Consumption

July 26, 2018

‘C O N S U M P T I O N"‘ reflects on Jon Stratton’s The Desirable Body: Cultural Fetishism and the Erotics of Consumption (2001) which examines the intersection of commodity culture and gender studies. Drawing from Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism and Freud’s writing on sexual fetishism, Stratton dissects the cultural practices and ideological structures that, since around 1850, have brought about the spectacularization and fetishization of the female body in visual culture within capitalist societies.

Within this theoretical framework, the photographs explore how mass media frequently aligns sexual imagery with depictions of violence and domination. In advertising, cinema, and pornography alike, the eroticized female body is often rendered passive, fragmented, or degraded—coded not just as an object of desire but an object for consumption. This visual grammar teaches us to read domination as erotic, and submission as a site of fantasy.

By staging these tropes in a highly stylized manner, the diptych aims to expose the inherent power dynamics embedded in visual pleasure (i.e., seeing) and prompts us to consider the economy of spectacle and the systems that shape our fantasies. In line with Stratton’s analysis, the photographs do not offer resolution but rather foreground contradiction. They occupy the tense space where desire and discomfort meet.