Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 69

Capitalism Masquerades as a Postmodernist

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become McMasters. This urge to control is further evidenced by the
"hamburger police" who are sent around to spot check franchises to
make sure there are no dents in the buns, no overstuffed bags and no ice
cream cones that exceed three inches ("Great hash browns, but watch
those biscuits" 192-196).
In this hyperproduction, capital does not, as Baudrillard
suggests, freely radiate in every direction but is harnessed in the
production of more uniform hamburgers and in the hiring of more
cheap labor: "McDonald’s employs 5(X),(XX) teenagers at any one time.
. . . About 8 million Americans--? per cent of our [American] labor
force--have worked at McDonald's" (The Electronic Sweatshop 19).
Very little capital radiates out of this multinational corporation,
which continues to consume and digest more and more land—
McDonald's is one of the largest owners of commercial real-estate in
America ("The McDonald's Mystique" 112).
Finally, despite McDonald's "avant garde" commercials, the
ad campaigns (like the cover on the annual report) mask rather than
foreground the corporation's agenda and its complicity in a capitalist
system. Alison Lee argues that in advertising and marketing "the
techniques and playfulness of postnaodemism are used without any of
its strategies of subversion" (134).
In the ongoing debates about postmodemisms it is critical to
distinguish between contemporary culture (what has been labelled
postmodern) and postmodern art or theories of postmodernism. The
success of McDonald's capitalist narrative is very much dependent on
having its audience forget that they are being told a narrative;
however, it is precisely this promotion of reality as non-narrated
that undoes McDonald's postmodern performance.
University of Toronto

Teresa Heffeman

Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. "Forget Baudrillard." Forget Foucault. New York, NY:
Semiotext(e), 1987, 65-137.
------- . 'The Precession of Simulacra." Simulations. Trans. Paul Foss,
Paul Batton, Philip Beitchman. New York, NY: Semiotext(e),
1983,1-79.
Chief Seattle. "When the Last Red Man Has Vanished...." Trans.
William Arrowsmith. Human Rights 16 (Winter 1989/90) 34-35.