According to Statista, over 568 movies were released in 2024 despite ratings decreasing. The culture of commodification is the process where various aspects of life such as personal experiences and personal emotions are transformed into commodities that can be bought, sold, and traded in various areas. This often involves turning things that were once considered personal and sacred, to human experience into products with financial gain.
The culture of commodification has had a negative impact on societies. According to Study Smarter, culture of commodification can lead to the loss of local traditions and result in the exploitation of real emotional experiences. Specifically targeting youth, as they are more vulnerable. Some examples of these effects include consumerism by defining ourselves based on material goods and digital validation. A similar struggle the youth faces is the cycle of consumption, or the desire to keep up with certain trends. This can lead to a lack of fulfillment.
While this affects societies through social media, it also affects people through movies. Based on The Daily Targum, the art of movies has been drastically changed by becoming “systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned and reduced to its lowest common denominator, ‘content,” and more focused on money. This has led to a change in how people view movies today. Many of the movies we see now are the same, either being an action movie in which the so called ‘good guys’ always win, or a low-effort spin off of old rom-coms. On occasion there will be a strong movie that is filled with mental health issues, or other serious topics that affect many, but many of those movies turn out to have one purpose: financial gain.
Movies are being seen as commodities with no focus on artists’ value. This leads to a decreasing quality among franchises such as Marvel, Fast and Furious and Star Wars. Each one follows the same plot because producers realized audiences enjoyed the originals, meaning that copies would lead to more profit. Another example is producers tapping into people’s nostalgia such as in the 2024 Mean Girls. The movie follows the exact plot as the 2004 version in order to bring in viewers. With this reused Mean Girls people began noticing the pattern of repetitive movies. This is shown in the Green Book executive insights study done at the end of 2024, showing that 49% of people have stopped visiting movie theaters around the country due to lack of interest with upcoming movies.
Another way culture of commodification has had an impact on societies is the exploitation of actors for financial gain. In 2019 the movie ‘The Joker’ was released, telling the story behind the character Joker who has been seen in multiple other movies. Joaquin Phoenix, the man who played Joker had to undergo a serious weight loss in order to fit the role of Joker, as he was a very skinny, insane man in the movie. Phoenix began limiting himself to three things: lettuce, asparagus and apples. Producers told him in order to keep his role he had to lose weight to represent his character’s vulnerability. Not only was the Joker sick physically, but mentally as well. He was very violent, had a neurosurgical brain disorder, depression and anxiety. All these things in the real world are seen as issues needed to be dealt with but not in the movie industry. These things were exploited and put into a film for financial gain.
In addition to that film, the 1998 Truman show is based on Truman’s life and all his relationships, experiences, emotions and more are constantly being filmed for one’s entertainment then made into a spectacle. This demonstrates how the entertainment industry has the ability to commodify human life and personal privacy by turning individuals into marketable products. This leads to the constant sharing of private moments for public consumption like in the Truman show, with the media and social platforms profiting from their experiences, relationships, and struggles. Along with that comes the exploitation of serious mental issues that are ignored in order to make money from it. Overall, the culture of commodification has taken a toll on the movie industry in a negative way.
