Mass Media and the Control of our Everyday Lives
Gabby Badger
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is a collection of essays by Chuck Klosterman, probably the
most polarizing and visible pop-culture critic currently working. Klosterman is an unusually
gifted pop culture commentator best known for his spirited defenses of things that are uncool,
like Guns n’ Roses and Saved by the Bell. This collection touches on a large variety of topics—
everything from tribute bands to The Sims are subjected to Klosterman’s objective eye. What
Klosterman does best is to draw meaning from common, daily experiences and from our
exposition to mass media entertainment. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs tackles subjects as
diverse as love, MTV’s The Real World, Billy Joel and Tom Cruise. Klosterman is one of those
honest people that measures the influence of mass media and entertainment on our everyday
lives.
“This Is Emo”, the first essay in this collection notes the difficulties that Hollywood’s
representation of love cause with real relationships. “No woman will ever satisfy me. I know
that now, and I would never try to deny it. But this is actually okay, because I will never satisfy a
woman, either.” (Page 1) Klosterman is saying that no one will ever be satisfied with what the
other person can give to a relationship because their always going to want more. We see these
picture perfect relationships and couples in movies and in songs. These relationships are what
we search for and what we yearn for, so when we finally get a relationship and it isn’t going
exactly how the movie went we get discouraged and want more so we give up on that
relationship because it’s not what we saw in the movie. We want the picture perfect fairytale
that we see and read about, but no one realizes is that’s all fantasy. It’s not real love its ‘fake
love’ portrayed by the mass media and its hype. Klosterman uses the movie When Harry Met
Sally to show how mass media has put a conceived notion inside people’s heads about how
even if a person doesn’t love them they actually might love them and just not know it yet, and
how soon this person will realize how amazing you actually are and fall head over heels in love
with you just like what happened in the movie When Harry Met Sally. The media also portrays
to everyone that when things get quiet and there has been a lack of conversation between two
people in a relationship then something is wrong with the relationship that may cause it to end
when really nothing is wrong, sometimes there’s just nothing to talk about. Klosterman states
this in an interesting way. “There’s not a lot to say during breakfast. I mean, you just woke up,
you know? Nothing has happened. If neither person had an especially weird dream and nobody
burned the toast, breakfast is just the time for chewing Cocoa Puffs and/or wishing you were
still asleep. But we’ve been convinced not to think like that. Silence is only supposed to happen
as a manifestation of supreme actualization, where both parties are so at peace with their
emotional connection that it cannot be expressed through the rudimentary tools of the lexicon;
otherwise, silence is proof that the magic is gone and the relationship is over (hence the phrase
‘We just don’t talk anymore’).” (Page 7-8). The mass media has used movies and music to show
people what a real fairytale relationship should look like when in a reality relationships are
nothing like the fairytales, movies, and songs we hear and watch.
Not only is the mass media portraying fake idealistic versions of love and relationships it
also limits creativity and makes it easier for adults to sit around ignoring the jobs that they must
do. “Billy Sim”, the second essay in Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs discusses this
issue. “A homeless man once told me that dancing to rap music is the cultural equivalent of
masturbating, and I’d sort of fell the same way about playing John Madden Football
immediately after filing my income tax: it’s fun, but – somehow – vaguely pathetic.” As a result
of the mass media’s production of thousands of different video games most of which are rated
mature for adults only, adults now have something that keeps them from doing the jobs they
need to do whether it be a job around the house or an actual job or searching to find an actual
job. Instead of taking care of said tasks they sit at home on an xbox or ps3 for countless hours
playing countless different video games such as Black Ops: Nazi Zombies that in no way will
help them out in the real world. Unless all the conspiracies are true and there really will be a
zombie apocalypse and we will be attacked by mutated zombies, but I highly doubt that will
happen since the world was supposed to end about 10 years ago and were still standing. Not
only do video games prevent adults from being adults it also takes away the creativity of young
children. “It was uncharacteristic for Katie to be so unwilling to tell harmless lies. When playing
with real-world toys there’s no limit to the back story Katie will create for anything, animate or
inanimate. That’s how little kids are. But somehow it’s different when life is constructed on a
sixteen-inch screen; in the world of The Sims, Katie won’t color outside the lines of perception.”
(Page 16). The virtual video game world takes away the creativity of children. They don’t
question the rules or find reasons for them, the rules are just the rules and that is the way it is.
There is no creating of a back-story or using the imagination to create what happens. What is
supposed to happen is already created for you. There are specific tasks your character must
accomplish and there is only one way they can accomplish this task. If you do not accomplish
the task in the way that the game says you must accomplish it in, then you fail and must start
over until you do it the way they want you to do it. Thus there is no interpretation of the game,
no creating your own way of doing things, you must do things the way the game wants you to
in order to, in essence, ‘win’ the game. Klosterman then makes a comment on how computers,
yes are allowing children to advance at a faster pace, but are also making them think just like a
computer. If one wants to ‘win’ the game you must do what the game tells you to do, which in
turn, makes you have to think just like the game. The mass media has now found a way to
control the tasks of a part of our everyday lives, and is causing children’s imagination to slowly
diminish.
As we can see, the mass media has a major effect on our everyday lives. They control a
variety of things in our lives, from our relationships to our creativity. Soon the mass media will
have hold on every single part of our lives and we will no longer be thinking for ourselves. The
media will think for us and in turn tell us what to do just like they do in video games. We will be
living a video game. When media gets to this point they will have completely diminished any bit
of imagination or control we each have over ourselves. Mass media has been influencing
generations for a long time and with each generation the effect it has on our everyday lives
grows stronger, it’s scary to think how soon the media will have complete control over our
everyday lives and what its effect will be like 10 years from now.