Fetisization of Being Watched
Advancing further into a post-Foucault era, the idea of the panopticon can be argued to have become an actual commodity of society today. An example of this is reality television. The participants of reality television are encouraged to be themselves and are rewarded for displaying themselves and participating in activities. “It is gratifying to be watched; close surveillance is destigmatized,” (Giordano). This twists the idea of surveillance into a form of self-expression and it rewards individuality and promotes engaging content. Their behaviors and actions are on display for all audience members to watch. Another example of this could be YouTube, specifically vloggers, who video events that take part of their everyday lives. This industry commodifies individualization in the global market and people are marketing themselves and differentiates because they are participating in this surveillance willingly. This alters the idea of privacy, as the anxiety that is caused by being watched dissolves as surveillance becomes a commodity to be sold.
The panopticon has evolved greatly from its original physical conception and expanded to social relationships. As Marx explains there is an inseparable aspect between commodities and fetishisms. The seer-seen relationship that is so apparent in the original panoptic idea has been decentralized to the point of commodification. The Panopticon was not commodified during Bentham or Foucault's time period so it was not sold on the market. "This inescapability of observtation has only been enhanced by the application of the term panoptic to virtually any mode of surveillance today, thus forcing us into an iron cage of panopticism, of perceptual observation and surveillance we may not be able to escape," (Giordano).
