Peepshow Follies of 1938

(Fais Do-Do, 16 August 2013)

What Marx used to call exploitation, what feminists used to call objectification, what the layman calls a repugnant transaction, and what the philosopher intuits as injustice consists in having little choice but to make a living of a small and common subset of individual characteristics. This subset's commonality leads to vigorous competition, which makes so earned living meagre. This subset's smallness makes so earned living dull.

The way to improve an individual's condition is to expand the choices available to him, instead of circumscribing modes of employment. The involuntary, idle poverty brought about by such circumscription would hurt more than exploitation does.

The mundane serial exposure of common bodies lacks a narrative and aesthetic gratification. It is not art. (There is more art at an afternoon SkyBar, in the fabric flirting with the breeze and the bodies undulating with each step.) This exposure may lead to intellectual gratification, however. There is liberation in acknowledging the mundane as such. There is a promise in bodily small talk, however common.