Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2001 | Page 101

American Bumper Stickers

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that exemplify the common spirit that inspires these two categories of bumper
stickers. As mentioned, being successful and accepted by others is critical:
Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.
No one is listening until you make a mistake.
A bumper sticker such as...
My lawyer can beat up your lawyer.
...cannot but remind us of the pride of having one’s son beat up someone’s
honor student child. Or, consider these for example:
I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks.
He who dies with the most toys wins.
In the language o f these bumper stickers, one could say that money is to sex
what work is to love. The left side of this equation synthesizes the narcissistic
system of consumption of late capitalism; the right side represents the system of
production of a premodem society. Ends against means, the individual over the
collective, autonomy versus dependence, materialism opposed to asceticism, the
present over the future, the narcissistic self over the cooperative community.
Hitherto, we have observed how the ideology of this sample of bumper stickers
emphasizes the importance of attaining high social status and personal prestige
through sexual conquest and material accumulation. According to the existing theory
on the narcissistic personality, status and prestige are sought after by narcissists
because they confirm their inflated and grandiose self-concept and also grant power
over others. Obsessed with self-fulfillment, and being over-dependent on others
for the satisfaction of their wishes, narcissists come to believe that the accumulation
of power is synonymous with security. By attaining a high status the individual
rises above the anonymity of the masses, and by exercising this power the narcissistic
self can achieve a sense of control that quells temporarily many fundamental
insecurities.
Status is also a measure of success that individuals choose to accumulate and
display in order to be accepted and recognized. In our society material accumulation
occupies an increasingly greater role for the definition of success. One’s public
social status may be seen as a product that can be consumed and displayed in a
logic of consumption in which some products have more prestige and value than
others according to the current fashion (Baudrillard, 1981). Following this logic,
the narcissist would believe that the current fashion is represented by our society’s
fascination with sexual conquest and wealth accumulation. Sex and money,
perceived to be the most prestigious and valuable social products, need to be publicly
consumed and displayed in order to grant higher status. In Baudrillardian terms, it
is not from their use that these products derive their value, but rather from their
capability o f being displayed and exchanged to symbolize something, i.e. success.
In such a sign-value economy sexual partners become goods. In this logic of