(Our)
Vi$ual Culture™
(Revealed)
(An essay by GÉrard Konings)
-1-
The Beginning™
"To be HAPPY™ is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright." (…Walter Benjamin)
Over the past two decades, human ingenuity has made it possible to create all kinds of fakes and simulations that are so realistic it is getting hard to distinguish many of them from what they imitate. The process is already so far advanced that, today, a substantial part of our surroundings is made up of objects and IMAGES™ and people that appear to be something other than what they are. There are sugar substitutes and Elvis look-a-likes; Sy Sperling hairpieces and replicas of great art; soy burgers and false teeth; female impersonators and artificially coloured food; lip-sync artists who pretend to be vocalists and television commercials that are disguised to look like talk shows. – 1 They keep changing the rules-how we’re supposed to behave in each situation. They keep changing it. It’s just like the world: everything keeps changing constantly. – 21
"Life is an illusion and REALITY™ is a figment of the imagination."(…The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
In addition to all the things that now simulate the appearance of other things, there are even a few products of human ingenuity that are intended to simulate the appearance of nothing at all, such as contact lenses and Stealth bombers. These stealth-like objects are hidden in their environment, creating the illusion they aren’t there. – 1
"Why was I born with such contemporaries?" (…Oscar Wilde)
The sheer number of simulations that now exist and their realism is inevitably changing not only our surroundings, but our psychology and behaviour. One of the most important changes can be found in the fact that we now routinely experience simulation confusion, in which we mistake realism for REALITY™ and think some of these fakes and simulations really are what they imitate. We experience simulation confusion when we receive an advertisement in the mail that is disguised as an official notice, and, at first, fall for it and assume it is an official notice. And we experience simulation confusion by accident, rather than by other people’s design, when we make a telephone call and speak to a voice on the other end of the line, only to realise a moment later that we are talking to a recording on an answering machine that reproduces the qualities of a live voice. – 1
"I BELIEVED™ it because I could see it - right there on television." (…Elizabeth Thoman)
There is no question how so many simulations came to fill our surroundings. They are made possible by technology as well as by human ingenuity, and they are being brought into existence to fill a multitude of needs and desires. In many instances, simulation has become the great substitute: Almost anything we can’t get, or can’t get conveniently, from the world as it is, we now seek from fakes and imitations, whether replacing missing talent or missing hair, and the more realistic technology can make the fakes and imitations, the more they satisfy our desires. – 1
"We must prepare young people for living in a world of powerful IMAGES™, words and sounds." (…Unesco, 1982)
Simulations provide the military with new and more effective forms of camouflage. Simulations make it possible for children to collect their own imitation children, in the form of lifelike dolls that imitate an increasing number of human behaviours. And simulations provide all kinds of opportunities for consumers to enjoy the taste of sugar without the calories, to enhance attractiveness through cosmetics, to own replicas of works of art and to experience the fictional characters and situations provided by the imitation realities of television and film. In the kind of economic and personal calculations that go on today, the simulation is often more appealing than the original. For example, homeowners who would like the benefits of a watchdog without the bother now have the option of buying Radar Watchdog, a home-security device that plays barking sounds whenever someone approaches the house. In place of a dog, they get bark masquerading as bite. – 1 Richly confused and hugely verbal age, energized by a multitude of competing discourses, the very pro- liferation and plasticity of which increasingly deter- mine what we defensively refer to as our REALITY™. – 20 The miracle of photography, of its so-called objective IMAGE™, is that it reveals a radically non-objective world. It is a paradox that the lack of objectivity of the world is disclosed by the photographic lens (objective). Analysis and reproduction (resemblance) are of no help in solving this problem. The technique of photography takes us beyond the replica into the domain of the trompe l’oeil. Through its unrealistic play of visual techniques, its slicing of REALITY™, its immobility, its silence, and its phenomenological reduction of movements, photography affirms itself as both the purest and the most artificial exposition of the IMAGE™. – 2
"Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream, Neo? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?"(…The Matrix)
In 1859 Oliver Wendell Holmes described photography as the most remarkable achievement of his time because it allowed human beings to separate an experience or a texture or an emotion or a likeness from a particular time and place- and still remain real, visible, and permanent. He described it as a “conquest over matter” and predicted it would alter the physics of perception, changing forever the way people would see and understand the world around them Holmes precisely observed that the emergence of this new technology marked the beginning of a time when the “IMAGE™ would become more important than the object itself and would in fact make the object disposable.” Contemporary advertising critic Stuart Ewen describes the photographic process as “skinning” the world of its visible IMAGES™, then marketing those IMAGES™ inexpensively to the public. – 3
"I live and feed on the IMAGES™ that I come by, (re)directing me throughout the life “I” lead."(…riche en pulpe™)
Granted, the American “standard of living” brought an end to drudgery for some, but it demanded a price for all: consumerism. Divorced from craft standards, work became merely the means to acquire the money to buy the goods and lifestyle that supposedly signified social acceptance, respect, even prestige. “Ads spoke less and less about the quality of the products being sold,” notes Stuart Ewen, “and more about the lives of the people being addressed.” (…) Thus the modern dilemma: While few of us would turn in our automatic washing machines for a scrub board or exchange our computers for a slide rule, neither can we expect the IMAGES™ of the past to provide the vision for the future. We must recognise the trade-offs we have made and take responsibility for the society we have created. (…) In many ways we are living in a new world, and around that world hungry eyes are turning toward the Western democracies"longstanding promises of freedom and abundance - the promises the MEDIA™ has so tantalisingly presented. – 3
"Never confuse motion with action."(…Ben Franklin)
Yet behind the MEDIA™ CULTURE™’s constantly beckoning shop window lies an ever-widening gap. West or East, North or South, the flickering IMAGES™ of the MEDIA™ remain our window on the world, but they bear less and less relationship to the circumstances of our day-to-day lives. REALITY™ has fallen out of sync with the pictures, but still the IMAGE™ CULTURE™ continues. – 3
"Social inscriptions of visual CULTURE™ in everyday life."(…Unknown)
Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung debris, we calmly and adventurously go travelling (1969). – 4
"I love acting. It is so much more real than life."(…Oscar Wilde)
As we know, it is not only the implantation of cinema in the shopping arcades of the turn of the century that preoccupied Walter Benjamin’s, but its role in urban, metropolitan CULTURE™. He linked cinematic effects of montage and spatial construction to the psychological experience of big city life. The stimulus and shock of traffic, of the crowd, of the dense fragmentation of space, have been recognised as determining factors of the first two decades of film CULTURE™ (Singer, 1995). Benjamin’s notion of “shock” is at once a means of describing the aesthetics of early cinema, and the spectator’s experience of everyday life, in which the cinema is implicitly implicated. – 4
"Awake, awake! Ring the alarum-bell. Murder and treason! Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm! awake! Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, and look on death itself! up, up, and see the great doom’s IMAGE™! Malcolm! Banquo! As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites, to countenance this horror! Ring the bell."
(… Shakespeare , Macbeth, act II, scene III)
The dialectical IMAGE™ is an IMAGE™ that emerges suddenly, in a flash. What has been is to be held fast - as an IMAGE™ flashing up in the now of its recognisability. The rescue that is carried out by these means - and only by these - can operate solely for the sake of what in the next moment is already irretrievably lost. (1999) – 4 In the last few years critical reflection upon the increasing predominance of the IMAGE™ within society has as a whole tended to be reactive (in the Nietzschean sense). For it has been pitched in terms of “resistance” to the IMAGE™ and to the poverty of indifferentiation that has accompanied its socio-cultural growth. – 5 The predominance of the IMAGE™ in contemporary actuality is due, precisely, to its ability to affect us quasi-immediately. – 5
"The Gold Card says more about you than anything you can buy with it.
We think it’s time you joined the select group who carry it."(…Stuart Ewen, All consuming IMAGES™)
A representation or rather a medium for influencing/changing the thoughts of the audience. – 1
"In the midst of this signage, I’m gaining the knowledge of the world surrounding me, at least that’s what 'their' telling me."(…riche en pulpe™)
Communication, in general, and news coverage, in particular, has some of the characteristics of a caste or class system in which people and things are depicted positively or negatively, depending on the values they are seen as embodying. This class system has its privileged elites and its oppressed classes. It has a place for everyone and puts everyone in their place, even if that place can change over periods of time. Thus, the IMAGE™ of Mother Teresa is always enhanced; the IMAGE™ of Zhirinovsky is always attacked in the American news MEDIA™, and treated as an object of ridicule. Dan Quayle gets one kind of treatment, C. Everett Koop gets another. – 6 In addition, it should be noted that many acts of IMAGE™ treatment are based on the instrumental manipulation of values. Here, journalists don’t treat someone as a scapegoat or saint because they BELIEVE™ them to be so, based on their own values. Rather, they do so to create an exciting story or get a political enemy or merely because they know the audience will demand this treatment. Thus, investigative television news shows are forever looking for and creating villains, so they can have exciting investigative stories to offer the audience. – 6 The IMAGE™, together with the complex which makes it possible, have thus become the site of negotiation for the future of CULTURE™ as such. – 5
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."(…Martin Luther King, Jr)
When I heard the mellifluous voice of Ronald Reagan announce on GE Theatre that “Progress is our most important product,"little did I realise that the big box in our living room was not just entertaining me. At a deeper level, it was stimulating an “IMAGE™” in my head of how the world should work: that anything new was better than something old; that science and technology were the greatest of all human achievements and that in the near future - and certainly by the time I grew up - the power of technology would make it possible for everyone to live and work in a world free of war, poverty, drudgery and ignorance. – 3 It is this search for “something-more than-what-we’ve-got-now” that is at the heart of the consumer CULTURE™ we struggle with today. But the consumer CULTURE™ as we know it could never have emerged without the invention of the camera and the eventual mass-production of MEDIA™ IMAGES™ it made possible. – 3 Television has the connotation of plenitude; it seems to embody consumer society as a whole. In many households, a television set is on most of the day, the pictures and sound adding up to a steady accompaniment or is it a second-hand life? – 3
"(2:18)What profiteth the graven IMAGE™ that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten IMAGE™, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols? (2:19)Woe unto him
that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it."(…Old Testament, Habakkuk, Chapter 2)
The ability to confuse audiences en masse may have first become obvious as a result of one of the most infamous mistakes in history. It happened on Halloween, Oct. 30, 1938, when millions of Americans tuned in to a popular radio program that featured plays directed by, and often starring, Orson Welles. The performance that evening was an adaptation of the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, about a Martian invasion of the earth. But in adapting the book for a radio play, Welles made an important change: under his direction the play was written and performed so it would sound like a news broadcast about an invasion from Mars, a technique that, presumably, was intended to heighten the dramatic effect. – 7
"If you cannot convince them, confuse them"(…Harry S Truman)
The broadcast also contained a number of explanations that it was all a radio play, but if members of the audience missed a brief explanation at the beginning, the next one didn’t arrive until 40 minutes into the program. – 3 At one point in the broadcast, an actor in a studio, playing a newscaster in the field, described the emergence of one of the aliens from its spacecraft. “Good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a grey snake,” he said, in an appropriately dramatic tone of voice. "Now it’s another one, and another. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing’s body. It’s large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face. It …it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate… The thing is raising up. The crowd falls back. They’ve seen enough. This is the most extraordinary experience. I can’t find words. I’m pulling this microphone with me as I talk. I’ll have to stop the description until I’ve taken a new position. Hold on, will you please, I’ll be back in a minute.” (…) As it listened to this simulation of a news broadcast, created with voice acting and sound effects, a portion of the audience concluded that it was hearing an actual news account of an invasion from Mars. People packed the roads, hid in cellars, loaded guns, even wrapped their heads in wet towels as protection from Martian poison gas, in an attempt to defend themselves against aliens, oblivious to the fact that they were acting out the role of the panic-stricken public that actually belonged in a radio play. Not unlike Stanislaw Lem’s deluded populace, people were stuck in a kind of virtual world in which fiction was confused for fact. (…) News of the panic (which was conveyed via genuine news reports) quickly generated a national scandal. There were calls, which never went anywhere, for government regulations of broadcasting to ensure that a similar incident wouldn’t happen again. The victims were also subjected to ridicule, a reaction that can commonly be found, today, when people are taken in by simulations. A cartoon in the New York World-Telegram, for example, portrayed a character who confuses the simulations of the entertainment industry with REALITY™. In one box, the character is shown trying to stick his hand into the radio to shake hands with Amos n"Andy. – 7
"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."(…Oscar Wilde)
In a prescient column, in the New York Tribune, Dorothy Thompson foresaw that the broadcast revealed the way politicians could use the power of mass communications to create theatrical illusions, to manipulate the public. (…) “All unwittingly, Mr. Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre of the Air have made one of the most fascinating and important demonstrations of all time,” she wrote. “They have proved that a few effective voices, accompanied by sound effects, can convince masses of people of a totally unreasonable, completely fantastic proposition as to create a nation-wide panic”. – 7
"Why am I guilty for making a film that year that was not propaganda? I have always spoken the truth, and I have made no compromises, not even to Hitler."(…Leni Riefenstahl)
Hitler managed to scare all of Europe to its knees a month ago, but he at least had an army and an air force to back up his shrieking words. - But Mr. Welles scared thousands into demoralisation with nothing at all. (…) In the 1950s, America had another taste of the power that simulations have, to draw people into a world of delusional fantasy, when paired with mass communications. This time it was revealed that a number of television game shows were simulations, in which contestants who knew the answers ahead of time were pretending to guess at their responses. But unlike the invasion from Mars, here the fakery was unambiguously intentional; it was the work of producers who had concluded they could create fictional game shows that would be more exciting than the real thing. – 7
"My husband gave me a necklace. It’s fake. I requested fake. Maybe I’m paranoid, but in this day and age, I don’t want something around my neck that’s worth more than my head."(…Rita Rudner)
In 1990, it happened again. Audiences around the world discovered that they were taken in by the ultimate Hollywood illusion in which two performers faked their own talent, lip-syncing, to create the impression they were singing. What millions of fans had BELIEVED™ were two talented singers was actually a composite, another seamless interweaving of sensory simulations in which two people provided the visuals, while vocalists provided the audio. (…) One might say that War of the Worlds and the game show scandal foreshadowed the age of simulation that was still to come. Allowing for a little poetic overstatement, the “Milli Vanilli” scandal served as a rite of passage or symbolic marker, making clear that we now live in an age of simulation confusion in which our tendency to mistake fakes for what they imitate has become one of the characteristic problems of the age. – 7
"Illusion is the first of all pleasures."(…Oscar Wilde)
More to the point, we live in a time in which the ability to create deceptive simulations, especially for television, has become essential to the exercise of power. And the inability to see through these deceptions has become a form of powerlessness. Those who let themselves be taken in by the multiple deceptions of politics, news, advertising and public relations, are doomed, like the more gullible members of the radio audience in 1938, to play a role in other people’s dramas, while mistakenly believing that they are reacting to something genuine. – 7 But, more often, we are being deliberately tricked, by people who have something to gain by manipulating us with misleading appearances. Indeed, much of America’s economy is based on providing consumers with deceptive simulations, from knockoffs and fake IDs to padded shoulders and tinted contact lenses. As a result, we find ourselves in a new kind of surroundings, in which we can no longer always rely on the evidence of our senses to tell us what is real. – 8
"I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost."(…Nan Goldin)
The growing role of deceptive simulations is particularly evident in fields that use props and disguises as part of larger strategies to outwit opponents, including the military, crime, security and police work. Thus, we find that military strategy is now based on inducing confusion in opponents with such visual deceptions as missile decoys, stealth aircraft and camouflage. Perhaps the most impressive example was the creation of a dummy invasion force - including inflatable rubber tanks and canvas aeroplanes designed by a movie studio - that was used to mislead the Nazis about where the Allied invasion would take place. Less noble are the con artists who placed a counterfeit ATM-machine in a Connecticut mall, to trick customers into feeding in their bank cards, and revealing their account numbers and personal identification numbers. – 8
"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."(…Lenin)
These fields provide a good model of contemporary society, which has become a Hobbesian world of simulators and dupes, con artists and the conned, in which people routinely manipulate appearances to get what they want. When we look behind these invented appearances, what we often find are advanced forms of art and technology that make it possible for people to present an IMAGE™ of themselves, and of products, situations and ideas, that tells a story. (…) An example can be seen in local television news. These programs are well known for reciting the daily litany of crimes, and personal and community disasters, with all the potential that has for evoking sympathy, fear and anger in audiences. But this trail of mishaps and mayhem is always framed by a larger message of safety, which is conveyed by the staged expression of helpfulness and friendliness on the part of the newscasters, and by all the stories about public ceremonies and community efforts to deal with problems. The overall effect is to create another kind of symbolic arena, which gives viewers the sense that they are members of a community that is competent to contain danger and suffering. – 8
"Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it."(…Alfred Hitchcock)
In the recent movie Avalon, Barry Levinson’s film portrait of an immigrant family before and after World War II, the delivery of the family’s first TV set is portrayed as a significant milestone. Three generations of Krichinskys squeeze together in front of their tiny new television set and stare vacantly at a black and white test pattern. “Just wait,” one of the children says, “something will happen.” – 9
"If it weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we’d still be eating frozen radio dinners."(…Johnny Carson)
And it did. Throughout the "60s and "70s, television grew from a diversion in the living room into a national obsession. From moon landings to Leave it to Beaver, a president’s assassination to Mr. Clean, MEDIA™ IMAGES™ moved from the background to the foreground of our daily lives. “At the heart of MEDIA™ literacy is the principle of inquiry.” (…) From the clock radio that wakes us up in the morning until we fall asleep watching the late night talk show, we are exposed to hundreds, even thousands of IMAGES™ and ideas not only from television but now also from newspaper headlines, magazine covers, movies, websites, photos, video games and billboards. Some are calling today’s young people, screenagers. (…) For 500 years, we have valued the ability to read print in order to participate fully as informed citizens and educated adults in society. Today the family, the school and all community institutions, including the medical and health community, share the responsibility of preparing young people for living in a world of powerful IMAGES™, words and sounds. Call it “MEDIA™ literacy”. – 9
"Whoever controls the MEDIA™ - the IMAGES™ - controls the CULTURE™."(…Allen Ginsberg)
MEDIA™ literacy is just what it sounds like, the ability to interpret and create personal meaning from the hundreds, even thousands of verbal and visual symbols we take in everyday through television, radio, computers, newspapers and magazines, and of course advertising. It’s the ability to choose and select, the ability to challenge and question, the ability to be conscious about what’s going on around you and not be passive and therefore, vulnerable. (…) There all constructed. Whether we are watching the nightly news or passing a billboard on the street, the MEDIA™ message we experience was written by someone (or probably several people), pictures were taken and a creative designer put it all together. But this is more than a physical process. What happens is that whatever is “constructed” by just a few people then becomes “the way it is” for the rest of us. But as the audience, we don’t get to see or hear the words, pictures or arrangements that were rejected. We only see, hear or read what was accepted. (…) MEDIA™ messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules. – 9
"Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some."(…Alfred Hitchcock)
Each form of communication newspapers, TV game shows or horror-movies has its own creative language: scary music heightens fear, camera close-ups convey intimacy, big headlines signal significance. Understanding the grammar, syntax and metaphor system of MEDIA™ language increases our appreciation and enjoyment of MEDIA™ experiences, as well as helps us to be less susceptible to manipulation. One of the best ways to understand how MEDIA™ is put together is to do just that make your own personal video, create a website for your Scout troop, develop an ad campaign to alert kids to the dangers of smoking. (…) Because of each individual’s age, upbringing and education, no two people see the same movie or hear the same song on the radio. This concept turns the tables on the idea of TV viewers as just passive “couch potatoes”. We may not be conscious of it but each of us, even toddlers, are constantly trying to “make sense” of what we see, hear or read. (…) Newspapers lay out their pages with ads first; the space remaining is devoted to news. Likewise, we all know that commercials are part and parcel of most TV watching. What many people do not know is that what’s really being sold through television is not only the advertised products to the audience but also the audience to the advertisers! The real purpose of programs we watch on commercial TV, whether news or entertainment, is not just to entertain us but rather to create an audience (and put them in a receptive mood) so that the network or local station can sell time to sponsors to advertise their products in commercials. (…) MEDIA™, because they are constructed, carry a subtext of who and what is important least to the person or persons creating the construction. MEDIA™ are also storytellers (even commercials tell a quick and simple story) and stories require characters, settings and a plot that has a beginning, middle and end. The choice of a character’s age, gender or race mixed in with the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviours that are portrayed, the selection of a setting (urban? rural? affluent? poor?), and the actions and re-actions in the plot are just some of the ways that values become “embedded” in a TV show, movie or ad. – 9 We must turn the one-way system of commercial mass MEDIA™ into a two-way process of discussion, reflection and action. – 3
"Our commodity is evil… To each according to his wickedness, all the evil his heart desires… Just name the person, fill out our form, describe the grudges, grievances, bones of contention… Present your specifications and you’ll receive our catalogue (of fantasies). Orders filled within 24 hours."(…protagonist "Ijon Tichy"explains in the "Rocky Horror Picture Show")
Things will only go horribly wrong if we as a MEDIA™ consuming CULTURE™ decide to value more what they’re selling than we can get from each other via the net or any other method. And if we value what they’re selling, we’ll get what we ask for. If people would rather watch Rambo than talk about Chomsky, then that’s what they’ll get. Right now what we really have is an opportunity for the people of this world to take charge of the global agenda. The controllers of society let the wars of society be fought in the ideological realm, which is the mediaspace. But now they’ve lost reins of the coach and I’m encouraging the idea that anyone can pick them up. – 10 Thousands of years ago a philosopher wrote of a cave of illusion in which captive humans were enraptured by a flood of IMAGES™ that appeared before them while they ignored the REALITY™ outside the cave. This prophetic metaphor contained its own solutions. Once again we are summoned into the light. – 3
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."(…Richard P. Feynman)
The new CULTURE™ finds expression in various MEDIA™, whether it is in tabloid news shows or talk radio’s verbal transgressions. But much of it once again relies on simulation and IMAGES™, in the form of television, film, and video and computer games. These MEDIA™ are ideal for the acting out of seemingly dangerous fantasies, because they offer a faux universe of electronic IMAGES™ and theatrical situations, in which portrayals need not include any reference to morals, social mores or limits since everything is mere appearance. Everything is possible because none of it happens. “In the graphic computer games full of sexual psychodramas and violence; in the commercial Internet sites that promise every possible fantasy and taboo activity will be depicted; in some of the more gruesome creations of the movies; and in a host of other places, we see the emerging CULTURE™ of the techno-Id in which everything is possible as pretence and (seemingly) nothing is denied. – 11
"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not;
a sense of humour to console him for what he is."(…Francis Beacon)
With creations such as these, audiences are being offered a new twist on the classic battle between good and evil, between the upright Dr. Jekyll and his transformation into the malevolent Mr. Hyde. The message is that we can now all become Mr. Hyde and vicariously experience unbridled evil in a world of electronic IMAGES™ and simulations. We can then return to REALITY™ without having compromised our moral identities. – 12 In zoos and museums, it now offers us a growing number of “educational” displays modelled after theme parks. One of its specialities is “walk-through rain forest exhibits” that look like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. (…) In our cities, this CULTURE™ threatens to turn some urban and suburban areas into immerse forms of fiction. It has already done so in Las Vegas where many of the hotels are giant material IMAGES™ that look like they were lifted out of the movies. – 13
"REALITY™ is something you rise above."(…Liza Minnelli)
-2-
The Turn™
In a rundown section of downtown Boston, inside a partially abandoned building, one can find an indoor playing field for a combat simulation game known as paintball. (…) There are in- and outdoor playing fields for paintball around the United States and a burgeoning subculture with its own tournaments and heroes. There is also a growing arsenal of air-powered guns that can be purchased by players, which parallels the fascination with real guns in the larger society. (…) Paintball is an example of a new kind of symbolic arena that now characterises popular CULTURE™. By way of a preliminary definition, symbolic arenas are protected domains that make it possible for people to act out fantasies, embodying their fears and desires, in ways that aren’t possible in everyday life. The settings, situations and actions they are created out of, are lifelike representations - fictions - masquerading as something authentic. (…) In addition to paintball, examples of these “high-interaction” simulations include laser tag; video and computer games; interactive movies; some rain forest exhibits in zoos; virtual realities; board games; pinball; children’s toys; sexual role playing; interactive computer pornography; voice acting on 900 numbers; and so-called MUDs on the Internet, in which people play roles in fictional worlds created with text descriptions instead of IMAGES™. (…) Other symbolic arenas place the audience in a more passive role, in which it is taken for a ride or watches, and identifies with, characters who do things in fictional situations. These include television, traditional movies and the theatre, amusement park rides and the more recent movie rides. – 14
"I BELIEVE™ in looking REALITY™ straight in the eye and denying it."(…Garrison Geillor)
What kinds of fantasies do participants re-enact in symbolic arenas? As in theme parks, they experience the illusion of transcendence, not only from time and space, but from the roles they play in society. They become part of stories that are larger and more interesting than those in everyday life. The adolescent video game player becomes a space pilot trying to save the universe; the child becomes a parent ministering to a doll that acts as a surrogate child; the television viewer, acting vicariously through the character of the detective, solves the crime and defends the moral order of society. (…) Thus, one can say that many symbolic arenas are acts of self- and world-repair: they allow us to face and overcome simulated dangers and problems, which are a more exciting version of what we face in everyday life. In these characteristics, they are similar to daydreams, in which we convert our defeats into victories and our losses into gains to bolster the sense of safety and self-esteem. (…) In addition to letting us master trauma and danger, and escape the limits of physical REALITY™, symbolic arenas also allow us to play out every other kind of desire we know from psychoanalytic theory and everyday life. Power, phallic aggression, revenge, sex, love and success are routinely acted out and temporarily sated in these fictional worlds. (…) Symbolic arenas, based on these principles, now define popular CULTURE™, which is becoming a giant arcade that draws everyone into its lifelike fictions. Overseeing it, we once again find growing numbers of designers and fabricators who take IMAGES™ and ideas from nature, history, the contemporary world and their own imaginations. They convert these into forms of entertainment, which make it possible for millions of people to act out personal and collective fears and desires in artificial worlds. – 14
"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."(…Oscar Wilde)
Video games provide a realm of virtual action in which players can incarnate in fictional worlds by manipulating IMAGE™ surrogates on the screen. Players choose from a selection of imaginary adventures that are, for the most part, the same as those found in television, movies and theme parks. And like them, video games let players experience a sense of transcendence from time and space, and from the roles that players routinely find themselves in, in everyday life. (…) Video games similarly allow players to express anger, hostility and desires for revenge, which are blended in with desires to express phallic aggression (as they are in life, in general) in the experience of destroying things on the screen. – 14
"Nobody Knows You’re a Dog."(…Douglas Coupland)
Identity. I go by the Tootsie theory: that if you concoct a convincing on-line meta-personality on the Net, then that personality really is you... Or an isotope of you. Or a photocopy of you. Karla noted that when photocopy machines first started to come out, people photocopied their bums. “Now, with computers, we photocopy our very being.” – 15 We deplore the disappearance of the real under the weight of too many IMAGES™. But let’s not forget that the IMAGE™ disappears too because of REALITY™. In fact, the real is far less often sacrificed than the IMAGE™. The IMAGE™ is robbed of its originality and given away to shameful acts of complicity. Instead of lamenting the relinquishing of the real to superficial IMAGES™, one would do well to challenge the surrender of the IMAGE™ to the real. The power of the IMAGE™ can only be restored by liberating the IMAGE™ from REALITY™. By giving back to the IMAGE™ its specificity the real itself can rediscover its true IMAGE™. – 2
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."(…Oscar Wilde)
Age unknown. Sex unknown. Job unknown. Dress sense unknown. Race unknown. Class pretty predictable, but strictly speaking, unknown. On the Net, all you have is your words. None of the conventional clue s to a person’s identity appear on the screen. The user is free to present him/herself in whatever way s/he chooses - starting from scratch to construct an identity, to present the self to the online world. This presents unlimited opportunities - some say to expand and enrich the self through play, others to escapism, identity crisis and madness. It’s a confusing new society out there, where what would earlier have been denounced as closemouthedness or duplicity is seen as normal, accepted in the name of experimentation and fun. – 18
"A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know."(…H. L. Mencken)
Transgression is not immoral. Quite to the contrary, it reconciles the law with what it forbids; it is the dia- lectical game of good and evil (Baudrillard, 1987: 81). There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say – 19 One of the most interesting differences to me is the social tolerance / acceptability / encouragement of multiple personalities. In RL, this is called a disorder or MPD. But in VR, being multiple is almost hip. (…) It recalls a scene from Jurassic Park where the female scientist responds flippantly to a frantic tirade by her male counterpart, as they begin to realise the extent to which the dinosaurs have broken loose. - Jeff Goldblum: “…GOD™ creates man, man creates dinosaurs, dinosaurs destroy man…” - Laura Dern: “Woman inherits the earth.” – 18
"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking."(…H. L. Mencken)
Well, welcome to the twenty-first century. We are all immigrants to a new territory. Our world is changing so rapidly that we can hardly track the differences, much less master them. Whether it’s caller ID, MTV, digital cash, or chaos math, we are bombarded every day with an increasing number of words, devices, ideas, and events we do not understand. On a larger scale, the cultural institutions on which we have grown dependent - organized RELIGION™, the medical establishment, corporations, nation states, and even the family itself - appear to have crumbled under their own weight, and all within the same few decades. Without having physically migrated an inch, we have, nonetheless, traveled further than any generation in history. – 10 If we examine the roots of this CULTURE™, we find that they go back to the beginning of the modern age, with mass communications, marketing and advertising, and theme parks. Perhaps the first social critic who understood the implications of what was taking place was the historian Daniel Boorstin, who described it in a book appropriately titled The IMAGE™: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. In the book, Boorstin hit on many of the central dynamics of this CULTURE™. One of his many insights is that as IMAGES™ become more important, they replace values. What we see, today, is just that - a CULTURE™ of contrivance that specialises in creating the appearance of values in place of their substance. (…) In particular, this CULTURE™ offers us one value over and over: it promises to give us an escape route from the limits of life. From the consumer utopias depicted in advertising to the false promises of the politicians, we are forever being told that we can lift off into another realm if we buy or watch or vote the way others want us to. (…) In effect, what this CULTURE™ offers us is phoney transcendence - the hope of a better, more interesting, world, shrink-wrapped in plastic. Like your typical con artist, it promises us everything for nothing, while it picks our pockets. – 13 These IMAGES™ are constructed over time to conceal REALITY™ and manipulate middle class opinion in a way that would suit the needs of the cultural Mafia. – 16
"The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper."(…Stanislaw Lec)
Manipulative IMAGE™ construction can have very dangerous political consequences. The consequence of stereotyping is abundant in history: the stereotyping of the Jews as exploiters in pre-Hitlerite Germany, the socio-political dissents as imperialist agents in the Soviet Union, the leftist sympathies as anti-American, and the stereotyping of intellectuals as anti-national and anti-poor during the Cultural Revolution in China. Such politically manipulative stereotypes left behind unspeakable legacy of tragedies in human history. – 16
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."(…George Bernard Shaw)
-3-
The End™
The 20th century is witness to the fact that all stereotypes tend to be lies that lead to untold misery and wretched years filled with dead bodies and destruction. Though Hitler and Stalin had a different rhetoric and logic, at the end of the day there seemed to be little difference between the two. The ordinary people of Germany had a bitter taste of the consequences of such manipulative IMAGES™ and the people of Russia are still suffering the unintended by product of Stalinism. – 1
"You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap."(…Dolly Parton)
The IMAGE™-building industry is not, however, part of any grand conspiracy. It seems to emerge partly from the insecurity and paranoia of the middle classes in different countries, and partly from the tendency to present news and views as consumer products packaged with striking IMAGES™ and sensational coverage. Television thrives on IMAGES™. Each channel uses IMAGE™ marketing to compete with the others. Thus trivial and insignificant personalised IMAGES™ like that of Princess Diana’s romancing or the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky thriller ended up as global preoccupations. People got the same kind of thrills watching the bombing of Iraq as they did watching IMAGES™ of a boxing championship or World Cup cricket. – 16
"I get a lot of bad press. I get ripped to shreds. I’ve got everybody waiting to tear me down"(…Madonna)
CULTURE™ is a double-edged sword. In the name of CULTURE™, women are denied justice, in the name of CULTURE™ untouchability is being practised, in the name of CULTURE™ the black are seen as inferior and human rights are denied. The worst atrocities in the world are committed in the name of CULTURE™. There are vultures all over the world that thrive on the destructive elements of CULTURE™. The entire social and cultural practice of the world has evolved through mutual influence, assimilation and reinforcement. That is why we are still talking about democracy on our television chat-shows. CULTURE™ is not an island. It is a bridge that connects people, nations and humanity. CULTURE™ is a sense of belonging, not a denial of the other’s belonging. That is why we have to shake off our drawing-room complacency to redeem CULTURE™ from the cultural Mafia. Do we need cultural policing to reinforce our heritage? Or do we need to build our own sense of self-respect and self-worth without being swept away by the market? – 16 No one could be called HAPPY™ without his share in public happiness ...no one could be called free without his experience in public freedom, and ...no one could be called either HAPPY™ or free without participating, and having a share, in public power – 18
"I sometimes think that GOD™, in creating man, overestimated His ability."(…Oscar Wilde)
!! WARNING !!
" This (written) section can be placed within
any POPular magazine available on newsstands
at any given moment "
This work contains writings, selected/(re)aranged by Gérard Konings,
to create a view on the "rise" of the " Visual-CULTURE™", a
nd was created through the words and IMAGES™ of "others", like…
1(…Faking It, Ken Sanes / Sunday Boston Globe, October 18, 1992) 2(…Photography, Or The Writing Of Light, Jean Baudrillard) 3(…Rise of the IMAGE™CULTURE™, re-imagining the American dream, Elizabeth Thoman) 4(…The Flâneuse as Cyberfeminist, Catherine Russell) 5(…Towards a Critical CULTURE™ of the IMAGE™, J. Derrida and B. Stiegler / http: //tekhnema.free.fr/ 4beardsworth.html) 6(…The Migration of News IMAGES™) 7(…War of the Worlds, Orson Welles) 8(…CULTURE™ of Deception: Simulation Confusion) 9(…Skills & Strategies for MEDIA™ Education, Elizabeth Thoman / http://www.medialit.org/ readingroom/ keyarticles/skillsandstrat.htm) 10(…Playing the Future, Douglas Rushkoff) 11(…The new MEDIA™) 12(…The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the emergence of recreational evil) 13(…The New CULTURE™ War, Ken Sanes / http: //www.transparencynow.com/CULTURE™.htm) 14(…A CULTURE™ Based on Fantasy and Acting Out, Robert J. Stoller) 15(…Douglas Coupland, Microserfs) 16(…IMAGE™ merchants and culturemafias, John Samuel) 17(…riche en pulpe™ ) 18(…Unknown) 19(…Steinbeck, 1939:31-32) 20(…New- man, 1985: 15) 21(…U.S. soldier in Haiti police operation)… (a.o.)
!!
"That"s All Folks™"
and Thank You All™
!!
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