In post-modern society, what people get from commodities is not the real benefit they can get from them, for example, today someone buys a car not just to satisfy his transport problems. In fact, it fulfills a different kind of cultural need. In this social context, the technological devices used in the home reflect the social status of the person. This pervert relationship between consumer products and man is a symptom of post-capitalism.
The nature of this new civilization that has already entered our society is best illustrated by the telephone and social media. Of these, the telephone today is not only used as a means of communication, in particular, the mobile phone is used for other purposes, such as either a radio or a camera. Apart from that the mobile phone has become a tool that provides services such as games, television, calendar, MP3 recorder, bank and post office etc. The arrival of mobile telephone has made societies’ cultural needs up right down.
Mobile phones and love
Because of this, an inquiry about mobile phone’s mediation towards love and sex becomes a reading about post-society. Lars von Trier’s ‘Breaking the Waves’ movie provides another dimension to read this society and its reversal.
The movie is about a new married couple, Bess a young woman who marries a rig worker Jan and he had to work far away from her in sea. Bess has difficulty living without Jan and prays for his immediate return. In fact Jan returned. But as a weak person who got injured from an accident. Jan was no longer able to perform sexually and mentally. Then Jan asks her to have sex with strangers and tell him the details of those sexual contacts. She sees that his health condition was become progressed because of her narration. The details of her sexual encounters gave Jan more satisfaction than having sex with Bess.
Virtual stimulation
The purpose of this article is not to review a film. This is about mobile sex which is virtually made using mobile phones. Mobile sex is a different reading of the story of the ‘Breaking Waves’. Couples on both sides of the mobile phone get lot of stimulation, just as inactive Jan get stimulation when he hears the details of his wife’s romantic behavior. The important thing is that they do not get such stimulation even when they are physically together. Here I am reminded of an ad watched on TV. A couple three or four feet apart in the same house are having a love conversation on their mobile phones. Inertia or rather hindrance like Jan and Bess has come between them. It is a barrier they have created to maintain the desire. Jan and Bess in the movie as well as the couple in the TV commercial are misled by the illusion that sex is a reality.
For Slavoj Zizek this is the binary opposition between inter passivity and inter activity. Clearly, in today’s broader media society, the spectator is no longer an active viewer. In most TV comedy shows, audience does not have to laugh where they should laugh. Laughter is heard in the background. Zizek likens this to the wailing of mourning women at funerals. Zizek says that in the end it is the object, not me, that is satisfied. No wonder you see on TV a scene where two mobile phones are kissing and getting ready for intercourse. In fact, mobile phones are intensifying the fetishism of commodities. Thus human relationships become only relationships between things. In short, in a fetish tic universe, people mistake relationships between things for human relationships.
Fantasy and social status
According to the Marxist reading of fetishism, we regard commodities not only as mere objects. They are things that have an inherent power of their own. It is because of this fantasy that consumer goods have a special power to elevate social status.
Now when it comes to mobile intercourse, it is not just a woman and a man, but two phones. In short, two mobile phones make love for us. Then in this cyberspace there is no such thing as love between two people. Love is a displacement as between two things (mobile phones). Or the mobile phone has become a substitute for love.