While junk food and trendy items turn up in sitcoms, the scripts for dramatic programmes frequently sell hi-tech products, such as cellular phones and automobiles. But avid television viewers seem unable to distinguish between real life and fantasy, and the advertising industries in cahoots with broadcasters have constructed this public perception. In addition to product placement, advertising intervenes in programming in more subtle ways. It is important to sponsors that programmes provide the 'proper atmosphere' for their product messages. One keystone of the consumer edifice is the notion that all problems are individual in nature, and therefore subject to individual choices and remedies.
Individualism is absolutely necessary for the survival of a consumer-based society.
But this is a false sense of individuality. The contradictory message is to be yourself and buy this product like millions of others who also want to express their individuality through mass consumption. Personal identity is intertwined with product consciousness to such a degree that American youths pay for the 'privilege' of wearing logos on their clothing as a marker of personal style. Anderson suggests that 'for American culture, as everyday life is ruptured from the political context, the family has become the site of struggle for meaning that embodies all the contradictions of the discourse of persuasion. Presented as utopian fantasy, it is simultaneously the source of all dysfunction.