In this blog post, we explore the complex meanings of human identity and urban experiences through the lives of modern cities, where production, consumption, and sensibilities collide.
The lifestyle of modern cities has attracted the attention of many scholars. For a long time, the dominant perspective was that of the production school, which focused on the labor aspect of lifestyle. The production school focused on how the industrial revolution shaped the labor patterns unique to modern cities. They first noticed that the modern production system, equipped with new technologies, attracted large numbers of workers from all over the country to the cities. They also explored how people with diverse customs became workers who moved uniformly in accordance with the rhythm of large-scale machinery. For example, Michel Foucault studied what disciplinary strategies were employed to turn workers into docile bodies that performed ascetic labor in accordance with group discipline so that they could be exploited. Furthermore, the production school accused workers of losing their inner world of sensory and emotional experiences and becoming mere objects while being exploited by mechanized labor. From this perspective, modern cities seem like giant production machines where no pleasure or fantasy can exist.
In response, the consumption school began to criticize the production school, arguing that modern city dwellers had not been reduced to objects that had lost their inner world. For example, Colin Campbell argued that even Puritans, who had an ascetic spirit, had a self-delusional hedonism in their consumption patterns. There is inevitably a time lag between the desire to satisfy a deficiency and the actual satisfaction of that desire. However, in modern cities, this gap does not lead to frustration, but rather creates a subjective fantasy of a future state in which desires are fulfilled. Unlike the production school, Campbell believed that the development of new technologies would raise expectations that such fantasies would become a reality rather than mere dreams. He positively evaluated these expectations, saying that they stimulated pleasure and encouraged the modern consumerist spirit.
Recently, research has been conducted to reconcile the positions of the production school, which focused on labor patterns, and the consumption school, which focused on consumption patterns. Walter Benjamin, who had long been interested in the complex characteristics of modern cities, has been rediscovered as one of the pioneers of this research. He acknowledged that the introduction of new technologies intensifies the alienation of labor. However, he believed that the meaning of consumption could not be reduced to purchasing behavior that brings profits to capitalists. This is because consumption brings about a more complex experience. Benjamin explains this fact through his exploration of modern cities. In modern cities, different things, such as old and new, natural and artificial, are juxtaposed and mixed together, flowing rapidly. Various attractions that create illusions also appeared throughout modern cities. Railway travel allowed people to experience landscapes that had previously been experienced as static images as a continuous panorama. In addition, arcades, which were shopping streets made of glass and iron, blurred the boundaries between inside and outside, reality and dreams. Benjamin believed that these experiences had a profound impact on modern city dwellers. He also said that these shocking experiences awakened new sensibilities and senses.
In addition, changes in social relationships also played an important role in understanding modern urban life. Modern cities were not only affected by physical changes, but also by changes in human relationships and social structures. After the Industrial Revolution, people left rural areas and flocked to cities, which led to changes in family structures and community life. With the breakdown of traditional family structures and the formation of new social relationships, individual identities and social roles also changed. These changes made modern urban life more complex and multi-layered.
Benjamin argued that the complex characteristics of modern cities were revealed in the new art form of cinema. For Benjamin, cinema, which appeared at the end of the 19th century as a novelty, was a medium that corresponded to the functioning and rhythm of modern cities. In that fragmented film strips flow at a constant speed to create movement, film is reminiscent of the rhythm of machines on a factory conveyor belt. Furthermore, actors who must perform in front of a camera rather than an audience, and staff who participate only in their own areas of expertise, find it difficult to grasp the overall picture of the work. The alienation of modern city dwellers from labor due to the division of labor is also evident in the film production process. At the same time, however, film is also a medium that evokes new emotions and sensations in modern city dwellers through a kind of shock experience. Experiencing a film, which is a series of unpredictable images, is similar to the everyday experience of a modern city, where disparate objects are mixed together in a complex and irregular manner. The formal principles of film, such as the connection between different times and spaces, the changing perspective with each movement of the camera, and the interplay of slow and fast scenes, create a mental shock. Movies provide experiences that go beyond the normal range of sensory perception of the average person. Benjamin likened this shocking experience to hallucinations and dreams, calling it the “visual unconscious.” By experiencing the visual unconscious provided by movies, viewers discover new meanings in everyday spaces. Audiences gathered in movie theaters share this experience collectively while enjoying their own personal dream worlds.
Benjamin’s view of modern cities and the experience of cinema provides a theoretical basis for both the production and consumption schools of thought. Benjamin shows that modern city dwellers are objectified workers, but also dreamers with an inner world of their own. The modern city Benjamin describes is a complex space where the object world of exploitation intersects with the subjective world of dreams. Benjamin’s view helps correct one-sided perspectives on modern cities.
From this perspective, modern cities are not simply spaces of production and consumption, but also stages where new forms of human experience and identity are formed. This still has significant meaning in contemporary urban life. Labor and consumption remain major activities in contemporary cities, but at the same time, cities are spaces where diverse cultural and social experiences intersect. Therefore, understanding the lifestyle of modern cities provides important insights into the complexity of contemporary cities. Such studies lay the foundation for a deeper and more multifaceted understanding of urban life.
The additional content has increased the length of the article and enriched the understanding of the lifestyle of modern cities.
