Mistrust in Products

A major part of the consumer society is having faith in images and products that are set forth and the modes which help to drive these products, such as music. Advertisers make significant use of their music and images within their calculated manipulations to gain the faith of the public. Without faith in these things, there would be no consumerism. Roger lacks this trust because he is the one who creates the exaggerated and often false advertisements. According to Fine and Leopold, “advertising often produces an aesthetic illusion by concealing a commodity’s actual physical properties from the consumer.”[3]

Roger goes through life through the use of strategies, payoffs, sales angles and exaggerations. Because Roger uses these tactics to persuade and convince others, he is going through a crisis of disbelief in his surroundings. Because he is an advertiser, Roger is the siren who sings the song to attract the consumer, yet is unmoved by his own rhetoric. At the same time, through his lack of faith, Roger can also be compared to Ulysses because he is able to escape this song or rhetoric by stopping up his ears.