Performance Anxiety in Media Culture: The Trauma of Appearance and the Drama of Disappearance PDF
Preview Performance Anxiety in Media Culture: The Trauma of Appearance and the Drama of Disappearance
Performance Anxiety in Media Culture The Trauma of Appearance and the Drama of Disappearance Steve Bailey Performance Anxiety in Media Culture This page intentionally left blank Performance Anxiety in Media Culture The Trauma of Appearance and the Drama of Disappearance Steve Bailey YorkUniversity,Canada ©SteveBailey2016 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-55788-9 Allrightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmissionofthis publicationmaybemadewithoutwrittenpermission. Noportionofthispublicationmaybereproduced,copiedortransmitted savewithwrittenpermissionorinaccordancewiththeprovisionsofthe Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988,orunderthetermsofanylicence permittinglimitedcopyingissuedbytheCopyrightLicensingAgency, SaffronHouse,6–10KirbyStreet,LondonEC1N8TS. Anypersonwhodoesanyunauthorizedactinrelationtothispublication maybeliabletocriminalprosecutionandcivilclaimsfordamages. Theauthorhasassertedhisrighttobeidentifiedastheauthorofthiswork inaccordancewiththeCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988. Firstpublished2016by PALGRAVEMACMILLAN PalgraveMacmillanintheUKisanimprintofMacmillanPublishersLimited, registeredinEngland,companynumber785998,ofHoundmills,Basingstoke, HampshireRG216XS. PalgraveMacmillanintheUSisadivisionofStMartin’sPressLLC, 175FifthAvenue,NewYork,NY10010. PalgraveMacmillanistheglobalacademicimprintoftheabovecompanies andhascompaniesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld. Palgrave®andMacmillan®areregisteredtrademarksintheUnitedStates, theUnitedKingdom,Europeandothercountries. ISBN 978-1-349-56853-6 ISBN 978-1-137-55789-6 (eBook) DOI10.1057/9781137557896 Thisbookisprintedonpapersuitableforrecyclingandmadefromfully managedandsustainedforestsources.Logging,pulpingandmanufacturing processesareexpectedtoconformtotheenvironmentalregulationsofthe countryoforigin. AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Bailey,Steve,1967– Performanceanxietyinmediaculture:thetraumaofappearanceandthe dramaofdisappearance/SteveBailey. pages cm Includesindex. 1. Performingarts—Psychologicalaspects. 2. Performanceanxiety. I. Title. PN1590.P76B362016 791.01(cid:2)9—dc23 2015027218 Contents Acknowledgments vi Introduction:FacesontheStageandFacesintheStalls 1 1 TheSubjectisPerformance:GoffmanasDramaturgical Prophet 5 2 PerformanceAnxiety:Role-ingwithLacan 26 3 LiquidStagesandMeltingFrames:Objective De-Stabilization 44 4 FromLookingtoBeingtoKilling:PerformanceAnxietyin RecentFrenchLanguageCinema 64 5 ProtestingDisappearance:TheDramaoftheStylishSelfin theWorldofOOTD 99 6 ‘IForgottoRemembertoForget’or,‘RockabillyRebel, WhatYaGonnaDo’? 138 Conclusion:PerformanceasaPsycho-ExistentialProblemor, BetweenPerformanceStudiesandPerformativity 178 Notes 191 WorksCited 209 Index 218 v Acknowledgments IwouldliketothanktheFacultyofLiberalArtsandProfessionalStudies, York University for a research fellowship that supported the comple- tion of this book. Chris Satoor and Stephanie D’Lima assisted with the research for Chapters 5 and 6. Thanks are also due to a number of col- leaguesatYorkandotherinstitutionswhoprovidedfeedback,editorial suggestions and intellectual support: Alan Blum, Kevin Dowler, David Skinner,SusanIngram,andMarkusReisenleitner(YorkUniversity);Elke Grenzer(YorkUniversityandtheCultureofCitiesCentre);PaulMoore (RyersonUniversity);SaeedHydaralli(RogerWilliamsUniversity);Diego Llovet (Cancer Care Ontario); Dan C. Shoemaker (Bowling Green State University). Audiences at conferences organized by the Canadian Communica- tionAssociation,FarWestPopularCultureAssociation,CultureofCities Centre, Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, and Studies in CulturalMeaningResearchGroupprovidedfeedbackonvarioussections of the book, and graduate students in the Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture, Graduate Program in Humanities, and Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies have been an enduringsourceofstimulationandinspiration. My family have been lifelong supporters, and Herman (RIP), Gordie (RIP),andPermiehaveconstitutedtheCanadianfelinefamily.Christina and Alexandra have added to my life in ways impossible to measure. Dr. Greg Dimitriadis (1969–2014) was one of my dearest friends for nearlytwentyyearsandwillbemissed—agoodsoulandagreatfriend. Idedicatethisbooktohim. vi Introduction: Faces on the Stage and Faces in the Stalls It came over him in especial—though the monition had, as it happened, already sounded, fitfully gleamed, in other forms— that the business he had come out on hadn’t yet been so broughthometohimasbythesightofthepeopleabouthim. She gave him the impression, his friend at first, more straight than he got it for himself—gave it by simply saying with off- hand illumination, ‘Oh yes, they’re types!’—but after he had takenithemadetothefullhisownuseofit.Itwasanevening, it was a world of types, and this was a connexion above all in which the figures and faces in the stalls were interchangeable withthoseonthestage. HenryJames,TheAmbassadors(1903) AnObject Thisthingthathathacodeandnotacore, HathSetacquaintancewheremightbeaffections, Andnothingnow Disturbethhisreflections. EzraPound,‘AnObject’(1912) Maple Wood, Minnesota—All the world’s a stage at some Minnesotabars.Anewstatebanonsmokinginrestaurantsand other nightspots contains an exception for performers in the- atricalproductions.Sosomebarsaregettingaroundthebanby printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in cos- tume, and pronouncing them ‘actors’...Owner Brian Bauman explained. Shaping the words in his hands like producer envi- sioning the marquee he said: ‘We call the production, “Before 1 2 PerformanceAnxietyinMediaCulture theBan!”’Thesmokingban,passedbytheLegislaturelastyear, allowsactorstolightupincharacterintheatricalperformances as long as patrons are notified in advance. About 30 bars in Minnesota have been exploiting the loophole by staging the faux productions and pronouncing cigarettes props, according toananti-smokinggroup. ‘MinnesotaBarsSkirtSmokingBanbyDeclaringPatronsas Actors,’FoxNews.Com,March6,2008 Separatedbyaboutonehundredyears,James’reflectionsontheblurring of theater and audience in the recognition of the social type, and the literalizationofthe‘dramaofeverydaylife’inacleverlegalmaneuverof Minnesotabarsstrugglingtopreservesmokers’rights1traceamovement fromnovelisticinsighttoquotidianpractice.ContemporarywithJames’ novel,Pound’sreflectionsontheimpermeablecore-lessobjectintervene toindicatesomeofthesinisterundertonestotheflatteningofmaninto type long before such fears were a routine part of intellectual culture andsocialthought.Collectively,theseliteraryandjournalisticmoments offeranentrypointintothecentralfocusoftheworkthatfollows:the cultureofperformanceanxiety. As James’ insights demonstrate, the notion of a life/theater merger does not begin with Erving Goffman, who inaugurates dramaturgical sociology nearly sixty years later (with some prefiguring by Theodore SarbinandKennethBurke,amongothers)andasPounddemonstrates, anxiety about the ‘coding’ of the individual appears long before ‘one- dimensionalman’(Marcuse,2013[1964])andevenabitbeforethe‘man without qualities’ (Musil, 1963 [1930]). Certainly, concern for one’s appearance and for the cultivation of appropriate social role-playing techniquesisasoldassocialinteractionitself,andwaslikelyamplified by the diversification and to a degree unmooring of selfhood associ- ated with modernity (see Giddens, 1991, among many others). What has emerged in more recent decades is the proliferation of a reflexive andpersistentrevisitationofthetheatricalconstructionofsubjectsand situations,aswellasarangeofculturalpracticesthatreflecttheanxious spirit of this dramaturgical reflexivity; some practices transform anxi- eties regarding performance into opportunities for radical self-creation while others seek a therapeutic reassurance that life and theater can coexist with a modicum of authenticity. Understanding such phenom- ena requires a recognition of their three-dimensional character: they reflectproblemsofsocialpractice,problemsofdesiringsubjects(Pound’s ‘acquaintance’doesnotentirelyobliterate‘affections’),andproblemsof asocial-symbolicorder. Introduction 3 This volume is structured around these dimensions in its first three chapters,witheachconnectingakeythinkerwithananalyticaldimen- sion. The first chapter, ‘The Subject is Performance: Goffman as a Dramaturgical Prophet,’ re-examines the work of Erving Goffman as a substantive theory of subjectivity, against critics and even supporters offering a more restricted view of his career achievements. The sec- ond, ‘Performance Anxiety: Role-ing with Lacan,’ explores avenues of engagement between Goffman’s dramaturgical sociology and Lacanian psychoanalysis; while such a dialogue would never square with ortho- dox Lacanianism—nor with narrowly sociological interpretations of Goffman—I find some intriguing consonances in the two traditions. Thefinaltheoreticalchapter,‘LiquidStagesandMeltingFrames:Objec- tiveDe-Stabilization,’addsthelaterworkofJeanBaudrillardalongwith thatofsomekindredphilosophicalspiritstothemix,andnecessarilyso, asBaudrillardprovidesthegroundsforananalysisofthelargerculture upon which desire-charged social subjects enact various social dramas. Thethreetheoreticalchaptersaredesignedbothtoprovideananalytic apparatus for the cases that follow in Chapters 4–6, but also to act as akindoffreestandingargumentforthisunusualcombinationofsocial theorists. The three case studies that followare likewise eclectic in nature,tak- ingon,respectively,depictionsofperformanceanxietyincontemporary cinema, the virtual world of outfit of the day blogs and vlogs, and the subculture associated with rockabilly music and corollary styles. The cases are designed along several axes of comparison, with a range of aesthetic preoccupations (art cinema, clothing, and music), as well as differing forms of expression and communication (filmic, digital, and proximate/concrete rituals); they also reflect contrasting biases in termsofthecentralpreoccupationsregardingaperformingsubjectivity, with the first emphasizing a formalist analysis of the symbolic charac- ter of contemporary culture, the second the enunciation of reflexive discourses of self-presentation and obsessive thematization of every- day aesthetic decisions, and the third a time-bending enactment of cultural-historical personae between nostalgia and critique. By provid- ingconcentratedexamplesofkeyculturaltendencies,thecasesarethus intendedasallegoriesforamuchlargersetofculturalpracticesandori- entationstoprocessesofsubject-formationandrole-performance.They are also explored, in the spirit of the Baudrillardian seduction, with a willingnesstoenterintothemontheirowntermsbutnevertosurren- dertoomuchground;thegoalisnotsomuchdemystificationasakind ofcontrapuntalanalysis,astrategywithitsownrisks,asBaudrillardwas quicktorecognize.
The list of books you might like
