According to Existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, bad faith involves lying to oneself to avoid responsibility. Thus, good faith is genuinely making a choice by oneself, actively choosing it, and taking responsibility for that choice. His phenomenology implies that all mental states are conscious states. In this way, Sartre believes that everybody’s actions are conscious. One knows they are free in the capacity that they can make choices, but when they adopt everyday roles and pretend to be a mechanism or a thing, they pretend they are not free (Sartre, Basic 205). Sartre’s understanding of freedom relates to his ethics; he claims that that the moral is the authentic and the immoral is the conformist. Sartre believes that “Man is condemned to be free,” meaning that freedom of choice is a terrible responsibility (Sartre, Existentialism 29).

 

Sartre proposes an Existentialist ethics in his famous speech Existentialism is a Humanism. Here, Sartre unites his understanding of freedom with moral responsibility. He contends that humans yearn for “the good” and thus, one will never choose evil consciously. Furthermore, he states that nothing can be good unless it is good for all. Acting in good faith or consciously and authentically choosing, requires one to “realize[s] that he is not only the individual that he chooses to be, but also a legislator choosing at the same time what humanity as a whole should be” (Sartre, Existentialism 24). When one acts, that action creates an image of what humans ought to do.

 

Sometimes humans find it is easier to avoid responsibility (because responsibility may cause inconvenience, discomfort, more effort, etc.). Avoiding one’s freedom by avoiding responsibility is immoral because one is neglecting the responsibility to make a choice for humanity. In Sartre’s Existential ethics, bad faith is immoral and good faith is moral.

 

Expensive Humanity portrays two characters in an undisclosed area covered with a tarp and surrounded by speakers. The man in the jumpsuit showcases a combination of dances, spasms, and other movements while the fat orange man pours colored liquids on the jumpsuit man. The jumpsuit man is moving with the noise-rock music that blares as the fat orange man walks up the ladder every minute. The jumpsuit man is sporadic and free; the fat orange man is controlled and obedient.

 

The performance is Existential because the jumpsuit man starts by showing the audience a glass water bottle and criticizes it throughout the performance. Bottled water is an oxymoronic object because it juxtaposes a survival necessity with synthetic packaging. Even more unfortunately, capitalist society decides to sell a natural necessity and thus, normalizing it. Bottled water is normalized to the extent that it can become luxurious by using glass bottles. Furthermore, people go to mountains to retrieve water, adding to the capital value of the water. This is a commentary on the arbitrary value humans place on things that take more unnecessary effort or are rarer. The entire performance revolves around the silly yet profound existential crisis of why humans buy and bottle water.

 

The jumpsuit man acts in good faith as he reacts to bottled water in an other-worldly way. He does not care what others think about him. He wants to critique bottled water in his own absurd way. The jumpsuit man is in full control of his life as he throws his body around the stage, bathing in the liquids like animals who die in their excrement. This true expression is what he stands for, so he acts as he believes others ought to act: freely. He acts as if he is humanity.

 

In the description of the video, the jumpsuit man accuses all people acting in bad faith. He accuses people who accept the social constructs that force them to perform, to deny that materiality exists, to buy the water, and to disguise themselves. In contrast, the jumpsuit man “takes the beating” of responsibility and freedom because he knows humans are the most parasitic creatures on Earth. People act in bad faith because they avoid the suffering they deserve and “build thick fat” as protection. Building thick fat is the representation of conforming to norms imposed by others for protection. Thus, the fat orange man is a contrasting character that obeys because the jumpsuit man hired him. The fat orange man does not care about what he is doing because he needs money—one of the most terrifying social constructs that burden humans.

 

The jumpsuit man wastes food (colored liquid) to show others that they waste value on the wrong things. He knows wasting food is something universally understood, but he fails his motive because the socially confined people incorrectly interpret his performance. The presence of the noise-rock music is the jumpsuit man’s way of indulging in a presence to lose rationality (a common theme of the genre). This is a statement on how entertainment, passions, and hobbies are activities that humans take up to forget about their suffering. Perhaps meaning-making is merely effective ways to understand or deal with suffering and the fate of death.

 

However, the jumpsuit man uses the music to loosen the shackles of social construction. Rationality is tied to social construction because one must make decisions depending on social constructs. One who lies outside the boundaries of social construction cannot be too “weird,” “rude” or whatever “negative” trait others want to assign them; otherwise, society will reject them. The jumpsuit man gradually realizes this and eventually becomes tired of his performance. The music fades, as social, political, and cultural constructs surround him again. He lies in the mess he created and has an epiphany. Perhaps he was just performing, too. He is not sure anymore though. Are any of us sure?