Free Climbing, Hip Hop, and Capitalism: the Modern Monetised Spectacle

Climber Alex Honnold’s recent ascent of Taipei 101 raises a few questions regarding the modern monetised spectacle. On the 25^th of January 2026, Netflix livestreamed Honnold’s climb with a ten second delay.

Without any safety gear, just one error would have resulted in thousands of spectators lining the tower’s base being witness to a catastrophic death. Questions would have been raised over Netflix’s ethical rights to stage and film such an event. Resignations would be inevitable, and a young family would have been left without a father.

Honnold, of course, made no such mistake; an expert in his craft with over 30 years of experience, he made the ascent appear trivial. The climber even stopped a few times to wave at the cheering crowds below, and took a selfie from the top of the skyscraper. 

When asked what he would earn from the event, Honnold replied, ‘an embarrassingly small amount’. However, he also contended, ‘I’m not getting paid to climb the building, I’m getting paid for the spectacle. I’m climbing the building for free.’

Honnold, as the centre of the spectacle, was in this instance not just a climber, but a commodity.

Free climbing is a sport of great risk. This risk, however, is not assumed for monetary gain. Instead, the allure of free climbing comes from the meditative state its entrants achieve through the unparalleled concentration it requires.

Concerning the fears associated with the sport, infamous urban free climber Alain Robert argues, ‘when you are living such a dangerous existence, between life and death, your survival instinct is stronger than anything else. We human beings can’t do two things at the same time. I cannot climb free solo and think about being afraid, or about not paying my electricity bill. I am f*cking focused on what I am doing’.

We can understand that free climbing, like meditation, has no productive value. Instead, the sport forces the entrant to step outside the economic illusions that organise modern life. In the act of free climbing, all that can remain is a pure hunger to survive, a primal concentration comprising the pain of death. 

Free climbing is what Georges Bataille might have described as a ‘heterogeneous’ activity, existing outside the requirements and considerations of a ‘homogeneous’, interconnected consumer society. In the meditative state assumed through the sport, the entrant ceases to be defined by their relations to others, becoming solely reliant on personal strength and a determination to succeed. 

To these extents, free climbing can be considered antithetical to a capitalist mode of existence characterised by productivity and the organisation of individuals into large economic structures; cogs in the machine.

In climbing Taipei 101, itself symbolising capitalist expansion, Honnold could be read as personally overcoming the mundanity of homogeny under capitalism, triumphing over a system defined by productivity, through inherently unproductive means.

However, the commodification of Honnold - the manipulation of the event into a monetised spectacle - suggests the opposite.

In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher argues that capitalism is like the Thing in John Carpenter’s film of the same name: ‘a monstrous, infinitely plastic entity, capable of metabolising and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact’. Capitalism is all-consuming; no culture, activity or event can truly exist outside of it.

For instance, Fisher considers the music genres ‘alternative’ and ‘independent’. In the past, these labels were used to describe music outside mainstream culture; now, they represent styles within the mainstream, sold under a guise of cultural subversion.

Fisher offers a further example: 1990s hip-hop. He notes that rather than the ‘realness’ of hip hop challenging capital in its uncompromising aim to convey the realities of the black ghetto experience, of racist violence, economic instability, and police brutality - all qualities which directly oppose the consumer capitalist ideal - it instead reifies these traits, they having emerged as its most marketable quality.

Like hip hop, it was the realness of Honnold’s feat which lent it its monetary value. Both live spectators and Netflix viewers were drawn by the real, potentially devastating consequences of the event, in the same way that free climbers are drawn to their sport in the first place. 

However, through viewing without participating, the spectator receives a far-diluted, consequence-free taste of the freedom experienced by the climber, sold by the very system from which it offers an escape. 

Free climbing itself can be a sport antithetical to the mode of capitalist production. However, its marketisation demonstrates that the elements which exist furthest from the capitalist system, the elements which are the ‘realest’, are often the most attractive to consumers. 

This analysis demonstrates that even fantasies of systematic escape are fetishised by the market and returned to the consumer. Honnold’s feat, as a spectacle, therefore supports Fisher’s ultimate conclusion: it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Image: Flickr/TED Conference (Bret Hartman/TED)

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