Tomfoolery

In her recent book On Not Being Able To Sleep: Psychoanalysis and the Modern World, Jacqueline Rose provides a great definition for what constitutes celebrity in contemporary society (in an essay originally published after the death of Diana) that is worth sharing here: I’m using it to think about Tom Cruise’s recent media hi-jinx in the lead-up to the release of War of the Worlds. Firstly, Rose acknowledges the paradoxical, impossible relation of celebrity, providing a source of entertainment that is able to provoke mixed feelings of love and hatred that can become intertwined with the viewer's subject-self identification. More than this, she posits that one of the deeper reasons for the cult of celebrity is a somewhat perverse need for the star’s ruin:

“Celebrity is often a ritual of public humiliation. Indeed, in relation to celebrity, shaming often appears to be the point.”

So, no matter how beloved the celebrity figure may be depicted in the media, we still feel that repressed desire for scandal, decline, and the fall from paradise – indeed, how low can a star fall? Culturally, it is one of our favourite literary motifs. With Tom Cruise, we can see the curse of celebrity as ritual of humiliation by his playing the role of hyperactive performing monkey on Oprah. Because of his sheer enthusiasm to the studio audience, Cruise appeared kinda scary because he broke a number of typical conventions of the Hollywood celebrity: stars are not supposed to court or enjoy their fame, it is a burden that must be endured (Jacqueline Rose again: “a celebrity is someone all too close who also stages something in the nature of a magical disappearing act.”). High, low; there, not there; present, absent: the paradox of celebrity means that for a moment Tom had kind of sunk to the level of a reality television star. Which is fitting, considering that he was on Oprah, after all, which in its hey-day was a locus in which the “ordinary” person could become (almost) famous.

But the intensity of the subsequent reportage in the world media presages a major source of anxiety toward Cruise’s talk show performance. The general view expressed is that Tom Cruise is not acting enough like a real star (reading MX on the way home the other day, I read that one late-night comedian in the US has recently said something like “OK, Tom, we’ll go and see War Of The Worlds, just please stop all of this madness!” as if it were simply too much for Tom to be sinking to such a low level). It seems unbefitting for the sheer magnitude of his celebrity, but analysing this through Rose’s psychoanalytic reading we can see that he is absolutely fulfilling the other half of the celebrity contract by making himself the object of mild shame! Just as long as he can resurrect his position and oscillate between the two spheres of admiration/humiliation: I would argue counter to Rose that it is the movement between the two that is the point.

Rose offers a final definition for celebrity:

“Celebrities are the people required by us to embody or to carry the weight of the question: who are we meant to be performing to, or what are we doing when performing to an invisible audience? We should never assume that because an audience is present, visible, that there isn’t an invisible one, hidden but present too. Among other things, public celebrity might be an elaborate diversion from the complex, often punitive audience, inside the mind (one narcissism as a diversion from another).”

The “weight” mentioned here lies in the sense of temporality – status quo is tantamount to eternity. How does the reality television star fit into this definition of celebrity that Rose lays out? Obviously we are looking at an inferior breed of celebrity, although the reality TV celebrity is someone “all to close” to us, which is always compelling, reality television stars do not embody the classical celebrity of Rose’s definition because:

1. They unembarrassedly seek fame.

But real stars can do this too (witness Cruise) so more importantly

2. There is a recognition that their subsequent fame will be fleeting and soon lost.

Rove’s contempt for the latest Big Brother evictee that I reacted to last week was bound into this acknowledgement of the ephemeral nature of her fame. I think a sense of shame is the point here too, but add to this a sense of betrayal that Rove taps into: you do not come close to embodying any of the questions that I ask of you.

The mythological figure that best describes the true celebrity: Atlas. Like Atlas, Tom Cruise needs to bear the weight for a life-time, to do anything less would be profoundly dissatisfying.

Fevered Televisual Grumblings

So right now I have a bad case of bronchitis that appeared virtually overnight. On Saturday I felt one hundred percent healthy, then on Sunday I had a day of heavy flu symptoms: headaches, vivid dreams, exhaustion, etc. I spent the day in bed, hoping that I could kill it off by staying warm. Not quite. The next day saw the appearance of two new sorts of abject liquids: watery vomit and a treacle-ish green ooze in my lungs that murmured whenever I breathed and when I was lucky enough made itself manifest to me on tissues when I coughed. As my little sister called me once when I had a chest infection (I had asthma as a child, so it was often), I was Gem the Phlegm. Again. That was when I went to the doctor:

G: I’m fairly sure that I have a bronchial cough – it’s happened so quickly, it normally takes ages.
Doctor: Let me listen…oh yes! Oh yes! [Way too excited here] Of course you do! It must have been this cold weather, it could have brought it on more quickly. Can’t you tell you have it, don’t you have trouble breathing?
G: Yes… that’s why I came here.

What drugs did my doctor prescribe for me? Antibiotics, steroids (yes, I thought that seemed unnecessary, but apparently my bronchitis is severe and I needs me extra boost ‘o chemicals), a Ventolin puffer, plus the usual cold and flu tablets. Mornings and evenings are becoming quite ritualistic for me. The directions on some of the tablets seem more than a little bit over precise verging on sadistic: for the antibiotics, the directions are “take ONE tablet TWICE a day with the first mouthful of food until all is taken.” They’re those mother-sized tablets too, so big that I keep accidentally crunching down on them and taste how disgusting they are. Faithfully, I’ve been following this direction to the letter (like perhaps it stops nausea or stomach upsets or something), but today I made the first part of my breakfast a glass of water, and I haven’t suffered any ramifications yet…

But to continue on with my grumblings… The pure pleasure of a blog-rant sometimes makes you wonder about the form's potential hidden socio-political function - a bit like Sharon Zukin’s Adorno-esque problematic in her study of cultural capital in New York, that the fashionable Manhattan youngsters who make no money in the arts industry don’t mind so much about being exploited in their bit-jobs with shit pay because they don’t feel it is their real career and therefore is nothing worth worrying or complaining about. I don’t get heard on a public forum very much, well that’s OK, I can say all that I want to the symbolic Other on my blog… I digress (but at least it’s still all in the spirit of complaint). Last night, I turned to crap prime-time TV for some visual solace. With my headache last night, it hurt too much to read, and I looked forward to seeing what commercial television could offer to me. Nothing, it seemed. The OC was yet another episode with a recycled storyline from last season and from every other teen soap before it. Not carefully borrowed, but blatantly stolen – for example a large part of the show was set in Miami at the infamous college Spring Break. Infamous? I only know that it is infamous because I have seen it happen before on Dawson’s Creek! Remember, that time when Dawson and Pacey go there and… oh, don’t worry, it happened.

Admittedly, I didn’t really pay much attention to the intricacies of the episode as I was on the phone for most of the hour. But then I made the mistake of continuing the Channel 10 odyssey by watching some of Rove. Only when I’m sick, really! Yes, I got a little bit interested when I noticed that the street-interview segment “Roving with Rove” was filmed at the recent Superheroes conference on campus, so I was expecting a little bit of lively conversation from the participants. Nope. Rove went there with a couple of important questions like “What Superhero do you want to be?” (considering that all of the interviewees were dressed in superhero outfits, this question seemed a little superfluous, perhaps “why” would have been more appropriate); then his next question was something like “Who is a real life villain?” Ask a boring question… The conference was made to appear bland and inconsequential (the same way that higher education is normally presented in popular media, then) and I’m sure that all of the more interesting conversation that couldn’t be filtered into a single Rove-ian soundbyte sentence was swiftly edited out.

Then, I got annoyed when Rove interviewed the most recent evictee from Big Brother, Rachel. Rove did his usual fluff-interview (“what was it like to live in the house?” whatever the normal tripe he comes up with). As she was leaving, Rove said something patronising to the audience (I’m paraphrasing) like “yes, I think your fifteen minutes are well and truly up.” I hate the second-class citizenship that is meted out to reality television stars on these kinds of shows. Rove sells itself as a largely interview-based show, but if Australian Idol and Big Brother weren’t around to prop up Rove with extra cross-promotional interviews, how would the very show survive? I’m sure the show's ratings are oftentimes attributable to these kinds of short-term celebrities, so the condescension in his tone was the kind used by a master who doesn’t like the look of his servants. If you don’t like interviewing them, Rove, it’s easy, stop exploiting them on your show!

It was all the visual equivalent of phlegm anyway – soft, slimey, leaving a bad taste in my mouth. At this point I’d naturally had enough of Rove, and I decided to remedy my poor night of TV-viewing by watching a DVD of a quality drama – The Sopranos. I sat happily and watched the last two episodes of Season Two. These episodes are really so excellently written and filmed, they just inspire awe. Really, the only good news I’ve heard in the last week concerning TV is that Season Five comes out on DVD in Australia next month. But speaking of remedies, I’m going to end this rant now because I need to go and get some more pills, and take some more ventolin inhalations, and perhaps make myself a hot water bottle. Or curl up and die. One or the other.

Of all things, I am most of all very angry with my body at the moment.

Seeing (Is Not) Believing

How good was the Is Not Magazine launch party last night? Very good! I was especially delighted by the Baby Take A Bow cabaret dancers - there needs to be more burlesque action around Melbourne, I reckon.

And Issue 2 looks great (except for my piece of course!). I would have stopped to read it on Lygon Street this morning, but it was pouring with rain and I was forced to flee past it and to carefully avoid the giant lake of water in front of it. It's good to see that the poster print seems to stand the rain well, though...

Viaggio in Italia

In Promised Lands: Cinema, Geography, Modernism, Sam Rohdie writes about his own film-induced tourism adventure:

"Do you remember, one summer, in Naples, we retraced the steps of Ingrid Bergman in Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia? We took photographs in Il Bersagliere, posed in front of the Excelsior, walked along the embankment opposite where George Sanders had picked up a whore who he took for a melancholy ride to nowhere. His reality and its sadness were exposed without a word, like ours. Do you remember? And the time in Pompeii, when they discovered the clay mould of a couple embracing at death, and their own desperation? And the ferry ride to anguish and silences and hurt in the Bay of Naples?

I wonder what we reproduced. Why did we choose to do so? It certified something disquieting. Then, I only wanted to translate what had happened in the film, just for fun, like a game, like children. But now, I know other reasons. If you know the result beforehand, Rossellini said, there is little point in filming it. To film, like 'to write', is to reveal something, not to record what has already been revealed and that you already know. When Sanders and Bergman find each other during the hysteria of the religious festival, after having been lost to each other, it is like a miracle. I am certain Rossellini came upon the ending as they came upon each other.

The experiment has to be done with care to avoid coming to a conclusion and thereby cheapening the journey. Viaggio in Italia is never cheap. Film narratives, most of them, impose sense. Rossellini had to decompose sense, to allow sense to flourish, giving birth to significance by making it uncertain.

If I had said anything like that to you, you might have looked bored.

The game I played and the one you played were different even if it seemed that we were playing together."

To me, this resonates with what Glen has been writing about lately, that not everyone follows the same rules within the confines of a singular event (and coincidentally, both Glen and Rohdie are referring to a game that is played out between people). So, how can one define the parameters of the film-induced tourism event? I guess that it begins when the film is first watched, when the viewer is seated at home watching it on the TV or at the cinema. For Rohdie, we see his journey begin as a retroactive homage to the film-event - a "reproduction" or an attempted simulation of the symbolic conditions of possibility of the film-event. Deleuze has written that it is impossible for becoming to occur simply by imitation - what needs to happen is for the film-event to also become the film-induced tourism event. So, as Rohdie's journey continues, it begins to blend with his own experience (the sadness and the anguish are jointly shared by film-characters and Rohdie/partner). And what Rohdie is suggesting in this passage is that only some films allow such becomings - the films that can "decompose sense" are the films that can enable film-becomings.