This is an essay I did for a culture of cities module taught by the excellent Lorcan Byrne in UCC. It deals with the concepts of worship, consumerism and self.
Commodity fetishism has expanded at pace with technology since Marx identified it in Das Kapital (Marx,1928) and Benjamin extrapolated it in the Arcades Project(Benjamin, 1999). Our relationship to the artificial has grown from tools of embellishment to a point of near symbiosis with modern tools of communication, much like the relationship between the cosmopolitan type and his watch in Simmel’s work on metropolitan life (Simmel, 2004). When Marx identified commodity fetishism he fell short of identifying it’s emerging potential to usurp religion as the ‘opium of the people’ which Benjamin did when he likened shop windows to shrines in The Arcades Project. Interestingly Comte (Ellen, 1988) viewed fetishism as the first step in a timeline from fetishism, through to polytheism to monotheism. What follows will show parallels with this timeline. In this essay I will examine through the advancement of medias the evolution of commodity fetishism from the Marxist perspective of labour theory of value.
In the Codes of Advertising Jhally touches on theories by Garnham and Smythe (cited in Jhally, 1987 pg 67) that identify both the commodification of culture and the audience as commodities themselves in new media, respectively. In this vein of thought let’s begin by reworking Marx’s labour theory of value and supplanting labour with desire to examine the use of media (media incorporates in this context both communicative objects and television etc) in commodity fetishism. Just as in the labour theory of value workers sell labour power to capitalists in this era viewers also sell their watching power to advertisers (Jhally, 1987).
For the purpose of this essay let it be that people can be said to sell their desire for self actualisation to agents of consumption. By this it is meant that ordinary people through their personal desire for self betterment unwittingly empower agents of capitalism (advertisers, stores, media) to manipulate their insecurity or what they consider to be lacking within themselves as a means of harnessing their desire to consume. In this instance the use value of desire is the cost of it’s reproduction, therefore this “perfect self” can not be attainable or desire will be quenched and we will in fact become true materialists (Williams cited in Jhally, 1987) as in we would be satisfied with simply the acquirement of material objects. In order to manifest the reproduction of desire one could say that the subsistence (or wage) of the consumer or agent of desire is the attainable objects, as all objects are in theory attainable. What creates the reproduction of desire is the unattainable ideal type; the perfect version of you.
Mannequins and shop windows
Mannequins contemporary to Benjamin were at their most fundamental functional objects which existed to present other objects, and they continue to be. Yet on deeper examination they are in fact blank, featureless abstractions of the idealized human, with slender limbs, defined torsos, pert breasts, long necks and poseable limbs.
In the world of the window display the mannequin is representative of you, a perfect you participating in a tableau of beauty and opulence in the frame or lens of a perfect scene.This is a world that is completely visible to all who pass by but which exists behind an exclusive barrier of glass. The postures of these perfect ‘yous’ seem to lounge casually in their tableau of opulence, to just rest naturally in their poses yet are utterly edited by simply dimming the lights or an after business hours rearrangement of the scene. The mannequin, by virtue of being an object itself, is changeable, malleable ; its limbs assembled and dismembered by shopkeepers according to demand, a row of hands emerging from a shelf to demonstrate gloves, slender legs can-canning from hosiery isles. These are abstract impressions of beautiful people interacting with beautiful objects.
Benjamin (1999) suggests, most likely drawing his inspiration from Freud, that in a sense we seek to congress with the object and in this congress we believe the object comes to embody us. Why an object? Is the allure in what the object means? Is it in fact not in the object itself but in the opportunity to lust after an idea of oneself expressed in the external and obtainable? There is an element of control that lies within an idealised form of the ‘self’ inhabiting a desirable object or vice versa that can be manipulated, changed, exchanged, tailored and repaired, where in many cases the true ‘self’ may be oppressed, repressed or wholly unexamined such as Freud suggested in his identification of ego, superego and the id (Freud, 1962).
Yet this idea that this externalised self resides in the object is the trick of consumerism. Perhaps what we are mostly lusting after is the ideal type that is manipulating the object to display to us. Perhaps that is what we seek congress with. Although Freud (Ellen, 1988) identifies this as some sort of disembodied phallus, a theory later commercially applied by his nephew Edward Bernays, perhaps it is more a direct association with that which demonstrates the meaning of the object rather than the object itself.
In the mannequin we see the coupling of an ideal “type” with an object, and this inevitably becomes inextricable from the object being displayed. For example a small, slender porcelain white foot is the perfect accompaniment for a dainty heel, broad shoulders fill out and perfectly compliment a designer shirt etc. So much so that the object comes not only to embody one’s desire for congress with the personal projections of self onto the object, ie. “if I buy this expensive designer shirt I will be seen to be a person of great means and taste” but in fact the desire for the object comes with the desire to embody the ideal type that we are shown to be the couple of the object, ie. “if I buy this designer shirt I will be the broad shouldered man of great means and taste”. The fetish is not solely for the object but in fact for the ideal type which we associate with the object, which is what gives the object meaning. To fetishiize can be thought to mean to “give spirit to” (Ellen, 1988). By the terms of symbolic interactionism a cup is just a cup in the hands of a person, it is a chalice in the hands of a holyman, a goblet in the grasp of a king, a stein in the mitts of a drunk. The object is the same, it is defined by who or in this instance what is interacting with it. Likewise the world which surrounds this interaction, the edited world is of equal importance in demonstrating the necessary phantasmagoria (Benjamin, 2008) for this congress.
People in Pictures
To further this point I take the example of the ‘Torches of Freedom’ product placement stunt designed by Edward Bernays. In 1929 Bernays, inventor of the profession of public relations, was employed by Big Tobacco and given the task of encouraging more women to smoke. Bernays did this by planting young attractive debutante women as suffragette agitators at the New York Easter parade and paying them to light up in front of news cameras. Bernays reported this act in the newspapers he owned as the lighting of “Torches of Freedom”. (The Century of the Self, 2002). The stunt worked and women began to smoke, but did these women smoke in order to wield “torches of freedom” or to embody the wealthy, attractive, radical young women who they considered their sisters in the fight for suffrage? The cigarettes in this instance with their new branding were the ‘sign-equipment’ (Goffman, 1959) for a fetishised ideal type, for self-actualisation. The association these women sought was beyond simply being smokers, it was in the identity of defiance. Take for example a hypothetical situation whereby Bernays had simply suggested someone stamp ‘torches of freedom’ on the side of cigarettes and handed them out at feminised events such as bingo halls or bake-sales? One can assume the uptake of women smoking would have not been as great.
Just as the mannequin is an object to be carved up posed and rearranged according to need so we see the emergence of people embodying this function. Celebrity endorsements and product placement in newspapers, magazines and especially television programming in the former half of the 20th century begin to adopt this role. A greater, more intricate variety of actual people laying aside their beliefs and identity emerge as the new demonstrators of these archetypal roles in order to give meaning to objects. The cool of the Marlboro cowboy, slender silk-clad women sneaking chocolate in Galaxy ads. Brand relationships with household names. In Comte’s timeline of fetishism one could suggest this is the emergence of polytheism.
Furthermore just as mannequins are poseable, edited ideal types inhabiting a tableau of perfection in a visible yet inaccessible world of desire, celebrities too, via television, come to inhabit a world that is perfect, edited, even more visible in your living room yet even more inaccessible. A moving display in your home and on your commute of ideal types and their complementary commodities. Some types are there to demonstrate the function of the object, others perform solely to give what is most likely a useless and superfluous item meaning. For example; Ellen Degeneres, an actress and television host, was asked to promote the Bic “Lady Pen” (quite literally a pink pen) as an indispensable item to the modern woman on her chat show. In order for that pen to be justified in being sold in a certain package it needed the endorsement of a female American sweetheart. Thankfully Degeneres instead used the placement timeslot to ridicule the concept of gender specific pens. (TheEllenShow, 2012)
Likewise increasingly incongruent types and things are appearing together in order to effectively false advertise in a legal way. Happy healthy children feasting voraciously on fast food and sweets, celebrities on beaches philosophising punctuated by the name of a perfume company, slim women worrying about their weight in cereal ads. In the cult of the commodity it is not the object that we want to define us, it is the meaning given to the object by those who show us it. We are compelled to consumption by the promise that this energy drink will make you an athlete. That the object is the key to our dreaming unconscious desire, that all desire for a new or improved self can be acquired in the union of you and this item. In the most typical sense it is the Freudian appendage and bridges you with your desired existence. In the ‘desire’ theory of value it is your subsistence wage, telling you that you have enough now to live as your true self.
The irony is that as Benjamin remarks “Fashion stands in opposition to the organic, it couples the living body to the inorganic world.” (Benjamin, 2008, pg 102) In this sense commodity fetishism in fact further removes us from our goal self-actualisation through distraction, just as subsistence wage keep workers too weak and hungry to seize the means of production.
Simple examples being that smoking makes you appear cool rather than makes you smell bad and age rapidly, drinking coffee is a good way to relax with friends although realistically you are actually imbibing stimulants, chocolate keeps women thin, cologne makes you more philosophical yet spending large amounts of money on something that literally translates as “toilet water” seems to lack critical thought.
The Self and Social Media
Perhaps the current evolutionary phase of this model of glass or lens, frame and type or archetype in commodity fetishism is the age of social media. In this age you are what is visible to all, available for mass consumption, yet still behind glass. You can include and exclude at will; deny friend requests or remove ‘tags’, like the right films and support the right causes. you can demonstrate what your ‘type’ values; with photos of sun holidays, nights out with friends, sharing of political articles or mindfulness quotes and events you attended. What occurs out of frame is the less ideal aspects of you, things that are incongruent with this idealized self; trips to the toilet, boredom, cleaning up cat sick, crying fits, personal tragedy, doubt, insecurity, (although if you identify best with Jon Arbuckle from the Garfield comics as a type then maybe these are the things that you will be performing). What we are projecting into these smartphones and laptops on social media pages is a self created ideal type, yet it still remains inaccessible, a removal from self into an object. In the fulfillment of Comte’s timeline of fetishism this is theism. We have externalised ourselves and created deified perfect versions of ourselves to worship. In this instance the commodities that promise to bridge you to it are experiences and interests. Being photographed and tagged in the places you feel your ‘type’ ought to be, showing to your audience or followers (worshipers for the particularly narcissistic) that you like good food by taking a picture of your dinner, that you love your mother by taking a selfie together, that you appreciate nature by signing an online petition. Just as the celebrity age fetishised the commodities linked to an increasingly specialised arena of types now there is quite literally a specialised type for each person available them. This is of course is a cynical approach but our use of impression management is now so nuanced it would be wholly possible to utterly construct a false self through social media, which is commonly done. Take the example of the ‘selfie’, that phenomenon which is in equal parts maligned, parodied and celebrated. Not least to say that the selfie is possibly the greatest symptom of the age of individualism fathomable in that it has atomized us to the point where we control our impressions openly without so much as a facade of the organic. We seek to look at ourselves quite literally inside an object. We have projected ourselves into an object which affords us the tools to manipulate, edit, enhance or discard this appropriation of ourself. Is this not the ultimate commodity fetishism?
Where does this come from and what is the result of all this? It would appear that humans have a
tendency toward the sentiment that reality is inadequate and to foster a fundamental denial of our humanity; our fallibility. That to simply be ourselves without a role or type to embody is too insecure a position, that what we can and must be improved upon by buying objects or consuming experiences that bridge you to some deified archetype or “faking it til you make it”. This has a relationship with theories of modernity identified by Nietzsche and in this context Benjamin’s critique of progress. Everything must be improved upon, although these are values which we give to things ourselves, in reality things just are. We have all witnessed people at national monuments or in majestic natural settings who seem more awed by their photographs on their phones or digital cameras than the subjects in real life. Is this symptomatic of an ingrained nervousness in a world we cannot control? An attempt to edit reality?
To conclude I hasten to add that I don’t condemn this as being vacuous or an intellectually inferior state of being. Just like Narcissus we are all transfixed with our reflections to some degree. I merely suggest that rather than forever attempting to break through the looking glass of windows and screens, into our own wonderlands, so to speak, that we occasionally look away from them and allow the world and the self as it is to sustain us, as chaotic and overwhelming a state that may be, before we drown in fantasy.
Bibliography
Benjamin, W. (1968) Illuminations New York : Schoken Books
Freud, S. (1962) The Ego and the Id London : Hogarth
Ellen, R. (1988) Fetishism Man, [online], Vol. 23, No. 2 pp. 213-235
Marx, K. (1928) Capital : A critique of political economy and the processes of capitalist production London : Allen & Unwin
Benjamin, W. (1999) The Arcades Project Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Simmel, G. (2004). The metropolis and mental life. In: N. Spykman, ed., The Social Theory of Georg Simmel, 1st ed. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
The Century of the Self. (2002). [DVD] BBC: Adam Curtis.
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life New York : Doubleday
Jhally, S., The Codes of Advertising : Fetishism and the political economy of meaning in the consumer society
TheEllenShow, (2012). Bic Pens for Women.
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCyw3prIWhc [Accessed 2 Dec. 2014].
Benjamin, W. (2008) The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Joseph, H.W.B. (1923) The Labour Theory of Value in Karl Marx London : Oxford University Press
Accessed at :http://0-www.jstor.org.library.ucc.ie/stable/pdfplus/10.2307/2802803.pdf
Sionnachaí 