Popular culture and social influences such as materialism are the main contributors to the definition and construction of love. Since love cannot be fully defined by a single person because of subjectivity, materialism and popular culture dictate the meaning of love that society considers conventional. One can have an idea and a notion of what love is, but as a society we try to broaden the concept of love. In a society, like America, where materialism is present in people's everyday lives, a construction of reality that agrees with the mainstream ideas, morals and behaviors are created. In Sex Isn't Everything (But It Can Be Anything): The Symbolic Function of Extremity in Modernism, Joyce Piell Wexler discusses extremity and symbols which can serve as an explanation of the characters' ideals of love in The Rules of Attraction. Extremity in this instance is the furthest point or the limit, of love, which is accepted by society. Therefore, based on popular culture and materialism, society shapes the satisfactory meaning and paradigm of love.
Every generation of American culture has had specific established values and norms, and morals, which include ideals on love and sex. In the 1950's, speaking of the pleasures of sex was unheard of, that is until the Kinsey reports were published. In the 60's sex became a form to express love for each other and for humanity as a whole. With each passing generation the meanings of love and sex changed to adapt to the context that it was part of. According to Chris Barker's Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, "popular culture can be regarded as the meanings and practices produced by popular audiences at the moment of consumption. Thus the study of popular culture becomes centered on the uses to which the commodities are put" (Barker 52). In the 1980's, when the book, The Rules of Attraction is set, sex becomes a commodity for the three main characters Sean, Lauren, and Paul.
The Rules of Attraction focuses on Sean, Paul, and Lauren who become involved in a love triangle while searching for love. All three characters attend Camden, a college that is overflowing with wealthy students. These three characters try to attain love by engaging in casual sex with as many people as they can in their microcosm of a hyper-sexualized and materialistic society. The characters in The Rules of Attraction are all similar in that they have a radical idea of what love is. It is normal for them to have meaningless sex, do drugs and, not to be concerned with their studies. Lauren, Paul and Sean all construct ideas of what their ideal partners should be, but they never truly find that ideal partner because their ideals are constructed based on desire which is dictated by their society through popular culture. Sex is a commodity for these characters and they only use each other to satisfy a need. The characters never form actual bonds or relationships when they become sexually involved with each other. The way that The Rules of Attraction represents love is by showing an extreme ideal of love that would otherwise be considered a transgression. In Sex Isn't Everything (But It Can Be Anything): The Symbolic Function of Extremity in Modernism, Joyce Piell Wexler states “extremity pushes the reader beyond the empirical referent: 'Something that smacks of revolt, of promised freedom, of the coming of age of a different law, slips easily into this discourse on sexual oppression...Foucault indicates the range of meanings transgression can evoke.' When the extreme becomes the norm, however, this proliferation of non-empirical meanings stops” (Wexler 167). In other words, the characters in The Rules of Attraction have extreme interpretations of love that become the norm and ultimately, part of popular culture. When Sean tries to convince Lauren that he indeed loves her he says "I want to know you" and Lauren responds, "know me? What does that even mean? No one will ever know anybody" (Ellis 252). Later in the book, Sean responds with the same line When Paul tries to tell Sean that he has feelings for him. Sean, Paul and Lauren have all constructed their own ideas of love based on previous partners, but most importantly based on popular culture.
Materialism can serve as an oppressor and as an influential factor in people’s ideas, norms and values. In The Rules of Attraction, materialism is the reason why most of the characters are nihilists; they see life as being virtually pointless. Lauren, Paul and Sean all come from wealthy families and do not appreciate the value of money. According to Wassily Kandinsky, an expressionist painter, “our minds, which are even now only just awakening after years of materialism, are infected with the despair of unbelief, of lack of purpose and ideal” (Wexler 169). It can be said that the characters Sean, Lauren and Paul are victimized by materialism and it has shaped their idea of love and the lack of purpose in life. According to Barker, "commidification is the process associated with capitalism by which objects, qualities and signs are turned into commodities. The surface appearance of goods sold in the marketplace obscures the origins of those commodities in an exploitative relationship, a process called commodity fetishism" (Barker 13). That is, materialism allows for the characters of The Rules of Attraction to view each other as sexual objects, commodities, which allows them to exploit each other for sex. The characters in the book also construct their ideas of love through symbols.
In Sex Isn't Everything (But It Can Be Anything): The Symbolic Function of Extremity in Modernism, Wexler believes that symbols are a product of extremity. She states that "symbols were indeterminate and non-empirical as a result of the linguistic structure of the symbol and the rhetorical effect of extremity" (Wexler 166). Much like Ferdinand de Saussure, Wexler tries to explain language can be ambiguous because of the sign, the signified and the signifier. Saussure states, in Course of General Linguistics that "[language] assumes that ready-made ideas exist before words" (Saussure 78). So both Wexler and Saussure argue that since language serves as a way of using symbols for ideas that people will always have their own perception of such symbols. Jacques Derrida's Differance also addresses how the ambiguity of words causes the meaning of words to be subjective because there never is a final definition of a word. Therefore, love can have many different meanings because of the ambiguity of words and the use of symbols and signs in language.
The Rules of Attraction might be considered an extreme or a radical depiction of love and sex in terms of the conventional meanings of the words. Since, the definition of love is ambigious and subjective, people will have different ideas of what love is. Just like in the book, the definition of love is particular to the time and the context that people are part of. Therefore since love cannot be defined by one person we resort to the dominant idea of love that is dictated by our society through popular culture and materialism.
Works cited
Derrida Jacques. Differance
Ellis, Bret Easton. The Rules of Attraction. Vintage Contemporaries, New York. June 1998
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality.
Wexler, Joyce Piell. Sex Isn't Everything (But It Can Be Anything): The Symbolic Function of Extremity in Modernism. College Literature, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Spring,2004), pp. 164-183
Works cited
Derrida Jacques. Differance
Ellis, Bret Easton. The Rules of Attraction. Vintage Contemporaries, New York. June 1998
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality.
Wexler, Joyce Piell. Sex Isn't Everything (But It Can Be Anything): The Symbolic Function of Extremity in Modernism. College Literature, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Spring,2004), pp. 164-183
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