The Commodified Commode
In this reading by DeBord, there clearly existed an overlying theme of commodities. He argued that commodities were acquired to build towards a level of privatization. There also exists an illusion of perceived commodities. These are things that are not necessary for survival, but rather as a measure of success, as everyone else seems to need them.
When I was reading this, multiple things came to mind as examples of this “illusion of commodities.” An example of acquiring commodities to build towards privatization is represented by peoples’ desire to obtain automobiles. If a family of drivers has enough cars for each person, then they need not rely on anyone else for transportation. They don’t have to take the city bus or even pool with other family members. They are within their own private cocoon of glass and steel. Taking it an extreme step further, if someone is successful enough, they can acquire their own private jet, which takes out the entire facet of the airport. Accelerated commodification at it’s finest.
Other people will look at this family of drivers who have a car per person, and wonder how living could be done any other way. They do as any human does in a society and compare themselves. Suddenly, cars are not longer a luxury, they are a necessary commodity. Before you know it, going on the bus is taboo, and if you don’t have your own car you are a social reject, isolated within your pathetic home.
In this reading, money is said to be the emissary of something much graver. Currency is the middleman for commodification. Worthwhile experience that would enrich lives is suddenly slapped with a dollar amount. The beautiful scenery of a forest is gated off and pawned off as a service, because people are charging to protect it. Suddenly nature is a commodified service, something that needs to be kept up rather that occurring naturally.
Back to toilets. Society frowns on one urinating or defecating (‘wizz’n’ or ‘drop’n a deuce’ in laymen’s terms) in public. So how does someone cash in on this social norm? In Europe they do so by commodifying the toilet. Now the toilet is another commodified service. Society is providing a service by charging natural human facility. What is next, fines for orgasms and tax reductions for abstinence?
What DeBord as implicitly stated here is that anything can be commodified, and that instead of finding another way, humans simply work towards acquiring those commodities. By putting a price on necessary things that should be free, and creating an illusion of necessity for those things that are trivial.
Tim Turi