LOOKING AT YOU, LOOKING AT ME

This piece has been revised since it first appeared last week, owing to the fact I found myself disagreeing with what I'd written. Which may sound deranged - and perhaps ironic given the nature of the piece - but it also illuminates in part why this blog exists. As the old adage goes, "How can I know what I think until I've heard what I've got to say?"

Technological advances in digital cameras means that when a child is born now they are photographed immediately many, many times. Parents can even record a Quick Time movie that will enable the child to see their first moments on earth from the vantage point of adult life. This is unprecedented. Of course there have always been baby photos - and even films of births - but they were the preserve of the very few, the photos usually posed and the means of processing still limiting their quantity. But now every moment of your life can be visually recorded via hundreds of JPEGS and QT's saved for future perusal. An indication of what this might be like can be gained from watching Jonathan Couette's documentary 'Tarnation' (2003), a film made possible by the fact Couette's had sufficient filmed material of his life - from birth to present - that it could form the basis for an entire documentary film.

But what are the consequences for the subject? What happens if you see yourself on film and in photos all the time from your first moments on earth? What role does that leave for other people in your life? What if your own gaze becomes the opinion you increasingly covet and rely upon? Certainly, 'Tarnation' is very much the work of a Narcissist, the comfort provided by Couette's camera off-set against the hostility of the world he grows up in. Film offers him insularity, a protective wall between his outer life and his inner life. Reading Kenneth Tynan's Diaries, I came across this passage in which Norman Mailer is quoted writing about Henry Miller, which inverts many Popular assumptions about Narcissism - and in doing so, explains a lot about the modern predicament:

"The narcissist suffers from too much inner dialogue. The eye of one's consciousness is forever looking at one's own action. The narcissist is not self-absorbed, as much as one self-absorbed in the studying the other. The narcissist is the scientist and the experiment in one. It is not the love of self but the dread of the world outside the self which is the seed of narcissism."

Camera in mirror - the ubiquitous Social Networking Image.

The existence of Social Networking sites and the explosion of consumer photography presents the notion that we possess a heightened sense of 'self-awareness' simply because we look at ourselves more often - in some cases, all the time. Certainly Social Networking sites enable individuals to project a desired identity (and in doing so often facilitate self-delusion) to thousands of people in a way that is unprecedented. At its best it evokes a world where you can star in your own life, replete with an audience already logged on. You do not have to be who you actually are. You can be who you want to be and nobody will be any the wiser.

But it is obviously an illusory state. It is not increased 'Self-awareness' that is gained; quite the contrary. It is increased 'Self-Consciousness'. Obsessing upon your own image does not tell you who you are, it simply emphasizes what you look like. It enables physical scrutiny, not emotional or intellectual understanding.

Jean Cocteau's 'Orphee' (1949)

Part of what Digital Cameras aligned to the Social-Networking culture have done is amplified the same instincts that drove Narcissus to gaze into the pond, and invited a crowd to the gazing.* All of these anxieties combine in the Jonathan Couette film, and more recently in 2010 in Solve Sundsbo's frankly bizarre short film in which James Franco kisses himself. Partly because it parodies prejudices about Celebrities, partly because it taps a long cultural revulsion towards Narcissism that dates back to Ovid, there is something sickly about Sundsbo's film. But perhaps the greatest revulsion is triggered by the fear that someone's life could be so fixated upon themselves that there is no room for anyone else to feature in it? Wouldn't that be a chilling thought for people yearning for their own audience? Because if other people aren't even paying attention to us, then who the hell is? And so we are duly sent scurrying back to our own identities, in search of self-improvement, certain how we look, how we present ourselves, is the solution and truly important to other people. In doing so, we remove ourselves from action and risk our identities being entirely submerged into the visual, now a haven not simply for illusion, but a means for basic social survival.

*I have a theory that a large part of Twitter's appeal is that it alleviates some of the scrutiny MySpace and Facebook demand, and returns the emphasis to pure conversation. Certainly MySpace's recent woes are linked in part to fucked up HTML, but also I think to its inherent ostentatiousness.