Shop...Give...Get...Return and the Cycle Continues

For Christmas this year I, like anyone celebrating a holiday this winter season, received a couple gifts that I didn't particularly like and wanted to exchange.  Different color this, wrong size that, the usual suspects.  When I took a trip over to the mall to try and make such an exchange, it was easily apparent that many and I mean many people wanted to make such an exchange as well.  I went to the mall the day after Christmas, and the parking lot was sprawling with cars driven by frustrated, impatient patrons.  You would be practically ousted from society if you decided to not subscribe to the regular holiday traditions by not getting someone a gift, yet those people receiving the gift are not bound liking it despite the amount of time and thought you may have put in.  At Target stores there are whole segmented desk areas for the sole purpose of making returns and exchanges.

The thing is, however, it is never this simple.  According to an article from a story done by CBS's Augusta, Georgia affiliate, people have lots of different and valid reasons for making returns the day after.  "I bought some games for my nephew.  I decided I had bought too many.  So I needed to return something," said a shopper in the news story.

Whatever the reason may be for taking a gift back, the article said that during this holiday season almost 40 percent of us are expected to return one of our presents.  I suppose it's easy to do with all of the advantageous post-holiday sales that stores advertise nowadays.  My only fear, however, is that people will just give up and just give a gift card or money for the holidays.  Then the magic of receiving a big, colorfully wrapped box with a neat bow tie on top and wondering what's inside until you tear the wrapping paper off in a whirlwind of fervor to find what you now have will be lost, though.  We can't lost this emotional part of the holidays in lieu of the logical choice of not giving something to someone because of the risk that they may not like it though.  In my opinion, people do not remember specific things as well as the feeling they had at the time that the specific thing was in their life.  What's more significant: 1) remembering getting a scooter and learning to go off a jump or 2) remembering the excitement and happiness of receiving a scooter and recalling the thrill/pride of learning to jump?

It seems that Americans, or perhaps Westerners in general, often care more about option one from above: just getting something.  Gift giving can sometimes be looked upon as a formality, and if one doesn't conform, it's automatically a faux pas.  In other cultures besides Western ones, gift giving is popular, but there is a little more that goes into the process.  One article about Japanese culture says, "In Japan, it's customary to give gifts periodically to certain people, such as co-workers, bosses, parents, relatives, teachers, and so on.  These gifts are given to express gratitude."  This time is somewhat like the holiday gift giving custom in the U.S., but the average price is about three to five thousand yen in Japan, which equals about forty to sixty dollars per gift.  These gifts are called "o-seibo" and "o-chugen".  The fact that these gifts are given to people other than family and close friends differentiates it from American culture and shows the amount of thought the Japanese put into the idea of gift giving.  If Americans receive gifts from family only to return them the next day, what would we think about buying expensive. ornately wrapped gifts for mere co-workers?      

Made in the USA

Over holiday break, my brother, mom, and I are currently visiting my cousins in the greater Boston area and while spending some time here, we've spent some time sightseeing historical sites.  A few days ago, we took a walk over the North Bridge in Concord.  The North Bridge is the starting place of the Revolutionary War and is famously dubbed as the location where the, "shot heard 'round the world" was fired.  The bridge crossed over a small river and led to a gravel path which wound up a hill to a little gift shop-museum building.  We bought a small ornament there to serve as a testament to our visit and as a pretty addition to our Christmas tree at home.  We joked around as to where the ornament was made since it was such an American artifact and things are so often made in other countries like China nowadays.  I pored over the small ornament, which has a picture of the minuteman statue, to find that it was hand painted in Russia.

I thought to myself, "I'm at one of the most important sites in the United States' history and they sell items made in other countries here?"  It was funny at the time due to the apparent irony, but I later thought about how lame this actually was.  There was no authenticity in the ornament now besides the fact that we actually bought it at the North Bridge.  However disappointed I was, the ornament is still nice and we are still happy with it.  So how important is it that something is genuinely authentic if the product is the same or better?  Also, if the ornament couldn't be painted as well in the United States as it could have been in Russia, then maybe we are doing the site better justice if it's painted in Russia.


According to North Carolina State University economist Mike Walden, "Now 12 percent of the durable goods that we buy are made in China, but only half of that 12 percent is using Chinese inputs.  The rest China does by assembling parts that come from other countries."  China is, of course, the primary source of the U.S.'s foreign imports.  If you watch the video to the right, ABC News reports that 98% of the clothes made for the United States are made overseas and the majority of that is from China.  The report also shows the massive price difference between Chinese and American factory wages, the root of outsourcing United States jobs, which has helped to fuel the current economic crisis.


All of this is somewhat besides the point as it pertains to the ornament we bought in Concord, but it is still relevant in terms of the current economic situation in the United States.  The fact is that the ornament we bought is about something strictly American, yet it was made overseas.  I'm sure there are Americans who could paint the piece just as well.  No matter how well they could paint it, though, the odds are that the American would charge more for their work than the Chinese, Hondurans, or in my particular case, the Russians.  Why is this?  Why does someone in China work all day for $14 and someone in Michigan for $88 a day?  Is this something that is at the root of Americans' ideals? 

Satire and Society

Last year, our high school started a satirical newspaper where students write articles that basically poke fun at whatever ideas they can muster up in their heads.  This year, I've begun writing for this newspaper, and it's so far been a blast.  I find that writing something for comedic purposes is often quite relieving, fun, and exciting; it's exciting to see how people will react.  I've always been a junkie for laughter and love to hear other people laugh at my jokes, no matter how stupid they may be.  I began to wonder as I wrote some of my articles, however, what the significance is to a satirical newspaper besides making people laugh.

At first, I thought that making fun of issues in society can be an interesting and raw perspective straight into the eyes of the public.  For example, if Saturday Night Live makes a hilarious skit about how there are always so many people in any given Apple Store not really doing anything but playing around with the various gadgets, this can send an important and true message about what is considered important to people in today's society.  Satirizing something is a gateway into what people are thinking and it often (but not always) adds a spin to relate it to real life or to make it funny.

According to an article titled The Purpose and Method of Satire, "Inseparable from any definition of satire is its corrective purpose, expressed through a critical mode which ridicules or otherwise attacks those conditions needing reformation in the opinion of the satirist."

Above all, the author is saying, true satire highlights what is wrong in society and offers a solution or a "correction." Of course, our high school satirical newspaper is not a relay of society's ideas, that's more the purpose of a free press.  Our ultimate goal is to be funny by finding out and exploiting what is wrong in high school, suburban, or global society.  In doing this, there is a sense of connection people feel to one another to see that something they see everyday is seen by someone else and they can talk about this with other people.  An illustration of this is found in the show Seinfeld, where some of the funniest episodes are making fun of what we see all the time.  This has commonly been dubbed as "observational humor" and an example is shown in the clip from Seinfeld shown above to the right.

You'll notice in the clip that George, the bald character, is describing a moment in a hotel that many of us have probably experienced and this connection is what's supposed to make it funny.  Same goes for the part with the woman at the payphone.  This part suggests a societal issue of the time (early 90s), however.  Back when this show aired, payphones were commonplace and therefore societal issues arose from this that led to popular t.v. show satire.  This is similar to the Apple store example mentioned above; as the times change, so do peoples' interests and opinions, and these are often relayed through the channel of satire.  Can you name a time when something funny also made you think about the society you're living in?  You could ask yourself, "what makes this so funny and how/why is this significant?"