Opinion | Estorerics under capitalism
Caden McQueen, Opinions Editor
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2019 to December 2020 American Time Use Survey found that, on average, Americans are awake for around 15 hours and nine minutes a day. According to Business Insider, approximately 13 hours and 21 minutes of that time is spent interacting with some form of media.
This statistic, outrageous as it may seem, offers a telling portrait of life in the United States of America. The media landscape is heavily over-saturated as a result of late-stage capitalism, to the point where society is almost constantly exposed to all kinds of content.
Unsurprisingly, the emphasis on producing for quantity rather than quality has rendered the vast majority of this media completely unremarkable. Products that once dominated the market have become so commonplace that one must make an effort to notice them.
Content that does manage to hold public interest maintains relevance for a few weeks at a time, only to fall back into relative obscurity soon after. Few things capture the expansive scale at which our capitalist society operates better than the media merchandise industry.
If the sheer volume of their output is any indication, it seems that the corporations that produce media merchandise are hell-bent on plastering the imagery of popular brands and intellectual properties on as many products as humanly possible. Shrek, the protagonist of the “Shrek” series, is a prime example, having been affiliated with CRT TVs, Twinkies, Heinz ketchup bottles and even a set of commemorative coins produced by the Royal Canadian Mint.
One could argue that cult fads like Shrek provide some sliver of insight into the mentality of the American consumer, yet these regurgitations of popular media are hardly ever considered worthy of documentation. Without any public record of their existence, many of these products are lost to time as soon as they are taken off store shelves.
YouTuber PatMac is dedicated to changing that.
On Aug. 7, 2016, they uploaded “A Look Back At The Sanei Mario Party 5 Plushes!,” a roughly 27-minute-long video that presents viewers with a comprehensive account of the initial release, design and current availability of a fairly standard line of Mario-themed plushies. From then on, similar videos would quickly become the focus of PatMac’s channel.
Initially, I was unsure how to react to PatMac. Although discovering such a wealth of esoteric information was exciting, I found myself unable to shake the feeling it in many ways epitomized the image worship that led to the onslaught of content we all currently face.
As someone who routinely finds themselves exhausted by consumerism, why someone would want to spend so much time creating a platform for what were essentially aging advertisements was admittedly perplexing.
Despite my apprehension, I could not pull myself away from this YouTube channel. I had never seen the garden-variety toys and figurines that had existed in my periphery for so long treated with such tenderness and compassion.
As absurd as this may sound, it only dawned on me that my cynicism was dreadfully misplaced after hearing PatMac discuss the many iterations of the classic Spongebob ice cream bar’s wrapper design in “A Look at Nostalgic Spongebob Foods and Candies.”
“Definitely a good wrapper design,” PatMac mused, referencing the bright yellow wrapper introduced in the 2010s. “But man, what I’d give to see that original one just one more time.”
The sense of longing PatMac clearly felt for the wrapper design of their youth was palpable, and it revealed something that I feel should have been immediately obvious. To accept my initial reading of PatMac’s work would be to disregard one of the most integral elements of the human condition: our appreciation for each other's creations, no matter how seemingly unimportant.
Strangely, these videos reminded me of Jeff Koons’ “Banality” series, a hideous batch of sculptures depicting cartoon characters, celebrities and religious iconography that Koons had commissioned in the late 80s. Koons’ sculptures mitigate the distinctly bourgeois shame associated with indulging in “lesser” art through layers upon layers of irony. His work is intended to be viewed in the same manner one would enjoy a bad movie.
PatMac instead chooses to present the works of pop culture as they are, dispensing with Koon’s venomous pretension in lieu of genuine interest. Their affection for these ice cream bars, plush toys and action figures clearly goes far beyond a simple fondness for the fictional characters they portray.
The fact that someone, somewhere has managed to find value in what most of us would consider to be nothing more than landfill fodder is surprisingly beautiful. I guess that old aphorism “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” still rings true, regardless of how ubiquitous that “trash” may be.