The Toothpaste of Immortality: Self-Construction in the Consumer Age

by Elemér Hankiss

This lively and insightful account reveals the profound ways in which everyday acts and artifacts of consumer civilization shape our sense of self. Elemér Hankiss shows how human beings act simultaneously in two plays. On the "trivial" surface of their everyday lives they work, make money, raise children, build houses, and do a lot of other things. At the same time, they also act in the "existential" drama of their lives―even if they are not aware of doing so. They construct and reconstruct their selves each day by striving for authenticity, the intense experience of being, dignity, meaning, and the hope of immortality. Hankiss explores this interaction between the trivial and existential, in the process unfolding its context in "consumer civilization." This concept is brilliantly illustrated in a section entitled "the toothpaste of immortality": "If we watch enough commercials, we believe that this or that special brand of toothpaste preserves our teeth, and― per metonymiam ―ourselves, young and beautiful indefinitely. And then, for a fleeting moment, there, in our bathrooms, we experience the sweet and melancholy illusion that we may stay young and beautiful forever; that we may defeat mortality; we may defeat decay and death." First published to great success in Hungarian, this entertaining and compelling book reveals surprising insights into the challenges and possibilities of self-fulfillment.

Genres: Sociology

425 pages, Paperback

First published August 2, 2006

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost every chapter of this book made me smile and every chapter had an insight into our modern human condition. In some ways it does feel like an academic Lost in the Cosmos, focusing on consumer society instead of sex and death as Percy did. It is well read, ranging over history, sociology, and theory - and its bibliography is immense - but he ranges over these books lightly and his own research includes a reconstruction of how we get up in the morning, reading magazines, and analyzing his wife's library. It is an absolute delight to read - not at all dense but full of insightful, playful, and challenging sentences, because he does not entirely praise or condemn consumer society. Instead he comes at it from both sides and I think makes some wonderful conclusions (even if they are sometimes bundles of other people's conclusions) about the nature of consumer society and the role it plays in our disenchanted, modern world.

On the reasons for a morning shower (do not be afraid the entire book is not like this):
"First, in most cases, they will feel themselves better in their hides after, than before, the shower. Second, the shower will mobilize their vital energies and make them feel stronger and more athletic, even if they are not particularly that type of person. Third, a cold shower releases endorphins in their bodies so that they suddenly feel themselves victorious and ebullient; they may even suddenly feel that their lives have a meaning and purpose. Which probably is not the case. Fourth, taking a shower has also a mythical dimension. It is a kind of 'rite of passage.' The morning shower is a water curtain between the darkness of the night and the lights of the new day. We pass through it as mythic heroes... the shadows of the night are washed off us, and we are reborn to the new day." I appreciate "which probably is not the case" most of all.
For Hankiss there are two levels to every consumer decision - one is the trivial and the other the existential. Purchases are markers of self and in the modern world, stripped of traditional sources of meaning but still desiring the enchanted, we look for things to provide stability to our fragile selves. And our purchases and the advertising and entertainment that promote those purchases, creates a world of meaning in which we can comfortably move. Now with cell phones, "Instead of saying a short prayer to our patron saint, we may give a couple of quick calls..."
As a Christian, that world seems a bit disturbing and competing with the tradional worldview that I try to inhabit (Hankiss is sympathetic to its loss), though I see how I also inhabit this world of spectacle and habitual desire, as well as a world of reason and science. There are competing meaning systems at work here and really only one can be ultimate. But it really is difficult to make judgments, especially if you live in an evangelical Christianity that blends so completely into the world of desire and works so hard to make itself a "reasonable" alternative to the scientific materialism of elite culture.
Hankiss never calls consumerism idolatry, but he quite convincingly argues that consumer culture is an alternative meaning system, as much called into being by consumer needs as by advertiser's plans. It is what we consumers cry for because it allows us to focus on ourselves and frees us to pursue our own desires and meanings. He uses the wonderful phrase "Proletariat Renaissance," seeing the Renaissance grant of space to the individual genius finally sinking down from its elite heights in the 15th century to everyone with a credit card and who can afford cable today. It is not a perfect book with a complete argument and full answers, but it is a perfect book in that it asks so many of the right questions and leaves the reader wanting so much more (hence my continued perusal of the biblography).

[Kyle York · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hankiss' Toothpaste is essentially about two things: how we construct ourselves in our day-to-day lives, and how these methods of self-construction are unique to the 'consumer age'. His main thesis is that underlying most seemingly trivial elements of our lives and popular culture, there is an existential tragedy being played out (whether we know it or not). A background premise here is, I think, that the loss of traditional transcendental frameworks (like religion and traditional social institutions) in secular liberal societies have forced our responses to existential questions to become unconscious, while forcing everyday life to seem more trivial.

He sets this book up by first taking us on a tour through the seemingly banal activities in a day in the life of some middle class person. We see them brush their teeth, pick out their clothes, go to the office, go to the pub. But then Hankiss reflects on the deeper symbolic functions underlying these activities. For example, of shopping malls, he says: "The shopping center is a soft and beatific version of Utopia, 'a pseudo-democratic twilight zone between reality and a commercially produced fantasy world,' where everybody is anonymous and equal..."

Hankiss draws mainly from thinkers like Goffman, Foucault, Heidegger, and Mead. The book is erudite and scholarly, but in a very readable and entertaining way. The second part of the book examines how the self-construction in the 'consumer age' is unique and, for comparison, how the self was conceived of in other historical eras (by the Greek stoics, in the Renaissance, etc.)

Hankiss gives serious consideration to many thinkers who regard the consumer age as an age of illusion and inauthenticity. He, however, thinks that we still need to take into account the tragic and existential functions of seemingly trivial aspects of our culture, and in this sense he's kind of like the Joseph Campbell of popular culture. He spends a lot of time examining women's magazines, for example, which "are full of human dramas, which for a short instant may break the ice of our everyday routines and open before our eyes the depths of our mortal condition..."

Hankiss has a pretty good sense of humor in the book, such as his tirade against men with comb-overs. He leaves many questions open, but isn't afraid of giving his opinion on many issues, in a self-conscious and almost self-mocking way. He also remains aware that the projects of 'self-construction' and 'self-actualization' are primarily top-of-the-Maslow-scale privileges of people who don't live in poverty or constant war.

The main thing you'll take away from this book is how there are many layers of meaning to our everyday lives and popular culture that try to grasp and deal with the human condition.

[Kieran Telo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only half finished this because suddenly on p111 a 32 page section of the text had not been included and instead a section from the references had been repeated. The text picked up again at p143.

To be honest I was losing enthusiasm by then anyway. There's some very interesting thoughts explored here but it's far too wide and unfocused. That 'self' is a performance, one that _might_ become convincing if repeated reliably and often, isn't an especially novel idea (nor one that stands up to scrutiny) but isn't in any case backed up with anything more than picturesque waffle. Lots of citations, sure, but not a single one was unpicked critically and I couldn't see anything that writers like Goffman have not already elucidated more carefully and clearly.

Not bad, honestly, but I can't think of a single illuminating insight that was made in the half of the book that I made it through. Save yourself the time and don't bother with this... It was mainly the whacky title that caught my attention in the first place!

[Toby Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read and a lot of fun. This makes a nice, light companion piece to the work of Ernest Becker - as a guidebook to the ways in which we humans bolster our sense of self-meaning through the "things we do". Written with a wry enjoyment, it's a revealing read.