forward is something quite different and actually a lot more disturbing in some ways. What they contend is that the counterculture and the dominant culture are not only one and the same thing – that in fact what is referred to as the counterculture doesn’t actually exist – but that the so called counterculture in fact is one of the main drivers behind the power and continued expansion of Capitalism into even more markets across the globe. Although I wasn’t 100% convinced by their arguments it did give me more than enough food for thought to look at things through a new set of eyes.

The authors contend that there is a component in human nature that makes a small percentage of people want to stand out from the rest – in effect to be more ‘cool’ than those around them. To do this they must in some was distinguish themselves from others – they move to particular areas, wear certain clothes, listen to certain music and so on. They’re often the early adopters of all things later seen to be cutting edge and often initially invent, manufacture or develop much of what makes them distinctive. Before you know it they are not only recognised as cool within their own tiny community of other cool people but are perceived as cool by those on the leading edge (rather than the bleeding edge) of culture. This is when Indy bands become increasingly popular and your kids start wearing black make-up. With a growing population of cool and semi-cool people the demand for this year’s cool items increases and (as we all know) if there’s a big enough demand for something then someone will make money out of suppling it. At this point it starts to become less cool, less exclusive and less distinct as more and more people buy into it. It becomes mainstream – counterculture has become consumer culture. Long before this happens the cool people have found something else to make them distinctive and the cycle repeats itself again and again. The counterculture, which was always actually part of the innovating, risk taking, cutting edge capitalist mainstream culture provides the driving force behind capitalism itself with constant change, constant recycling of the old and constant planned obsolescence.

It’s not capitalism cannily co-opting rebellion for its own repackaged use. Its capitalism doing what capitalism does – finding new markets, discovering needs and then fulfilling them. It is human nature – looking for novelty, wanting to stand out from the mass, needing to be cool (or appearing to be cool or at least not uncool!), demanding to be individualistic and distinctive and (finally) getting quickly bored and looking for the next craze that drives the whole process forward. It’s a very interesting thesis and in many ways makes a lot more sense than a sort of global conspiracy to take the sting out of rebellion by pulling the Che T-shirts over people’s eyes. Each chapter ended with a bibliography and I intend following up on some of the author’s recommended reading. I think there is much investigation and much mussing to be done before I decide if their hypothesis is correct which, on refection, I think it probably is. Recommended for anyone who wants a different perspective on things and who likes to look at things in a rather unexpected way.