Trophies

In Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, which has been “drawn from everyday life, by direct observation or through common notoriety, rather than from more recondite sources at a farther remove,” he provides a clever way of revealing the construction and perpetuation of problematic social norms (Veblen VI). It is therefore no surprise that Veblen doesn’t find the need to adhere to certain conventions, because “the particular point of view, or the particular characteristic that is pitched upon as definitive in the classification of the facts of life depends upon the interest from which a discrimination of the facts is sought” (Veblen 9). In short: truth (for the most part) is fashionable, and fashion is determined by whoever is in charge. This might explain his lack of respect for conventional citations or the need to back up his findings with research. I say “for the most part” because even Veblen himself doesn’t see social norms as merely capricious, “But the change of standards and points of view is gradual only, and it seldom results in the subversion or entire suppression of a standpoint once accepted” (Veblen 9).

In one of these gradual processes is the transition of “peaceable savagery” (which is not exactly peaceable due to the violence in sexual competition that is present in all stages) to a “predatory phase of life,” the “incentive to emulate” increases and becomes “more habitual” because of “individual ownership,” and perhaps simultaneously the desire to show others “tangible evidences of prowess” is created (Veblen 16-7). It seems like instead of dissolving once we’ve moved out of our predatory phase and overtly rewarding aggression, the need to prove “successful contest” has taken on different, more subversive forms (Veblen 17). Veblen describes this process: “Gradually, as industrial activity further displaced predatory activity in the community’s everyday life and in men’s habits of thought, accumulated property more and more replaces trophies of predatory exploit as the conventional exponent of prepotence and success” (Veblen 28).

As we move away from (perhaps hardly) a predatory phase I believe that this aggression, exploitation, and the need for proof of dominance becomes more mediated, and perhaps more latent, but the purposes remain the same, even as such customs and traditions cannot be overtly seen to celebrate their own foundations and functions. For example in John Berger’s Ways of Seeing the tradition of European oil painting which is, “roughly set as between 1500 and 1900” is where he finds painting turn into a commodity (Berger 84). In this tradition: “oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects. Everything became exchangeable because everything became a commodity” (Berger 87). Although Berger does qualify this statement with artists who opposed this tradition, on the whole he finds that European oil painting during this time period, “served the interests of the successive ruling classes, all of whom depended in different ways on the new power of capital” (Berger 86). As a luxury item, the woman can be seen to represent one of the many subjects in this tradition of oil painting, “They show him [the art lover] sights: sights of what he may possess” (Berger 85). So here, although mediated and refined, the structure of domination is still present, and Veblen’s assertion that the “appropriation of women seems to have been their usefulness as trophies” continues to remain true (Veblen 22). Only now, the problem has been complicated: women are still trophies, women are represented as trophies (through art), and the art object representing the trophy woman is a trophy itself.