Do you want an iPhone? Well, here you go.
All right, I’ll admit that iPhones aren’t
the best example anymore. What’s the hot
thing right now? Maybe a Nintendo Switch.
Or maybe the blue and white Royal Oxford for
600 ringgit, worn by a peculiarly pensive
philosopher bro. Or maybe you’re just saving
up for Nvidia’s new Ampere line of GPUs
to enjoy that sweet, sweet ray tracing. The
point I’m trying to make is about commodities.
Whether you’re a fashion queen, a binge-watcher
of Netflix, or a true audiophile, you want
commodities. And the question for this lecture
is, what makes us want them? Now this is a
far more complex question than it appears,
and it’ll take some time before we can see
the paradoxes and contradictions involved.
So, let’s keep this question in the background
for now, while we unravel today’s topic.
I used the iPhone as an example of how commodities
sound amazing, perfect, life-changing when
we think about them – the iPhone 3G was
once like the Switch, like the Tesla car,
like the iPhone 11 – it once had that shiny,
irresistible aura. That’s where the idea
of fantasy comes in again; the fantasy of
the commodity that brings perfection and completeness
to your life… right up to the point where
you have it. And suddenly, it seems dull,
uninteresting, not so perfect. The fantasy
never comes down to reality; reality disappoints
us, and the iPhone is suddenly just another
phone, just another piece of circuitry encased
in metal or glass. A good place to start is
with Karl Marx’s discussion on commodities.
In Chapter 1, Volume I of Das Kapital, published
in 1867, he said, ‘In order to find an analogy,
we must take flight into the misty realm of
religion. There [in religion] the products
of the human brain appear as autonomous figures
endowed with a life of their own, which enter
into relations both with each other and with
the human race. So it is in the world of commodities
with the products of men's hands. I call this
the fetishism which attaches itself to the
products of labour as soon as they are produced
as commodities, and is therefore inseparable
from the production of commodities.’ (Das
Kapital, Vol I., Ch. 1) Let me clarify one
thing. Fetishism here doesn’t mean something
like sexual fetishes. Anthropologists used
the word ‘fetishism’ to refer to things
like idols or totems made of wood and stone,
which people believed were alive. What Marx
is saying is that something similar applies
to commodities: it’s as if they have a life
of their own, a dimension beyond material
existence. Commodities exist in another realm,
in the same way religion exists in another
realm that’s different from reality. The
phone is not just a phone: it is more than
a phone, it is more than circuitry encased
in metal or glass. The fantasy Apple is selling
you is that the iPhone is more than the sum
of its parts. What that “more” is, is
clever advertising. The “more” is enticing
because you have “less”. I won’t explain
fully what this diagram is, because you’ll
be seeing it again in Week 6. But let me briefly
summarise that the minus sign at the bottom
right signifies loss. The idea is that you,
the subject on the left side represented by
the dollar sign, are lacking, you lost something,
you are a minus. All it takes to hook your
desire is to remind you that you are missing
something or inadequate, and that possessing
the fantastic commodity is going to supplement
that lack, to restore your minus into a plus,
your lack into fullness or wholeness. Let
me ask a question. Why are unboxing videos
so popular? It’s because fantasy isn’t
the object itself, it’s what surrounds the
object: it’s the presentation, the packaging,
the cool factor, the mysterious thing inside.
Unboxing videos capture that moment of being
a pure commodity. But the product, after it’s
been unboxed, it would be like Venus in Titian’s
painting removing her hand: if the male gaze
sees what’s underneath, the painting loses
its mystique, it becomes plain ol' boring
biological reality, the heterosexual man stops
fantasising and his desire moves elsewhere.
It’s the nature of fantasy to be disappointed.
Hopefully, we’re starting to see how capitalism
operates. Capitalism operates because it disappoints
us very well. It starts by creating desires
in us, by telling us what we lack. It then
fails to satisfy us, because if we ever become
satisfied, then logically, we stop consuming.
I’m reminded of a quote in the early months
of coronavirus: Now that everyone’s buying
only what they need, the economy is in shambles.
Capitalism is not the satisfaction of needs,
it’s the creation of wants. All of this
forms a cycle of reproduction, between production,
desire, and consumption. Let me expand on
each one. Let’s talk about production. What’s
the latest technology in video gaming, for
example, that may change the scene entirely?
If you answered VR, or virtual reality, you’d
be right. And if you’re tapped into the
news, you’d know that Half Life: Alyx, developed
by Valve, is perhaps one of the landmark entries
in VR Gaming. For many people, Half Life Alyx
convinced them that VR gaming is a revolutionary
technology, completely changing the way we
play games. While VR has been around for some
years before Alyx, people were sceptical that
it could gain mainstream appeal. Alyx confirmed
that VR could be the future of video gaming.
Gone will be the days of desktops, keyboards,
controllers, and their limitations. So, IGN
sat down with Gabe Newell, founder and CEO
of Valve to interview him about Alyx’s success.
But watch what Gabe says in these clips I’m
going 
to play. He’s saying in this interview that
a direct interface between your brain and
your computer is already possible, and more
feasible than we realise. Soon, we’ll be
controlling video game characters just by
thinking. Before we’ve even had the chance
to let VR revolutionise the industry, we’re
already looking at the next “extinction-level
event”. I don’t know if it’s as shocking
to you, but it caught me off guard. Of course,
Gabe Newell’s just being a good businessman.
He knows that brain-computer interfaces are
the future that gamers want, the future we
didn’t even realise we wanted yet. And the
entire capitalist system, from planning to
advertising, is built upon predicting what
consumers will want: and not just predicting
it, but making that prediction become real,
like a self-fulfilling prophecy. What I mean
is that we didn’t know we wanted an iPhone
until Steve Jobs went on stage and created
that desire for us. And similarly for brain-computer
interfaces, we didn’t know we wanted it
yet. All Gabe Newell needs to do, when the
technology is ready to market, is to create
the desire in us for the product. The paradox
of advertising is that it both discovers and
manufactures desire: it discovers it like
an astronomer discovers a planet, but at the
same time creates it, like a god who makes
planets ex nihilo, out of nothing. In this
way, the production of commodities is tailored
towards market desires, both predicted and
planned, and the trends or habits of consumption
by consumers. If consumers habitually consume
certain kinds of products – let’s say,
Marvel movies, rom coms, sequels to existing
franchises, video game spin-offs – then
companies and corporations are going to follow
the trends that promise the most profit. Pop
music sells because it’s… pop music. What
consumers habitually, repetitively consume
is what steers the decisions of every industry.
If consumers want fast meals, accessible music,
simple to understand and reliably feel-good
sitcoms – in other words, commodities that
are as close to braindead as possible, requiring
next to no thought, no decision-making, no
challenging of your beliefs and presuppositions
or your moral compass – then companies will
deliver. They will meet your demand, like
dutiful capitalists. Food becomes easier to
eat, packages become cheaply disposable, storylines
become simpler, jokes become more comforting
and feel-good, TV shows turn their characters
into caricatures of themselves. Reality around
us shapes itself to slowly conform to our
wants, because capitalism is centred on want.
But let’s not forget that it knows what
we want before we know what we want. In other
words, capitalism doesn’t stay in a state
of homeostasis. Capitalism changes, and that’s
because it needs to evolve infinitely, transform
infinitely. There will never be a state of
satisfaction, where every consumer says “That’s
enough.” and capitalism stops expanding.
It needs to not only meet demand, but to stoke
its flames by keeping us in a state of wanting,
by making sure there’s always something
new. But we consume. And the truth is, we
even enjoy consuming it. We eventually start
to understand that satisfaction is never gonna
come from commodities, but we still like the
temporary enjoyment that comes from them.
But how do we consume? It’s not something
straightforward or intuitive. We learn that
there are certain rituals, or what I like
to call certain protocols, we follow when
consuming. What is your protocol for watching
a twitch stream of Valorant, or binge-watching
YouTube clips of your favourite game show?
If it’s a twitch stream, maybe you say hello
on the chat first, try to get the streamer’s
attention, maybe play along with some of the
insider jokes, memes, and catchphrases that
the streamer uses. Maybe you sit and watch
them play for hours, because there’s no
editing involved and there’s always a sense
of Live interaction. If it’s YouTube, maybe
you sit down with a box of snacks first, or
a cup of tea, and you skip the ads that you
can skip, or sit through the ads you can’t;
you allow YouTube’s recommendation algorithm
to lead you from one video to the next. Maybe
you save some videos to your playlist of favourites.
Once in a while, you watch new genres or shows
you haven’t seen before that are in the
recommended list. It’s very similar to Netflix,
or Spotify, where the algorithm keeps you
in a never-ending stream of content, of recommendations.
And what you always get are similar, but slightly
different content: maybe a different streamer
who plays the same game, or maybe an artist
in the same genre. The protocols of consumption
are shaped by the commodity itself: the way
the interface is designed, be it disposable
plastic straws or swipe-right for dating apps.
These protocols, in other words, shape our
daily behaviours. Messenger apps shape the
way we communicate, digital streaming platforms
shape the way we participate in music, film,
and comedy, and dating apps shape the way
we attract each other, the way we make romantic
connections. And all of these protocols performed
over time become habits: habits of consumption,
habits which become patterns on the macro
scale, patterns of consumption and demand
that feedback into capitalist production.
But I want to ask you, don’t you agree that
these repetitive protocols shape not only
our behaviours, but the way we think? Is it
possible that it shapes our consciousness,
our sense of identity and freedom, our “individuality”?
Are we reproduced, just like commodities…
after all, don’t schools, churches, and
shopping malls essentially churn out the same
kind of people through dogma and habit…?
The French Marxist, Louis Althusser put it
like this: ‘Every child knows that a social
formation which did not reproduce the conditions
of production at the same time as it produced
would not last a year. The ultimate condition
of production is therefore the reproduction
of the conditions of production. This may
be ‘simple’ (reproducing exactly the previous
conditions of production) or ‘on an extended
scale’ (expanding them).’ In other words,
any system – biological, social, economic,
political – needs to replicate the environment
that enables it to exist in the first place,
in order to continue existing. What do we
make of the thesis that capitalism is repetitive?
Well, consider this portrait of Marilyn Monroe
– and as an aside, it’s interesting to
think how her little mole played a large role
in the fantasies of her as a female sex icon
– and as a further aside, that she was not
a dumb blonde by any means, but very intellectual
and interested in things like psychoanalysis.
Anyway, this series of portraits were created
by Andy Warhol, famous for his repetitive
paintings of, for example, Campbell’s Soup
Cans. When asked why he painted this, Warhol
replied: ‘I used to have the same lunch
every day, for twenty years, I guess, the
same thing over and over again.’ Warhol
was making art in a time when mass production
and commodification were taking place, when
even people could be commodified through images.
Speaking on the theme of repetition in his
work, he said: ‘The more you look at the
same exact thing, the more the meaning goes
away, and the better and emptier you feel.’
We can think about the effects of repetition
through his work, Atomic Bomb. Notice how
as the image goes on, with each copy, the
image gets worse and worse. It’s like photocopying
the same image over and over again: it reaches
a point where nothing of the original is left.
And when we look at the content we consume,
be it Twitch personalities or pop music or
feel-good procedural sitcoms, do we have any
sense of the original that once existed behind
all the copies? Who was the first authentic
streamer, the first authentic pop musician?
Maybe we could say, like Jean Baudrillard,
that there never was an original. I’ll leave
you with that thought of how capitalism relates
to authenticity. So, to count your attendance
for this lesson, I'm giving you an individual
task. Simply leave a comment, below this video
in the comments section, with your FULL NAME
and answering 
this question: “…” Now you can answer
this at any length, short or long, just write
your answer by Sunday so I can mark your attendance.
And do think genuinely about this question,
because it gets at the heart of character
formation, about how you and I have been shaped
as characters by the system of production
around us. Now, I’m thinking that next Monday
should be a live lecture. I’ll set two 1-hour
slots where we can meet and discuss our next
topic, which, for a little teaser, is about
Sigmund Freud and the unconscious. Thank you,
over and out!
