Feature articles are often written with a specific target audience in mind and as such reflect and reinforce the values and attitudes held by society. At other times, feature articles are also written with a view towards making society reflect on its values as well as challenging these beliefs. This is evident in Clive Hamilton’s ‘Affluenza: the new illness in Australia?’ published in 2005 and ‘Hard Sell’ published in the Weekend West, 2012. In Affluenza, Hamilton portrays a society that values consumerism greatly and challenging society to reflect on what is important and necessary for happiness in life. In ‘Hard Sell’, the writer reflects a society where young girls are heavily sexualised. Therefore, both the articles reflect what is currently occurring in society but do not reinforce these beliefs instead challenges these beliefs through selection of detail, use of statistics and by expert opinions. As such the feature articles challenge society to explore the values it currently holds as important.
Society in Afflenza is portrayed as valuing material possessions at the cost of sacrificing family life and personal relationships. This is a clear reflection of society’s current focus on satisfying wants rather than being satisfied with having basic needs met. Thus, Hamilton portrays a society which wants bigger houses as he says “Many families float around in dwellings with far more space than they can use”. In addition, the target audience can identify with the desire to have up to date advanced barbeques when a $200 barbeque will do the same job at a fraction of the cost. He also states that, “One current TV advertisement tells us seriously that if you get bitten by a deadly snake in the outback, only a Toyota Landcrusier will get you to hospital in time”, this shows that we are wanting bigger and better cars for the purpose of showing a high level status. These examples emphasise a society that has become so consumed by attaining material possessions, it has lost sight of what is really important. This is because people have to work long hours in order to earn lots of money to satisfy these material desires. The writer’s use of specific examples, which the reader can easily identify with, makes the reader question their own behaviours.
Society as reflected in Hamilton’s article is very confronting for the reader as they are able to identify with the issues presented and are encouraged to question and reflect on their behaviours. These behaviours such as working long hours and sacrificing family life force people to question if the sacrifice is really worthwhile. This is evident when the writer says, “Most people act as if more money means more happiness” which makes us question whether more money really brings us any happiness. This is relevant in today’s society as we are very concerned with our status that is determined by material possessions. “Instead of wondering whether the desire for more money is the problem, they raise their threshold of desire; this is an endless cycle”, he again questions us if the money we make is ever going to be enough to satisfy our needs as our wants are an endless cycle of earning more and more money as our wants seems to keep increasing. This forces us again to realise what’s important and what will make us truly happy. That’s because earning more money is not the solution.
Young girls are portrayed in Hard Sell as heavily sexualised and concerns are raised throughout the article about the appropriateness of these images especially for tweens. This is another reflection on current society and how our attitudes are being challenged towards the dysfunctional childhood that tweens are having these days due to media and pop idols. ‘Their heroes are stars like Miley Cyrus, who, by 16, was performing a pole dance on stage wearing micro hotpants”, this shows the kind of influence these celebrities have imposed on the tween girls and to
