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12/15/2005 Archived Entry: "celebrity"
Blog Notes
The history of writing shows that the experience of reading a text to oneself produced an experience of self-awareness that eventually produced the behavior and identity formation of self. In the era of recording technologies that capture the look and sound of the body in action, a new experience of identity is emerging. The vanguard of this experience of becoming image are the celebrities, whose images are appropriated and augmented by entertainment discourse in the spectacle." (Electronic Monuments 99)
Everyone on the Web is famous for more than 15 minutes. The common trope in English Studies is to draw an analogy between Benjamin's Arcades and the Web and extrapolate the emerging identity formation of a technologized Arcade: The Web. But it is not the Arcade nor the Web which generates the Star identity (weblogs, search engines, Facebook, del.icio.us, Amazon, Photoshop) but the process of the link, as Albert László details. The Web foregrounds this process as a chain of links. The Greek polis, congregating around the poet or rhetor, perceives identity as the group (or as some note, "the tribe."). The Web polis is but a chain of Star personas, each engaging in the post-literate (electrate) practice of self-googling (or as Edbauer says, "yougle"). Links are the basis of identity formation, celebrity based and made electrate through contemporary writing like hip hop, where passing the mic stands for the literate practice of “transitions” (making links). The MC is the electrate equivalent of Mike Rose's "I couldn't read/now I can" model of identity formation in literacy.
The name is d. y’all and I don’t play
And I can rock a block party ’til your hair turns grey
So, what you sayin’? I explode on site
I’m like jimmy walker I’m dynamite
And now I’d like to pass the mic
To adrock c’mon and do anything you like
I.e. the celebrity image (the spectacle) is an emerging literate practice of “learning how to pass the mic.”
Replies: 7 comments
Yeah, but when the web was in its nascent stages, bulletin boards ruled the virtual solar system. They still do in some places. Then someone must have figured out that they weren't getting individual credit for all of that writing.
Not identity formation -- multiple identity formation. Or multiple identity regression. Or identity absorption into a bulletin or message board.
And something's got to give with blogs sooner or later -- another format has to be on the horizon. Blogs demystify celebrity.
Links = popularity = fleeting, not identity. Tainted links, affiliate links. Links=money. Pyramid scheme.
When all links start leading to similar places, there is a problem. Google's algorithms run on popularity, contribute to popularity -- not identity.
Posted by comp mafia @ 12/16/2005 08:59 PM EST
i'm unconvinced. i much prefer james monaco's taxonomy of fame.
the star
the celebrity
the quasar
the web is the birthing center and playground for quasars. small lights, smaller fame, even if it's self-promoted.
Posted by american idol made me an idiot @ 12/16/2005 08:55 AM EST
It occurs to me that Richard Linklater, director of -School of Rock-, also gives us one of the great scenes of Bogart Blasting in the final sequence of his cult favorite, -Slacker-.
I'm thinking, of course, of the scene with the guy driving around in his car with a studio microphone put in place of the rearview mirror and speakers mounted on the roof of the car. (A scene that Link.later re-mixes in -Waking Life-)
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2001-01-26/screens_feature2.html
Posted by gvc @ 12/16/2005 08:51 AM EST
Hi Shashi (not ignoring other comments...)
Is it possible to imagine a different kind of agency than traditionally considered? Rhetoric without rhetor? In opposition to culture industry critique, and more in accordance with Ulmer's understanding of interpellation, one does not work against interpellation (the dead-end state of critique which changes little nor recognizes how we are always a part of any system) but recognizes its power (and overlaps). One writes/produces through interpellative states. That is where the link comes in, the M.C. metaphor, the process of passing the mic....always in the Web of connections and identities..
the network identities Derek notes...
Posted by jeff @ 12/16/2005 08:51 AM EST
Moving the mic around reminds me of the closing credit sequence in School of Rock, where Jack Black passes it among the little jam session that emerges such that no one person "Bogarts the microphone."
Bogart. v. To take more than one's share of the microphone.
Posted by gvcarter @ 12/16/2005 04:38 AM EST
Nice connection Dr. J:
Where is the agent amidst the links? If identity formation is made through linking practices, is there a conscious choice of which links connect to/form us? Or is it simply a sector/ field into which we place our mic?
Can we choose the MC who hands us the mic?
Also, these linking practices seem to push the traditional notion of "discourse" to include a more fluid sphere where perhaps, hopefully, we won't have to spit those tired ass rhymes Mc imperial gaze floated in past times: word
Posted by srt @ 12/15/2005 10:40 PM EST
re: emerging identity formation ala blogs--I like Chris Anderson's long tail model along with the famous to fifteen people switch of microfame. In the long tail, the link-cluster nooks with varying knots of ties--we get small-nested networks, networked identities, and, I think, just the sort of thing you're talking about here.
Posted by Derek @ 12/15/2005 08:08 PM EST