Consumer Culture In Ian McEwan’s Solar

As one of the most distinguished and influential writers today,Ian Mc Ewan(1948 –)touches upon different fields of life in his works,presenting the vulnerability and tenderness of human beings,and exposing the complexity and distortion of human nature.Solar,published in 2010,is such a novel.Up to now,scholars have interpreted this book from multiple perspectives,such as realism,ecology,ethics,psychology and narratology,but scant attention is paid to consumer culture that permeates the lives of the characters in the novel.By telling the story of Michael Beard,the Nobel Prize winner in physics,Solar reveals the shaping influence of consumer culture on modern man.Deeply affected by consumer culture,Beard is consuming and being consumed,gaining benefits from it and is also manipulated by it.As a prominent feature of the present age,“consumer culture” has been carefully studied by sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu,Jean Baudrillard,and Mike Featherstone,whose ideas lay the theoretical foundation for this thesis.According to Bourdieu,taste distinguishes social classes.Social subjects are distinguished by their distinction between beauty and ugliness,elegance and vulgarity.Therefore,taste indicates the identity and class of consumers.From the perspective of semiotics,Baudrillard points out that in consumer culture,consumption functions as a system of symbolic signification in which goods bear cultural meanings.People consume commodities not just for the use-value,but also for the sign-value,which symbolizes their social status and identity.Featherstone has absorbed the research achievements of his predecessors and opines that consumer culture has played a more important role in the social structure and cultural system.Furthermore,the commodity world and its structural principles have a core position in understanding contemporary society.Adopting the main concepts of the three scholars,and centering around theThe thesis begins with an analysis of Beard as a modern man who immerses himself in “hedonism” in spite of his identity as a Nobel Prize winner in physics,which is usually associated with indifference to fame and wealth,and whole-hearted dedication to scientific research.Beard indulges himself in pleasure-seeking activities,satisfying his needs by consuming food,female body and other person’s research results.As explained by Featherstone,hedonism is one of the prominent features of consumer culture in which images evoke human desire,fantasy,and narcissistic personality.Beard consumes excessive food to satisfy his physical and psychological desires.He does this by linking the choice of favorite potato chips with British national identity,identifying with the cartoon figures on the snack wrappers,or taking the act of consumption as an assertion of his authority.For Beard,the female body is also a commodity with both use-value and exchange-value,the former satisfying his “sexual needs” and the latter consolidating his “sexual status”.Similarly,in academic and industrial markets,Beard acts as a consumer,narcissistically seeking self-affirmation.He plagiarizes the research results of the doctoral student Aldous in an attempt to prove his value in the academic filed and applies the research results to the project construction,trying to obtain benefits in the industrial market.Moreover,Beard lives in consumer culture filled with signs,which become the manifestation of social differentiation and distinguishes him from the other people.In the novel,the Nobel Prize itself serves as a rare sign,bringing him honor and wealth,but at the same time keeping him stagnant in the aura brought by the prize.In light of Baudrillard’s interpretation of symbolic value and Bourdieu’s concepts of taste and habitus,it can be seen that tangible objects such as houses and cars have become signs of consumption that influence Beard’s life choices and manners.Meanwhile,intangible leisure activities,like daily recreation,way of tourism,and literary appreciation,also become the indicative signs of taste.Compared with the laborers in the story,Beard as a member of middle class has more time and more ways to enjoy life.In addition to hedonism and signs,mass media constitutes another important feature of consumer culture,exerting great influence on Beard’s life.The overwhelming advertisement in consumer culture makes Beard accustomed to purchasing commodities and this habit of consumption exists even in the scarcely populated Arctic where there is practically no media coverage.Mass media also creates what Baudrillard defines as “pseudo-event,” transmitting misleading messages and images,and turning Beard into a consumable target.Sharply keen to how it operates,Beard not only uses the media to cover the truth about Aldous’ s death and influences the direction of press coverage,but also capitalizes on the mass media to draw investments and attention for the North American project,and rebuilds his image as a successful scientist.To conclude,hedonism,signs and the mass media in Solar present a vivid world of consumption where hedonism guides Beard’s consumption behavior,commodity signs establish Beard’s social position,and mass media turns Beard into a sign to be consumed and a consumer who takes advantage of this convenient tool to gain benefits.By portraying the individual life affected by consumer culture,the novel fires a warning shot to the possible misconception of consumer culture and the ensuing self-loss,and highlights the importance of self-reflection and moral thinking in the consumer society.