However, is this a rejection of materialistic society or is it a result of their exclusion from society, and their inability to ‘succeed’ due to their social class? The characters in Trainspotting are drug users and have alienated themselves from society. It has been said that Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting is a critique of both excess, and the culture of, materialism. This, society argues, is what everyone should strive for. To acquire qualifications, a job that pays well, to set themselves up so that they too can begin to accumulate material goods. They are seen to be lacking in something, incomplete, and are encouraged to ‘make something’ of themselves. The people within this society who do not have the means to amass material possessions are pitied, considered the underclass. It is a society whose basis lies in the fundamental need to accumulate property.
However, it also, undeniably, encourages self-interest, greed and – as Marx argued – an obsession with private property. Capitalist society is described by some as protecting freedom and individuality. This resulted, they argued, in the widening of class divisions. That the basic right to own property results in the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, becoming obsessed with the accumulation of possessions and, as a consequence, becoming slaves to commodities Commodity fetishism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that Capitalist society, which is based on the right of each individual to own private property, is the cause of the main class divides evident in today’s society.
0 kommentar(er)
