the cultural fabric of her society. Due to the fact that “The fetishisation of the body through
makeup and adornment creates a seductive sexuality that is not grounded in real sexuality,”
Baudrillard hypothesizes that women in the modern world have no awareness of themselves as
sexual beings outside of simulated reality (Dant 507). For instance, red lipstick exudes sexuality
because women are told that this given shade of a banal cosmetic item is synonymous with erotic
desire.
Women are deemed to be sexy by pledging their allegiance to a preexisting model designed
to create colossal profits. In reference to the revenue generated by simulations, Baudrillard
declares, “Le corps fait vendre. La beauté fait vendre. L’érotisme fait vendre” ‘The body sells.
Beauty sells. Eroticism sells’ (La Société de consommation 211). “The Hobbit” profoundly
destabilizes the viewer because it serves as a reminder that consumer society has commodified
everything including human corporality. Anything can be sold and disseminated to the masses
as an idealistic image. For Lisa, the dire repercussions of this phenomenon cannot be overstated.
Her body is no longer her own because it has been reduced to an ironic caricature made available
to the highest bidder or to the most popular boy in class. In a society where symbolic exchange
is void of any real meaning, signs eclipse the real. Lisa is now a simulated object of carnal
desire that is drowning in an abyss of other insignificant objects to which people despondently
attach their hopes and dreams. This young girl has been stripped of her very humanity. The only
semblance of an existence that Lisa will ever know is watching an artificial image of herself
flicker across digital screens. This utopian representation is so utterly divorced from reality that
it can only lead to ontological emptiness and despair.
For Baudrillard, this existential angst reinforces the economic system by compelling the
subject to continue to search for happiness and meaning in the endless acquisition of
insignificant signs in malls, department stores, and shopping centers. As Alex Cline
underscores, “the material values of commodities are largely unimportant, when compared to
their symbolic and structural values […] The capitalism of the code attempted to induce
existential crises amongst its subjects; to get them to change their job, partner or lifestyle on a
regular basis and become fanatical consumers of media, the nectar of simulation” (n.p.). When
her relationship with Clyde inevitably crumbles, Lisa will have to seek solace in the same exact
signs of sexuality that conceal genuine female eroticism. Given the ubiquity of the code that
appears to have permeated all aspects of the modern lifestyle, Lisa will have no choice but to
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