ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a look at the depiction of the desire for money, the acquisition of wealth and its consequences, which forms a significant part of the folk and fairy tales of Western culture. It considers how traces of these tales are found within more contemporary media texts such as Citizen Kane and Pretty Woman. The chapter also considers how these stories fit within the context of the consumer capitalist culture within which much of the world now exists, and the growth of advertising which helps to sustain it. In traditional folk and fairy tales, there are a wide variety of stories associated with wealth and fortune. All folk tales do not make the same point; some are exhortative while others are admonitory. The illusion of happiness held out to people by micro-narratives of advertising is one where the careful acquisition and display of commodities offer to make manifest the identity of an individual, but it might be an illusion.
