section_path: Criticism/Consumerism
section_name: Consumerism
paragraph_text: Consumerism
  
  According to the postmodern sociologist Jean Baudrillard, the individual is trained into the duty of seeking the relentless maximization of pleasure lest he or she become asocial. Therefore, "enjoyment" and "fun" become indistinguishable from the need to consume. Whereas the Frankfurt School believed consumers were passive, Baudrillard argued that consumers were trained to consume products in the form of active labor in order to achieve upward social mobility. Thus, consumers under capitalism are trained to purchase products such as pop albums and consumable fiction in order to signal their devotion to social trends, fashions, and subcultures. Although the consumption may arise from an active choice, the choice is still the consequence of a social conditioning that the individual is unconscious of. Baudrillard says, "One is permanently governed by a code whose rules and meaning—constraints—like those of language—are, for the most part, beyond the grasp of individuals".
  
  Jean Baudrillard argued that the vague conception "Public Opinion" is a subjective and inaccurate illusion, for it attributes a sovereignty to consumers that they do not really have. In Baudrillard's understanding, the products of capitalist popular culture can only give the illusion of rebellion, since they are still produced by a system controlled by the powerful. Baudrillard stated in an interview, critiquing the content and production of The Matrix:
  
  The Matrix paints the picture of a monopolistic superpower, like we see today, and then collaborates in its refraction. Basically, its dissemination on a world scale is complicit with the film itself. On this point it is worth recalling Marshall McLuhan: the medium is the message. The message of The Matrix is its own diffusion by an uncontrollable and proliferating contamination.