What struck me most from Stuart Hall’s seminal lecture, Representation & the Media, was the issue of “identity claim” and “identification” with the images we are confronted with on a daily basis. While Hall’s focus was more on how we, as the audience to different forms of visual culture, find ourselves increasingly emotionally invested and engaged with the images we are often presented with, I thought more about how much we have come to utilize images in attempts to represent ourselves. With the growth of the internet as a means of communication and connecting to other people (friends, strangers, prospective love matches, etc.) in particular, we are increasingly dependent upon the use of digital pixels as stand-ins for our material selves.
Facebook, MySpace, Lavalife and even good ol’ Blogger allow users to pick out a ‘profile’ picture as a means of visually representing yourself. Why is it so important for us to visually depict ourselves? Or perhaps more importantly, why is it so important we visually differentiate ourselves from one another? After just barely grasping the ideas of Jean Baudrillard last semester, my guess would be the fact that humanity is becoming more and more homogeneous largely because of mass media. Baudrillard argues we consume because our identities depend on it. We purchase CDs, clothes, and Hannah Montana gear to differentiate ourselves from certain groups of people, while also aligning ourselves with others. And we need to make these identity claims because mass media (among other factors such as urbanization) have left us all wondering where Brangelina are going to adopt from next and what kind of dog the Obama’s have settled on (Have they already settled that?). In other words, we’re all becoming the same because we read, see and absorb a lot of the same stories.
Though Brangelina is probably not the best example, I see evidence of the local becoming more and more global everyday. Those ‘Daily’ newspapers for instance—despite our complaints about the poor quality of local news, are we really better off absorbing the same headlines as the rest of Canada? And as we become more and more saturated into the World Wide Web, where we’re all stuck with the same standard white and ‘IKEA blue’ Facebook layout, it becomes harder and harder to distinguish ourselves as individual human beings. Perhaps we are just as dependent upon consumption as we are on visuals to help satisfy the need to be unique and individual. Mass media is making us so self-conscious!
PS – It was a poor choice on my part to bring in Baudrillard into my first blog post.
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Hey amigo
ReplyDeleteI read your post last night and it really had me thinking about my own projections of myself on an internet medium. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I didn't think about it. I am an avid facebooker and so horribly ashamed of the fact, but by the same token I can't wait to see more photos of myself on my home page and consistantly be renewing my visual appearance on the site. What is with that, that one needs to keep recreating themselves if it were for a voyeristic audience that might not even be there.
Cool man I dig your style.
peace and salty nugs
Dear Naoko,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, you rock. A Baudrillard reference is dope. No need to apologize. I don't think
you can really discuss these issues without bringing in theory from people like that. I too
will be writing about stuff I don’t think I quite understand yet. Maybe by going back and
forth we can all solidify or complete our understandings of these concepts we are
exposed to in cultural studies. Most of us have had different teachers and have been
exposed to different essays/writers in theory, so we may have some info to fill in some
gaps.
I think part of the conversation you are having here has to do with the Lacanian Lack (or
maybe because after feminism and film and reading some Zizek I have taken an interest
in psychoanalysis and so it is only me who things your discussion has to do with this
concept)-I guess you can decide. anyway, I believe this theory has something to add to
the discussion.
The lack is basically a concept related to desire, and Lacan states that because of the
Lack(which he believed was a direct result of the unconscious, which, differing from
Freud, he structured similar to the post-structuralist influenced semiotic theory of
language where there may in fact be no signified at all, or at least no relation of the
signifier to the signified, but only to other signifiers) we desire, or feel empty, or
incomplete...our identity is one based on loss, or absence, so we unconciously try to
make up this loss through various means...
Others since Lacan have viewed his concept of the Lack as referring to many other
things outside of psychoanalysis. Many have seen desire and Lack to be products and
producers of our global habitus, and/or capitialism, and/or as structural, and/or as
social… or other things not directly related to child development or psychoanalysis.
Lacan’s Mirror Stage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_stage) says that during
development we acquire a fractured identity, forming the Ego. This sums up very quickly
much of psychoanalysis for those not familiar with Freud/Lacan:
“This is the state of "nature," which has to be broken up in order for culture to be formed.
This is true in both Freud's psychoanalysis and in Lacan's: the infant must separate from
its mother, form a separate identity, in order to enter into civilization. That separation
entails some kind of LOSS; when the child knows the difference between itself and its
mother, and starts to become an individuated being, it loses that primal sense of unity
(and safety/security) that it originally had. This is the element of the tragic built into
psychoanalytic theory (whether Freudian or Lacanian): to become a civilized "adult"
always entails the profound loss of an original unity, a non-differentiation, a merging with
others (particularly the mother).
(http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/lacan.html) –and this whole
article is pretty good too.
My point in all this is that maybe the Lack is also a contributing factor in the need to
visually represent ourselves as whole, as complete. Again, Lacan believed the
unconscious functioned similarly to language, with a system of signifiers forming meaning
not by their relationship to the signified, but by their difference to all the other signifiers
in language. Words have meaning only in relation to other words, and so too may
identities only be seen as solid, whole, as overcoming the Lack, in relation to other
identities. Maybe the huge social trend that is “social networking” is an attempt not to
differentiate, but functions on an individual level to as an attempt (however impossible)
to complete the fractured self. but since signifiers can only have meaning in relation to
others, the effect is also to socially differentiate.
Ok. I'm really not sure if I am representing my ideas or those of Lacan accurately. That
was hard. I still don't understand... but there is definately a visual aspect to Lacan's
writing, in the Mirror Stage theory, and even in his descriptions of what the
unconscious "looks" like...if there could be such a discription...but on another note-
I also think that identity functions socially, and that by “expressing” ourselves online we
are attempting to maintain or improve our class and/or social status. Visual
representations of ourselves with lots of friends, with lots of capital, with lots of
happiness, with lots of…everything…function as a way provide agency and access to
sexual opportunity and power…it is essentially an economic and/or evolutionary strategy.
Even identifying as a member of a counter-culture or as “uncool” function in the same
way , since they represent a social security in the individual; a social status safe enough
to flirt with losing some social prowess(but of course, not really since this rebelious
nature awards more social status, if not always economic status).
I agree with you and have some other thoughts this subject.
ReplyDeleteMore and more I feel that we are treating the virtual world as a reality. We indeed live in the virtual world half the time, and it has become a part of us. These online spots (facebook, my space, lava life), almost appears as the area in which the ego is now living. We are so concerned, about how we construct ourselves, simply because we can fully construct ourselves. We no longer feel any bounds (this is increasingly true with virtual realities such as Second Life). We construct the perfect person (or almost perfect person), and we can share all of our thoughts openly.
Although I too believe that mass media plays a huge role in this, I think it has gone far beyond even media, to the point where we are now even are classrooms and schools are using these devices. This I think is a very scare proposition, classes and activists groups should have no existence in this virtual world and here is why…
Normally this little rant I am having would be heard in class, I would go off, and a lively discussion would ensue. Now that I am typing this, most will simply skim read (if they even read it at all), and hardly anything will sit with them. They will not bring up their frustrations with what I have said to their friends, and if they respond it will be via blogger. If we then meet in person, they are not going to talk to me about the problems with my post. They will simply smile and go about constructing some other, non threatening conversation. We have lost the skills to communicate about powerful hard-hitting theories, with out getting offended, and think it rude to bring up these points. Blooging, and all of the other Internet communication tools seem to have made us apathetic…