The Nodes Have Eyes
The picture observes node workers from the futuristic sci-fi film Sleep Dealer. This film follows the main character Memo as he attempts to use the nodes to find work to send his family money back home. The nodes themselves are technological devices that allow a person to attach themselves and be able to control and work in the form of a drone anywhere around the world. This takes Marx’s theory of human labor a step further into the future. There is a specific scene in which Memo is working on a skyscraper and there is a glitch in the system which harms one of the node workers and causes the drone on the building that was being worked on to fall. To the average eye of the overseer it may seem harmless, even slightly annoying that the drone malfunctioned, but in reality it emphasizes the distance between the value in the human worker and the commodity.
These nodes drain the life force of the individuals using them and they risk their lives at the possibility of a power surge just to make money and attempt to live their lives. Marx states, “It is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic,” (Marx). Although these people, such as Memo, are doing this dangerous work, they are being exploited and not getting any of the credit for it. Memo even struggles to obtain the nodes because there is such a high value placed on the connection with them and the ability to gain a new level of work. However, the consumers of the byproducts of their labor do not make the connection that there is a human behind the work of the drones and are caught up in the consumerist and capitalist ideologies that have shaped the culture that they live in. Although this film is set in the future it is not entirely different from what is seen in modern society, but heightens and makes this commodity fetish profoundly visible.
The concept of money also clearly obscures this correlation between laborers and consumers. Even one of Memo’s main concerns for getting the nodes was so that he could have a better way to make money. Marx emphasizes the relationship between money and consumers explaining that, “It is, however, just this ultimate money form of the world of commodities that actually conceals, instead of disclosing, the social character of private labor, and the social relations between the individual producers,” (Marx). Profit is the driving force behind consumer culture and money holds a great deal of social power. Marx calls attention to the fact that money hides the reality of commodities and consumerism, therefore taking away any of the focus or value in the labor or individual behind the finished product.
The commodities themselves gain control and the illusion of value becomes reality. There is a strong dissociation between the node workers, the drones, and the consumers of the labor. The subjects become viewed as objects rather than human beings behind the work being done. This creates a power structure that emphasizes the power outside the individual to control that individual. This also generates a decentralized figure of the panopticon in relation to this power complex. These node workers are risking their lives to work for someone they do not know and are not physically in contact with . However, the overseer has all of the power and control over what the node workers do and are able to do.
