Vivre Sa Vie

Godard's Vivre Sa Vie, in my opinion, has many postmodern qualities to it, and seems to be a good example of extreme human commodification in the form of prostitution. Nana - who is trying to become an actress - is forced to work retail in a record store, but finds it impossible to make ends meet. After being thrown out on the street and being picked up by the cops for attempting to steal money, she decides to become a prostitute.

At its most basic level, the film could be considered postmodern because of Godard's use of the Twelve Tableaux, which break up the narrative into episodes, or chapters. This could be interpreted as fragmentation, which is emblematic of postmodernity.

The film also has many references to popular culture, which is a common motif in postmodern works. Examples of this would be the pop music played on the jukebox, the references to consumer culture throughout the movie, and the large role movies play within the film. Nana constantly voices her desire to "go see a movie," and at one point is shown watching Carl Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, while towards the end of the film, we see a shot of a movie marquee displaying Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim.

An obsession with the photographic image is also a recurring theme in the film, which would be associated with postmodernity. At several points during the film, Nana is either looking at photos of herself or is talking about having photos taken of her. This represents her desire to become an image, which could then become commidified: in the form of her becoming an actress whose image is sold through the cinema. This commodification of the image, however, becomes realized in the form of prostitution. She uses the image of femininity and sexuality to sell herself literally as a human commodity, by having people pay her to fulfill their sexual desire. In the process, she is subjected to capitalist exploitation. The pimp, Raoul, controls her the way a worker would be controlled in a capitalist society. Thus, she is turned into human capital, working within a system, which controls her through politics and police force, as evidenced by the scene in which Raoul explains to her the rules of being a prostitute. These rules have been clearly delineated by laws, which control her working conditions and define where she can and cannot go in the city. Raoul also tells her about how her beauty affects her place within the hierarchy of prostitution. The more attractive girls have a higher price, which translates to more money, while the less attractive ones have a lower price and generally make less money. Because of this, her beauty directly determines her exchange-value as a human commodity.

During the scene where Nana first meets Yvette, she makes a comment, which ultimately sums up the capitalist attitude towards human life, and foreshadows the ending quite well. When Yvette mentions escaping to the tropics, Nana responds by saying that "escape is a pipedream." Later, when Nana tries to leave the life of prostitution, Raoul tries to sell her off to another pimp which ends in Nana's death. This is reminiscent of the "Society of the Spectacle", in which Debord suggests that: "The tendency of use value to fall, this constant of capitalist economy, develops a new form of privation within increased survival: the new privation is not far removed from the old penury since it requires most men to participate as wage workers in the endless pursuit of its attainment, and since everyone knows he must submit or die." Nana, who represents the wage-worker, becomes the symbolic manifestation of the "submit or die" mantra.

Also, the scene where "the young man" reads the poem by Edgar Allen Poe, he foreshadows the ending, which relates to primacy of the image over the subject, and the subsequent death of the subject, as a result of its auraticization. The poem describes a man who paints a portrait of his wife. The man becomes so obsessed with the painting of her that he forgets that it’s based on a living person. When he finally finishes the painting, he looks over at his wife, who has died. Nana, who has become a reified image of beauty in the image-based postmodern society, has died just like the woman in the poem.