iOccupy
I.
On the home page of the New York Times on Thursday, October 6, 2011, two images, staggered: One, a crowd; the colors are vibrant and varied. There are people, dozens, maybe hundreds, spilling out of the frame and into the world beyond the photo. Sitting, standing, yelling and looking up. Signs held up high read "OCCUPY-RESIST," read "REVOLT."
Next to it, down the page a bit, is a man against a black background. He's pale and staring into a screen. He's seated. Alone. This man could be nowhere but on a stage.
This man, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, has just died, and with his death a worldview is dying with him.
The worldview in the other photo, as enacted by Occupy Wall Street, has just been born.
The day before, one could feel the mass media about to finally present Occupy Wall Street - the movement that is largest in New York, but growing into other cities, echoing Middle East protests, and targeting corporate greed and demanding corporate accountability. Leftist journalist Amy Goodman had showed up on the livestream; documentarian Michael Moore was tweeting away, unions had joined. Surely, no one could ignore the movement.
Then Steve Jobs died, and an opening was made for the media to crawl out of or into. A "visionary," as he is being called by seemingly every media outlet everywhere, had passed. Pancreatic cancer - we saw it coming, but as always with death, it still seemed to arrive from nowhere.
My Twitter feed, which had been very slowly filling with Occupy Wall Street-related news, erupted with "RIP Steve Jobs" messages which ranged from the heartfelt ("Your technology has made my life possible") to the light-hearted but warm ("iSad"). Many recounted their first Apple purchases.
II.
I started earlier than most: My mother bought my family an Apple IIc in the 1980s. With it, I began to write a novel when I was seven years old. The computer, with its clumsy floppy disks and off-white entire-desk-occupying monitor fused with my creative life. I would have never written so much as a child without the computer, and writing so much is what kept the thread going -- from writing then to writing now. And the thread is here at this moment; I'm writing this on a Mac.
But despite this early involvement with Jobs's early, clumsy children, I wasn't exactly moved by his death. He was and Apple is, unlike prime competitor Bill Gates, notorious for not making charitable donations (at least publicly -- Jobs's apologists, including Andrew Ross Sorkin and Forbes magazine, say he may be giving secretly). His company is reported to use sweatshop labor, and last year, materials used for Apple products were traced back to murderous African militia groups. He was as anti-pornography as someone could be while not being a radical fundamentalist. His devices are, according to many public health advocates, spreading cancer. Without even approaching the enormous amount of resource depletion and pollution creation computers are responsible for (and this should not be ignored, should be examined more deeply and more often), Jobs and his work are problematic and cannot hope to present moral value in and of themselves.
On top of that, there was and is, what from any angle looks like a revolution happening, and the mainstream media suddenly shut it out.
The Twitter feeds kept coming in from sources (like @OccupyWallSt) directly related to the protests; many stating police were corralling protestors to arrest them and worse. Some protestors were being beaten and pepper-sprayed for doing little more than holding those colorful signs and bearing witness to economic crimes against humanity.
While this was happening, people began to march to Apple Stores, not to occupy them, but to grieve, with their glowing devices in hand; mock candles that costs hundreds of dollars. They placed notes. Some cried. Many took photos of each other.
III.
Commenting on any of this in public was tricky business, I learned. When I said on Twitter and in a cafe I was worried that people were projecting emotion onto their gadgets, I got a cold "fuck you" and called an asshole more than once. "He changed the world!" Was the most common response, as if change were value-laden, the measure by which a person's life is gaged. As if we all don't change the world.
When I said, "let's not forget Occupy Wall St while we mourn," people scolded me. Didn't I know, they wondered, that the whole movement couldn't be happening without Steve Jobs's innovations? I mused back: maybe these protests wouldn't be necessary without the corporate and technological running amok. Not much of a response there, only that I was "dismissing people's sense of loss."
I was reminded of Andrew Ross Sorkin's particularly stupid article on Occupy Wall Street just a few days earlier (The New York Times, October 3, 2011). He thinks he's got some sort of stick-it-to-them line for the protestors: a withered and sixth-grade criticism. He asks one (out of tens of thousands) how they got to the protest. When the response is by plane, he questions more "deeply" that planes are part of corporate culture no? "Doesn't Virgin America represent the corporations you are trying to fight?" he asks. In other words: don't these fools know they're hypocrites? Sorkin's question is profound, though by no credit of his own. He doesn't know it's profound, because he asks with the intent of dismissing the group. The call of hypocrisy is often a child's game, because it refuses to recognize complexity.
The real weight of this question in light of Jobs's death is this -- where do these gadgets, corporate-built but now woven into the fabric of our being, fit into our lives? It's not clear that they're good -- good for whom? Certainly not Apple's sweatshop workers, nor for the millions that can't afford Apple products. Nor are they good for many of those who can afford them, but brandish them like badges of honor -- status symbols in a strange war for whose iPhone is the whitest. Add, again, the problems of resources and social implications of these devices and I'm not so sure they're good for us or that the way in which Jobs "changed the world" was for the better.
Then again, bad for whom? Occupy Wall Street and the movements they engendered or grew from them employ technological advances like no movement before.
Livestreams, Twitter, phones with cameras, phones as walkie-talkies, hacking systems, broadcasting to the world, emailing demands. So, like the first apple, to bite at technology renders unto us a gift that is by no means free.
Of course, none of this means that Steve Jobs was a good person. The Nobel Prize was named after the inventor of dynamite, which was subsequently responsible for death after death. The Rhodes scholars take their name from a racist diamond mogul. Works of peace or beauty often come from violent and strange places.
IV.
Sorkin's other question was "What's the message?" He writes, "...at least to me, the message was clear," but then uses the rest of the article to point out just how messy and unclear he thinks the message is. This is as ubiquitous a media sentiment about Occupy Wall Street as "visionary" is about Jobs. But aside from the fact that many of the participants have stated clearly what they want, their detractors miss the point: decentralization is its greatest strength and most profound feature. And this decentralization was made possible historically and practically by technology.
Whereas once there were figureheads and men and women with megaphones fighting the power, now there are waves. The protestors don't seek a leader, but consider themselves collectively as a leader of a new way of thinking. The movement is the leader, in service to its subjects.
This is possible only because our sense of self is changing; growing more accustomed to connectivity through the Internet and globalization, we have begun to define ourselves by our interactions with others, not merely our own pursuits. Self is composed of a vast matrix of others instead of being segregated into Ones.
Of course this has its consequences too -- as many media theorists have pointed out; we can become more isolated by thinking the rest of the world is in the computer rather than real. But Occupy Wall Street represents this new sense of self at its most human.
Connecting online before and during the protests, with each other as well as the world, Occupy Wall Street occupies real space, and finds solidarity in virtual space with those who can't be there.
And this connectedness has given us a vast sense of equality that the protestors want borne out on a global, economic, and political level. A way to understand this is exhibited by the Ever-Shrinking Celebrity. No longer the untouchable black and white movie divas and leading men, celebrities are instead our neighbors, sitting in their living rooms. We're connected to them and participating in our own exhibition on YouTube and Facebook and Tumblr. We're curators of the fascinating museums of our superstar lives; media- and business-selected celebrities are less interesting to us. Even genuine mainstream celebrities like Lady Gaga show a different sense of self; in touch with her fans, she is her fan base, she tells us. Their actions are her blood. Other celebrities are less direct but nonetheless exhibit diminishing old-school fame. They talk to "the other 99%" on Twitter. They're no longer mobbed for autographs at the airport but instead they pose -- without pay -- for quick cellphone photos. We're them. They're us.
If our cherished celebrities cannot withstand the erosion of collectivity, how could our leaders -- financial and political -- hope to be spared? We're interconnected enough to know what others need. We don't need to be "represented" anymore, because we can actually speak to one another.
Famous, brilliant, "visionary" Steve Jobs, alone in the black with his gadget, isn't quite the hero he would have been even ten years ago. Vitriolic responses to critics of his corporate miserliness can be seen as symptoms of clinging to an old worldview. Since we're now understanding ourselves as connected, so will we connect moral bankruptcy with technological innovation. The latter will not excuse the former.
The world is fleshing out a new ethic and moral structure as the sense of self changes. Until it resolves (and perhaps it never will; perhaps it will be in this tension for a long, long time), we will stand in paradoxes. This isn't hypocrisy, it's a moment of learning, of process. But one of the messages of this moment has already emerged:
If you were famous, you will no longer be famous. If you were uncharitable but innovative, we'll take the computers and turn them into charitable devices. If you were irresponsible, you're one of us, and we demand responsibility of ourselves. No more figureheads. No more totalizing centralization. No more celebrities, no more superpowers, no more Wall Street or despots. No more crimes from iron-fisted, power-wielding authorities because there will no longer be any authorities. The center is everywhere, and we occupy it.
Image by David Shankbone, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
Tweet- 10-10-11
- Conner Habib's blog
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Comments
Separating Technological Ingenuity from Corporate Over-Lordship
It seems a bit naive for someone to make direct parallels between those with creative prowess ... inventors and such, who are more often than not, "starving artist" type fellows with their own unique bent of creative genius.with the exploitive corporate mentality. along with all of the investment / trader type mentality, who, by their very nature, more times than not, virtually hijack such creative genius and exploit such for profit.
The trick of corporate identity is to legally bind, artists, researchers, inventors through contracts via funding temptations to where one is led to believe that the corporations are themselves responsible.
So much of this argument comes down to the machinations of our money system to where so much research and technology are literally coerced to suit the capitol gain of board members and investors almost always to some degree at the very expense of creative ingenuity and collective participation ... keeping everyone in competition for the dollar, rather than free to collectively share and create.
Most neo-cons, if you put them out in a field they could not take care of themselves. Put them on a soapbox on a street corner and no one would pay attention. So many creative think tanks are hired to find ways to propagate us away from our inherent ingenuity.
Instead of a McDonalds commercial showing the actual exploitive slaughter house one is shown a tasteful family scene designed by creative artists payed to paint a rosy picture of family and children getting the latest movie promo toy.
It is the artists creativity that we are attracted to, as is only natural Same within inventors, after all such manipulations of their talents, and skills the artists then portray on behalf of the illusionary corporate interest a picture of "helping the world become a better place " .. "providing jobs" ...
Politicians almost never write their own speeches .. all creative energies are again, hijacked for a buck here a dollar there. So many psychological ploys are used to bewilder one of less discrimination.
The reality being we are attracted to creative genius, like even sitting down with a good fictional novel we can become lost to the creative ideology.
We are naturally attracted to ingenuity in all forms, but for so long we have been unaware of what lies behind the scenes.
Nicholas Tesla is one famous example of an technological wizard who was corporately defamed for not playing ball. Einstein himself deeply regretted having participated in the making of the bomb, having fallen for the propaganda of God and Country ... again not that such is bad but that such ideology itself is verily manipulated by propaganda machinations at virtually every level, and those who are now waking up to such
.. well it is natural to regret having been so blindly misled .. having been taken advantage of ones natural intrigue with creativity and ingenuity themselves. ... and I guarantee you this .. there is not one scientific, technological medical or even political representation anywhere in the world right now that would not be more evolved, efficient and/or beneficial if was, once upon a time / up to the present freed from corporate interests.
So many inventions and ideas are squashed, bought out manipulated, at the expense of collective societal progression, for so long, that there is likely not a one of us who could really envision where we would be right now in regards to such without such "intentional exploitation".
Some have become so bewildered by such manipulative drama that they criticize in protest the reawakening of social discrimination at such fictional propaganda behind the actual creative scenes.
There are obviously all levels of waking up going on ... some just scratching the surface, and others decades and even centuries deep into the manipulations of our inherent viability all across the board .. financially, artistically, technologically, politically ... Wall Street behind it all.
Time for Dorothy to leave the dream and return back to Kansas {OZ} .. the majority of us can easily relate to the actual story ... we no longer require fictional representation to distract us.
That many are not yet refined in their progressive discriminations into the length and breadth of the manipulations is of no real consequence .. a little naive still ... a little rough around the edges ... so what ... the basic sense of underlying truth will always be enough for those honest enough to still have some inner integrity left.
It is certainly not a simple matter as so many have themselves implicated and entwined in so many ways into this inefficient fabricated system.
One thing for sure those who have the most invested in the illusion will have the most criticism of those waking up to think for themselves ... so many levels of participation on both sides ... and on it will go.
" "Wonder is what Mystery would do if it was conscious" ... "Wandering is for every other possibility" Pippalayana Muni
corporate trick
Wide Open
CH,
Just some very generalized comments, mostly in relation to the one comment about criticizing protesters for flying in planes ... {quite a bit of this type naive critical commentary out there along similar vain.} ... as if Wall Street and/or Corporations having anything directly to do with all of our use and/or intrigue with technology itself.
In a more open society and a more efficient monetary system that virtually all technology could be advanced without any corporate structure claiming responsibility for such , as most inventions are created independently virtually above and beyond all of the "name brand" buying and selling in the name corporate interest after the creative fact.
That no one ever really owns technology per se ... just general sharing in the overall intrigue of the over all "science of life" that evolves on it's own outside of the money game only by those of sufficient intellectual prowess ... which are never those who "supposedly" own the rights to such ... a virtual illusion
... that every protester knows "unto themselves" to different degrees just what value such technology has for them outside of the markets of cost manipulation and royalty ownership.
Without such historical corporate manipulation of technological prowess our present state of technology would likely be way more open and efficient.
That there are college students on the street right now with a much more evolved understanding of jet engines than any so-called CEO ... how are they therefore not the ones meant to be taking advantage of such creative luxuries , based solely on their qualitative understanding above and beyond any "tricks of ownership" by those who only know of the pennies lost and gained in such illusions.
We can be dependent on the creative science behind technology without being obliged in any "real" way to the market manipulations of those with less actual understanding and or appreciation than our own qualitative insights into the science and use of such.
Just some "indirect" commentary to add to the mix, meant to support all of our inherent qualitative understandings of value beyond the illusions of dollar sign manipulation ..., all other opinion aside
"Wonder is what Mystery would do if it was conscious" ...
"Wandering is for every other possibility"
Pippalayana Muni
Techno Paradoxi
Thanks, Conner, for the excellent post!
In intact indigenous communities of the past (and the few still in existence), the people you respected, were inspired by, learned from and taught were are people you had physical contact with and knew you. Today, if we're lucky, we have family members, friends, and mentors who we know and know us. But for many of us, our relatives and acquaintances are often abusive, deluded, uninspiring, dull. The exceptions prove the rule. Yet we still, of course, seek contact with inspiring, nurturing, wise, bright people, often resulting in (what Derrick Jensen would call) toxic mimics of healthy relationships. For example, for me: Buckminster Fuller is the grandfather I never had, Daniel Quinn the father I would have liked to have had, Steve Jobs and Derrick Jensen the uncles, Lady Gaga the little sister, and Ke$ha the wild niece. So I cried a bit when Steve Jobs died, just as I'll cry when any of the other stand-ins pass. (For the record, I didn't cry when my real grandfather died—good riddance—sorry!)
Humanity has really only used electricity for 150 years, or less than 1% of its history (let alone so-called "pre-history"). Computers and the internet just a fraction of that. My favorite recent tweet is from Jimmy Kimmel, of all people: "So realistically, are we supposed to continue tweeting forever? What's the long-term plan here?" http://j.mp/KimmelTweet
I grew up with the Apple IIe; it definitely enhanced my life as a kid, and now I own the MacBook, iPhone, iPad. Yet, I want to live in a world where muskoxen and bison can freely roam evolving on their own terms, where we can drink from rivers, and not give cancer to everyone.
I would pay an extra $50 for my iPhone if Chinese factory workers could work in more comfortable wage-slave jobs, but that's depressing too. As Douglas Rushkoff wrote recently, who wants jobs anyway?
I'm encouraged by the seeming intensification of the paradoxes we live in—they inspire hard thinking, conscious responses, new worldviews!
It's a great time to starting imagining a "post-electric internet", the de-institutionalization of the world's youth (school), and surppressed spiritualities. I think we're ready!
Thank you!
How could I not love a comment in which Ke$ha shows up? Anyway, I appreciate your idea of connection via "relatives" - our intellectual and artistic mentors do offer relationships, for sure. It's good to view them as having certain roles in our lives - When someone becomes an idol, it's (no surprise) idolatry.
Derrick Jensen is a great example - I've loved and respected his work for a long time now - but without the counterbalance of Daniel Pinchbeck's radical hope for the future, I'd be drowning in Jensen's neo-primitivism.
Which is just a nice way of saying: when we treat concepts as family and welcome them all to the table and hear them out, we avoid the narrow-lensed specialization which is responsible for so much of the fragmented mess we're in.
CH
A different kind of movement
"But Occupy Wall Street represents this new sense of self at its most human... Connecting online before and during the protests, with each other as well as the world, Occupy Wall Street occupies real space, and finds solidarity in virtual space with those who can't be there."
Conner's done a great job pointing out the realities of the world we live in: Maintain mindfulness with the use of technology. Not to the extreme of completely rejecting it's existence, nor use it to a complete dependency. This was a truly refreshing and sober article. Thank you.
Excellent..
Thank you for the essay, I feel it's given me a clearer view of the process that seems to be happening (although I do find it hard to distinguish sometimes between what is my wishful thinking and what is a realistic assesment of what is happening!). I loved some of the statements you made like - 'Whereas once there were figureheads and men and women with megaphones fighting the power, now there are waves.' and '...we have begun to define ourselves by our interactions with others, not merely our own pursuits. Self is composed of a vast matrix of others instead of being segregated into Ones.' It would be so wonderful if we could one day come to the realisation that humanity is like one being, which is inherently loving, I hope the collective consciousness is becoming awash with this idea.
I was listening to Carl Calleman talk about what he refers to as 'Unity Consciousness' and he said he believed it would be expressed as more transparency and I resonated with that idea. Not only is the internet helping us to become aware of the atrocities happening but it seems to me that thoughts, intentions, motivations are also becoming less private, and more easy to detect, in one'self and others, it's as if you know, that I know, that you know, that we have a common source and a hopefully pretty much identical goal, ie love, unity, connectedness, justice..and the defence mechanisms, evasions and excuses that we hide behind are just getting too easy to see through.
transparency
Thanks for your comment - I really like the word "transparency" for understanding connectedness. It's a good counter to the usual reductive "we are all one" idea, which I don't like - Since we're also individuals and feel our separation from each other and the world, to merely disregard this separation or wish it away doesn't work (and also, it may perhaps be truly USEFUL and beautiful to be an individual).
But transparency - it's a way of seeing. I'm imagining a way in which we feel our individulaity, but turn it slightly and reveal everything contained within us - all the connections. Jean Gebser talks about this in reference to new stages of consciousness - humanity has passed through many different structures of consciousness and we still "contain" the old forms within us (since they're what our current form grew out of). The point is not to go backward, but to render transparent those old stages. So perhaps that's part of what's happening now - a rendering transparent of the connections we'd forgotten.
CH
Lady GaGa as figurehead and other observations/criticisms.
I thought this was an occasionally thoughtful but ultimately under-developed article. You conclude your third section dismissing Alfred Nobel in what I thought was a rather witless and tired argument. It is important to be discerning and separate invention from repercussion- the work of art from its reception. You ignore the fact that dynamite was once used extensively in construction, mining and demolition during the Industrial Age. There was a large need for such potent explosives for use in the mining industry and in it tunnel construction and Nobel’s invention fulfilled that need. Attributing responsibility for “death after death” to the dynamite itself is unfair. Was the dynamite responsible? Or humans who applied it thus? Or is the “responsibility” dynamic here more complex than that? I’m not going to get into Latour’s arguments surrounding the agency of objects here, but what I can say is- it’s not that simple. The relationship between invention and volition is one of tough love. It’s messy. It’s inconvenient. It’s certainly not a dismissive 18 word sentence. The oversimplified and reductive bi-causal strand in your “argument” here is problematic. By the same token, we might as well hold alcohol and hash “responsible for death after death.” Of course, one should know better than this. It’s not quite that convenient. You seem to be aware of this when you state that “works of peace or beauty come from…strange places”. I just think the Nobel Prize example was rather poorly constructed.
**************************************** In the fourth section, I respectfully beg to differ with you when you suggest “figureheads” are a thing of the past. They aren’t “once”. They are very much alive, kicking and tweeting away. I find it interesting that your article mentions “no figureheads” and “Lady GaGa” in the same paragraph. I can’t think of a 21st century social-media heavy weight that fits the image of a figure head more than Lady GaGa herself does. (I’m a big Lady GaGa fan and somewhat of a GaGademic and monitor the Lady’s virtual presence closely)
As a self proclaimed champion of gay rights, “spokesperson” against bullying and DADT, her desire to unlock legions of fans’ “revolutionary potential” is not exactly the entertainment/music industry’s best kept secret. There’s a reason Sir Elton John anointed “Born this way” as the new “gay anthem” of the 21st century. Figureheads assume signatures and anthems as part of their communicative/artistic apparatus. The political history of the 20th century is littered with many examples of the same. Paws up, Conner.
GaGa often speaks of her desire to “liberate” her fans (especially those who feel “disenfranchised”) and insists they were “born [that] way”. Lady GaGa is the Lady with the megaphone, to use your own phrase. Many of her little monsters insist that until she came along, they felt they had no one who could speak and sing on their behalf. I think, therefore, your insistence that “we” don’t need “to be represented anymore” is far from the truth. If anything, millions of people have flocked to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogger, Flickr and Gaydar precisely because they want to be represented and we have a myriad ways to re-present ourselves in virtual spaces. That’s A LOT of re-presentation. Sure, this does allow for a significant degree of decentralization. But I certainly don’t think we’re seeing the end of totalizing centers of power.
You set up a binary between virtual space and “real” space, and problematic as it may be, I shall use it here to illustrate a point. Can your blog and twitter ‘profile’ not be construed as cyber/virtual figureheads for your “real” existence outside of the cyber realm? There is strength in numbers here too. Your twitter account itself has taken note of increases in numbers of followers. And numbers and power go hand in hand. Your audience is bigger than lots of other audiences and commands a center that is bigger than other audiences’. So I don’t think this space is unproblematically shared. This isn’t an even plain of interaction and engagement- this feels more like multiple pockets of privilege. There are cracks and fissures in this space through which the anonymous and unfollowable fall through, unnoticed.
Basically, every virtual presence belies an absence. Ignore, for a moment, all those you follow on Twitter, and think about those you don’t follow.
Consider the fact that it often takes a re-tweet from an artist of Lady GaGa’s social media status to garner a lot of publicity and attention for hitherto unknown talents: Greyson Chance and Maria Aragon are cases in point.
GaGa’s 14 million + strong twitter-traffic flows both centripetally and centrifugally. Her tweets leave centripetally, outwards from her account, and hundreds of thousands of little monsters converge centrifugally upon her twitter account on a weekly, if not daily basis. What remains constant in either situation is the existence of a center. She’s where it’s @.
I’ll elaborate further on Lady GaGa as entity in cyber-space. I think she’s very relevant to this entire discussion, and I think her persona and social-media-fandom undermine a number of arguments made in this essay. Consider this a quick case-study.
The “revolutionary potential” Lady GaGa prides herself in has now assumed an entertainment- establishmentarian “little monsters are here and we’re queer” presence. Lady GaGa is listed. She is now part of the media-establishment, over, above and beyond her own personal/artistic motivations. I’m not putting forth the tired “artist strikes a Faustian deal with the music corporations and sells their soul in the process”. I’m not even referring here to the diffusion of oppositional tendencies in pop culture when counter/sub-cultural components “make it big” in the mainstream (those tendencies need not die and can simply manifest themselves in new, reconfigured ways). What I am suggesting, however, is that despite her noblest of intentions and for all her out-reach positive good will, little can change the reality that her artistic/social message is inexplicably bound up with the technological medium. Everytime we tweet something- the tweet itself is as significant as what is being said. The medium assumes the message and re-presents it in an interface where it can be passed along and spread further. When her “Little Monsters” retweet her every single tweet, they are not merely retweeting a message, they are retweeting the medium. They are not simply following their “queen of Twitterverse” , they are also following the “medium”.
I’m simply saying, Lady GaGa conspicuously “occupies” a center that all of us do not really share , a center that she recently shared with Barack Obama at an anti-bullying fundraiser priced at$35,800-a-person. The event for about 70 people was hosted in the yard of Facebook's COO, Cheryl Sandberg. Charitible, sure. But also unmistakably and totally centered.
The medium, therefore, may allow for significantly greater access and parity of opportunity for out-reach, but it does not preclude the existence of potent and strong centers of influence. We are not as central to her empire as we’d like to think- we are just more visibly and actively peripheral. “Little Monsters” are part of a periphery that simply has more “rear windows” available to look into GaGa’s life and work. And she can look back, too- if she so chooses. But with 14 million plus followers, the view isn't exactly connectivity-conducive and getting GaGa attention isn’t an even playing field. Instead of the idea of shrinking celebrity, I actually think the celebrity industry is only expanding- there’s just more to celebrate and more room to celebrate now!! There are so many more windows to look out from and look into. GaGa remains Twitter unreachable and untouchable, though ever so easily follow-able.
In her interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes she discusses the “Sociology of Fame” saying that she is simultaneously very public and private. She opines that blogging and reality television are taking away from the myth of celebrity and she also talks of the super star losing their elusiveness and their compelling mystery. This is not the same as the ever shrinking celebrity, however. The notion of celebrity is not shrinking in my opinion, it is undoubtedly changing. Audiences and fans can now simply “celebrate” and peep into aspect of their idols’ lives which prior to the social-media digital era, they would merely speculate on. If anything, a figurehead like Lady GaGa has aggressively heralded back the ideal of the “untouchable” icon, so reachable and accessible, and yet shrouded in mystery. GaGa herself says this is part of her “art of fame” which she has mastered to sanctify and protect the parts of herself that are most personal and private to her. On the Gayle King show she revealed “MY FANS don’t want to see me wearing flip flops, taking out the garbage.” We certainly ain’t seeing her living room. She doesn’t want us to. As she herself has said: “To me, being an artist is being private in public."
Don’t be fooled by the ubiquitousness of her virtual presence. Part of the reason for GaGa’s success lies in her ability to manipulate and maintain her mystique while simultaneously rendering herself into social-media’s first ultra visible global super-star- the one who has sworn off reality television precisely because she doesn’t want you inside her living room, nor find herself inside yours. Lady GaGa, in my analysis, undermines your idea of the “Ever Shrinking Celebrity”. The celebrity industry now only has more and more to celebrate and peep into; with the rise and rise of Mother Monster, and her ability to be both follow-able and untouchable at one and the same time, “celebrity” has a bright future ahead.
She tweets at “us” as much as she tweets to “us”- despite her own volitional claims that she is her fans. But sappy sentiment aside, she is *not* 14 million people, and she can never be. And “we” are not her. Lady GaGa came in and occupied the wall-street, if you will, of social media real-estate. Power to her for doing so. But her social media fandom still runs top-down more than it does bottom-up. She occupies the apex of the twitter pyramid, and her ever broadening fanbase occupy, well, the word says it all: the nondescript but numerically weighty base.
I’m asking you to consider the power-implications present in being a “Listed” and “Followed” person on Twitter. I think it is naïve to celebrate her social-media out reach without considering that she reigns supreme on the Forbes annual Celebrity 100 list of the most powerful celebrities. Social media is part of the contemporary index of power and influence. It is increasingly viewed as an indicator of power. This index has little to do with “a vast matrix of others” (though that’s a nice thought) and is explicitly segregated into “Ones.” GaGa isn’t rubbing shoulders with her 14,414,385 monsters here- she’s rubbing them with the likes of media tycoon Oprah Winfrey and other heavy weights such as U2, Elton John, Tiger Woods, Taylor Swift, Bon Jovi, Simon Cowell, and LeBron James.
Undoubtedly, her own initiative in out-reach is admirable, and assisted by the technologies at her behest, she has done much to ‘descend’ from her fortress of super-star celebrity to “reach out” to her fans. She is not sequestered in her fortress, she chooses to catch some fresh air and take a walk. But it’s still “reaching out”. And if the “center” were everywhere, and we all “occupied” it, we wouldn’t really feel the need to reach out. Why, we’d all just have to reach in.
Your article also mentions “world view” a lot. And as a non-Anglo American, South Asian citizen, born in London but bred in the city of Karachi, I find it a little ridiculous that “world” views should be spoken of without any mention whatsoever of tech-trends and practices in countries such as India and China ( two new emergent “centers” of power), and Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia to name a few. You article says “the world is fleshing out a new ethic and moral structure”, but I must ask you here, “which” world/worlds are you referring to? And if you’re not being particularistic here, which I recommend you should be considering the English article is published on a blog website where other English articles are published, you’re assuming a center of superordinate perspective and “worldview” that reads as ethnocentric. The vocabulary of the article itself is very centralized. And it, by default, excludes scores of populations and their alternative worldviews, cosmologies and ontological schemes of self, Other, technology and connectivity.
Where I agree with you about the large strides decentralization and de-centeredness are taking forward-they're not going anywhere without the very “centers” of media power and privilege they seek to spread outwards from. Decentralization has prospect and promise, though not in the degree that your piece suggests-explicit centers of power and wealth aren’t an irrelevance, yet.
The cult of celebrity not only retains its body-guard-escorted, ushered in-and-out-of-limos-with-tinted-screens exclusivity, it also devolves and decentralizes to the lesser and un-known, who are now able to claim their 15 seconds/minutes of celebrity, in true Warholian vein (think Rebecca Black). Instead of the “Ever Shrinking Celebrity”, it may be more rewarding to address the phenomenon of ever-expanding Celebrity. There is a net increase in Celebrity. Celebrity is increasingly becoming a contested site of competition and whosoever has the most Followers , Retweets, Likes and Youtube views, wins. If “Celebrity” were ever-shrinking, the Royal Wedding of Will and Kate wouldn’t have created the riot that it did. Nor would some of the contestants on shows like the X-factor and American Idol. Steve Jobs’ death wouldn’t have shaken the world of information and communication technology as it did.
I agree that the elusiveness of the “diva” and the star may be lessening- and this transformation is evident. Beyonce and Lady GaGa have addressed it themselves. The diva and star may be less-elusive but they are still ever-exclusive. They are still the red carpet and designer outfits. They are still novel. They are still “sighted” at public places. They are still the exhibition worthy subjects of a voyeuristic press and audience. They are still peeping-tom shows (only now one may peep with greater technology, efficiency and sophistication.) They still draw large, enthusiastic and screaming crowds at movie premieres world over, from Los Angeles to Mumbai. Their untimely deaths still send the entertainment world into memorializing frenzy abound with frantic speculation (Anna Nicole Smith, Heath Ledger and Amy Winehouse exemplify this).
If we are indeed “curators of the fascinating museums of our superstar lives”, I’d like to add these “curators” can’t touch their fetishes- they can certainly look. Not unlike the pornographic project.
Another very problematic aspect of your write-up is that you use the collective pronoun “we” throughout your piece rather uncritically. And yet you claim “we” don’t need to be represented anymore. Who/what is the “we”? Because there are millions of ‘I’s who would disagree. So who are you speaking for? And if representation is as unnecessary as you claim it is and if “there are no more figureheads”, why do you insist on using the quintessential, constitutional verbiage of figure-head representation itself? “WE” the people. “We don’t need to be represented anymore”- but “we” is as representational as discourse gets. Is your sense of “self” here, then, not being refracted through a representational matrix itself?
I don’t find much in the way of current affairs and social/media phenomenon that reveals “the message of this moment” you feel/and write rather sentimentally about. Your sentiment is admirable, but your argument doesn't really hold. I see centralization, I see figureheads and I certainly see authorities, celebrities and superpowers. Just thought I’d share my thoughts/critique.
In other news, Lady GaGa is scheduled to visit India, that emergent center of power and human resource, this month. Obama did say India has arrived. He was right. The lady has, too. I guess that means centers react to and attract each other.
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Thanks for writing so much -
After all that, I'm not really sure what your point is.
Most of your arguments/criticisms are calls for a more relativistic view -
Questions like: What about the GOOD stuff dynamite did? How can "we" mean all of us? What about the fact that "world view" can't encompass the world (and a note here: "world view" references an individual or group's view of the world, not the entire world's view.)
Presenting such arguments are useful as a growth tool in our personal intellectual lives, which is why they're so widespread in undergraduate and graduate studies. But I don't find using them to criticize someone else's work without adding more substance than "what about _____?" very helpful.
Your idea of "listed" and "followed" on twitter makes sense to me - and it's something to be explored for sure. But I don't think it applies here, either: The entire article is about the pulling apart of ways of life and thinking - a shifting from one (type of) world view to another. Which is why paradoxes and overlaps of theories and behaviors are inevitable. Lady Gaga can be famous and try to equalize her fame at once. That's what happens in periods like this.
More broadly, your criticism lie most squarely in an academic and postmodern spectrum. I think that type of thinking is useful, but this web magazine is more about developing something beyond that; which is part of why the article is constructed the way it is - it has that movement beyond humanistic and relativistic postmodernism in mind.
CH
the "point" lies in my post :) consider re-read.
I'm confused you're confused, because I think I made my point quite clearly when it came to Lady GaGa and the cult of celebrity in argument against the idea of the "Ever Shrinking Celebrity", and employed numerous examples and references to support my argument too. I was specifically responding, in context, to your claims: "no more figureheads", "no more celebrities", and "we don't need to be represented anymore." I based my discussion around Lady GaGa because you had mentioned her in your piece and I think her role as a centered entity in the virtual domain is relevant to your argument. I've only responded directly to claims and observations made in *your* article, and delineated which ones I responded to as I went along.
Perhaps you misunderstood my response. Perhaps that lonely looking question-mark should redirect you to my reponse and its rather explicit statements concerning representation, figureheads and celebrity. :)
If you're still confused, which I reckon you should't be, because I'm not a jargonistic writer and am hardly making any esoteric claims here, feel free to ask questions, if you have any.
In response to your note, I am aware of what "world view" means. I was attempting to deconstruct the semantics of the phrase itself: "World" and "view". It's obviously not a view shared by the entire world as you said, and yet it is accompanied by "world" and hinges around the idea of a "world". It is a view framed around/by an attendant world. Those attendant worlds are dizzyingly and amazingly diverse and different. Forget the divide between apple users and non users, I'm talking of a wider technology-literacy gap- the technology rich and poor. Such discontinuities drive a wedge in phrases like "world view" and call to question the underlying, almost invisible condescension in boasting a "world view" and making references to "the world" "fleshing out a new ethic and moral structure as the sense of self changes." I, for one, can't take an expression of that nature for granted. The words we use (and don't use) are value-laden. Those values, and where they come from, and where they're going, are of interest to me.
I think it's important to unlearn one's tech-informed privileges and unlearn and disentangle one's views and politics and then take a look around. Web magazines like this tend to forget that, I feel.
Discourse analysis, which is what I'm big on, isn't necessarilly even symptomatic of relatvistic postmodernism- it's a fairly flexible intellectual tool adaptable within and across scores of disciplines and fields- from media studies to cultural theory to post-colonial theory.
x
Well
I don't mean to offend here but I'd like to be as honest as possible: I do read your post as mostly jargon. I also think what you've said boils down to standard postmodern calls for relativism uber alles.
"Media studies", "cultural theory" and "post-colonial theory" all being modes of postmodern discourse, I'm also not sure how "discourse analysis" leaves the realm of what I addressed.
Even if it did leave the postmodern framework, "discourse analysis" is not enough to understand what's happening in this moment. Instead, a more coherent and spiritual view is needed. I don't pretend my article engenders that explicitly (Though the ideas presented are founded on spiritual examination - particularly the work and Gebser and Steiner; but for thinkers with more overlap with postmodernism, William Irwin Thompson or Doug Rushkoff will work better.) - so I ask that you explore the articles on the rest of this site if you haven't already. Some express a very lofty spiritual conception, others more down to earth. Most try to work toward understanding cosmology, not just discourse.
Thank you for your thoughts - I welcome more in email if you'd like to continue this discussion at length!
CH
Agree to disagree
Media-studies, cultural theory and post-colonial theory are in fact, at this very moment, embracing perspectives collapsing the "post-modern" project. My post-colonial theory professor at the University of Edinburgh, for instance, doesn't even believe in the "post-modern".
Discourse analysis lies at the heart of spiritual examination (certainly in my experience) because it gets to grips with the problem of language beyond Wittgenstein's idea of "language games" and the linguistic turn in the social sciences. It aspires to gain a more nuanced understanding of how language is used to synthesize "world views". This is not merely a deconstructive exercise- it's as concerned with breaking things down as it is with making (new) things up. New perspectives, reoriented lenses and a theoretical aperature that is welcoming of readjustment.
I'm not offended at all- I just disagree (surely, we can, can we not?). I find it absurd that you'd mention the prospect of "no figureheads" and Lady Figurehead Herself GaGa in the same paragraph.
I also quoted her words from her very own interviews (perhaps you should check them out- Anderson Cooper/Gayle King) - not obscure, post-modern jargon.
If anything, my aim was to bring the lofty (admirable) sentiment in your piece down to earth. To take a "bite", if you will, out of this particular "reality sandwich"" and expel it from the gardens of iOccupy Heaven it takes a meditative/spiritualist walk in.
I think this claim, for instance, is simply lofty, romantic and sentimental: "No longer the untouchable black and white movie divas and leading men, celebrities are instead our neighbors, sitting in their living rooms."
I then went on to illustrate that untouchability persists in the world of social-media, entertainment and celebrity.
I'll say (quote) it again: Don't be fooled by the ubiquitousness of her [Lady GaGa's] virtual presence. Part of the reason for GaGa's success lies in her ability to manipulate and maintain her mystique while simultaneously rendering herself into social-media's first ultra visible global super-star- the one who has sworn off reality television precisely because she doesn't want you inside her "living room", nor find herself inside yours.
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} I appreciate your honesty but I'm also confused that you'd reduce what I read as a very direct, grounded (and not simply post-modern) argument to being jargonistic alone. Don't get that, but to each their own at the end of the day.
I also must add that I am not making "calls" or claims for anything, least of all postmodernism. As an artist and student, I am weary of academic/theoretical labels and find them very stifling. I think you're working too hard on my response. If you don't read between the lines that much, you might just see it for what it is and what I intended it to be: a precisely pragmatist argument highlighting the inadequacies and inaccuracies of some of the claims you make regarding representation, figureheads, Lady GaGa and "Ever Shrinking Celebrity." (each of these are, of course, intertwined concerns)
Having said that, I respectfully, but with the force of informed opinion, agree to disagree. :)
xxx
Leaderless movement
You've found the words I've been looking for since the movement picked up steam:
"Whereas once there were figureheads and men and women with megaphones fighting the power, now there are waves. The protestors don't seek a leader, but consider themselves collectively as a leader of a new way of thinking. The movement is the leader, in service to its subjects. "
It's amusing/frustrating to watch the media pundits, naysayers, and NYT journalists to point to 'occupy' as a muddled leaderless mess - when they can't yet see the power in that very feature. It is a very new concept - a brand new development - a paradigm shift and they can't see it. How could the movement be corrupted without leaders? How can it be divided with no stable target to cut through? The opponents are grasping for handles on this thing which they can use to pull it apart - and surprise! There are none! It is more like fighting an ocean of water than an army of men.
Deepak Chopra spoke at the protest and said something like - "don't worry about the overall message because the only thing you can control when you are part of a wave this large is your own intention". I love that we are starting to take 'experimental' concepts like this and putting them into practice in a meaningful way.
We are the ones we've been waiting for.
-Hopi Elders
No opposition
Thanks Rich,
Funny, I just read this after coming home from a discussion between Deepak Chopra and Leaonard Mlodinow in Berkeley. I was much more impressed by Chopra than I thought I'd be; and your quote confirms my impression.
Your words, too, are inspiring thought in me - I hadn't thought of how unopposable the movement is because it eschews the power of the leader. I'd thought mostly about its power, not the relative weakness of its oponents.
Thank you for this,
CH
Mckenna's view of the overmind
I thought this from Terence Mckenna (from 1985) seemed relevant to the article -
'...the difference between Jose [Arguelles] and I, one difference, is that he is interested in creating a planetary consciousness out of the surrender of the ego of individuals to this higher vision of what should happen, I think that there already is this superhuman organism and that our freedom is largely illusory, we are all moving to the tune of what Freud called the superego, what I call the overmind - because I don't like the notion of superego, it's a little like torchlight parades, that sort of thing - but the overmind, the notion of simply a control mechanism which is almost cybernetic but which is leading everything forward and is actually orchestrating what is happening so that all these human groups that aspire to hegemony, you know, Wall Street, the Communist Party, Zionists, you name it, they are all frustrated because there seems to be an invisible impeding force against their massanations(?) and their vision of how things should be and no matter how many guns they pile up, no matter how much propoganda they churn out, the historical continuum has a way of stabbing them in the back and surprising them endlessly, this is I think because they are fools playing with the master which is the superego, and what we as individuals can do is help that process by not participating in the projections of anxiety that these various factions are pushing, that arise out of their frustration with their own inability to get a handle on things. I don't want them to run things, Wall Street or the Communist Party or anybody. I think that it works very nicely that it is run invisibly from the unconscious, I think it was Charles Fort who said "there comes steam engine time and then there will be steam engines", and that is what is happening with modern technology..'
http://www.futurehi.net/media/McKenna_The_Invisible_Landscape_3-A.mp3
Into China should please the CIA
We are the 99%
Sadly the name of famous
Sadly the name of famous people has been involved in others demonstration.
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Paul of www.kekacase.com - we make design for ipad 2 case