Fight Club

I had seen this movie once before, years ago, and all I could remember were Brad Pitt’s abs. Ah, the abs. I don’t remember it having to do with consumerism at all, but it was very interesting to watch it at the very end of this class. Here are my reflections.

Fight Club is essentially a cult, which becomes a terrorist cell that is based on fighting, and more broadly the subversion of conspicuous consumption. The members fight to feel real, intense emotions to counteract the numbing of everyday life that mass-consumption creates. The critique on consumption begins with Ed Norton’s insomnia. Lack of sleep becomes a physical manifestation of simulacra- Norton can’t tell what is real, everything is a copy of a copy, and déjà vu hits repeatedly. When the insomnia first begins to take over his life, he is a proud conspicuous consumer. He orders from catalogs, and cleans his Scandinavian furniture when he is upset. He is what we all are- complete and utter victims of marketing. Lives ruled by commodities.

Norton meets Brad Pitt and they organically grow a fight club. Men gather to fight because of the intensity of raw feelings, even though it is mostly pain. Obviously it is a release of tension and/or anger, but it is ultimately a willing act of subversion. The members subvert the capitalist system by forming an egalitarian group in which money and commodities are entirely absent (except when the level of destruction rises with the evolution of the group to Project Mayhem). They become a lot like the Situationists in that they are nihilistic, will stop at nothing, and are not afraid of destruction on a mass scale for their cause. Pre-Project Mayhem, Fight Club was able to subvert the entire system of capitalism. Even though capitalism has invaded our consciousness, it has not invaded communal underground fighting for, well, nothing- no money, no commodity prize. Voluntary pain cannot exist in the system of capitalism because capitalism is based on pleasure, desire, and ever-growing profits.

Money is involved for Pitt and Norton to survive- they make luxury soap. Soap is a brilliant choice for the characters’ commodity engagement. Soap is something that makes us clean, that smells good, that comes in an infinite variety of different flavors, and is almost always thought of in a positive and easily accessible way. This is a brilliant play on Marx’s notion of the consumers’ extreme distance from the production of the products they consume. I remember when my father told me that soap was made of fat and chemicals. I could not believe it, was extremely disgusted for maybe an hour, and then resumed my pleasant, consumer-oriented attitudes towards soap. The scene where they steal fat from the dumpster trucks of the hospital is really poignant because it shows how disgusting the process of production really is and how distanced it is from the average consumer. Either Pitt or Norton says, “We’re selling rich women their own fat asses.” I am convinced that New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik saw the movie or remembered the quote before writing his article on Veblen, “Display Cases.” On the first page he says, “Veblen wanted to explain not just who wins and who loses in business but why the winners, who have won so much, seem to enjoy themselves so little…[why they] pay big wads of money to put fat in their mouths, and even bigger wads to have it sucked back out through their thighs.” Fat asses seem to be a hot topic among academic discussions of conspicuous consumption- who would’ve thought?

The violence seemed a little abrasive to me this time around. I realized that the movie is forcing the view to do the same thing that the members of fight club do, which is watch massive amounts of violence. The members of fight club, like us viewers, are desensitized to violence, even extreme violence, find pleasure in violence, art in violence, and entertainment in violence. If we didn’t, why would we watch the movie? Fight Club is a great catalyst to question one’s sensibilities and one’s relations to commodities.

"Postmodernism is the New Black"

I came across a very interesting article while accumulating too many sources for my research paper. It’s called Post-Modernism is the New Black; Shopping and Philosophy. It is from The Economist, London, December 23, 2006. It is very short- here is the URL to take a look:

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1196369361&sid=2&Fmt=3&clientId=3620&RQT=309&VName=PQD

It is periodical that doesn’t seem to have an author, or at least ProQuest doesn’t know who the author is. Whatever the case, this is a very interesting article that argues that modern marketing uses the tools of post-modern discourse, “thus capitalism employs the critique that was designed to destroy it.” I am particularly interested in consumption and post-modernism. I am currently reading several texts on postmodernism for my art history class, and every single one is heavily preoccupied with the effects of mass-consumption. A quote by Jean-Francois Lyotard thoroughly sums up the relationship between consumption and postmodernism in that there is no hierarchy of goods: “eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture; one listens to reggae, watches a Western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games.” The activities that Lyotard listed are no longer contradictory in postmodernism because everything is individualized, fragmented, and random.

The mysterious author of this article argues that the pomos, Lyotard, Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida all wanted to destroy capitalism, but they predicted how capitalism would reinvent itself in the 1980s and 1990s, or the postmodern era. The author cites Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment as the founding post-modern text, declaring that, “the 18th-century attempt to replace religion with rationalism had supplanted one form of mental slavery with another.” Horkheimer and Adorno, along with the pomos and other postmodern writers, sought to deconstruct theories such as socialism, Marxism, and capitalism to reveal their true natures and liberate their readers. Capitalism has reinvented itself in the past few decades in the same way- using offbeat advertising to liberate consumers, appeal to the individual, and make the consumer the artists of their own life. This can be seen in recent forms of non-traditional advertising, such as rebellious tilts (the author cites Nike), or highly individualized tones, such as “because you’re worth it.” Advertising campaigns superficially seek to breakdown authority and hierarchy within consumers, within companies, and within the relationship between consumers and the companies they buy from.

Both postmodernism and free-market economics seek to free the individual from authority- through thought and economic power respectively. Individual choices, and the power derived from choice, were to be the most important themes. Finally, the author argues that mass culture has broken apart into a million different niches, citing the success of companies based around one niche, such as Dolce & Gabbana (“…for people with lots of money and loud taste”) or American Apparel, who’s niche is moral and economic because people buy their expensive T-shirts not only for style or brand appeal, but because they supposedly treat their workers well.

In conclusion, a set of beliefs put forward by the pomos as postmodernism- the deconstruction of capitalism and other rationalist theories in order to liberate people and promote individual ability to take control of their own life- has been co-opted by corporations to increase profits. Huge stores based around a niche, or radical advertising with a highly individualistic, liberating flavor is the byproduct of the commodification of post-modernism. I guess the colonial nature of commodification is true- it subsumes all other logic.

Alienation & Consumption

“Have advances in technology, because they are meant to make the lives of the consumers easier, lent themselves to improving community, or have they further alienated individuals of a society?”

I find the first part of the question odd because improving the lives of consumers is not necessarily going to improve a sense of community. Consumption is highly fragmenting and alienating because it is done on an individual basis and the structure of capitalism requires a certain level of self-interest. So, if we’re talking about a sense of community, something that will make consumption easier will further destroy any sense of community. On the other hand, something that would make the lives of consumers easier will “improve” a community in the sense that it will probably make most people happier because we live in a consumer society where happiness is often dictated by desires for commodities. Seeing as though the first part of the question is supposed to be the antithesis to the second part, I will go with the second interpretation, in which technology will improve a community because it will make consumption easier, and thus, consumers happier.

But, again, the dichotomy of this question is blurred. Advances in technology have certainly alienated individuals of a society, but this has probably made consumers happier, too! In a culture where consumerism and capitalism reign supreme, the advancement of technology is almost inevitable. Average desires have been so excited to witness and consume the latest technological innovation because consumer society might die out without it. If a corporation can’t continually make a newer, better version of Commodity A, at a cheaper, more efficient rate of production, the corporation can’t stimulate ever-greater desire and thus receive an ever-greater profit. Thus, technology feeds the spectacle of consumption, alienating one from one another and alienating one from oneself because we are driven by external agendas and expectations. I’m going to have to take a Marxist approach and agree that alienation is centrally rooted in economic conditions, and that technology and consumption estrange one from one’s essential nature because of the artificial nature of consumer desires.

I remember reading some article in which the author traced the evolution of American culture as a social, public culture to its current state as a privatized, consumerist, individualistic, anti-social society. The author said something to the effect of, “Family activity went from the town square, to the inside of an entertainment center, to the porch of a house [in the suburbs], to the backyard, to the living room, to each person’s individual room.” This point really hit a nerve with me because I had just returned from studying abroad in Athens, Greece and one of the major newfound perspectives I had on the United States was that everything is so anti-social and privatized. People don’t go out just to go out, or strike up conversations with others- essentially the public sphere in America is dead. I agree with L. Cohen that public space has turned into a commodity, been bought out by corporations, and is regurgitated into the system as a semi-public space to consume more.

To wrap things up, the alienation of America’s consumer society is inevitable due to the nature of consumption and capitalism. Advances in technology certainly contribute to this alienated because of technology’s inherent role in the advancement of consumer society, or the ever-growing profit. Advances in society continue to make consumers’ lives easier, which I would not consider as “improving” community. The opposite occurs- as consumers’ lives are “improved” by endless convenience, the rage of mass-consumption lives on, further deconstructing community by promoting individuality, self-interest, and an anti-social mentality.

Death of a Wal-Mart Employee

After Black Friday death, shoppers back at Wal-Mart

BY ALFONSO A. CASTILLO AND MATTHEW CHAYES | alfonso.castillo@newsday.com and matthew.chayes@newsday.com

12:31 PM EST, November 29, 2008

Other than glaziers out front fixing the doors damaged by a throng of impatient shoppers, there were no outward signs Saturday at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart of the chaos that turned this year's Black Friday into a day of death and mayhem.



Shoppers at the store, located near the Green Acres Mall, wheeled carts stuffed with big holiday gifts beginning shortly after the store opened at 7 a.m. A Salvation Army bell ringer solicited Christmastime donations.

But the specter of the stampede that killed Wal-Mart seasonal worker Jdimytai Damour, 34, Friday morning hung over the morning.


Shoppers echoed the sentiments of the Nassau County police detective supervising the investigation, who told reporters in the aftermath of Damour's death that the store could have and should have better prepared for the large crowds that camped out as early as 9 p.m. the night before for the post-Thanksgiving bargains.

Bibi Raffik of Jamaica, Queens, a frequent Wal-Mart shopper, said she always feels safe at the store.



The 41-year-old said, "I'm very shocked by what happened." She added: "There should have been more security here."



Wal-Mart has defended its security, noting that it hired additional personnel -- of whom Damour was one -- and put up barriers in anticipation of the Black Friday rush.

Out front on Saturday, the two glaziers from Solar Glass of Island Park worked to replace one of the doors unhinged by the shoppers just before 5 a.m. Friday.


In the melee, shoppers had pushed glass sliding doors to the ground, bending their aluminum frames like an accordion. The stampede resulted in the death of Damour, who was in the front vestibule helping to open the store for the morning. A cause of death is still pending an autopsy, police said.



Meanwhile, Damour's mother was en route to Jamaica, Queens, from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to help prepare her son's funeral arrangements, the family has said.

I’m sure everyone has heard of the latest holiday media sensation- the death of a New York Wal-Mart employee on Black Friday. Jdimytai Damour was trampled in an early morning stampede of overly-anxious shoppers on the busiest shopping day of the year- Black Friday. I think the media frenzy that this story has inspired is some sort of signal as to an increasing awareness of the dangers of commodity culture “going a little too far.”

I had never really analyzed the language of the term “Black Friday” before this. The day after Thanksgiving draws huge shopping crowds for sales across the country in department stores, local boutiques, and even grocery stores. Virtually every store in the country has some sort of sale on this notorious Friday. “Black” Friday as a consumer holiday has a very negative connotation of chaos and sin. It’s as if the sales are so enticing, no one can resist. Thus, the actual act of madly shopping and taking advantage of every special discount is severely stigmatized. The term implies that this type of mass-spending and uncontrollable desires to consume all types of objects is harmful and shameful.

Nonetheless, everyone gives in to this consumer holiday. Everyone wants to rush to the mall, or even Main Street, USA to purchase all kinds of things, whether they need them or not. Maybe the name is only ironic for humor’s sake, or to mock the notion of mass-consumption as harmful and immoral. Whatever it is, the term “Black Friday” is subversive to some extent.

I had heard about the death of Jdimytai Damour by 5:00pm on Friday, November 28, 2008. I saw it on a television while eating Mexican food with two friends. We were all totally shocked, horrified, and somewhat saddened to hear the news. How could a mass of 2,000 people gather around the doors of Wal-Mart at 5am, flatten the glass doors to the floor, and proceed to trample a living being- a temporary employee at that? Something, most likely a mixture of things, had so intensely stimulated desire, energy, and relentlessness within the mob that they ran over a human being- no one, or no group of people, was strong enough to calm the shopping frenzy. And that is where the absurdity lies- this was all the result of a shopping frenzy! Ever since reading Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, I feel as though I can find the spectacle anywhere. But this sad case is so clearly demonstrative of Debord’s fears that it makes me want to adopt a more radical critique of capitalism.

Ultimately, I think this incident has, and will continue to raise awareness about the serious mind control that commodities have over us. This incident makes it very easy to side with the many critics of mass-consumption and the capitalist mindset. Whether the term “Black Friday” was meant to mock or signal danger, it will forever be infused with a memory of death when a shopping frenzy eradicated all moral concern for others. The power of shopping over the mind of the 2,000 people stationed outside of that New York Wal-Mart literally erased all sense in those 2,000 minds except for the dangerously narrow goal of getting that special item they’ve been wanting- on sale.

My boyfriend went in to a local mall to see about seasonal hiring for some extra money. I brought up this incident and he said, “Natalie, I could die if I get a job at Macy’s.” It was funny for a minute, but then extremely chilling due to its likelihood.

Claire Fontaine

I have been looking around a lot for art that engages critiques of consumption, and have found a lot. But nothing like this.

Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based art collective, founded in 2004. Her name was taken from a popular brand of school notebooks, and allows her declare herself a “readymade artist.” Thinking of Duchamp’s Fountain, which was a readymade urinal, one can begin to understand the concept of a “readymade” artist. The artist herself is displaced, deprived of its use value, and undisguised but probably modified. Claire Fontaine works in neon lights, video, sculpture, painting, and text usually appropriating objects and images and experimenting with detournements.

Here’s the catch: Claire Fontaine is not a person- she only exists as a concept. Her “assistants,” Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill, physically create her artistic output and speak for her in interviews. Anthony Huberman from Bomb Magazine says:

“By exemplifying readymade and stereotypical identities imposed by social or cultural superstructures, she becomes an empty vessel…She understands that making art can’t oppose or rebel or subvert the political condition of late capitalism, so she presents herself as an artist on strike, a readymade subjectivity, a hole in the landscape through which a revolution might creep, arriving from elsewhere."

The latter half of this quote is clearly in line with the logic of culture-jamming in its admission of the lack of power to single-handedly subvert capitalism. Both Claire Fontaine and culture-jammers rely on individual tactics in the hope that some revolutionary thought will be sparked, or even just a critical approach to capitalism and consumption. Claire Fontaine’s work is also very much in line with Roland Barthe’s declaration of the death of the author.

Claire Fontaine’s work is even more in line with Guy Debord’s notion of The Spectacle as it relates to authenticity and inauthenticity. These two elements function as material in her work. Much of her work appropriates, or expropriates, objects and images. For instance, a Debord film, Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952) is downloaded to play on a customized iPod or PlayStation. La Societe du Spectacle is turned into a brick by covering the brick with the book cover via rubberband and is then placed on a commercial gallery floor:
Christopher Mooney from Art Review says:

“At some level, then, Claire Fontaine sees herself as a Robin Hood of the contemporary art scene. A culture-jamming trickster and radicalizing figure of aesthetic stealth and conscientious objection. A biopolitical activist engaged in a war of liberation against the disciplinary institutions that subjugate our bodies and control our minds. True to her self, true to art, true to her ethics. But not true.”

Claire Fontaine’s existence as a concept, not as a person, is a total spectacle. Categories of human identity are irrelevant because if used, Claire Fontaine would be fiction. She has completed Debord’s process of value moving from being to having, and finally appearing to have. Her name tricks people in thinking that she is a person, a single artist. One relates to Claire Fontaine as Debord claims one would relate to advertisements: an inability to have real relationships with her, but the ability to have relationships with the representations of her, or her art objects.

Mooney poignantly finishes: “That she has named herself after a French stationary brand is appropriate. Claire Fontaine is a blank page: empty, yet full of promise.”

Sarah Palin

Please see this great article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/03/sarah.palin.debate.feminism/print

Michelle Goldberg says, “It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both venerate and despise.”

Sarah Palin is a brand. It is obvious that she has honed her skills [of blabbering with a hick-ish accent] to sell the elements of her personality that the McCain campaign wants to promote- an abrasively down-to-earth persona. She has consciously crafted these traits into a very distinctive persona, and even I will admit that she has a pretty nice package for the Sarah Palin brand (no pun intended). And, “like the famous brands that have become a part of our consciousness, self-branders have to go about enhancing their profile and increasing their visibility through marketing, marketing, marketing” (Davis 47).

Palin tries to work against an emphasis on institutional roles, and work towards being a link between Americans’ internal impulses, and her own. In other words, Sarah Palin is trying to move beyond the institutional role of “Republican,” and move towards connecting with six-pack Joe, or the “average” American. The definition here of “average” is totally ambiguous, and is instead supposed to encapsulate most people in the mid-west or red states. This average inner-self is not completely internalized: it is externalized in the need to connect with others on this very basis of dignified ordinary-ness. It seems as though the Republicans have been running an election on, “a new emphasis on the exploration of personal desires and immediate experience, on distancing oneself from institutional (i.e., external) norms and goals, on finding one’s unique inner voice, and on freely expressing one’s intimate feelings” (Davis 43).

Palin’s artificiality is more than just her being a commodity- she is a brand. Davis writes, “A brand became a carefully crafted image, a succinct encapsulation of a product’s pitch…According to branding expert Scott Bedbury, in an interview with the business magazine First Company, a ‘great brand’ is ‘an emotional connection point that transcends the product’” (Davis 44). Both Sarah Palin and John McCain repeatedly fail to provide a product, or substantive explanations to their intended plans, and continue to reach out on an emotional level to connect with Joe the plumber. This echoes Debord’s idea of the spectacle, in which the image becomes more valuable than the actual product. Even though Davis was writing well before anyone knew who Sarah Palin was, he seems to have some psychic ability about her techniques: “the new marketing scripts incorporate the language of self-determination and transformation, and build on the knowledge that being true to our unique inner selves is a powerful moral ideal” (Davis 45). Don’t get me wrong- I am aware that Republican and Democratic politicians alike try to appeal to voters on an emotional level because voting is not an entirely rational process, and people must simply like the candidate they choose to support. But Sarah Palin is on a whole different level because of her complete and total lack of substance.

It seems as though Palin’s marketing scripts have been so successful because they reach both ends of the spectrum of self-definition that Davis initially talks about (one end being an institutionalized self, defined by external experiences and the other being an internal, unsocialized impulse). On the one hand, the “ordinary-ness” of Palin’s constituency that she is trying to capitalize on is originally an internal identity that many people trace to their upbringing. Yet, being “average” depends on defining oneself in opposition to those who are not average, and is inherently a social definition. So, Palin has been able to personally identify with Middle America, reaching a part of their self-definition that desires to be acknowledged, and connected with others on a large scale. Davis says, “People need to ‘locate themselves in a larger experience,’ and they need social recognition for their identity projects’” (Davis 46). Sarah Palin has sold herself as the quintessential sign, or spectacle, of the Republican Party, which is striving to personally connect with Middle America as opposed to politically or intellectually connect on a substantial level. She is the brand of the Republican Party, and you can certainly wear her on your sleeve.

Vivienne Westwood

“The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas. They are the only subversion.”-VW

From http://www.style.com/beauty/icon/101008ICON/:

“Kate Winslet has hotly denied recent rumors that she'll play Vivienne Westwood in an upcoming biopic. To which we say, are you kidding? What actress would turn down the opportunity to play one of fashion's most intriguing characters? Just think of the costume changes…

Yes, there'd be the dreary schoolteacher garb to start, but then came Westwood's peroxide provocateur phase, in which she played partner-in-crime to Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and the model for ripped-and-safety-pinned T-shirt-wearing punks everywhere. In the eighties, the designer was her own best advertisement for the mini crinis and reconstructed eighteenth-century garb she put on the Paris runway. Cut to 1993, when Naomi Campbell took her infamous catwalk spill in Westwood's ten-inch platforms; we'd like to see Winslet give those a try. Fast-forward to today—when fashion's great crusader isn't sporting tiny horns in her dyed orange locks, she's wearing a headband that reads "branded" and proselytizing an anti-consumerist message that must give her business managers some sleepless nights. Come on, Kate, reconsider.”

Vivienne Westwood has always been her own best advertisement for her fashions. Yet she has always held an anti-establishment, anti-consumerism message. Westwood is completely against everything that Fordism represents: rational and standardized approaches to human beings and time. How can one of fashion’s most respected, most unconventional characters be anti-consumerism? Her career rests on consumerism. How can she be against branding? She is a brand, even more so than the brand that she has created. These paradoxes are quite characteristic of Vivienne Westwood’s often puzzling character and dogmas- anything against the grain, anything nonsensical, anything against conformity, and anything against consumerism (no matter what the costs, even if the costs are a raging business based on elite consumerism). What a fascinating character.

Britain experienced a cultural revolution in the 1970s with the birth of the punk subculture. Catherine McDermott says, “Westwood and McLaren saw themselves as the natural inheritors of Dada and Surrealist antics and one of the weapons they used to attack the establishment was the subcultural world of sexual deviancy and pornography. The clothes the pair designed carried with them the spirit of play with the signs of the times- a spirit that was vital and alive. The people who wore their clothes reflected their manipulation of urban culture and the libidinous world of London night life. Westwood’s designs acted as a trigger for the consumer, rendering them participants of the counter culture” (McDermott 13, emphasis mine).

Thus, from the get go, Westwood’s clothes were powerful symbols of rebellion, and were barely read in terms of “clothes.” Throughout the course of her career (especially from the late 70s to the early 80s), Westwood paradoxically brought punk, which was founded on an underground mentality of anarchy, anti-authority, and anti-conformity, to the mainstream. What does it mean to bring something that is rooted in anti-establishment beliefs to the mainstream? It has certainly changed the original meaning and significance of punk. Westwood became disenchanted: “I got tired of looking at clothes from this point of view of rebellion- I found it exhausting, and after a while I wasn’t sure if I was right. I’m sure that if there is such a thing as the ‘Anti-Establishment’- it feeds the Establishment” (Wilcox 15). Claire Wilcox goes on: “Westwood, now in her early 40s, turned her attention to subverting the Establishment from within” (Wilcox 15).

It seems to me that Vivienne Westwood has succeeded in sending an anti-consumerism message via a consumer based business because of the sign value, as defined by Baudrillard, attributed to her fashions. People do not necessarily buy Westwood for aesthetic purposes, but because of the radical messages the label sends. It also seems as though her seniority has tamed the reputation of her fashions. For instance, the recent Sex and the City film kissed Westwood’s feet, many times. Carrie’s wedding dress was Westwood, and Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall donned Westwood to many of the international premieres. But Westwood's unpredictability remains. She said of the film: "I thought Sex and the City was supposed to be about cutting-edge fashion and there was nothing remotely memorable or interesting about what I saw. I went to the premiere and left after 10 minutes." Westwood’s unconventionality will never die. And although her fashions have become more conventional, aesthetically speaking, the sign value of her looks as anti-establishment, anti-consumerism, and anti-conformity are stronger than ever.

"Fashion was a baby I picked up and never put down," said Westwood, whose formal training consisted of a single term at Harrow Art College.

"The only reason I'm in fashion is to destroy the word 'conformity,' " the designer once said. "Nothing's interesting to me unless it's got that element."

“Fashion is all about playing with the polarities of masculine and feminine with ideas about dress and undress. Fashion is eventually about being naked.”

Sources:

Wilcox, Claire. Vivienne Westwood. London: V&A Publications, 2004.

McDermott, Catherine. Vivienne Westwood. London: Carlton Books Limited, 1999.

Mulvagh, Jane. Vivienne Westwood: An Unfashionable Life. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.