Reproduction does NOT = Results


    

(Photo Source: Best Life)


I am a self-proclaimed Maxxinista (frequent shopper at the store TJ Maxx). I love going to the

store and searching for the perfect item I didn’t know I needed before I walked in the doors.

When I was on my most recent TJ Maxx adventure with my friend Katelyn, we thought we found

the famous Stanley tumbler. The gasp that left our mouths could be heard throughout the entire

store. We thought we had hit the jackpot! As we looked at the tag on the tumbler, however, we

discovered it was a completely different brand. In fact, it was a completely random brand that

neither of us had ever heard of. The more we looked around the store, the more seemingly

random and irrelevant brands we found, all reproducing popular items by name-brand

companies. By the end of our shopping spree, we found the knock-offs of a Lululemon belt bag,

the Stanley tumbler, Drunk Elephant skincare products and more. The quality of these

reproduced, knock-off products is obviously worse than their name-brand counterparts.



(Photo Source: TikTok)


This article from the New York Times talks about counterfeit or reproduced products. It discusses how reproduced or “fake” goods affect the consumers of them. There is one example of a counterfeit “Ove Glove” giving a consumer burns from the lower quality of the good. This same concept of reproduction lowering quality also applies to pop culture. When something is popular, everyone wants a piece of the pie. Everyone is trying to “get in” on the popularity of something. They will do whatever it takes and sacrifice whatever they have to (in many cases, quality) to have a piece of the popularity. When there is a trend on social media, everyone hops on it until it becomes annoying. The thing that made the trend popular in the first place, the individuality of it, is lost, and because of that, the quality of the content is lessened. Like with the knock-off products on the shelves of your local TJ Maxx, mass reproduction of media and content lessens the quality of the original idea. The more things are reproduced, the less special and unique it becomes.


What is an example of a reproduced good or pop culture artifact that has lessened the original idea?

Comments

  1. Lexi HamelJanuary 31, 2024 at 10:29 AM

    For starters, it is always great to hear wise words from another fellow Maxxinista. I think you highlight a lot of solid points here. One that really stuck to me was people wanting a slice of the popularity pie. I think we as humans always tend to want to be in with the times and blend in. Social media has really heightened current trends.

    An example of a reproduced pop culture artifact that I recently noticed is the new Mean Girls. Truthfully, I didn’t know they were making one until about a month ago. I didn’t have a strong desire to see it because the first is such a classic! However, I got baited into going with some friends. My expectations were already low, but I was really disappointed with the film. I think the producers have a great understanding that Mean Girls is still a movie people talk about, and wanted to reproduce it to make it fit in with current times. The jokes weren’t the same, the story wasn’t as good, and the characters were much more annoying, in my opinion. Mean Girls + Reproduced Good = Lessened Original Idea.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Madelyn BushmanJanuary 31, 2024 at 8:03 PM

    Everyone instantly hops on to buy the newest trendiest product when it hits social media. I will watch countless content videos of people giving hauls of the trendy items or their dupes. The individuality of products is completely lost, just like you said, and same with the quality. It’s quite annoying because I feel like nowadays I can’t find a clothing item or any type of product without a ton of other people having it too. I really liked how you said that when something is popular, everyone wants a piece of the pie. I think about the Lululemon products being reproduced from other companies that are lesser quality yet everyone loves because they want to fit in and be trendy.

    For me, I am not a fan of the dupes of designer items such as Louis Vuitton purses that were extremely trendy on social media. People started to get knock-off products that were identical to what you would get from LV but lesser quality. I used to believe that if you owned LV that you were successful and popular but now I can never tell if it’s real or a knock-off. This has made it so I’m not really interested in ever owning an LV purse which lessened the original idea of the product.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Tale as Old as Time

Image
"Everybody's got an angle," said Bing Crosby's character in White Christmas , the holiday classic movie. That phrase can be true on so many levels. Though the movie goes on to show that not everybody has an angle, that doesn't mean all people are like Bob Wallace. There is always an angle when watching a film or listening to music. The writers or directors are attempting to influence people's perspective of the social class system. Either they want you to think that the class system is not there or that it is very distinct. This neo-Marxist perspective also says that any story throughout history, in essence, has been about class distinction. I'm inclined to agree.  While looking back at various movies, commercials, and stories, they all can have the neo-Marxist perspective applied to them. I even went back to the oldest story discovered, Beowulf. Even that story shows that if we are subservient to the upper class eventually we will be given riches and roya...
Read more

Analyzing Different forms of Feminism in How to Get Away with Murder

Image
The hit show How to Get Away with Murder aired in 2014, nearly one decade ago. The six seasons included a variety of characters, new adventures, and one storyline that kept the audience coming back for more.  This series takes numerous hegemony stances and reinforces a message that ties in with Sellnow’s Feminist Perspectives. The main character - Annalise Keating - is a black, highly educated, single woman.  Throughout the series, Annalise Keating defies typical gender roles and strengthens her role as a successful woman. She deals with hardship, loss, and sexism, yet perseveres into a stronger educator. All of these attributes seem to contribute to the series’ success. While this is just one example of one series that takes these positions, this leads into the main question - are more shows likely to take this storyline position? Sellnow (2022) points out the sites of struggle when it comes to taking a feminist perspective. She also states that oppositional readings may inc...
Read more

Newsflash: Your Social Feed is Pushing Ideologies. Yes, that Includes Grandma's Facebook Post.

Image
In this module, the theory of Marxism is introduced to describe how pop culture and media push forward ideologies, whether hegemonic, occluded, or oppositional. Through the video examples including Titanic, Good Will Hunting , Pretty Woman , The Matrix , and many more, these texts describe how the world might be seen by the average person.  As I was watching these videos, I wanted to take the chance to reflect on how my feeds were pushing any of these Marxism concepts. With movies, they are bound to have themes, issues, or ideologies demonstrated. They have to be spotted in a movie, or else why are we even watching them?  It's obvious that much of the content we see online has some sort of view, ideology, or stance, but I was interested in the "average Joe" content or content that doesn't seem to have a reading on it - but alas, it does.  In recent years, as TikTok has pushed forward content with its thousands of new users a week, these Marxism themes have appeared i...
Read more