Ex Machina Consumerism

Zygmunt Bauman (2007:28) in his book, Consuming Life, states that the term ‘consumerism’ defines a society that has become dependent on the human wants and desires as the primary driving force. When consumption takes on the essential role previously played by work in society, consumerism appears, therefore the problems of inequality cannot be taken seriously unless the reason behind why humans need luxuries and how they are used is discovered (Bauman 2007:28). One should note that the main difference between consumption and consumerism in that consumption is a trait of human being while consumerism is a characteristic of society (Bauman 2007:28). For a society to acquire the longing, desiring and wanting characteristic the society needs to

The notion of consumerism can be further explained through the use of various elements that the film Ex Machina (Garland 2015) offers. As clarified above, the difference between consumption and consumerism relates to the individual and the society together. Consumption can be understood as the individuals that are passionate about science fiction films as a certain trait that they possess draws them to these films, or individuals such as scientists that strive to create robots much like Ava in order to attempt to create the perfect ‘human’ in hope to eventually create a utopian world. On the other hand, consumerism, in terms of this film can imply that the cinema tickets society pays for entertainment, i.e. to watch films, and money that scientists receive from society, whether from salary or from their own achievements, causes scientists to want to create this utopian

This can also link to Ex Machina (Garland 2015) as Nathan created these AI’s to satisfy his sexual and emotional desires whereas consumer society attempts to satisfy the desires humans possess. In consumer culture humans behave ‘unreflexively’ which denotes that humans behave without thinking about the consequences to follow and it indicates their conscious reflection of what to consume instead of focussing on the more essential questions of life (Bauman 2007:52). Nathan did not think of the feared consequences if his AI’s actually do gain self-awareness and try to abuse him to escape, therefore Nathan behaved unreflexively when creating these AI’s. The life of a consumer is primarily about being on the move, and not revolved around what to possess and to acquire, neither is it about discarding the possession acquired in the past (Bauman 2007:46). Saying that consumers should always be in motion means that they should continuously be motivated to be someone better and fear stagnation and boredom (Bauman 2007:69). Within a liquid modern society of consumers change in a modern society occurs rapidly and more regularly than before, therefore identities are