Macbooks, ipods, iphones and ipads are a few of the products from Apple Inc. that have become one of the most fashionable commodities to buy. Often claimed to be the slimmest, the lightest with its modern and simplistic designs making Apple Inc. products one of the hottest commodities in the market. Not only in our local context, that the iphone and the ipad has become part of the popular culture and the latest trend. Even Barack Obama, the president of the United States has complimented Steve Jobs on his “revolutionary products”. Apple Inc. have become a cultural phenomenon in many parts of the world, the bitten apple has become an icon that the world can recognize.
The secret that lies behind commodities.
They are exchanged within the commodity market and as Marx (1867) has analyzed, they have exchange values and use-values. On the surface level, these Mac-products have exchange values in monetary terms and the use-value, the usefulness of the product towards a consumer, seems like an inherent and natural property of the product – the commodity fetish. In addition, people evaluate their efforts of their own labor as a personal issue but in actual fact, it is a social relation between each other, between objects. As we can see behind the monetary terms, lies the objectification of abstract human labor. The way we valuate the product is often based on the amount of human labor that is required to produce it and thus, human labor is being sold as part of these commodities but consumers often do not realize this fact. Consumers think that the act of purchasing these products are of their own desire and willingness to pay a particular price that they think is ‘worth’ to pay for the product. Little did they know the way they are involved in the market are being controlled by the social creation of values that is created from such objectification human labor and the commodity fetishism, treating commodities to have a ‘natural value’.
We, as consumers in the commodity exchange are subconscious of ourselves being emerged and controlled by this system. We subconsciously sustain the system of labor as a commodity, as we believe that we are free labors who have the freedom to choose how to use our own labor. We believe that our human labor belongs to us but unfortunately when we sell our human labor, it becomes a commodity. By continuing our usual practices causes the sustenance of the entire system. (Zizek, 1989) The person you see at the next table furiously typing on his Macbook is a perpetrator of such a system, he bought the commodity, labor. The boundaries of an individual become expanded and unclear (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983), the consumer of that Macbook also bought a part of that individual that sold his labor to produce that particular product. If the consumer chose to buy the Macbook over any other laptops because of the way it looks, the consumer bought the human labor from the designer of the Macbook.
The sign and the signified
When the person opposite you is using a Macbook, all you see is the brightly lit icon of the bitten apple. When a person holds an iphone up to his or her ear in conversation, you see a shiny silver bitten apple. The Macbook user could be listening music or surfing the Internet, the iphone user may seem to be enjoying the conversation or may be entertained by the device. The bitten apple icon is linked to these leisure activities. Without the signified, the bitten apple is only a shape. The sign and the signified (Sassure), the bitten apple as the sign and it signifies the upper class popular culture and their lifestyle.
Youtube Video of an Iphone Advertisement
The travel application that is available on the iphone is suggesting that the owners of iphone can afford the enjoyment of traveling and can afford the lifestyle of the upper class. Due to the link between the sign and the signifier, people consume the culture that the symbol seems to bring. The symbol motivates the consumers to purchase from Apple Inc.
Why do you want to consume such products?
This brings us to why the consumption of the symbol is of importance to consumers. Veblen (1895) explains that this is due to emulation. The hierarchy of class and status in our society motivates us to desire to emulate upwards and we want to show off that emulation. In other words, people want to show off what they have earned to show their belonging to the upper class, in Veblen’s words - the ‘leisure class’, and the leisure class have a taboo of labor. For Veblen, the totem is the body and people want to emulate the bodies of those who already belong in the ‘leisure class’. Till today, Apple products are cost relatively higher than the other options that run on windows systems. For example, the cheapest laptop at dell would cost $699 where else the cheapest Macbook costs $1348. The price of the Macbook is almost double the price of the Dell laptop. Thus, to choose to buy a Macbook over a Dell computer would make the consumer seem like he or she has the wealth to consume luxury products, therefore closer to belonging to what Veblen calls, the ‘leisure class’.
People buy the bitten apple symbol to show their relation with the leisure class and to place themselves as far away from the laboring class as possible. The body as treated like an object, controlling the body to behave in certain ways in order to emulate the ‘leisure class’. This questions if people are consuming the technology or the symbol. The desire to emulate can motivate people to consume and that is the power of the sign.
Think again.
If you think you are the one in control, as consumers, as the people with the monetary power and choice, think again. Horkheimer and Adorno (1999) has shown how products can define the consumer and not the other way around as we often imagine it to be. As explained above, you can see how the symbol on the bitten apple can be in control of how the consumer thinks. The bitten apple symbol can motivate consumers to desire products from Apple Inc. The control of consumption and production does not belong to the consumer as we often assume it to be. “The iphone sells to a niche market based on its iconic status rather than its features.” (The Straits Times, Alfred Siew, 2007) We can see that it is not its advance technological features that motivates people to consume their products. Just the bitten apple logo on anything might do the trick. This is the power of the bitten apple.
