• Title/Summary/Keyword: Commodity fetishism

Search Result 10, Processing Time 0.024 seconds

Fetishist Characteristics and Aesthetic Values of Glamour Style (글래머 스타일의 물신주의적 특성과 미적 가치)

  • Park, Ju-Hee;Kim, Min-Ja
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
    • /
    • v.57 no.4 s.113
    • /
    • pp.173-187
    • /
    • 2007
  • The purpose of this study is to analyze the fetishist characteristics and the aesthetic values of glamour style based on the premise that fetishism is the theoretical root of glamour style expressed in fashion throughout history. The following results are from analysing fetishist characteristics of glamour style. First, luxury was analysed from an angle of commodity fetishism. Every culture develops images and stories that portray a world in which its ideals are realized: a paradise, a utopia, a golden age, etc. Consumer goods often serve as 'bridges to these ideals'. People thus can fantasize about owning the perfect life. Crucially, however, they must never get everything they picture. That is why luxuries often take on displaced meaning. Glamour gives the displaced meaning visual form, making it beautiful and real. Second, the attention on the glamour of luxury goods as a bridge to ideals is connected to the glamour icon who is simultaneously a consumer of these luxury goods and a producer of cultural goods. Glamour icons including the courtesan of the late 19th century, the actress of the 1930s' Hollywood golden age and today's celebrities appear to efface the traces of production and create fetishist images in culture. Through this artificial principle, the commodity-cum-glamour icon comes to life as a splendid image of spectacle. Third, masquerade and seduction were analysed from an angle of sexual fetishism. A magnificent image of masquerade as sexual fetishism is often equated with femininity, especially in Hollywood movies, because the artificial seduction of the feminine -namely glamour- can be effected by the absence or silence of being. That is to say, the aesthetic revelation of femininity coincides with the fleshing out of artificial signs. Masquerade and the seduction of the feminine are connected with glamour's artificial sensuality from this point. Fourth, since 1980's when homosexuality as sexual deviation resurfaced as a hot topic, sexual ambiguity and bisexual image have gained attention as perverse sexuality. Next came queer theory, which reduced gender itself to a matter of surface rather than depth. According to queer theory, gender itself can be revealed as a kind of drag act. Drag's imitative performance may reveal that womanliness is just about 'dragging up'. Queerness as a decadent play makes a connection with the wicked origins of glamour. From these characteristics, four aesthetic values were deduced: ostentatious luxury and mysterious idolatry by commodity fetishism, artificial sensuality and playful queerness by sexual fetishism.

Symbolic Values of Fur in Fashion Since 1990s - An Analysis under the Theories of Fetishism -

  • Hahn, Soo-Yeon;Yang, Sook-Hi
    • Journal of Fashion Business
    • /
    • v.5 no.5
    • /
    • pp.49-64
    • /
    • 2001
  • Fur is conceived as a material signifier, not only with its commodity value as luxury goods but also as its symbolic value as objects invested by one's libidinal desire. In this study, complex meanings of fur as multi-layered signs of political and sexual power focusing on fetishism shall be explored, especially on the spectacle fetishism acted by mass media during the anti-fur movement in the 1980s. In conjuction herewith, a highlight shall also be made to the symbolic value in fashion design since 1990s. In this study, first, as a theoretical investigation, fetishism, that has been traditionally considered only as sexual fetishism in fashion discourse will be explored in socio-economic level. Second, in historical context, how the meanings and values of fur have become realized in various cultural spaces, such as literature, art, film and finally, fashion will be viewed. In fashion, fur is a product of desire and power influenced by commodity fetishism as well as sexual fetishism. During the anti-fur movement, mass media has developed the concept of spectacle fetishism. Fur is a sign of animal-victim, and fur-clad women is viewed with images full of imperialsm, sexism and racism, thus act as derisive spectacles of consumerism. Since 1990s as a reflection on anti-fur movement, fetishistic characteristics, which challenge traditional operation method, are expressed by disguise, parody, and returning to the nature. First, fur as disguise is intended to hide sexually perverse, decadent characteristics and expensiveness of fur by texturing or patterning techniques. Second, fur as parody uses fake fur or dyed fur in order to satirize erotically and ethnographically fetishized meanings of fur. Third, aboriginal design of fur is adapted to use symbolic values outside the West, which can potentially mobilize antagonistic oppositions out of their fetishistic regimes. In conclusion, fur as sign of female sexuality and its libidinal profits of exchange, has significant symbolic values expressed in fashion.

  • PDF

The Meaning of Geographical Education of Commodity through Relational Thinking (관계적 사고를 통한 상품의 지리 교육적 의미)

  • Kim, Byung-Yeon
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
    • /
    • v.46 no.4
    • /
    • pp.554-566
    • /
    • 2011
  • Consumer capitalism is transforming real geographical knowledge into imaginary one through commodity fetishism. As a result, students' ability to think themselves and commodity relationally become weak. Thus, the students cannot recognize the positional meanings of themselves in the global networks of food and ethically perceive environmental issues that generate due to the interrelation between the students and the commodity networks. In these problematic consciousness and situations, this research examine relation of commodity consumption and ethics through hamburger connection and insists that geographical education helps the students acquire insight into the relationship between food and themselves through relational thinking.

Economics of Literature: Transfer of 'Worth' to 'Value' (문학 경제학 -사용가치에서 교환가치로의 전이)

  • Yang, Byung-Hyun
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
    • /
    • v.55 no.5
    • /
    • pp.767-792
    • /
    • 2009
  • The two fields, economics of art and literature, tend to be put together as part of cultural economic studies; yet the former has been widely popular as compared to the latter. Economics of art has been known as part of social science which studies art economically. Similarly, economics of literature is likely to be an interdisciplinary study of literature and economics. Literature is suggested usually to reflect the economic base of a society as a form of its superstructure in view of classical Marxism; so, it is interesting to see social, economic activities, such as individual values and social institutions, income, price and opportunity cost, in a particular way of analyzing economic ideas in literature. Capital seems to have an innate property of self-expansion in literature; this property thus features actual economic life since in capitalism money is the universal value between persons and literary works. Specifically, the field of economics of literature starts with such ideas: economics of literature is part of cultural economics; and economics of literature deals with the economic value of literature. Putting interdisciplinary fields of literature and economics together, this study is to examine the economic value of literature in which Karl Marx talked about commodities with exchange value, use value, and fetishism. The exchange value is commercial worth, the actual exchange value of a publication; yet, the use value is innate worth, the aesthetic use value of literature. With commodity fetishism, profit seems not as the outcome of a social relation, but of a work- "reification" as the would-be Marxists suggest. As a commodity, the literary work appears to be able to animate life and power in reality. As a result, this paper asserts that social, economical activities in literature as we may apply to the study of economics of literature increase its economic value, implying commercial and innate worth, as the capital in the marketplace.

The Valorization of Media Capital through User's Activities (이용자를 통한 미디어 자본의 가치 창출)

  • Kim, Dongwon
    • Korean journal of communication and information
    • /
    • v.70
    • /
    • pp.165-188
    • /
    • 2015
  • This paper deals with the questions: Are media user's activities labour? Or rent? These questions have provoked a debate in the critical media studies and Marx's theory. But it is not a matter of choosing either labour or rent. Even if user's activities could contribute to valorization, it needs some mediating process. Media Platforms-Google, Facebook, etc.-play a key role, and have to employ other forms of labour. Labour in media platform produces some capital commodities. In view of media platform, Smythe's audience commodity can be considered as capital commodity. Assertion in this paper expected to provoke new debate on media platforms and its labourer.

  • PDF

A Study on the Images of Fashion Advertisements using Mirrors (거울을 이용한 패션 광고의 이미지 연구)

  • Choi, Yoo-Jin
    • Fashion & Textile Research Journal
    • /
    • v.11 no.2
    • /
    • pp.200-209
    • /
    • 2009
  • Mirrors often appear in fashion advertisements. This study aimed to analyze meanings of the images represented in fashion advertisements using mirrors. This study analyzed the meanings of mirror image in Western art history, and also studied meanings of female representations in the paintings. Based on previous studies, this study classified mirrors' expressions in three types and analyzed their meanings. To analyze the meanings of the three types, this study researched the symbolic meanings of the mirrors in visual arts chronologically, first. And then, this study interpreted that in the context of consumption cultures and consuming ideologies in view of feminism, consumption ideology, desire theory, and fetishism. The results of this study were as follows; 1. Narcistic body expressions associated with strong and independent women, while associated submissive being overwhelmed by consumption cultures. 2. The method of revealing the female body throughout mirrors was meant to attract the attention of consumer. 3. Multiplied body images meaning was like a commodity in fashion advertisements.

Robert McLiam Wilson's Eureka Street: (Post)Modernity and the Social Ethics of Infinity

  • Kim, Sangwook
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
    • /
    • v.64 no.4
    • /
    • pp.531-550
    • /
    • 2018
  • This paper contemplates egalitarian ethics and ecumenical consumerism suggesting expansive possibilities of Northern Ireland's sectarian limits towards unlimited spatialities in Robert McLiam Wilson's Belfast novel, Eureka Street. This paper argues that Northern Ireland's (Belfast's) (post)modernity and a social ethics promoting outwardly mediated relationships are a vision for nonidentity Eureka Street espouses against the identity politics of Protestant-Catholic schism. Eureka Street remarkably challenges Northern Irish sectarian politics propelling inwardly unmediated relationships by ethical possibilities of infinitively mediated relationships. In the argument for a postmodern view of the novel, commodity fetishism and consumerism are considered as key to a prospect of emancipation of Northern Ireland from the political fetters of total identity the partisan communities impose on themselves. This paper also demonstrates that a post-national cosmopolitanism Eureka Street envisages embraces a new social solidarity predicated upon socio-political pluralisms against Northern Irish sectarian identities.

Socio-cultural Meanings in Advertisement of Fashion Luxury Products -Focused on Women`s Images- (패션명품 광고에 나타난 사회문화적 의미 -여성 이미지를 중심으로-)

  • Yang, Sook-Hi;Hahn, Soo-Yeon
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
    • /
    • v.29 no.2
    • /
    • pp.267-278
    • /
    • 2005
  • Fashion luxury products, which used to mean high-quality, handcrafted not-so-trendy items, are nowadays regarded as expensive fashion merchandise produced under the name of imported well-known brands. People cunsuming fashion luxury products distinguish themselves from other people according to the luxury fashion brands they are using, and as a result, advertisements of fashion luxury products are taken as a kind of international language. The purpose of this study is to point out the socio-cultural meanings of consuming fashion luxury products, by analyzing images shown in advertisements of fashion luxury products focusing on women's images. To do so, this study is based on general theoretical background on fashion, consumer culture advertising and analysis advertisements of fashion luxury products shown in fashion magazines in recent three years. The result of this study is as follows; The images of the advertisements of fashion luxury products could be categorized as (1) elegance, (2) kitsch and (3) fetish. Elegance is a taste of high society, aesthetically chic and feminine. Fashion luxury products, which are merchandise of extravagance, dignity, refinement, feminity and harmony, exhibit high-quality grace through their advertisements. Kitsch represents the vulgar and popular images of trivial commodities of industrial society. In the advertisement of fashion luxury product, it is shown as inappropriateness, excessiveness, stereotyped pleasantness, exaggeration an playful satisfaction. Finally, fetish images represent erotic or perverted sexuality, based on psychoanalytic fetishism which objects are regarded s substitute of sexual orgasm. The advertisements of fashion luxury product are characterized as (1) popularization of luxury, (2) objectification of sex and body, and (3) re-aestetification of anti-aesthetics. The asvertisements of fashion luxury products are actually targeted to the middle class with successful career women's images. They objectify female bodies through fetishistic images. Also, the deviant subcultural style, represented a new kind of cultural capital, is now reproduced as a new commodity aesthetics.

Mouk-Epic and "Novelization": Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (의사영웅시와 "소설화"-『머리카락 강탈』을 중심으로)

  • Lee, Hye-Soo
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
    • /
    • v.55 no.5
    • /
    • pp.865-883
    • /
    • 2009
  • The mock-heroic, "the single most characteristic and individual literary form of the neoclassical era," as Brean Hammond puts it, epitomizes the process of the "novelization" of the 18th-century British culture. Bakhtin mentions that when the novel reigns supreme, almost all the remaining genres are "novelized"; Hammond borrows the term "novelization" from Bakhtin and uses it as a "shorthand way of referring to the cultural forces that render epic anachronistic." Indebted to Hammond's apprehension of novelization, this paper reads Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock in the context of novelization, particularly focusing on 'probability,' 'contemporaneity' and 'domesticity,' three important signatures of the novelization of the 18th-century British culture. First, Sylph as a counterpart of god in epic is presented in The Rape of the Lock just as a helpless, fictional and irrelevant thing that hardly affects the empirical world. It indicates how the mock-epic 'mocks' the classical world of 'epic' and stands closer to the world of the novel. Second, Pope's poem displays an accurate picture of the author's contemporary reality, a capital concern of the novel, such as imperialism, consumer society, commodity fetishism, or reification. Lastly, The Rape of the Lock lays out the construction of modern gender ideology, another quintessential interest of the novel, particularly with the fixed female image of a coquette. It efficiently silences and nullifies Belinda, a typical coquette, who stands as a threatening force to the ascendent domestic ideology.