some ramblings on consumption, Baudrillard, and Taxidermia

I think that while watching Taxidermia I was a little disappointed at the level of grotesqueness. I have definitely seen instances that were more morbid than what was projected on film (although I will saw that there were a few moments in the final story where he was cutting himself open that were nearly on par with my preferred limit on disgusting). While watching the film it made me think of the seven deadly sins, which is probably a cliché way to look at the film, but as I read Baudrillard’s Consumer Society I began to really invest in the critique of the historical economic shifts it was trying to depict. I think the third story in the film is well represented by the idea that, “The substance of life, unified in this universal digest, can no longer have any meaning… there is no longer a symbolic function, but an eternal combinatory of “ambiance” in a perpetual Springtime” (Baudrillard 38). I feel like the relationship had by the taxidermist son with his “put to pasture” eating champion father deftly critiques overconsumption and the problems with misconstrued notions of abundance. The father’s consumption has literally left him immobilized and eventually the son’s decision to preserve his father’s body as well as his own mechanically stuffed torso explains the unsatisfactory existence that is tied to a heavy consumer culture. The taxidermist son has been so underwhelmed by the ideas and presence of his father that his life is spent going through the motions of consuming on the behalf of his incapacitated father. Eventually, the preservation of their corpses highlights this lack of satisfaction with their economic participation while the exhibition of their bodies explores how they are caught in their own “perpetual Springtimes” and have become cultural products of their generations. The second story sequence about the height of the father’s career and prime of his life is best explained by the statement that “we neither produce nor consume just any product: the product must have some meaning in relation to a system of values” (Baudrillard 40). During this segment nearly all of the consumption is shown to be for the pride of the nation (which may perhaps represent the competitive period of consumption to show the wealth and development of soviet bloc countries both during and after the split. I guess looking back at these periods as depicted by the film may be a hard pill to swallow and I had such visceral reactions to watching the characters eat in the second portion (yet somehow watching rich women in Beverly Hills drop $40K on a 2 year old’s birthday doesn’t warrant any disgust on my behalf for that level of consumption, sorry personal TV watching anecdote).  Is there any difference between physical consumption and monetary consumption in the grand scheme of things (or should they both make me nauseous)?