Fascist Spectacle.pdf

Fascist Spectacle http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft18700444&chunk.id=0&doc.v...
― 126 ―
glory. Fascism could not tolerate the existence of personal aspirations, the possibility of choosing. The
suppression of private desires was necessary to eliminate individual initiatives and conflicting
demands. Hence, fascism's attack on the senses led to the totalitarian intrusion into the personal,
private sphere—a space that through incessant regulation became politicized at the same moment that
it was in principle denied.
In reality, however, the suppression of the senses and the taming of the "masses" was not an
easily accomplished task for the regime, especially at a time when a developing consumer culture was
beginning to establish itself in many Western countries. Indeed, Mussolini feared consumption's
potentially disruptive effects. The multiplication of desires and temptations, as the necessary result of
an enlarged spectrum of options, would threaten to reintroduce individualistic principles into a society
that was being organized around totalitarian premises. In contrast to social critics who viewed the
suppression of individuality and the coming of a "one-dimensional" world as the most negative
consequences of mass propaganda and consumerism, the Italian fascists questioned consumption from
the perspective of its emancipatory force (although they were also afraid of the leveling effects of
mass production). The aesthetic being a "contradictory, double-edged concept," as Eagleton
argues, [29] fascism dreaded consumption's appeal to the senses and its potential to provoke a revolt
against power. [30] In this fear, however, fascism was not alone. Its worries about consumption and
modernity reflected the terms of a moral controversy that took place in many European countries and
the United States at the turn of the twentieth century around the question of mass consumption.
Although the development of a consumer public interested in commodities is sometimes situated
as far back as the fifteenth century, with the rise of a global trade network, [31] the preoccupation with
consumer culture's effects on society became intense at the fin de siècle. It was only then that the
growing production of goods gave wide strata of the population access to items previously obtainable
only by the upper class. The mass availability of once unreachable products seemed to be encouraging
more and more people to possess certain objects in order to achieve a higher social status. The
emphasis on luxury, seen as a result of the imitation of superior models, caused economists, social
scientists, and philosophers to worry about the consequences on civilization of the democratic
revolution. [32] In France, the morality of the desire to consume became an important topic of
discussion. The proliferation of unlimited wants solicited an answer to the basic question: "How could
the modern economic imperative to multiply needs be rec-
― 127 ―
onciled with the moral tradition inherited from Christian and non-Christian antiquity, which counseled
self-discipline and restraint of desire?" [33] Economic rationale seemed to dictate that a consumption
system was necessary, but consumption appeared to many to be undermining the morality of society.
Which should one renounce, morality or progress? And were the two actually incompatible? The debate
also addressed the problem of the future of civilization if progress were stopped and the issue of social
justice. On the one hand, it was argued, inequality motivates people to work hard in order to attain
what others possess, and in this process progress is enhanced. On the other hand, equality establishes
social harmony, which grants well-being. Others claimed that consumerism would not necessarily bring
inequality. [34] In the end, however, the quest to find happiness through material possessions seemed
to many an enslavement of the spirit, a moral degradation. Thus, whether individual consumption was
directed toward the acquisition of social status or the achievement of personal self-fulfillment, its
deleterious consequences came under attack. [35] Émile Durkheim, for example, wrote that
consumption fed "a fevered imagination," which would bring the individual to anomic behavior. [36] For
Durkheim, society was possible only if people sacrificed themselves and established social bonds
through communal rituals, so he proposed to restrict consumption in order to prevent an objectified
and materialistic life. This detachment from the mundane and "profane" world, through what was
considered a limited form of asceticism, would allow the individual to enter the sacred—that is, the
social. In this process, every person would end up acknowledging society's authority, with rituals
sanctifying this recognition. [37]
In Wilhelmine Germany, an ambivalent reaction to consumerism also took place in discussions
about luxury's impact on middle- and working-class people and about how to manage the changes
brought about by modernity. [38] Between 1900 and 1914 several articles and books of both academic
and popular circulation debated the question of whether luxury was harmful or beneficial. [39]
Continuing a century-old attack on luxury, which was then limited to the aristocracy, critics of
conspicuous consumption targeted all classes who seemingly spent beyond their means. Instead of
advocating the widespread banning of luxury, however, these critics set forth a productivist ethos as a
76 of 199 7/11/2006 12:54 AM