RR# 3 Rereading America

Brenna Gustafson

Stacy Knapp

English 1 a

14 April 2013

                                                         RR#3 Rereading America

            In the book "Rereading America" by editors Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie

Lisle there is this very heavy and controversial topic that is affecting America presently. The

book is about teens peer pressure, and how the corporations in America are capitalizing on our

counties youth's so called" rebellion". According to Rushkoff  “Today five enormous companies

are responsible for selling nearly all of youth culture"(650). Rushkoff goes on by saying that

these giant corporations go after our youth by sending spies to watch and find out what is so

called "cool". This statement is not very surprising. If one really takes a look at any big

corporation whether it be a food corporation or anything that is being sold to us it is clear as day

that the only thing that really matters is money. There is no integrity in the money

making business, no moral standards, and ultimately it is about turning a profit at the expense of

whoever stands in the way.

  In the chapter "No Limits" the subject of this part in the book is the momentum that is

building to do the most shocking trends and inventive lengths that people are trying to be

enlightened. The author touches on the fact that any crazy or some may say horrifying trends can

be made to sound appealing, but when one looks at the actual trend it may not be what you

thought you were buying into. This chapter goes over the new trend called suspension and the

way that people are being drawn into this crazy notation of “freeing yourself”. To me this is a

form of marketing to try to sell people things to get our hard earned money. Anything that needs

to be dressed up for consumption is a way of tricking people. Something that we as humans are

searching for like a product, idea, style, music, spiritual enlightenment, should not be dressed up

in manipulated ways to make you believe what you are being told, whatever it is that we are

searching for should speak for its self.

            I

In this article I agree with some of what the author is concluding, but on the other hand I

do not think that society can move backwards in time to so call “heal one family at a time” the

bigger issue is not just the corporations or the way marketing is done to reach our young. I think

that way to give the young people of America a chance at a stable, ethical future is to teach

parents how to be good parents. I think that we as a community should offer parenting classes for

the parents who want to make a difference in their children’s lives. I also think that we should

have stricter laws for parents who do not care about their children. We as America should hold

parents accountable for having kids and not caring for them. There are a lot of people in

America, especially young people, who are trying to find some sort of identity and spiritual

enlightenment and as parents it is our job to fully educated our kid and build their self esteem.