{"id":36232,"date":"2011-08-09T10:14:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T15:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=36232"},"modified":"2013-11-09T06:16:15","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T11:16:15","slug":"indulging-narcissism-starbucks-promises-its-all-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/08\/09\/indulging-narcissism-starbucks-promises-its-all-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Starbucks: Indulging the Narcissism in U.S. Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nKatie L. sent along a fascinating Starbucks commercial. In it, a succession of workers grow, harvest, roast, taste, and prepare coffee from scratch for a hypothetical customer named “Sue.” At first glance, I thought that the commercial did a nice job of at least acknowledging their workers (if in an overly romanticized way), unlike some commercials for agricultural products that erase them<\/a>. \u00a0But I thought again. \u00a0Because the entire commercial revolves around Sue, the inclusion of all the workers isn’t meant to focus our attention on them, it’s meant to highlight how much work goes into pleasing Sue. \u00a0We’re supposed to identify with Sue, not the series of workers.<\/p>\n

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This reminds me of a post about a “hand-rolled” tea sold at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf<\/a>. \u00a0The consumer was supposed to be excited about the tea not because of its flavor, but because, as I wrote, “it takes a significant amount of\u00a0human labor<\/em> to \u201chand-roll\u201d tea leaves into balls… What could be more luxurious than the casual-and-fleeting enjoyment of the hard-and-long labor of others? ”<\/p>\n

This ad has a similar feel. \u00a0The workers are portrayed only in order to make the intended consumer feel special. \u00a0They work with Sue in mind, tending carefully to Sue’s future pleasure intently and with care. \u00a0They find satisfaction in Sue’s satisfaction. \u00a0Sue is everything. \u00a0Everyone is for Sue.<\/p>\n

This tells us something interesting, no doubt, about American cultural values.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katie L. sent along a fascinating Starbucks commercial. In it, a succession of workers grow, harvest, roast, taste, and prepare coffee from scratch for a hypothetical customer named “Sue.” At first glance, I thought that the commercial did a nice job of at least acknowledging their workers (if in an overly romanticized way), unlike some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,329,2124,64,675,76],"class_list":["post-36232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-emotion","tag-foodagriculture","tag-globalization","tag-psychology","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36232"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58743,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36232\/revisions\/58743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}