Cheap Monday: A journey through consumer culture phenomena and the birth of Generation Y.
We live wherever we live, we do whatever work we do, we talk however we talk, we eat whatever we eat, we wear whatever clothes we wear, we look at whatever images we see… we are living however we can. We are whoever we are. This is the birth of generation Y, as some describe them as a reflection of globalize environment. We live in the city, the cities live in us… we move from one city to another, from one country to another. We change languages, we change habits, we change opinions, we change clothes, and we change everything.
Image is all about changing faster and faster and it has been multiplied ever sense the creation of internet and digital image, the very image which now replacing photography. We learned to trust the photographic image but can we trust the digital image? With painting everything was simple the original was unique and each copy, was a copy, a forgery, with photographic film, the life began to be more complicated, the original was the negative, without the print it didn’t exist, just the opposite to painting each copy is the original but now with digital there is no more positive or negative the very notion of original is abstract, everything is a copy. All distinctions have become arbitrarily no wander the idea of identity find itself in a very shaky state, identity is out of fashion. Identity and fashion are the two contradictory?
Wenders’s description captures quite well the contemporary societies and it raise the questions about “Identity”… what dose it means? What is it, “identity”? Knowing where we belong? Knowing our self worth? Knowing who we are? How do we recognize “identity”? We are creating an image of ourselves, and attempting to resemble this image…is it that what we call identity? The harmony between the image we have created of ourselves and …ourselves? Just who is that, “ourselves”? We are straggling with our identity, with ourselves, not meaning that the old generation didn’t, but as the result of globalization this has been magnified and shaped enormous psychological need for this generation to create own individual style. Commodities has always played an important role in identifying ourselves in modern societies, but especially now when we move more often between places, outside appearance has become more important as an clue for our identity. Before it was easy most of us lived in the same place there we were born, went to the same school as probably our parents did and work in the same place as they did, we knew everyone around us and they knew us, but now things are different. This is probably one of the reason brand has become more important. As Levy (1956) said we do not buy products any more purely based on what they can do but more likely based on what they mean. This is where the brand such as Cheap Monday helps some of us to create our individualistic style and as the time not much separating ourselves from others. You know this is very important, we want to have individualistic look but we don’t want to be lonely. Human being is a social animal, this is constant straggle… we want to be free but we need to belong to a group, we want to be chic but we don’t want to be snobbish…of course the media and advertising doesn’t make it easier neither. We are all bombarded by various messages everyday telling us who to be, how to look, what to drink or eat, what to read and how to behave…
