CULTURALPERSPECTIVES

ON MILLENNIALS

Arthur Asa Berger

Cultural Perspectives on Millennials

Arthur Asa Berger

Cultural Perspectives on Millennials

ISBN 978-3-319-69684-3 ISBN 978-3-319-69685-0 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69685-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017957224

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-tional affiliations.

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer NatureThe registered company is Springer International Publishing AGThe registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Arthur Asa BergerSan Francisco State UniversitySan Francisco, California, USA

In memory of my brother Jason Berger (1924–2010).

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I would like to thank the editor of the various MediaPost publications for giving me permission to quote from their posts. The MediaPost articles have been of great value to me not only in my work on Millennials but also for my other works on marketing and American consumer culture. I also made considerable use of material from eMarketer, whose editor also gave me permission to use eMarketer material, from the Claritas corporation, which supplied the chart on the sixty-six different kinds of Americans, and from the work of a number of writers and scholars who have had impor-tant things to say, in a distinctive manner, about Millennials or about top-ics that help us understand Millennials better. There’s hardly a day that goes by that I don’t receive email postings from some publication or indi-vidual or group about this or that aspect of life for Millennials. I have chosen to use postings that provide insights into the Millennial mind and psyche, Millennial behavior, Millennial culture, and related concerns, rec-ognizing that many people have something interesting to say about Millennials. I begin each chapter with quotations, integrated into the chapter, relevant to the topics being discussed. I have made minor modi-fications to the quotations in terms of their paragraphing but have not changed their contents. I use quotations because of the information they provide and the distinctive way in which this content is written and explained. Finally, I would like to thank my editor, Shaun Vigil, for his support and encouragement.

Acknowledgements

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contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The Mind and Psyche of Millennials 11

3 A Sociology of Millennials 29

4 Myth and Millennials 39

5 Millennials and the Media 47

6 Marketing to Millennials 63

7 Millennials as Shoppers and Consumers 75

8 Postmodernism and Millennials 85

9 Politics and Millennials 101

x CoNTENTS

10 Sexual Identity, Gender and the Millennials 113

11 Coda 119

References 127

Index 131

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Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

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Arthur Asa Berger is professor emeritus of Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts at San Francisco State University, where he taught between 1965 and 2003. He graduated in 1954 from the University of Massachusetts, where he majored in literature and philosophy. He received an MA in journalism and creative writing from the University of Iowa in 1956. He was drafted shortly after graduating and served in the US Army in the Military District of Washington in Washington, D.C., where he was a feature writer and speech writer in the District’s Public Information office. He also wrote about high school sports for the Washington Post on weekend evenings while in the army.

Berger spent a year touring Europe after he got out of the Army and then went to the University of Minnesota, where he received a Ph.D. in American Studies in 1965. He wrote his dissertation on the comic strip Li’l Abner. In 1963–1964, he had a Fulbright to Italy and taught at the University of Milan. He spent a year as visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 1984 and two months in the fall of 2007 as visiting profes-sor at the School of Hotel and Tourism at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He spent a month lecturing at Jinan University in Guangzhou and also lectured at Tsinghua University in Beijing in Spring 2009. He spent a month in 2012 as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Argentina, lec-turing on semiotics and cultural criticism, a month in Minsk in 2014 and three weeks lecturing on semiotics and media in Iran in 2015. He is the author of more than one hundred articles and more than seventy books on semiotics, media, popular culture, humor and tourism. Berger is married,

About the Author

xiv ABoUT THE AUTHoR

has two children and four grandchildren, and lives in Mill Valley, California. He enjoys foreign travel and classical music. He can be reached by e-mail at arthurasaberger@gmail.com.

His books have been translated in nine languages. A selected list of these books follows.

Li’l Abner, 1970 (Twayne)The Evangelical Hamburger, 1970 (MSS Publications)Pop Culture, 1973 (Pflaum)About Man, 1974 (Pflaum)The Comic Stripped American, 1974 (Walker & Co., Penguin, Milano Libri)The TV‑Guided American, 1975 (Walker & Co.)Language in Thought and Action (in collaboration with S.I.Hayakawa), 1974,

1978 (HBJ)Film in Society, 1978 (Transaction)Television as an Instrument of Terror, 1978 (Transaction)Media Analysis Techniques, 1982. Sixth edition in 2018.Signs in Contemporary Culture, 1984 (Longman); 2nd edition, Sheffield, 1998.Television in Society, l986 (Transaction)Media USA, 1988, (Longman, 2nd Edition, 1991)Seeing is Believing: An Introduction to Visual Communication, 1989.Political Culture and Public Opinion, 1989 (Transaction)Agitpop: Political Culture and Communication Theory, 1989 (Transaction)Scripts: Writing for Radio and Television, 1990 (SAGE)Media Research Techniques, 1991, 2nd edition 1998 (SAGE)Reading Matter, 1992 (Transaction)Popular Culture Genres, 1992 (SAGE)An Anatomy of Humor, 1993 (Transaction)Improving Writing Skills, 1993 (SAGE)Blind Men & Elephants: Perspectives on Humor, 1995 (Transaction)Cultural Criticism: A Primer of Key Concepts, 1995 (SAGE)Essentials of Mass Communication Theory, 1995 (SAGE)Manufacturing Desire: Media, Popular Culture & Everyday Life, 1996 (Transaction)Narratives in Popular Culture, Media & Everyday Life, 1997 (SAGE)The Genius of the Jewish Joke, 1997 (Jason Aronson)Bloom’s Morning, 1997 (Westview/HarperCollins)The Art of Comedy Writing, 1997 (Transaction)Postmortem for a Postmodernist, 1997 (AltaMira)The Postmodern Presence, 1998 (AltaMira)Media & Communication Research Methods, 2000 (SAGE)Ads, Fads & Consumer Culture, 2000 (Rowman & Littlefield)Jewish Jesters, 2001 (Hampton Press)

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The Mass Comm Murders: Five Media Theorists Self‑Destruct, 2002 (Rowman & Littlefield)

The Agent in the Agency, 2003 (Hampton Press)The Portable Postmodernist, 2003 (AltaMira Press)Durkheim is Dead: Sherlock Holmes is Introduced to Social Theory, 2003 (AltaMira

Press)Media and Society, 2003 (Rowman & Littlefield)Ocean Travel and Cruising, 2004 (Haworth)Deconstructing Travel: A Cultural Perspective, 2004 (AltaMira Press)Making Sense of Media: Key Texts in Media and Cultural Studies, 2004 (Blackwell)Shop Till You Drop, 2004 (Rowman & Littlefield)Vietnam Tourism, 2005 (Haworth)Mistake in Identity: A Cultural Studies Murder Mystery, 2005 (AltaMira)50 Ways to Understand Communication, 2006 (Rowman & Littlefield)Thailand Tourism, 2008 (Haworth Hospitality and Tourism Press)The Golden Triangle, 2008 (Transaction Books)The Academic Writer’s Toolkit: A User’s Manual, 2008 (Left Coast Press)What Objects Mean: An Introduction to Material Culture, 2009 (Left Coast Press)Tourism in Japan: An Ethno‑Semiotic Analysis, 2010 (Channel View Publications)The Cultural Theorist’s Book of Quotations, 2010 (Left Coast Press)The Objects of Affection: Semiotics and Consumer Culture, 2010 (Palgrave Macmillan)Understanding American Icons: An Introduction to Semiotics, 2012 (Left Coast Press)Media, Myth and Society, 2012 (Palgrave Macmillan)Theorizing Tourism, 2012 (Left Coast Press)Bali Tourism, 2013 (Haworth)Dictionary of Advertising and Marketing Concepts, 2013 (Left Coast Press)Messages: An Introduction to Communication, 2015 (Left Coast Press)Gizmos, or The Electronic Imperative, 2015 (Palgrave Macmillan)Applied Discourse Analysis, 2016 (Palgrave Macmillan)Marketing and American Consumer Culture, 2016 (Palgrave Macmillan)

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Fig. 1.1 Emulator 3Fig. 1.2 Time Spent with Social Media Among Generations 4Fig. 1.3 other Definitions of Generations 8Fig. 2.1 Aristotle 12Fig. 2.2 Sigmund Freud 13Fig. 2.3 Iceberg Model of the Psyche 14Fig. 2.4 Id, Ego and Superego in Psyche 15Fig. 2.5 oedipus Complex and Mothers 16Fig. 2.6 Gustav Le Bon 18Fig. 3.1 Clotaire Rapaille 31Fig. 3.2 Claritas Typology 35Fig. 5.1 Arthur Asa Berger’s Facebook Page 49Fig. 5.2 US Internet Users Addicted to Digital Devices  58Fig. 5.3 Smartphone Usage by Millennials 59Fig. 5.4 Time Spent online by Generations in US  61Fig. 6.1 Consumer Spending by Generations 65Fig. 6.2 Mary Douglas 70Fig. 8.1 Jean-Francois Lyotard 86Fig. 8.2 Fredric Jameson 91Fig. 8.3 Millennials as Smartphone Users 99Fig. 10.1 Judith Butler 114Fig. 11.1 Robert Musil 120Fig. 11.2 Michel Foucault 124

list of figures

1© The Author(s) 2018A.A. Berger, Cultural Perspectives on Millennials, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69685-0_1

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract This chapter describes Millennials and asks why they are of interest and whether there are important differences between different kinds of Millennials. It offers statistics about the amount of time Millennials spend with social media as compared to other generations. It offers a num-ber of lists describing the different generations and concludes that Millennials are persons (in 2015) who are between eighteen and thirty- four years of age. Then it discusses the notion that marketers see Millennials as “trailblazers” who may be setting new courses for older generations to follow. It concludes with statistics about Millennials gathered from various sources.

Keywords Millennials • Generations • Marketing • Trendsetters

We begin with two quotations of interest to our concerns. The first quota-tion deals with the number of Millennials (and there is some debate about how many Millennials there are in the United States) and how Millennials relate to other generations. This material comes from the Pew Research Center Fact Tank.

2

Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living gen-eration, according to population estimates released this month by the U.S. Census Bureau. Millennials, whom we define as those ages 18–34 in 2015, now number 75.4 million, surpassing the 74.9 million Baby Boomers (ages 51–69). And Generation X (ages 35–50 in 2015) is projected to pass the Boomers in population by 2028. The Millennial generation continues to grow as young immigrants expand its ranks. Boomers—whose genera-tion was defined by the boom in U.S. births following World War II—are older and their numbers shrinking as the number of deaths among them exceeds the number of older immigrants arriving in the country. Generations are analytical constructs, and developing a popular and expert consensus on what marks the boundaries between one generation and the next takes time. Pew Research Center has established that the oldest “Millennial” was born in 1981. The Center continues to assess demo-graphic, attitudinal and other evidence on habits and culture that will help to establish when the youngest Millennial was born or even when a new generation begins. To distill the implications of the census numbers for generational heft, this analysis assumes that the youngest Millennial was born in 1997. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/25/mill

The second quotation deals with Millennials and marriage and the reluctance Millennials seem to have about getting married. It is from Meg Murphy’s “NowUKnow: Why Millennials Refuse to Get Married.”

Millennials are saying no to traditional marriage in record numbers … and that’s not all. In Western culture in the late 18th century, marriage trans-formed from an economic arrangement into a union based on love. Now it may again be heading toward radical change. The median age at first marriage is now 27 for women and 29 for men—up from 20 for women and 23 for men in 1960. Today an unprecedented portion of millennials will remain unmarried through age 40, a recent Urban Institute report predicted. The marriage rate might drop to 70 percent—a figure well below rates for boomers (91 percent), late boomers (87 percent) and Gen Xers (82 percent). And declines might be even sharper if marriage rates recover slowly, or not at all, from pre-recession levels, according to the report. www.bentley.edu/impact/articles/nowuknow-why-millennials- refuse-get-married

A.A. BERGER