Culture Industry and Sneakers

Culture industry is a theory that an industry is jeopardizing culture and society. If you look at sneakers, there are only a handful of big brand names, but almost every shoe brand has tried an athletic shoe design. In this case, the price isn’t necessarily as important as the product, but it does play a factor when comparing between social classes. Those in the lower class will save up, borrow, or steal to get the latest pair of sneakers, just to have them. The average price of Nike Air Max sneakers, for example, is about $150. If you have the means to afford spending $150 every week or so on shoes you are going to wear once in a while, fine. But if you don’t have the money, it puts a strain on your other responsibilities and things you need to pay for. 

As far as design, while there are different color combinations and ‘uses’ for the shoes, they’re ultimately all of the same thing. There aren’t many professional runners in the world, but there are hundreds of people that have multiple pairs of seemingly different running shoes. Also, this culture industry cements people to their popular culture. People that collect sneakers often have no real use for them and they collect because its cool and something to do. It doesn’t take them out of their element or open their eyes that these shoes are often made in third-world countries where people are being exploited for their work and are usually not making livable wages to produce these shoes. This has to do with the exchange value being off. The cost of production is less than what the product is worth. Therefore, it brings looking at the sneakers as ‘what can they be sold for?’ over ‘how much are they worth?’ 

In March, there over 30 different Nike designs being released. There is a shoe for every day, with a few to spare. The different designs create a self-perpetuating reinvestment in the culture because in order to support your favorite basketball player, you need to buy his shoes. But you can’t wear them because they won’t look good for long, so you at least need another pair to wear everyday. 

These ideas and actions are the enslavement in capitalism. Within the culture, there is a false sense of need made up, consumers are willing to overlook their true needs to fulfill their false needs, as the false needs are met new forms of false needs are made, the purchase power makes people believe they are buying happiness, the consumption further enslaves them because they cannot fulfill their true needs with the way capitalism works. So there is a constant reinvestment in capitalism because as long as people will keep buying new sneakers, they’ll keep making them.