bell:Homegrown is an expression, it's a declaration and a bearing witness of that solidarity. It is a denial of the notion, the false assumption that we are not connected.
Amalia: We are connected.
(hooks & amalia 2006, p. 3)
Amalia: We are connected.
(hooks & amalia 2006, p. 3)
The Text I approach is the becoming-of-virtual-self. Desiring to map the pathways of subjectivity which create today’s cult of micro-celebrity. Micro-celebrity defined by the urban dictionary is
“One who gains a cult or mainstream following due to viral internet distribution. Does not refer to those who have gained limited or cult followings through traditional media. Does not refer to has-beens or "B-list" celebrities.” One who gains a cult or mainstream following due to viral internet distribution. Does not refer to those who have gained limited or cult followings through traditional media. Does not refer to has-beens or "B-list" celebrities.”
Micro-celebrity is the recrystallization of the former mass mediated celebrity. Celebrity in Greece referred to persona - a self founded on the division of the private and public. "Persona is externalized spirit; it is intimacy extruded from public anonymity and worn on an actor's sleeve; it is the secret self that we strive to represent in public"(Eggignton 102).
Celebrity culture is inextricably linked with industrial capitalism and the move from small towns to anonymous urban dwellings. The changes from agrarian to industrial society also coincide with the “phenomena of mass-circulation of newspaper, TV, radio, and film” (p. 16). Technological changes allowed for the dissemination of a homogeneous culture that could be controlled by those with the power of production. Capitalist cinema works through eroticizing the limits of reality and virtuality, modeling individuals into robots who find pleasure in possession(Guattari 1996, p.145). Hollywood became a factory for the American dream producing the assimilation of Native and Immigrant identities into capitalist production masked with a smoke screen of glamor(Knop 2005).
I share my middle and last name with the original ‘blonde bombshell’ Jean Harlow. Jean Harlow mocked domestic values in her films at the same time that an suburbanism and technologies of the home were emerging (Cohen 1998, p.267). Female movie stars walked the tightrope of female roles, mother by day, wife by night, housewife in private, star in public(Cohen 2008). Native American’s, immigrants, and African Americans, and women are invisible entities that haunt American Nationalism, and are thus repressed in cultural memory because of their representation of ‘non-citizenship” their figures are made “ghostly” when they appear (Bergland p. 18).
Marilyn Monroe imitated Jean Harlow in the 1950’s, her look solidified American sexuality. Banner (2008) highlights Harlow's blonde hair and the association with prostitutes and lower class women - she redefined a cultural aesthetic. Toni Morisson's The Bluest Eyes explores the themes of whiteness and beuaty and its dangerous psychological influence on the characters. Paula Breedlove says in the novel, "I remember one time I went to see Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. I fixed my hair up like I’d seen hers on a magazine. A part on the side, with one little curl on my forehead. It looked just like her. Well almost just like"(p. 96). Morrison's novel delves into the damaging effects white standards of beauty have on a community of black women pointing to the dangers of internalization of dominant cultures gaze perpetuated through Hollywood - not purely a male nor female gaze (Walther 1990).
The cult of celebrity breeds the cult of audience, who captured by the homogeneous eye of Capital is formed as a society of alienated consumers. Through techniques that created an aesthetic of familiarity and spectacle through close-ups and the creation of star personalities an ‘illusion of intimacy’ was formed. At its most neurotic this results in stalking - in less extreme forms desire for recognition is fulfilled through fan-magazines that portray stars private persona.
Television did not alter the position of audience, but rather extended the image into the living room. Media became consumed in an increasingly private manner. Alienated from the glamor of those on screen, viewers participate in popular culture through purchasing goods yet not creating them. TV relies on a seeing the perceived audience as singular and homogeneous (Weber - Interview). These images created a gaze that created different bodies into exotic spectacles.
As Guattari writes “the history of desire is inseparable from the history of its repression” (143). I desire - recognition and flight and space, but what has been repressed - Cixous says it is feminine (not woman as such - but the feminine - or those identities which heterosexual masculinity defines itself against) creativity - wildness, Lorde refers to the suppressed erotic. Guattari (1996) contends that “the question is neither of innocence or guilt but of finding the micro-fascism one harbors in oneself, particularly when one can not see it” (p. 13).
Who Am I Creating?
Is this me, this no-body that is dressed up, wrapped in veils, carefully kept distant, pushed to the side of History and change, nullified, kept out of the way, on the edge of the stage, on the kitchen side, the bedside?
-Helene Cixous Sorties-
Windows before me - video - camera - text - voice - I can be who I want to be, yet in what image should I fashion myself. CyborgDeva steez entices me, Cyborg to honor Haraway, Deva the name of a girl I met once - Deva - and Hindu god(ddess) in Sanskrit. Enter the internet age and we find a shift from media consumers to media producers, the viewer changes to user, and a shifting in mediation of self occurs. Micro-celebrity arises in the YouTube era of user-created content and viral videos. The internet displaces celebrity from the notion of time to networks, “fame is no longer about getting 15 minutes, its about becoming famous to 15 people” (Hammock 2008).
Post-modern capitalism turned towards the hyper individual, today's MTV generation is often accused of selfish narcissism. But narcissism creates the self in excess - Monroe was overdetermined and her excessive sexuality served as a means for her to play with the boundaries of societal norms through over-identification. The excessive personality created by the teenager of today may result in the ability to for the individual to see that the self isn't all it was cracked up to be.
Am I…
For You?
Is that me, a phantom doll, the cause of sufferings and wars, the pretext, “because of her beautiful eyes, for what men do, says Freud, for their divine illusions, their conquests, their havoc? Not for the sake of “me,” of course. But for my “eyes,” so that I will look at you, so that he will be looked at, so that he will see himself seen as he wants to be. Or as he fears he is not. Me, nobody therefore, or else the mother that the Eternal Male always returns to when seeking admiration
-Helene Cixous-Sorties
For You?
Is that me, a phantom doll, the cause of sufferings and wars, the pretext, “because of her beautiful eyes, for what men do, says Freud, for their divine illusions, their conquests, their havoc? Not for the sake of “me,” of course. But for my “eyes,” so that I will look at you, so that he will be looked at, so that he will see himself seen as he wants to be. Or as he fears he is not. Me, nobody therefore, or else the mother that the Eternal Male always returns to when seeking admiration
-Helene Cixous-Sorties
Narcissism leads the individual to see themselves in the eyes of other - causing a double consciousness. This double-consciousness is liberating in repressed members of society, creating self-confidence and an ability to play with societal norms (Sollors 1987, p.252). Micro-celebrity culture has created multiple sites for users to create representations of themselves. As we see ourselves as other - we also see the ‘other’; “Strangely the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder” (Kristeva p.1). I carry the legal documents check the appropriate online boxes - and align myself with America. American national identity is founded on the denial of Native genocide - Lulu my great grandmother an Algonquin, on my fathers side married the British. Her history is only heard in echoes. My mothers side has a more complete narrative - Siberian roots, Bolshevik revolution entered and my Jewish ancestors got on a haywagon headed to China. A boat to San Fransico led my great grandmother to her marriage of a Mormon botanist, and who am I? What color should-does-can digital blood bleed?
"And as people of color and women utilize memory as a site of resistance, white hegemony responds, "Why all this confession, why all this testimony?" But when we are engaged in this psychological, archaeological dig - when we rediscover not just the facts of history, but the psycho-history - we learn about our ancestors in a different way. For example, when we discover that slave women didn't just think about killing their children to prevent them from being enslaved, they did it, as Toni Morrison documents in Beloved, we have a new and very complex vision of Black female resistance." (bell hooks 2006 p. 109)
I am becoming-woman becoming-myself - I am multiple and I am disrupted - and I bear the wrapping of whiteness - my name is in honor of Hollywood's first sex symbol - out of these contradictions emerges not a collapse but a multiplication of desires a continued yearning. As I am becoming - I am making my own home - The home regardless of how "ephemeral" it may be is the base which all people create - this is a site of resistance (Bakardjieva 2005, p. 73)
What Benjamin refers to as ‘aura’ or Ulmer as charasmia of the star is their embodiment of the contradictions of the time. I desire recognition - a liberation - to occupy a third space. So I dance between the borders of my selves, between my Facebook smile, Myspace cries, Twitter flights, bedroom eyes, family ties, bar time swagger and school prose. So I enter virtual communities, or my ghostly figure of a self - someone does.
Intimacy according to Boelstroff (2008) is predicated on language’s ability to mediate selfhood (p.151). Interpersonal communication scholars describe Intimacy is an expression that describes relationships characterized by, “the exchange of warm, involving, immediate messages” (Anderson 1998 p. 303). One element key to the creation of intimate relationships is “self-disclosure”. Self-disclosure can be explained by “uncertainty reduction theory” (Berger & Calabrese, 1975), when people meet online high levels of uncertainty lead the people to strive to reduce the uncertainty of the situation.
Twitter allows for users to follow people without having to ‘friend’ them (Lacy 2009). Networking does not require a mutual relationship - this synchronicity is key to Twitter’s popularity. I was sitting in a coffee shop this morning and a middle aged mid-western women explained Twitter to her friend, “its like entering a party where you can talk with people all over the world”. The party is all night - conversations take place over long period of times or quick IM style chatter. The party is held on the twitter site - cell phones - ipods - and is really lacking a static place to call home. Anyone can search tweets to see what the birds are up to and then follow a tweet; joining the flock.
"the accelerated spatialization of the primal and contradictory human impulse to regroup or flee, spurred by digital media, has led to a meta-condition. Everything has become deeply inter- and intra-referential: uncannily about and, yet, elusively beyond itself”( Stafford 2004, p. 322)
Ambient Intimacy is a term coined by Leisa Reichelt which combines "the human ‘ickyness’ of ‘intimacy’ with the distributed and non-directional nature of ‘ambiance’." Thompson describes this phenomena as increased social awareness, similar to ESP that results from the loose but deeply connected networks of new media users. Burns alludes to this in his discussion of ‘produsage socialities’ that are non-hierarchical and non-synchronous. Twitter is also a fun word to say - Tweets are the work of birds. Ronnel sees conversation outside of the binary relations as an “outline of a becoming…From Mozart to Eckermann, Freud and Hitchcock, birds signal the uncanny space that travels between us when we converse”(151).
The uncanny was introduced by Jentsch (1925) to describe intellectual uncertainty. Elaborated by Freud the uncanny is extended to a feeling of not being at home produced through repetition of events that inspire anxiety - the fear that accompanies the revealing of that which was intended to remain secret. Krell contends that “the automation or puppet…is the uncanny other”(p.56) In the eyes of the puppet - the avatar lies the origins of repression that returns in the uncanny developed in narcissism of the individual. Bayne’s (2008) finds from his research on Second Life students benefit from encountering their double and the accompanying experience of the uncanny.
"The stranger is near, the Heimliche passes imperceptibly to the Unheimliche, which is the intimate of 'intimacy, the "true" intimacy...narcissus is accoutred in anguish" Cixous 2004 p. 542
So what it appears I have uncovered - or discovered - is that narcissus the figure created I create in my facebook, myspace, is accrouted -
"To outfit and equip, as for military duty
[French accoutrer, from Old French acoustrer, arrange, equip : a-, to (from Latin ad-; see ad-) + coustrer, sew; see couture.]"
a ghostly figure of myself is dressed and the anguish of discovering myself becomes familiar - now the problem moves from the mirror to the living room where the conversation begins - ambiance - a feeling that is no longer associated with any particular person or place - but rather with strangeness in which I find myself at home- permeates the room - intimacy - strangers passing in the room enter the infinite conversation and we can work to make this strange place *real* - [these strangers have many great ideas - that are made real - every day]
The result appears less uncanny than one may have thought - as I continue to search to create myself online - I am finding my family - my friends - joining the online conversation. Both of my parents have added facebook since I began this project...my friends from highschool, college, camps, my extended family - they are all signing up and the internet becomes more and more like home - a place where I can find the space to not be afraid to reach beyond myself and ask the questions, dare to try, think, speak, the courage to walk out the front door -
The conversation I hope to turn towards is as bell hooks writes, "we have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it. Let's talk about reciprocal education, not just reciprocal art. Let's talk about sharing conversation as a radical act" ( hooks 2006, p. 73)
"The power of the crowd, the embodiment of that anonymous sphere within which the the intimate soul was born, is also the aporetic power of a kind of freedom from freedom itself...when a hegemony of screens creates the illusion of intimacy with a billion other souls, the crowds that walk the streets of the world present a power that, win or lose on any given day, cannot be ignored. (Egginton 110).
Citations
Banner, L. The Creature from the Black Lagoon: Marilyn Monroe & Whiteness. Cinema Journal 47, No. 4, 1-29
Bayne, S. (2008). Uncanny Spaces for higher education teaching and learning in virtual worlds. malts.ed.ac.uk
Bakardjieva, Maria (2005)Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life. Sage
Boellstorff, T. (2008). Coming of Age in Second Life; An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually
Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cixous, Helene and Catherine Clement. (1975) The Newly Born Woman. 1975. Trans. Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
Cixous, Helene. (1976) Fiction and Its Phantoms: A Reading of Freud's Das Unheimliche (The "Uncanny"). New Literary History. Vol. 7, No. 3, Thinking in the Arts, Sciences, and Literature
Cohen, L. the horizontal walk: Marilyn Monroe Cinema Scope & Sexuality. The Yale Journal of Criticism. Vol.11 no 1 p. 259-288
Derrida, J. (1993). Specters of Marx. Routledge Classics.
Egginton, W. (2006)"Intimacy and Anonymity, or How the Audience Became a Crowd. Crowds. Thompson, J. Schnapp, M. Stanford University Press
Guattari, F. (1996) Soft Subversions. Slvere Lotringer (eds), Semiotexts
hooks, bell and mesa-bains, amalia (2006) homegrown.
Knop, A. (2007) The Whole Equation: A history of hollywood. The Velvet Trap Vol. 59, p. 72-73
Meadows, M. (2008). I Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having an Avatar. New Riders Press.
Stafford, B. (2004). Leveling the New Old Transcendence: Cognitive Coherence in the Era of Beyondness. New Literary History - Volume 35, Number 2, Spring 2004, pp. 321-338
Out of sight: Toni Morrison's revision of beauty. By: Walther, Malin LaVon, Black American Literature Forum, 01486179, Winter90, Vol. 24, Issue 4
Weber, S. (1973). The Sideshow, or: Remarks on a Canny Moment. Comparative Literature. MLN, Vol. 88 No. 6 1102-1133
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