The Specular Economy, Celebrities and us

We are computer literate and socially dumb, we don’t know how to communicate but boy can we connect, we are narcissistic and we don’t care; we are the “me-generation”…YOLO.

 

When Christopher Lasch dubbed the 1970’s as the ‘Me-Generation’ in his book the ‘The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations’ (1979), I seriously doubt he could have predicted the shit-storm that is new and social media. Had Lasch known the power, ease and accessibility of social media in the 21^st century, there is no doubting he would have dubbed the present as the most self-indulged and narcissistic generation to have existed (mind you, it's not all bad).
In the 21^st century, where just about everyone has a Facebook page or a twitter account (including my grandma) the process of being self-aware and forming online identities  is now part of everyday life, and we are part of, what David Marshall (2010) calls, the “specular economy”, where collectively we are becoming more conscious of how we present ourselves and how others perceive us. Yet, while being self-aware and creating identities is nothing new, “Where the specular economy differs is in its new reconstruction of how the self is reconstituted through the screens of engagement and interactivity…” (Marshall 2010). Thanks to mobile phones, tablets, computers and more importantly the internet we are constantly able to tweak and change our projected identities via online platforms, to display the person we are, the person we want to be, or even somebody completely different.

 

Identity formation is supposed to be a “process in which individuals are self-aware” (David Buckingham, 2008) an opportunity for people to experiment and explore themselves to discover who their “one true self” or “true” identity really is, social media has made this extremely easy. However, while we are certainly experimenting with how we present ourselves, are we really discovering and presenting our “true” selves? In fact is there even such thing as a one true self?  People are constantly told “be yourself”, “don’t change for anybody” and “be comfortable in your own skin”, and I regretfully inform you that most of these terms, in today’s tech savvy society, are completely obsolete, in fact even without technology these sayings are a complete crock. “We like to think of ourselves as being constituted by one ‘true’ self – the ‘real me’. This idea is, with some reflection, fairly simplistic, as each person’s self is multifaceted and constantly changing. The poststructuralist conception of identity involves rejecting the notion of singular, ‘true’ self and acknowledging that there are multiple selves” (Chalkley, 2012). And if we’re being honest, what fun would having one identity be anyway? Just ask Clark Kent.

Being self-aware and creating identities is something that “we manage [with] our non-virtual identities every day”, when we get dressed for work, university or a party what we are essentially doing is creating a suitable persona for the event at hand, it’s something we have done since the dawn of civilisation. What we now do, in the specular economy, is a whole new level of self-awareness and identity forming, in that where we once had multiple non-mediated or offline persona’s, we now have multiple online and mediated identities as well as our offline identities to create, maintain and present in multiple public spheres. Online identities can be in the form of Facebook profiles, twitter accounts and even blogger accounts like this one.  We are now able to constantly update “who we are” on a minute-to-minute basis as opposed to an hourly or even daily basis. Thanks to social media the managing, altering and creating of personal identities has been exponentially exacerbated.

I myself am an avid twitter user, and I have two different twitter accounts, one for socialising and one for professional purposes; essentially, what I have done is created two separate identities for myself. While some aspects of myself overlap on both accounts, some traits of what I like to think of as my true identity have also been excluded on either account, for either social or professional reasons, therefore depicting me in two different ways, creating two different identities. According to Leary and  Allen (2011) “people's outcomes in life depend greatly on the impressions that other people form of them, so they are understandably attuned to how others perceive them and often try to convey impressions of themselves that will lead to desired outcomes”, with this in mind I have created a mask of the self for public consumption in an attempt to gain employment and give myself every opportunity to succeed, so does this make me narcissistic or just self-conscious?

 

 

Who would you employ?  On the left my “professional” account and on the right my social account

“Identities are formed both from within and from the outside, in a complex interplay of mutual recognition and understanding of self and others” (FORNÄS, J,& XINARIS, C. 2013), this “mutual recognition” of self and others means that creating multiple personas is not only about narcissistically who you want to be, but it can also be to benefit who is seeing your profile. Take for example, again, my twitter accounts, I have one aimed at potential employers which I use to create a professionally perceived image of myself and the other aimed at my group of friends, which is designed for a laugh, in order to entertain others. You can see my creation and portrayal of different identities are not purely narcissistic, only slightly. My recognition of how others see me means I am able to manipulate each account in order to please the viewer, not just myself.

The presentation of the self is not the only thing that has been intensified by the specular economy, because the foundations of the specular economy “are derived from the much longer tradition of celebrity culture …whose repercussions relate to an emerging comfortability with a society of surveillance” (Marshall 2010), due the ever growing ease in which we are able to capture and share images, celebrity culture has been amplified to the point where "celebrity" is now a form of "news". The specular economy has produced a surplus of images which has been exemplified by the paparazzi constantly making the boundaries between private, public and intimate more malleable and blending in with each other from one sphere to another. Every new image of a celebrity or gossip column about a celebrity is to reveal something new about them, the up-skirts, the down-tops, the ugly faces and the rude gestures captured by the paparazzi reflect the celebrities how we look at ourselves in a mirror, in an intimately uninhibited way. And according to David Marshall(2010) we not only see ourselves in a similar uninhibited way, but we also present ourselves not dissimilar to how celebrities are represented. Whether it is through representing ourselves in a similar way to a paparazzi photo, our favourite movies or a modelling shoot, this is all part of the egotistical implications of the specular economy.

 

 

 

Spot the difference: on the left Eric Bana in ‘Chopper’ and on the right one of my celebrity influenced profile pictures.

However, with paparazzi pictures the celebrity in question (whoever it may be) is not in complete control of how their public persona is being captured and shared. However it is not completely out of the celebrities control, as before they even leave the house what they choose to wear influences how they are photographed and, in turn, perceived in a public forum when immortalized in photograph. Even despite this, paparazzi do constantly and continuously invade privacy in order to gain a good (bad?) photo of a celebrity.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have celebrities who deliberately create or change their persona's in order to gain new publicity or cause controversy. Take for example Miley Cyrus and her recent performance at the MTV video music awards (I know what you’re thinking, but unfortunately her example is too good to ignore). The performance portrayed Miley in a completely new way, it was a complete change of persona, one in which she deliberately chose for herself. The twerking, the skimpy outfit, the sexual dancing and the trademark ‘tongue out’ pose is all a creation of a persona Miley Cyrus has invented for herself, her ideal self if you will. Cyrus’ new persona breaks away entirely from her previous persona that mainstream society has associated with her, the cute and innocent Hannah Montana; she deliberately built a new persona in order to escape her old one. Unlike an unintentional nip slip that the paparazzi snapped that changed your persona, Miley reversed the roles and intentionally exposed herself to change the way she is perceived.

 

Hannah Montana: Nawww ,so cute!

Miley Cyrus: ewww, not so cute. Bring back Hannah

Moreover, the concept of the celebrity has been used to create a “celebrity economy”, where movies and products are advertised and sold through the use of “stars”, commonly termed “celebrity endorsement”. One tactic that is used by advertising companies, which can be directly linked to the narcissistic aspect of the specular economy, is the depiction of the ideal self. An advertising company will target a specific demographic in order to present them with a version of their ideal self by using a popular celebrity to portray this. For example, a picture of Brad Pitt next to a bottle of cologne will entice people to buy that cologne because he is seen by the opposite sex, and the world over, as a sexy, handsome, smart and seemingly perfect man who attracts seemingly perfect women, therefore making the consumer believe that this cologne will help them more accurately reflect Brad Pitt's identity through their own and will, in turn, help the consumer attract more women and be more like Brad.

 

 

I would buy that: Seemingly perfect bloke, Brad Pitt, advertises Chanel no.5 cologne

 “Conducting “face-work” online may be argued to be more conscious and intentional than in the non-virtual world... Social media users have greater opportunity to deliberately consider and sensor what information they provide on their Facebook page than in non-virtual everyday conversations” (Chalkley, 2012) and what is interesting about online identities and the specular economy is that while they do play a role in creating a perceived image of yourself, more often than not, this perceived image is a completely different self to the non-mediated identity/ies you’ve created. However portraying multiple identities is not a real concern, after all everyone does it (including my grandma), what the real worry is in this day and age, is being able to manage all of your online and offline identities and knowing who to be in what situations and who you truly are when you’re alone, because only you can know that.

In terms of celebrity culture, the grave concern is that, thanks to our overuse and addiction to social media and the internet, representational media cannot be caged, where once it could have been. Celebrities and images of celebrities are "always accessible well beyond the interventions of now weakened intermediaries of paparazzi and gossip columnists" (Marshall 2010). The intensification of celebrity culture and the desire to capture and share images of celebrities at their most private has not only “produced a new industry yes, but also pointed to the leaky nature of identity in celebrity culture“ (Marshall, 2013).

So that split second this morning when your bikini briefly slipped from the safety of the cliff of your upper breast and revealed a little bit of nipple, is now tomorrow's front page news. The image of your nipple will be archived on the World Wide Web forever and you will henceforth be known, remembered, immortalized and identified as “that girl that got her boob out”... a leaky nature indeed.

Where once the difficulties of how to present ourselves only extended as far as deciding what shirt to wear for the day, now "the specular economy has produced a new regime of personal presentation that we are only beginning to see its profound implications" (Marshall 2010). As technology evolves and new social media websites emerge, our presentation of the self will become more diverse and extensive, potentially to the point where being “you” might just become too hard to manage.

 

 

 

References.

 Buckingham, D (2008), "Introducing identity." , Youth, identity, and digital media pp1-24.

Chalkley, 2012, Communication, New Media and Everyday Life, Oxford university press, Victoria, Australia

 FORNÄS, J, & XINARIS, C 2013, 'MEDIATED IDENTITY FORMATION', Javnost-The Public, 20, 2, pp. 11-25

Lasch, C, 1979, ‘The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations’,

Leary, M, & Allen, A 2011, 'Self-Presentational Persona: Simultaneous Management of Multiple Impressions', Journal Of Personality & Social Psychology, 101, 5, pp. 1033-1049

Marshall D, 2010, the Specular Economy, Society, Vol.47, no.6, pp. 498-502

Marshall, D, 2013, Persona studies: Mapping the proliferation of the public self, Journalism, pp. 1-18