A Rollercoaster Ride Through Consumer Fetishism
Ever thought of the humble Coke bottle as
representative of the development of visual culture since the 19th century?
Jon Stratton's foray into cultural fetishism and the erotics of consumption
does considerably more than touch on the expected bases of this area.
Stratton has taken and assimilated the work of important theoreticians and
he's created a great melting pot if it all, relating theory to concepts and
realities which you and I and everyone else has experienced and can relate
to, like the inimitable Coke bottle. Philosophers of the calibre of Marx,
Foucault, Lacan, Huyssen and Debord each claimed the territories of
consumerism, fetishism in modern society and how they all tie together.
Notoriously, the writings of these individuals are not exactly what the
average reader in the street can take to the bath to read. Each has a
reputation for being powerfully unreadable for the average contemporary
consumer of modern fetishes, a truism that's patently ironic.
But, on no account should you get me wrong. The Desirable Body
might be a relatively slim, rather handy book, but it's not exactly easy
reading. Stratton has structured his text to embrace a number of different
areas where popular culture touches consumerism, and where fetishism plays a
role that doesn't only embrace what strange lonely men may do with shoes.
He takes the notion of cultural fetishism, the concept of the phallus -- or
the cultural penis, which, he explains, rather than a sex organ, is a
cultural symbol of power -- and stretches the material beyond what it is
about normally.
So, instead of being some kind of academic peepshow, this reveals
considerably more. Within the rubric of sexual identity and how it is
constructed by society's miens, Stratton introduces visual culture to
sociology, psychology, and all the other academic-ologies that it normally
passes like ships in the night, and hey presto! He makes them compatible.
The main difficulty that reading this book presents is the whirlwind of
analogies, and the plethora of examples drawn from all over contemporary
society.
That said, one thing that doesn't sit well with this encyclopaediac foray
into consumerism is the cover. It looks too much like a girlie mag, and if
you look closer, it appears too be an academic treatise, which makes it
forbidding. But maybe that's the whole point, which reveals my
insecurities: Stratton's book straddles the line. He gives his reader the
'heavies' in his introduction, outlining his theoretical position, but in
the text itself, he extrapolates his material, bringing together the theory
with the popular culture in a way that is palatable, humorous and logical.
And the ride is exciting -- creating couples that feel unexpected, but work,
theoretically. For instance, think of a juxtaposition between Kate Moss
and Freudian theories relating to hysteria and anorexia or Batman and Robin
bunched with Walter Benjamin's representation of the flâneur. Better
still, Arnold Schwarznegger in Terminator and Mickey Rourke in 9 ½
Weeks or Oscar Wilde and the average housewife consumer of the 1950s,
certainly feel like peculiar couples, but in terms of the machinations of
cultural consumerism, the points which Stratton articulates here are
succinct.
In this way, Stratton creates an edge on the material. This edge should be a
very exciting teaching tool. Not only does it offer a meaningful look at
the nineteenth century and all its bits and pieces of cultural development,
but it offers it in the context of a twenty-first century reader -- with all
his/her jaded reactions intact. The ideologies, behaviour patterns and
thought processes of the nineteenth century are all direct forebears to who
we may be today. The Desirable Body can give the reader a handle on
why Impressionism was such a dynamic earth-shattering movement; on the
difficult issues which the birth of photography presented; on the role play
of blue movies and other titillating visual culture which was for many years
relegated to hidden places; and on the presence of the gynoid in sexually
aware society.
And speaking of hidden places, cupboards and dark places to hide things, gay
culture also comes under Stratton's perspicacious eye. Together with
feminism, he takes apart elements of queer theory and puts it together again
in an English that is contemporary and articulate, and is plentifully
illustrated by way of example from popular, mainly visual, culture -- the
type of stuff that the average person in the world will know about and have
had access to on one level or another -- even if you haven't seen the
movie. One of the by-products of this sexual history foray may be seen as
sexist: women get painted in pretty darn disturbing colours if you ask me.
These, however, are not Stratton's philosophies, and rather than advocating
any specific, ideological thrust, his book is an account of how we, as
products of a western ideology, have shaped ourselves. In his conclusion,
Stratton is at pains to describe this, which perhaps detracts from the main
thrust of the material. It is clear that Stratton is not presenting
western ideology as a male conspiracy, but rather an account.
The text is divided into five chapters which deal with different aspects of
cultural fetishism, categorised broadly by gender, sex, sexuality. As the
title of the book dictates, and the notion of fetishism generally, sex is
where it's all at, and indeed, where it's all from. But aside from
evaluating the role and understanding of consumer fetishism and all its
implications, there's another course of development at play which is about
the development of visual culture across the centuries.
It's a much more subtle evocation of a social history of behaviour and the
world as we know it, and it runs parallel with the primary content of the
text. So, while Stratton's examples may begin with painting, follow on to
photography and branch out into the film industry and more advanced
technologies, he concurrently teases out, for instance, where or what would
the porn industry be today without the understood cultural presence of the
nude or the prostitute in nineteenth century European painting. Better
still, without the notion of the spectacle as a cultural entity, would we
indeed have room for all of the electronic media in our lives which are part
of our contemporary consumer's privilege? Clearly these are rhetorical
issues -- simply by virtue of being at the computer monitor, and reading
this review, we are products of a consumerist society, and wittingly or not,
are benefitting hugely by the rich varied history it has undergone.
This means of illustrating theory enables Stratton's perspective to be
broadly based in the logic behind cultural development rather than focusing
on the smaller details or agency of how things are. Thus his narrative is
painted in broad brush strokes, which obviate specialist idiosyncrasies or
viewpoints, making this a comprehensive overview rather than a pernickety
detail.
Indeed, it's a meaty text. But it's the kind of meaty that can get washed
down very palatably with a Coke, without causing any untoward indigestion.
It's meatiness is probably what living and seeing and behaving in this funny
old world with any degree of sensibility is still about.
............
A Note from the University of Illinois:
"Stratton ties spectacularization to the primacy of the visual, as evinced
in grand expositions, photography, the cinema, and clandestine surveillance
techniques. Among other topics, he explores an enduring fascination with
man-made women in literature (Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's Tomorrow's Eve, E.
T. A. Hoffmann's The Sandman) and film (The Stepford Wives, Mannequin). He
also explores female patterns of consumption (from "shop till you drop" to
anorexia) and, concomitant with a more public homosexuality, the
fetishization of the male body (e.g., Arnold Schwarzenegger and ads for
Calvin Klein underwear). "
