Free «Commodification» Essay Paper

Introduction

Commodification refers to the process of actions related to the impression that something or someone is deeply associated with the position that ordinarily accompany commercial transactions.  The commercial transactions maybe aimed for short-term or long-term benefits. Worry about commodification and objectification smack a discerning, or even disturbing, harmony with ourselves. It can be argued that close up consideration to ethical and social implications is defensible exactly where hesitation about the potential impact of technologies upon attitudes, values and behavior is most insidious.  The procedure by which commodification can take place, as well as the results of those procedure, is miscellaneous, mainly with esteem to a human being. Commodification can be into reference of so many things and situations.

Discussion

To start with is the violation of the obliquity to respect level for a person referring to another person as a thing that can be sold? Second it is the alteration of a person moral status, so the person assumes the role of a particular product without their will. Thirdly, it is through alteration of awareness of people directly concerned in the market place transactions. Here, the market place participants are reduced to mere objects; they value themselves in terms of cash rather than in terms of human being characteristics. Lastly it is through altering the ability for people to sense and learn how to value each other in terms of moral responsibility. This is because, they live under a society that permits in one way or the other the sale of persons but, they do not organize the transactions themselves.

 

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Latest expertise like genetic engineering can pilot to commodification in any way that the result is "dramatic changes in the sensibilities of participants and observers," or because such expertise "entrench, reinforce, or make seem more natural and inevitable, attitudes or beliefs that are already widely held."  (Shapiro)An intimately linked but maybe extra comprehensive notion is that of objectification.  This in reference to Michael Shapiro. Through Paying money to get a child, may attribute the child's condition as a product, but more in general, it advocates that the child is a thing or object. One cannot turn out to be an object without commerce as the key constituent of the objectification process. Take an example of the parents who give their children some growth hormones to enhance their capabilities or talents. This ability ranges from athleticism to fashion modeling. Others go an extra mile by inserting genes that cipher growth hormone into the early embryo. This is all done in the name of future commercial long-term harvest. Harvest here means the amount of money generated by the “talents” of the now fully adult embryo or child.  This is the worst case of objectification.

Both commodification and objectification is based on “association of ideas".  By making reproduction as a process that can be procured, manipulated and contracted for, the modern expertise promote the outlook that women are apparatus for duplication in the sense of reproduction, this ,therefore, makes their babies or fetuses to assume the role of commercial commodities. The discussion linked with assisted human being reproduction as well present illustration of objectification. This success of in vitro fertilization health center is often judged in stipulations of their "take-home baby rate". These technologies pose a threat to body parts and the whole persons making it in some cases of dangerous knowledge to destroy nature way of doing things. If couples have the power to choose exactly what features their own baby should have, the dynamic structure of our society will collapse.

Other people might want to clone their babies to have a distinctive feature, making them have advantages of others in the society. Greedy people with self interests in their mind will change the way and reasons that make people appreciate themselves, especially the poor. Nature has a peculiar way of balancing the whole society and all the dynamics within that society. If such a thing arises then, there will be no use of holding certain competitions such as a beauty pageant, maybe just to see who cloned best. This will automatically disqualify the poor in the society since they will not have the ability to clone their own children. This will widen the immense gap in the society, between the poor and the rich. The ability to know and even manipulate the genetic structure of a person is not at the moment the right direction to go. The society is not prepared for something of such magnitude. The best way to solve is to find the alternative solution to solve the problems that the stem cells of embryos can solve. Otherwise, the society should first prepare a platform for the genetic engineering process, in a manner that it will not affect the society. After laying this platform, there should be no challenge holding back the advancement of genetic technology.

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There is more to the celebrity lifestyle than meets the eyes, solely surviving on pure talent is extremely hard to achieve success as a celebrity. There are people behind the celebrities who guide, coordinate and to drive the celebrities to the top of fame gaining their own yield from this. Mockups, artistes and footballers, are viewed as objects which can be castoff, vended and subscribed.  Despite their opinions being sought, it does not necessarily facilitate the final price of them. Do you ever wonder how football clubs come-up with the value of players? It is mutual knowledge that the domain of show business is not an ordinary place to be and requires someone with skills to maneuver around a dominancy of corrupt and filthy persons. Government policies are to blame for such growth of moral decay in the societies. In many casts, you will find underage girls being ruled to forced sex, rape, in exchange for fame and wealth.  This is the reason why they often have sex with their directors or the producers, reducing them to objects of sex by the mighty producers.

Obscene peculiar behaviors of objectification and commodification can be found in the many adverts that are aimed mostly for the male gender. A common example is the almost nude girls that are associated with hot cars adverts. The depiction makes one to assume that the cars come along with the girls or the beauty of the girl is equivalent to the girl on the advert.  Million assumptions can be made by the target of the advert but certainly at the end, point of putting a naked woman at an advert for comparison is immoral. John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” is primarily based on criticism of such adverts and the way the societies interpret what it sees in the adverts with commodification sense. It is not necessarily that the portrayal comes from adverts alone, our own way of thinking and talking can contribute to commodification. It is a comparison between how people appreciate and respect each other during such business transaction in the aim of rapid marketing.

Berger argues that by sampling each painting, photographs and graphic art, the image concept our eyes are exposed to is not the only thing that happens. When we look at such images, two things happen. First, our eyes are exposed to the image, everyone sees the same image. John Berger says,” The way we see a thing is affected by what we know or what we believe”.  This is influenced by the assumptions of civilization, class and gender.  (John Berger & Corporation)

Second, we start to communicate with the image.  They say a single picture can generate a million views. For that purpose, Berger takes the task of questioning our ability to generate accurate and relevant views from a picture. Though we can generate the million views from a single picture, some things cannot be wholly explained through words alone. Pictures play large and decisive role of taking place and task of effectively explaining what cannot be explained in words. This maybe is due to the purpose of advertising and other actions that must be communicated to the whole society. People have different views based on their upbringing environment and intelligence. Intelligence to manipulate the picture and what we see is solely necessary to explain what cannot be said through words but pictures.

The relationship between what our eyes comes across, and the picture already in our mind about that thing defines our vision. This enables a person to outline the relation between the things they see and themselves. It creates a dialogue within us. One starts to question each picture at a certain point of the picture then to the rest image.

Berger says,” and often dialogue is an attempt to verbalize this-an attempt to explain how, either metaphorically or literally, ‘you see things’ and discover how ‘he sees things’.”  (John Berger & Corporation 26). Let’s take a basic example of an ordinary person. The person buys a magazine and comes across a picture of maybe a well dressed model in the latest fashion. The person attention will be caught at a particular point, the shoes, the jeweler or the clothing. Then the person starts to visualize them being in such a picture accompanied by what interest them most in the model. The final thing is for the person to imagine and visualize is people viewing them in such a photo (John Berger & Corporation 29).

Despite different upbringing of people in terms of religion, beliefs and customs and sex, inborn distinction and not heredity should power a person capability to explain the phenomena behind a picture or whatever images he comes across. There are those that are valid only in a certain field of criticism of what they see and are termed as haters or not optimistic enough. People that poses unique powers to at least have a manipulate images in every field and are termed as advisers. Thus, it is extremely true to say as it is said, every person is talented in a way or the other but not every person is intelligent in terms of “seeing”.

John Berger clearly state that between the action of seeing and giving definition with words, seeing will be the first action. Since everyone is born with no wisdom or knowledge in this world, then what the society exposes the person to is what become the character of the person. Seeing can be compared to exposure and character to the spoken words of what is seen. We do not necessarily have to speak out, but what and how we interpret what we see matters a lot.

Looking closer the seeing and interpreting is an exceedingly difficult task for the society due to the difference in cultural beliefs and religion. Let take an example where two people comes across an advert depicting a naked woman. If these people hold different religious views, the picture will be reviewed by the two persons in terms of religious views rather than in terms of artistic work.  Every religion is against immorality such as depicting women in nude adverts. The only difference in the religious view of such immorality is the empirical state of the church. When one is born, he comes into this world without any philosophical or religious view. Then what drives people to hold different views at alter stage of life? Is it the exposure that they are brought up in or is it their own intelligence?

Knowledge of seeing is a combination of several intellectual factors that contribute to wisdom. This is capacity to take quick and correct interpretation of a picture or problem coming with conclusive and reliable ideas within a short time account. This is increasingly becoming a bit difficult than the ancient times due to the extent of technology complexity of the specialized knowledge required of various kinds of fields in the world today.  Technology makes it easier for a person to fit in multiple seeing positions. Suppose that a person is conducting a research in scientific medicine. The task is quite hard to accomplish as it is likely to absorb the whole of his potential intelligence energy.  Just as there is a specialization in the world today seeing and interpreting may seem as a special branching in the field of wisdom. When allocated a task many people will at first look at whether you have knowledge of seeing the given task in relevant ways. After performing the task, they will try to understand your seeing power, whether you have the required wisdom to manipulate the task to achieve a better outcome than the required. If an individual posses a lot of personal seeing, and relative interpretation the person is qualified to adapt to any situation.

How would one refer to naked women in any painting? Since there is no crime committed in such pictures, the only problem is the purpose of such a picture or painting to the painter, the one painted and the viewer.  Get her naked image or view a naked image of a woman? Looking at these questions one by one the conclusive answer is that all the three parties are looked for a platform of the idea expression. This is in the sense that the person producing the naked images would like to try his hand at producing sensitive work that many have not ventured. While the viewer, and the person being painted are after a different approach of seeing things. Things here refer to the nudity.

Berger shows a crummy picture of traditional interpretation methods to the society. This is due to the fact the art work promoted envy and was a way of promoting materialism. Materialism in the sense of men owning, painting and viewing nude women.

Conclusion

Objectification and commodification of human beings is an old social evil which has been enhanced by the presence of new trends in civilization. The major catalyst for its growth is the greed for money and fame. The issue is whether it does not controvert to the rudimentary human characters as dignity and honor. Doubtless, it is high time people put a stop to the foreseeable procedures of deterioration before the  world  turns to callous objects, which can barely, be termed human beings.