THE STAR AS COMMODITY AND THE COMMODITY AS STAR.
As a cultural commodity, the star is the paradigm of the image on display in the same way that price was the paradigm of the commodity on display. Its emergence in the teens and the twenties was the consequence of the shift from the urban based to the electronically mediated culture industry. It resembles it predecessors, in that it is retrofitted to resemble the consumer. It no longer serves, though, as a symbolic mirror of the consumer. Instead the consumer is encouraged to see itself as a symbolic mirror of the star.
The culture industry holds out the possibility that style alone can break down the distance between the consumer and the screen. What is held out as catharsis through consumption—the possibility of reconstructing your identity by replicating another, reinforces the fact that "the perfect similarity is the absolute difference. The identity of the category forbids that of individual cases. Ironically, man as a member of a species has been made a reality by the culture industry. Now any person only signifies those attributes by which he can replace anybody else, he is interchangeable a copy. As an individual he is completely expendable and utterly insignificant, and this is just what he finds out when time deprives him of the similarity."(3) The expandability and utter insignificance of the consumer can be seen most clearly in the phenomena of the double, who is dependent on the status of the star for their own status and who know that once the star is replaced, they will be discarded.
For Adorno and Horkheimer [1989], the relationship between the star and the audience was that of "virtual" equivalence, with the expectations of one reinforced by the actions of the other and both equally reified. The star becomes the star because he/she fulfills the expectations of the audience, which the audience has because the culture industry has taught them what to expect. Consequently "every detail is so firmly stamped with sameness that nothing can appear which is not marked at birth, or does not meet with approval at first sight."(4) Both audience and star are "strangers", "fixed within the... [culture-industry]... or within a group whose boundaries are analogous to... [it, but their]... position within it is fundamentally affected by the fact that... [they do]... not belong in it initially... and cannot be, indigenous to it."(5)
At the same time "the culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory."(6) Given this, how is it possible for the audience and star to share "common features of a national, social, occupational, or generally human nature"(7) with other "strangers?"
This is achieved through the "internalization of a generalized other" within a collection of institutions-including the church, schools, the family and the culture industry—whose content is not neutral, but ideological. As Dick Hebdige [1979] notes "most modern institutions... despite the apparent neutrality of the materials from which they are constructed... carry within themselves implicit ideological assumptions which are literally structured into the architecture itself."(8) To view the internalization of this content as imposed, ignores the fact that the claims made within these institutions are viewed by the majority of those sharing common features of a national, social, occupational, or generally human nature as natural. As a consequence they are not simply arenas of potential repression, but hegemonic environments, where one internalizes the "generalized other" and learns the rules of the game.
For Todd Gitlin [1980] and Ericson et al. [1987], the culture industry outline and fill in the rules of the game through the "visualization of deviance." Adorno and Horkheimer take a similar position but argue it is done through the construction of needs which can only be resolved through the consumption of preselected cultural commodities. As a consequence "the generalized other" is a reflection of the lowest common denominator where everyone is free "to choose what is always the same... The triumph of... the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them."(9)
For Stuart Hall [1993], this is the consequence of the culture industry structuring as real simulations of the real and `re'-presenting these simulations as natural. While Hall himself is reluctant to tease out the implications of this claim, concentrating instead on the institutional structure of its encoding and decoding, his claim that the viewer is led "to think that the visual sign actually is what it represents to be"(10) parallels the claims of the Situationist International [S. I.] Hall and the S. I. diverge in his retention of a materialist stance tied to current relations of production/consumption, at the same time as arguing that such consumption is "open... to new accentuation's and enters fully into the struggle over meaning."(11)
For the S. I., as long as the struggle is based around the semiotics of production and/or consumption, consumers of cultural commodities would still be unable to distinguish "the real from its image." The fact that consumption is potentially open to new accentuations does not alter the relationship between the consumer and the cultural commodity. For them, the exploration of oppositional possibilities in consumption-of either texts or objects—mean nothing if not accompanied by the refusal to pay. Such explorations do not change the fact that "the alienation of the spectator to the profit of the contemplated object... is expressed in the following way: the more he contemplates the less he lives; the more he accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own existence and his own desires. The eternality of the spectacle in relation to the active man appears in the fact that his gestures are no longer his but those of another who represents them to him."(12)
Similarly Adorno and Horkheimer [1989] argued "the most intimate reactions of human beings hav(ing) been so thoroughly reified that the idea of anything specific to themselves persists only as an utterly abstract notion: personality scarcely signifies anything more than shining white teeth and freedom from body odor and emotions."(13) For the S. I., this thorough reification emerges in the society of the spectacle "where everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."(14) As a result "real life is becoming indistinguishable from the... [television]."(15)
This is underwritten through and made to seem real by the star, who -- although nothing more than the image on display —- reinforces "the very conditions of existence... [that]... resulted in the society of the spectacle, where life itself becomes a show to be contemplated by an audience which is forced to be passive."(16) The contemporary spectacle aims at a false familiarity, where "personalities and characters actually serve as friends and neighbors for many viewers in electronic simulation of friends and community. They are hyperrealities, simulating intimate networks of emotional human activity for many alienated consumers in order to deliver the commodity of audiences to advertising producers and the advertised commodities of producers to the consumer audiences."(17)
This results in -— and is the consequence of -— people becoming spectators of their own lives, which the media then validate as real. Under these circumstances, the spectacle appears to be sustained "not by the images produced by the media but by us when we reproduce these images in our daily life-which in turn, are reported by the media as examples of reality."(18) This, the S.I. argued, results in both the star and audience existing in a world that is both seemingly real and seemingly lived. Here stars "exist to act out various styles of living and viewing society... They embody the inaccessible result of social labor by dramatizing its products magically projected above its goal: power and vacations, decision and consumption, which are the beginning and end of an undiscussed process."(19)
In acting out "styles of living," and in reducing all conflict and choices to consumption, the star serves as the symbolic prism through which all relationships are refracted and reflected. Like the consumer, the star "renounces all autonomous qualities in order to identify himself with the general law of obedience to the course of things."(20) As the expression of the hegemonic commodity, the star represents "a caricature of antagonisms,... to be for or against Brigitte Bardot, the nouveau roman, the 4-horse Citroen, spaghetti, mescal, miniskirts, the UN, the classics, nationalization, thermonuclear war and hitchhiking. Everyone is asked their opinion about every detail in order to prevent them from having one."(21)
As the expression the generalized other, the star "must possess a complete stock of accepted human qualities. Official differences between stars are wiped out by the official similarity which is the presupposition of their excellence in everything... The admirable people in whom the system personifies itself are well known for not being what they are; they become great men by stooping below the reality of the smallest individual life, and everyone knows it."(22) They are neither original, unique nor neutral. Instead -— like other commodities -— they are branded and filled with meaning.
They are presented as "ideal types of the new dependent average"(23) and as such are stereotyped virtual-individuals, who are labeled heroes and role-models. If they fail or deviate from their proscribed role, they are disbarred for breaking contract with their consumers. They represent the hyper-commodity filled with an associated lifestyle and through them the "satisfaction which no longer comes from the use of abundant commodities (2)s... sought in the recognition of their value as commodities; the use of commodities comes to be sufficient unto itself... Waves of enthusiasm for a given product, supported and spread by all the media of consumption, are... propagated with lightning speed. A style of dress emerges from a film; a magazine promotes night spots which launch various clothing fads. Just when the mass of commodities slides toward puerility, the puerile itself becomes a special commodity."(24)
The star is the embodiment of banality. A commodity alienated from its being as a commodity and unable to break from its dependence on a range of other commodities, which depend on the star's status for their own legitimation. At the same time the star serves as the symbolic mirror of the audience's commodification, which sees itself as dependent on the star for its legitimation. The audience, although realizing "the great gulf separating them from" the star, feels that it can exist as a copy of the star through the consumption of a recognizable collection of commodities which bear its artificial imprint. This can be seen in the contemporary phenomena of the Madonna wannabees and Elvis impersonators, who do not have to look like the star to stand in for the star. All they have to do is dress like the star to feel like the star.
They should not be confused with the double, who's status is dependent on the existence of the star as a brand. The wannabe and impersonator are dependent on the existence of the star as image and can change allegiances as often as they change their clothes. They are unique to the developed culture industry and reflect the fact that all relations—from emotional investment through historical consciousness to political discourse-have been reduced to their lowest common denominator. As Debord [1990] notes "the spectacle proves its arguments by simply going round in circles : by coming back to the start, by repetition, by constant reaffirmation in the only space left where anything can be publicly affirmed."(25)
The Russian Formalist V. N. Volosinov [1986] -- in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language -- argued that meaning emerges through intra-individual symbolic interaction within a public institution. In the society of the spectacle, this institution is privatized. Here symbolic interaction becomes the interaction of symbols and—as Adorno noted—no matter how much the spectacle claims that its "standards were based in the first place on consumers needs."(26). As a response to intra-individual symbolic interaction, it can never be more than an advertisement for itself. As a result the culture industry is dependent upon "the effect, the trick, the isolated repeatable device...[these]...have always been used to exhibit goods for advertising purposes, and today every monster close-up of a star is an advertisement for her name, and every hit song a plug for its tune. Advertising and the culture industry merge technically as well as economically."(27)
The current trend in television, to feature the audience in a caricature of a town meeting through participation in a call in, illustrates how the content and meaning of any activity when incorporated within the culture industry is reduced to its lowest common denominator, the image on display. As a consequence discourse reflects "the most familiar... and played again and again and made still more familiar."(28)
This is reinforced through the participation of specialists, who appear as experts and are represented as "objective" but are "the media's professionals... bound by wages and other rewards."(29) It would be wrong to see this as a mutual relationship, with the spectacle as dependent on the status of the specialist as the specialist is dependent on the spectacle for its status. Instead the specialist is fully aware that what is provided by the spectacle can just as easily be revoked by the spectacle. There is only one culture industry but no shortage of Ph.D.s, retired generals and critics. Just as "when the spectacle stops talking about something for three days, it is as if it did not exist,"(30) when the spectacle replaces one specialist with another, he/she no longer exists. As a consequence, they willingly legitimate the ability of the spectacle to remodel --or ignore -- events to reflect its needs in the present.
COMMUNICATION AS A SYMBOLIC DISCOURSE IN THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE.
The effects of the culture industry incorporating previously autonomous realms into its orbit and supporting its claims through the "witness" of experts are three-fold; First, there is the suppression of history through the culture industry which has "the ability to cover its own tracks - to conceal the very progress of its recent world past."(31) The consequence being, "social significance is attributed only to what is immediate and to what will be immediate, and to what will be immediate immediately afterwards, always replacing another identical, immediacy, it can be seen that the uses of the media guarantee a kind of eternity of noisy insignificance."(32) This is made to appear coherent and seemingly based in reality by specialists who, as Guy Debord comments, would not explain the assassination of Jaures–by Villain in 1914--as a political act. Instead:
Journalists/police and pundits on `social issues' and `terrorism', would quickly explain that Villain was well known for having planned several attempted murders, whose intended victims were always men who, despite the variety of their political opinions, all by chance looked and dressed rather like Jaures. Psychiatrists would confirm this, and the media, merely confirming in their turn what the psychiatrists had said, would thus confirm their own competence and impartiality as uniquely authoritative experts. The official police investigation would immediately come up with several people ready to bear witness to the fact that the same Villain, considering he had been rudely served at the `Chope du Croissant', had in their presence loudly threatened to take revenge on its proprietor by publicly murdering on the premises one of his best customers.(33)
Second, it is no longer so desirable to think in terms of the separation of public and private realms, or of economic and social roles. In the society of the spectacle, "the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life. Not only is the relation to the commodity visible but it is all one sees: the world one sees is its world."(34) As a result "alienated consumption becomes for the masses a duty supplementary to alienated production."(35) This alienated consumption is underwritten and legitimated through the culture industry by service industries, the mass media, public relations and advertising, which in turn underwrite and legitimate each other.
For example, television programs such as Entertainment Tonight and the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour report as news the activities of the stars and the commodities associated with them, including films, records, speeches, advertisements etc. In discussing these, they concentrate on who or what is hot and not. This is tracked through polls of consumption–best-seller lists, hit parades and amounts of moneys earned by Film A or Film B– or polls of a politician's approval rating. The results are presented as fact and claimed as evidence of the consumers' approval of and freedom to choose from a range of preapproved choices. To support these claims the spectacle depends on the services of academics, who- under the pretext of serious research in all spheres of the social sciences, from sociology to communication studies-design surveys to define and explain to their corporate sponsors the heuristic of consumption:
A society in which man's essence is to consume - to consume Coca-Cola, literature, ideas, emotions, architecture, TV, power, etc. Consumer goods, ideologies, stereotypes -all play the part of photos in a gigantic version of Szondi's test in which each of us is supposed to take part, not merely by making a choice, but by a commitment... This society's need to market objects, ideas and model forms of behavior calls for a decoding centre where an instinctual profile of the consumer can be constructed to help in product design and improvement, and in the creation of new needs liable to increase consumption. Market research, motivation techniques, opinion polls, sociological surveys... may all be considered a part of this project.(36)
Finally, spectacular discourse becomes a creature of disinformation, which "unlike the straightforward lie... must inevitably contain a degree of truth but one deliberately manipulated by an artful enemy."(37) With the appearance of disinformation "networks of promotion/control slide imperceptibly into networks of surveillance/disinformation."(38) This has corresponding effects upon the role and function of the experts who are in reality "bound by wages and other rewards" to the producers of the spectacle. They "are happy to be given confldential information" and thus "hardly likely to criticize it, nor to notice that in all that is given to him, the principal part of reality is invariably hidden. Thanks to the benevolent protection of his deceivers, he sees a few more of the cards, false though they may be; he never learns the rules of the game. Thus he immediately identifies with the manipulators and scorns an ignorance which in fact he shares."(39)
There is a contraction of options and possibilities. This results in discourse coming to embody and express the lowest-common denominator. Language becomes impoverished, banal and commodified. "Once one controls the mechanism which operates the only form of social verification to be fully and universally recognized, one can say what one likes. The spectacle proves its arguments simply by going round in circles: by coming back to the start, by repetition, by constant reaffirmation in the only space left where anything can be publicly affirmed, and believed, precisely because that is the only thing to which everyone is witness."(40) Thus "the individual who has been more deeply marked by this impoverished spectacular thought than by any other aspect of his experience puts himself at the service of the established order right from the start, even though subjectively he may have had quite the opposite intention. He will essentially follow the language of the spectacle, for it is the only one he is familiar with; the one which he learned to speak."(41)
Language comes to serve the dominant organization of life. But it "presents only the falsified, official sense of words; in a manner of speaking, it forces them to carry a pass, determines their place in the production process."(42) It becomes the vehicle for the spectacle to lie to its consumers through each other. As a result, "the simple fact of being unanswerable has given what is false an entirely new quality. At a stroke it is truth which has almost ceased to exist, or at best, has been reduced to the status of pure hypothesis. Unanswerable lies have succeeded in eliminating public opinion, which first lost the ability to make itself heard and then quickly dissolved altogether."(43)
Finally, disinformation is used by the spectacle to justify its model of both a present and a past. Moreover the past is contained and constrained by the model of the future. Within spectacular society original objects are being restored to what we in the present believed them to have been in the past. Thus, in the Sistine Chapel, Michael Angelo's frescoes "acquire... the fresh, bright colours ofa cartoon strip."(44) These are then authenticated by art historians and critics.
For Debord, the consequence of this are "ignorance... created in order to be exploited. As the meanings of history and taste are lost, networks of falsification are organized... It is the sale which authenticates the value."(45) Once history becomes like the present, then the past is characterized by "knowingly eliminating any possible reference to the authentic."
When looked at from this perspective, the Pentagon's effort to utilize friendly High Ranking retirees to influence and effect public opinion is no different from the use of former administration is one more, albeit a particularly outrageous, illustration of how deeply embedded we are within the spectacle. Why are suprised that former high ranking personnel would obscure their instutional relationships when we expect former administration oficials to do the same.
FOOTNOTES
1. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." In Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York: Continuum (1989), 135.
2.
ibid., 121.
3. ibid, 145-6.
4. ibid., 128.
5. Georg Simmel. "The Stranger." In On Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1971), 143.
6. Horkheimer and Adorno (1989), 139.
7. Simmel (1971), 147.
8. Dick Hebdidge. Subculture the Meaning of Style. London: Methuen & Co. (1979), 12.
9. Horkheimer and Adorno (1989), 166-67.
10. Stuart Hall. "Encoding, Decoding." In The Cultural Studies Reader. Edited by Simon During, London: Routledge (1993), 95.
11. ibid., 97.
12. Guy Debord. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red Books (1983), Thesis 30.
13. Horkheimer and Adorno (1989), 167.
14. Debord (1983), Thesis 1.
15. Horkheimer and Adorno (1989), 126.
16. Point Blank! "The Changing of the Guard: New Developments in the Spectacle." In Point Blank! - Contributions towards a Situationist Revolution 1 (1972), 16.
17. Tim Luke. Screens of Power. Urbana and Champaign: University of Illinois Press (1989), 43.
18. Larry Law. "Cities of Illusion." Spectacular Times 18 (1984), 21.
19. Debord (1983), Thesis 60.
20. ibid., Thesis 61.
21. Raoul Vaneigem. "Basic Banalities II." In An endless Adventure ... an endless passion ... an endless banquet: A Situationist Scrapbook. Edited by Iwona Blazwick, London: ICA and Verso (1989), Thesis 18.
22. Debord (1983), Thesis 61.
23. Horkheimer and Adorno (1989), 146.
24. Debord (1983), Thesis 67.
25. Guy Debord. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. London: Verso (1990), 19.
26. Horkheimer and Adorno (1989), 121.
27. ibid., 163.
28. Theoror Adorno. "On the Fetish Character of Music and Regression in Listening." In The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Edited by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt, New York: Continuum (1985), 276.
29. Debord (1990), 16.
30. ibid., 20.
31. Guy Debord. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. London: Verso (1990), 15.
32. ibid., 15.
33. ibid., 68.
34. Guy Debord. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red Books (1983), Thesis 42.
35. ibid., Thesis 42.
36. Raoul Vaneigem. The Revolution of Everyday Life. London: Rebel Press (1983), 103.
37. Debord (1990), 45.
38. ibid., 74.
39. ibid., 61.
40. ibid., 19.
41. ibid. 31.
42. Unsigned. "All the King's Men." In Situationist International Anthology. Edited by Ken Knabb, Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets (1981), 114.
43. Debord (1990), 13.
44. ibid., 51.
45. ibid., 50
46. Ronald Reagan, speech about US support for the Contras ca 1985.
47. Debord (1990), 13
