MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

This paper focuses on the artificial aspect of sexuality, firstly in terms of sexuality as an ever evolving cultural construction and then as a manipulated force in people to aid consumerist society. The paper will present a progression of modern culture, from the Twentieth century machine age to post World War Two postmodernist, mass-consumer liberation and finally to the Twenty-first century digital age. Each of these stages has a clear relation to sexuality at that time, both in terms of its effect on people and their emotional relationships with others and in the way these cultural causes bring about new notions in sexuality. For example, peoples’ interactions with others in consumerist society is disturbed when it is supposed that objects are the best mediator between people, therefore we have seen a huge increase in themes of fetish since the Twentieth century. The evolution of fetish will be presented alongside that of culture and sexuality here to express the significance of man-made objects in our lives now and how fetish grows as a sign of the increasing inclusion of objects in our sexual lives. In analyzing sexuality in these terms my aim is to explain what this dependance on objects in sexuality, engendered by consumerist society, means for us today and in the near future where we are living in an increasingly non-pysical, non-bodily digital world. My belief is that as this disconnect between people exaggerates the relationships we actually form are with objects, this is clearer now than ever when we converse with others through a computer screen. For me this points to an increase in fetish and because of this a decrease in physical sex and sexuality.