The Ethics of the Object: What Cinema Teaches Us About Giving

The Ethics of the Object: What Cinema Teaches Us About Giving

Thou shall not covet. It is a stark, ancient commandment that opens Lee Chang-dong’s film, Possible Love, and it feels almost revolutionary in our current era. We live in a culture designed to make us covet—not just our neighbor’s house or car, but the latest iteration of everything, every single year. Marketing tells us that our identity is tied to the acquisition of the new. But as I sat with the heavy, lingering themes of Lee’s work, I began to realize that the way we choose gifts is often a reflection of how we value people.

The Human Cost Behind the Screen

Lee Chang-dong isn't a director who makes easy-to-digest movies. He is a master of exploring the wreckage left behind by modernity, class struggle, and labor. Possible Love draws its inspiration from the harrowing real-world events of the 2009 SsangYong Motor strike in South Korea, where massive layoffs led to a series of tragic suicides among workers and their families. It is a film about what happens when human beings are treated as disposable components in a corporate machine.

Transitioning from a story of labor strikes and human tragedy to a discussion about gift-giving might feel like a leap, but there is a profound connective tissue here. The film asks us to look at the human cost of the systems we participate in. When we buy a product, we aren't just buying an object; we are engaging with the labor, the ethics, and the story of its creation. By moving away from mindless "coveting" and toward intentional selection, we honor the humanity of both the people who made the gift and the person receiving it.

Choosing Tech That Lasts

When we think of tech gifts, the impulse is to find the sleekest, most advertised device on the market. However, these products are often designed with planned obsolescence in mind—meant to be coveted today and discarded tomorrow. To gift with the ethics of Possible Love in mind is to look for transparency and longevity.

For the tech enthusiast in your life, consider the Fairphone 5 or a Framework Laptop. Unlike the closed-off ecosystems of major manufacturers, these companies prioritize the "right to repair." The Framework Laptop, for example, is fully modular. If a port breaks or the user wants a faster processor, they don't throw the whole machine away; they simply swap a part. This approach respects the resources used to build the machine and the intelligence of the user. It turns a piece of technology from a disposable commodity into a long-term companion. It says to the recipient: I want you to have something that stays with you, rather than something that becomes obsolete in eighteen months.