Consumerism

The theme of consumerism is explored through both the structure of the show and Lily’s psychological trajectory. The contestants are repeatedly offered objects or comforts as rewards for tasks, eliminations, or personal humiliations. The personal rewards in particular are rarely essential to survival in the early stages, but they function as tokens of value within the closed system of the compound. They stand in for the pleasures, conveniences, and commodities of the outside world, and their scarcity magnifies their significance. The narrative thus refracts the logics of consumerism through the artificial lens of reality television, where objects acquire symbolic importance not because of their intrinsic utility but because of their status as prizes.

Lily embodies this consumerist logic more fully than any other contestant. From the beginning she invests extraordinary emotional energy into the pursuit of rewards. Small objects like a necklace, pyjamas, or diamond...