The commodification of bodies in fiction.

What is commodification? Commodification is when something not usually considered tradable or sellable becomes something that is traded or sold. In the real world, this might look like human trafficking or the sale of human body parts. We’re all aware that this is ethically wrong, but in fiction, we can start to think a bit harder about what that could look like.

When I think of commodification in fiction, the first thing that comes to mind is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. If you haven’t read or watched it, women are used to make babies for others; they’re raped and forced to live a life serving their ‘family’ before the baby is born and taken from them. They’re then moved on, and the cycle continues. Their reproductive ability becomes the commodity, traded in exchange for a place within a society that can no longer reproduce. It’s a perfect example of how the body becomes a tool, and how the person who owns that body loses autonomy entirely. Their rights are stripped back or removed altogether.

But there is more than one example of human traits being used as a form of control or currency in fiction.

The TV series Black Mirror explores this through the mind. One episode shows memories being taken from people as a way to monitor crime; another removes memories entirely as punishment for a crime the person doesn’t even remember committing. In another, consciousness is cloned and tortured into confession, punished, or simply played with. All these methods of extracting human traits make for fascinating fiction because they’re believable and close to home, with technology advancing every day and situations becoming more desperate.

One final example is The Hunger Games. The ‘lesser’ districts are used for their labour to feed and indulge the Capitol. Now, I don’t like to compare my own book to The Hunger Games, because when an author follows the same tropes and themes too closely, I immediately switch off and feel it’s a rip‑off. However, the Salt and Ash Trilogy does have a loose connection here, as labour is used in a way that eventually, unintentionally, oppresses its people as they work together to ‘cure’ the dying earth. It’s not a conscious choice, but the lives of the people in Novaris could be compared to those of worker bees, working day in, day out until death, oblivious to the idea that there could be an alternative, yet content to continue. Their “exchange” is the safety and stability of Novaris, protected from the unforgiving conditions outside.

Exploring commodification in fiction lets us shine a light on just how fragile human rights become when they’re treated like commodities. And that’s the heart of it. Fiction helps us imagine the issues that may lie ahead, shining a light on what’s really important.

Thanks for reading.