STUFF.

Reading this week’s play by Coco Fusco and Nao Bustamante I was really intrigued by their exploration of consumption. I took a class last year that focused on sex work, with a specific focus in sexual tourism in Central and South America/the Caribbean. Much like Fusco and Bustamante, we discussed the implications of sexual tourism, the effect on both the tourist who travels to another country with the express desire to find sexual companionship and the sex worker who makes a living dependent upon the desires of these travelers. In the situations of both of these groups, we can see the consumption that the authors discuss. On one hand, we see the tourist as a consumer, searching for a product for the week and then returning home to a “normal” life. Fusco and Bustamante demonstrate this in their second “Travel Tester” performance where they show the interaction between a tourist and a sex worker (it should be noted that they never really expressly identify these women as empowered “sex workers” but more portray them as engaging in sex work out of necessity). This interaction obviously sheds light on the consumption of the tourist but what is really intriguing to me is the consumption of the woman. At one point in the piece Coco reads a postcard addressed to the audience that says the following:
“So when you come charging in our direction, running from whatever it is you’re running from, you may not think that we who serve you could be eating as well. But we do. Gently but efficiently, we devour you. The more visceral your desires, the more physical our labor.” This was a point that really resonated with me and that I saw as a focal point of the entire piece. Food, sex, women, men- the interactions between these things are a two-way street. One does not consume the other, the two consume each other until there is nothing left. As Fusco and Bustamante point out in their performance note- “WE are dealing with how cultural consumption in our current moments involves the trafficking of that which is most dear to us all- our identities, our myths, and our bodies.” So my questions are the following: If cultural consumption is inherent in our world of globalization and interconnection, what should our goal be? To stop cultural consumption? To create a positive way of consuming? To create a more equalized system of consumption- you consume me and I consume you? Because the fact of the matter is, we are constantly consuming the things around us. It is not a choice to stop but rather a choice to make our consumptions beneficial to those that we are consuming instead of stuffing our faces (to use Fusco and Bustamante’s food metaphor) with no regard for the effects we might be having on those around us.