Films and music videos, like other media works, are machines for generating affect, and for capitalizing upon, or extracting value from, this affect. As such, they are not ideological superstructures, as an older sort of Marxist criticism would have it. Rather, they lie at the very heart of social production, circulation, and distribution. They generate subjectivity, and they play a crucial role in the valorization of capital. Just as the old Hollywood continuity editing system was an integral part of the Fordist mode of production, so the editing methods and formal devices of digital video and film belong directly to the computing-and-information-technology infrastructure of contemporary neoliberal finance. There's a kind of fractal patterning in the way that social technologies, or processes of production and accumulation, repeat or 'iterate' themselves on different scales, and at different levels of abstraction
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Vivian Sobchack compellingly argues...that electronic media 'engage [their] spectators and 'users' in a phenomenological structure of sensual and psychological experience that, in comparison with the cinematic, seems so diffused as to belong to no-body...the electronic is phenomenologically experienced not as a discrete, intentional, body-centered mediation and projection in space but rather as a simultaneous, dispersed, and insubstantial transmission across a network or web that is constituted spatially more as a materially flimsy latticework of nodal points than as a stable ground of embodied experience'
My thoughts on The Bling Ring as a post-cinematic text
The Bling Ring is a postmodern coming of age film, where the central characters, a group of teenage thieves, struggle to come to terms with their identities. Their identities are constructed through consumer culture and self-manufacturing of image through the internet and social media.
Self-branding is a practice that is encouraged in our society. Theirry Jutel describes the neo-liberal subject as the "corporate Indiana Jones", a risk taker who is constantly prepared to re-invent his or herself. There are expectations on the individual to be productive in constructing their own identity and brand. Hearn notes that self branding is heavily narrated and marked by the visual codes of mainstream culture. People create a self conscious construction of their own self brand through cultural meanings and images. The self is a product in its own right, and overt practices of self branding are encouraged. Throughout the film, the teenagers use the internet to locate the houses of celebrities in order to break in and steal the products they are envious of and believe they are entitled to. Afterwards they document their glamorous finds through selfies and updating their Facebook pages. This overt self branding helps the teenagers construct themselves and their identities through their actions and consumption. Self branding is a spectacle. Throughout The Bling Ring the teenagers are promoting a narrative of their own lives and their identity as characters.Â
Consumer culture has evolved to become an identity based exchange. People experience intensities, and are ready for affective experience. Throughout the film, the members of the bling ring attach feelings to the objects they are stealing. The products are loaded with the potential for affect, which is qualified by the emotions the teens feel when claiming them. In addition, Hearn describes the fascination of the paparazzi format and being seen as cultural values of fame and attention. In the film, Mark says "We wanted to be part of the lifestyle". The obsession with celebrities and consumption goes further than material things, the teenagers want to be recognised and seen as people. They have a desire to express themselves and use the designer objects to design themselves.
Emma Watson is fantastic in this movie, and also hot (heeeeyoooooo). Watson can be described in terms of Shaviro's post-cinematic celebrity. The post-cinematic celebrity circulates endlessly amongst multiple media platforms, and is always present at events, on the television, cinema, bus stops, blog posts, Facebook news feeds. Often pop-culture figures are intentionally cast to actively play against their familiar personas. This creates a cognitive dissonance and confusion in the minds of the audience. Emma Watson will probably never be entirely separated from her role of Hermione Granger in Harry Potter, which she played for 10 years. In this film, Watson plays a shallow, superficial teenager obsessed with consumer culture, shoes, fashion, fame and "the lifestyle". Her character Nicki is the most savvy with the idea of self-branding and identity. Her character is the one who gets the lightest sentence at the end of the movie, and turns her experience into a "learning opportunity" and way to gain fame and recognition. The end of the movie features her being interviewed on a television show about her 30 day experience in jail and her plans for the future where she expresses her desire to change, and dedicate her life to "being a better person" and giving time to charity. While shallow and superficial, Nicki is a good example of how the use of self-branding and the construction of identity encouraged in a neo-liberal society.
all activity is under surveillance from video cameras and microphones, and in return video screens and speakers, moving images and synthesised sounds, are dispersed pretty much everywhere.
In this environment, where all phenomena pass through a stage of being processed in the form of digital code, we cannot meaningfully distinguish between ‘reality’ and its multiple simulations; they are all woven together in one and the same fabric.
Steven Shaviro in Post-cinematic Affect
....all watching, all being watched.
audience is on display, audience is working
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