Disclaimer: This is an essay assignment for the course “Embodiment and Experience” at Goldsmiths, University of London, which was submitted in April 2024. I am fully aware this article is not good in many ways, and this is a revision is planned.
“This is the affection-image: it has as its limits the simple affect of fear and the effacement of faces in nothingness. But as its substance it has the compound affect of desire and of astonishment – which gives it life – and the turning aside of faces in the open, in the flesh.”
(Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. Cinema 1: The Moving Image, 101)
As the quotation and the book that contains the quotation above have indicated, images do not stand by themselves – they have to be hyphenated with other elements so that they can be interpreted and understood. No matter whether it is called perception-image, affection-image, or action-image by Deleuze in his book Cinema 1[1], or body-image argued by Coleman[2], or body-without-image articulated by Featherstone[3] and Massumi[4].
By these hyphenations, elements and factors were connected, depicting an entangled structure of the multifaced relations between ourselves and images; however, it also implies a condition where things are connected and intertwined, which is driven by the advances in technologies that empower the distributed mesh of networks as well as the flows of visible data. These omnipresent technologies, in one way, do enable more possibilities, but in another, they are impeding our means of resistance through these hyphenations that bring out embodied and nomadic ideas such as affection and becoming – technologies are increasingly incorporating into our body, making them hard to trace and even impossible to dismantle. Moreover, it is worth noting that the media and technologies above exist in every stage from body image to body-image and body-without-image. In this chapter, our body will be taken into the discussion to investigate how non-fixed images change the perception of how we look at or feel about our body and ourselves in a non-linear time. Also, by referring to the concepts of body-image and body-without-image, this essay believes that they are not in a hierarchical relation, for which the body-without-image is superior to the other. These two ideas are just taking a different path towards the same destination: a kind of resistance that alleviates us from the arbitrary power of image and the representations and technologies that often come with it.
However, as said, concepts like body-image and body-without-image merely alleviate the power rather than demolish it, thanks to the omnipresence of media and its technologies. This essay will draw resources from media studies and computational culture to construct this final viewpoint.
Representational still image
The pure definition of images, though this essay was trying to include, we must admit, is an illusion because there is simply no such area or domain that contains nothing but the image itself, excluding interactions and relations around it. In other words, this essay believes that there is no ontological essence to images, only existential conditions for images.
Therefore, for the context of this essay, all we can do is describe how the images and their related media and technologies generate meaning by referring to other resources and how this kind of referential system forms a separation between images and bodies. Then, this chapter will examine how this referencing power shapes our understanding of the relationship into such a static and limited object-subject illusion, which resonates with the ancient and rigorous philosophical traditions that have been engraved into our ways of perception.
This essay calls images at this stage” representational still images.” At this stage, the relationship between images and bodies is solely body image or imaged body. The mediums and technologies containing these images are self-contained and are able to master images along with their imagery.
Image as semiotics
When Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye compiled the book Course in General Linguistics (1916) for their teacher Ferdinand de Saussure in the early 20th century, they might not have foreseen how fundamental this book would be 50 years later in France, when theorists in the structuralism movement adapted ideas from it such as signifier and signified to interpret the world in their own academic fields, and still to be brought out in universities nowadays frequently.
Many great names emerged during that period, and Roland Barthes is one scholar we can’t miss in the discussion of this essay. Based on Ferdinand de Saussure’s basic model of semiotics[5], in which a sign is made up of a signifier (the utterance or the sound-image of a tree) and a signified (the concept of a tree in our head), Barthes has developed his structure of disassembling the process of manufacturing values and meanings in the modern society of capitalism, which he calls it mythologies.
In Mythologies (1972), Roland Barthes proposed a second-level signing system – the system of myth. According to Barthes, in this “second-order semiological system”[6], a sign Saussure has developed has degenerated into a mere signifier in the system of myth so that the latter is capable of adding on or calling out another signified onto the previous signifier-ed sign. In this operation, the Saussurean sign is a “language-object” that serves as a foundation for the myth system; as for the myth system itself, Barthes calls it “metalanguage” because it acts like a second language and “speaks about the first”. What is important here is, as Barthes argues, is a semiologist “no longer needs to talk ask himself questions about the account the details of the linguistic schema; he will only need to know its total term, of global sign, and only inasmuch as this term leads itself to myth”[7], and in the end, both of the language-object and the metalanguage are “endowed with the same signifying function”[8] as well as constitute a kind of language.
What is interesting and coincidental here is that Barthes himself has raised an example concerning images. Following the argument above in the Mythologies, he described an image[9] shown in a magazine of a black soldier wearing a French uniform and saluting the French flag. In his writing, he sees this image not only as a sign that a soldier is showing respect to a national flag but also as a myth that France is an empire that includes everyone loyal to it regardless of their background.
It is remarkably obvious in Barthes’ writing that cultural objects, no matter what media they inhabit within and even whether they have a physical form or not, are manageable and manipulatable in terms of adding, subtracting, emphasising or concealing meanings. Most importantly, this process is under the cover of an invisible system of myth that operates the basic elements of meaning creation – semiotic signs.
However, Roland Barthes is not the only one who contributes to this topic but he sets the foundation for the representational image. Stuart Hall, one of the key figures in the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, furthered Barthes’ idea of the system of myth in his renowned article The Work of Representation[10], which everyone might read when they start their journey in cultural studies.
By stating that meaning is not fixed but instead slides between cultures or periods of time, Stuart opens a vacant space where Barthes’ idea of mythologies and Foucault’s notion of discourses and the production of knowledge could fit in. What is essential here, and what this essay is trying to emphasise, is that though Barthes has revealed the constructional nature of the meaning, Foucault points out the power and formations of the knowledge behind the construction of meanings – how we ended up interpreting things according to an external meaning system, who has the power of constructing sign systems, and more vitally, what is our position in these constructions and systems? Here is how Stuart answered these questions: in Barthes, “you recalled the importance of signifier/signified, language/parle and ‘myth’”[11] and as for Foucault, “you will recall discursive formations, power/knowledge, the idea of a ‘regime of truth’ the way discourse also produces the subject and defines the subject-positions from which knowledge proceeds”[12].
We should end the revisit of semiotics and representations here and get back to our representational images that separate our bodies with images and then manipulate our bodies. Examples are almost everywhere in the media and its related technologies, from televisions and cinemas to social media, and it is so prevailing and shareable at the scene that we are struggling to focus on a single case. However, (paid) promotion or recommendation videos made by uploaders and influencers across platforms, primarily content for nutrition supplements, make-ups and other body/face-related products, are typically worth analysing here. Not only are they an emerging form of media that produces myths, but they also cover up the power and formations of fabricated knowledge to a less noticeable level.
Visually, these videos are full of signifiers and signified. The majority of people appearing in front of the cameras in such videos are living in bright and spacious spaces, smiling to show off and centred their clean faces or fit bodies in the middle of the frame, cupping the products they want to recommend in their hands or close to their face, and acting confidently as if they are experiencing an excellent life. This essay has no intention of judging these people but to argue that this series of fragmented elements consists of a style indicating something beyond the sole action of sharing things they like. Following the methodology of mythologies, this essay sees these videos telling people the product holding on the influencers’ hand is superior and calling an imagination that you could be as healthy and successful as the person in the video if you own the product and use it to boost your life – just like a fairy-tale, saying that the product is a magic weapon to win the favour of princes. This method has revealed the meanings underneath the video, but how these imaginations are manipulated is still unanswered, for which we need to go into the realm of representation expounded by Stuart through Foucault’s idea of discourse, knowledge, and power.
For one thing, styling elements like what is listed above generate and construct a series of knowledge through self-approval (because it not only references the body shown in the video but also references other similar videos uploaded by other uploaders across video platforms that are operated under the flows of data and algorithms, which doesn’t involve anything that is outside the mechanism of the production and circulation of these videos) and unquestionable (because they try to convince by arguing “you see is what you will get”) procedures, for which the videos has generated a discourse that tells video consumers that if they are able to purchase one of these products, they could lead a life that is much alike figures shown on screen, shaping and managing their body to a commonly recognised charming condition, which in reality, however, is subtly disciplined and regulated. This is, no doubt, imposing burdens and anxieties on the person if they don’t have the same eating habits or lifestyle and don’t use the promoted product[i] as a way of correction and redemption – a typical scenario of producing a body image or more bluntly, an imaged body.
For another, please pay attention to the parentheses in the previous paragraph, for which the “paid” promotion or recommendation is to be forgotten. Indeed, economic factors are fundamental for critical analysis, but here, the economic mechanism is beyond a simple relationship between a manufacturer that pays a content creator to say good words for their products, though such a relationship already adds a proxy to hide corporations. This essay tries to emphasise the voluntariness of filming, editing and uploading aforesaid videos. Sometimes[ii], content creators manage and exhibit their bodies voluntarily to gain more views and likes, even if no manufacturers are telling or paying them to do so, and eventually, they hope to get paid by manufacturers[iii]. This constructs a two-channelled body image, broadcasting desired images in favour of product manufacturers and video platforms, both for content creators and video consumers. The biggest beneficiaries, manufacturers and platforms, their giant entities, are always hiding behind the scenes, proxying through the individual performance of figures in the videos, incentives of financial rewards and illustrations of entertainment, wielding images imposed on our bodies and generating body images they want, rather than images from us.
Images as normalisation
The semiotic approach is constructive, providing insights and perspectives to interpret images with the belief that elements presented in the image are meaningful and related to a broader context of society, economy and more. However, as described in the above example about promotional videos, there is a pattern of showcasing the settings of living conditions and body/face models of influencers. This section of this essay will focus on another aspect that is less on the social and political interpretations of images and imaged bodies but highlights the existential conditions of their medium, which, in summary, not only defines representational images but also follows the tradition of separating our bodies and objects, thus taking images in imaged bodies as a way of regulation and normalisation.
At this point, you, the reader, might challenge this essay by saying that the example given above is a video, which, by its technological nature, is a moving image rather than a still image, and the former can imbricate “temporal continuity and extending the intensity of some aspect in order to inscribe tense in it”[13]. Therefore, the moving image, or the video, is a way of resisting the impositions of still images. This essay does admit the potential of moving images but believes that a clarification between “image to which movement is added”[14] vs “movement-image”[15] is needed, just as Deleuze in his book Cinema 1 has indicated, and without a doubt, the video described above is merely a series of similar and linear still images packed into a timeline, fostering the regulation and normalisation.
Stay with Deleuze for a little bit longer. When Deleuze brought out his ideas of movement-image, he was contesting his concept with Henry Bergson, who, in his book Creative Evolution,calls the cinema[iv] “the cinematographic illusion” because it only has a formula of “immobile sections + abstract time”[16] for which Deleuze concludes it in comparison between ideas of “space covered” and “movement” from Bergson. For Bergson, the “space covered is past, movement is present, the act of covering”, in which the former “all belongs to a single, identical, homogeneous space” while the latter is “heterogeneous, irreducible among themselves”[17].
Such comparison in the example in the videos illustrated above is still compatible – these videos tend to display the effects of applying promoted products in contrast in a frame of BEFORE and AFTER, which is just as single, identical, and homogeneous as Bergson refers to because they always demonstrate an imperfect body/face that lacks the nurture of these products before using them and a well-managed, flattened and perfect body/face after using these products, which the frame only contains itself and always shows the condition of being done. In other words, the true duration between the moments before and after in the real, physical, relational world is covered and eliminated, though the abstract duration does exist between the frames of these videos. Hence, they are not movement-image but a series of representational still images within a playable timeline.
Enough talks about Deleuze and Bergson’s idea towards the medium of moving images, and let’s answer the initial question of how body image or imaged bodies in the forms of representational still images are a means of normalisation. Psychologists have already got an answer for this one. They think it is a schema model that conceptualises body image as we perceive our own bodies in ways of making comparisons between someone else’s bodies visually[18]. This convincing explanation highlights the crucial concepts of difference and otherness. For one thing, according to De Saussure, the meaning arises from the difference[19], making comparisons between two persons possible and often creating gaps, allowing representation practices to fill in. For another, as Jean-Paul Sartre articulates his popular phrase “Hell is other people” (L’enfer c’est les autres) in his play No Exit, indicating that “most people care, usually very much, about what others know and think about them”[20], which not only implying with his own idea of existence precedes essence, and therefore one’s being is built through moment-to-moment choices and actions and taking responsibilities[21], but also resonating with Foucault’s idea of biopower, for which is no longer a sovereign power, transforming into a diffusive, natural and invisible way of normalisation and integrating people and their body into a machine of the economic system[22].
Body image, or imaged body, is precisely residing in this dilemma in relation within others. For Sartre, Hell is Other People is a dialectic expression that says that it is in the relationship with others that we should give ourselves and others free choices to avoid the situation of hell, which is a way of liberation. This essay believes that anyone is capable of being aware of it. But in reality, the biopower imposed by the representational still images, with the help of circulating and shareable networks and platforms, is integrating our bodies into an economic and entertainment rewarding system, just as discussed earlier. In this system, uploaders can make money by posting promotional videos online if they are willing to exhibit their bodies under the management of products; video consumers can be entertained by watching these videos, further purchasing products being promoted, and leading a “healthy” life and body to get the possibility of getting more economic and societal opportunities in order to earn more authorities and financial incomes. Eventually, the whole process treats the body image yearned by manufacturers and platforms (which inevitably stand for the mainstream because they are also in the system) as norms and disciplines, maintaining a healthy and controllable society that is not only sustainable but also profitable.