The Lonely Individual
by Jeroen van der HulstThe Netherlands can be blamed for being the source of iconic reality television shows such as Big Brother, Idols, [country]’s Got Talent, The Voice. This year’s television season has introduced the Dutch public to a new phenomenon in reality television, namely Utopia. The viewer follows fifteen ‘pioneers of our time’ through their lives at an abandoned hangar with a patch of land around it where they spend a year together to make their own ‘Utopia.’ This is an interesting word to pop up in pulp television, as it is those very television shows that are often criticized for being a sedative for society, keeping the public bound to the screen on the couch, not letting people reach their full potential because they become obsessed with someone else’s claim to fame, distracting children from their homework, etc. So when I saw the first announcements of Utopia online, I remember wondering about that heavy word ‘utopia’ being used in such a context. Is the public now so fed up with inane television about civilians becoming quasi-celebrities that networks are actually developing a show that questions the current state of society? Will this be another one of those legendary Das Experiment moments where people are put together in a small space, eventually turning to catastrophe? Am I going to witness a true Utopia being built on television, as if watching an ant colony grow and flourish? No. The participants obviously do not start from scratch as there is already a predetermined hierarchical social order, and their biggest concerns are mostly arbitrary. They have a roof over their heads, water, electricity, and even cash and a phone. They’ll be fine. I did not really expect anything to come from Utopia but nonetheless the questions remain. How does reality television relate to our real world? Walter Benjamin touched upon this subject in his comments about Russian film: “Some of the players whom we meet in Russian films are not actors in our sense but people who portray themselves – and primarily in their own work process. In Western Europe the capitalistic exploitation of the film denies consideration to modern man’s legitimate claim to being reproduced.” It seems reality television has caught up with this notion: the viewers can watch themselves in the form of a televised reproduction. Perhaps following this line of thought immediately disqualifies any hope in a Utopia being able to flourish in the medium of reality television. Looking at a reproduction of oneself means the incapability of any real change to occur – the basis of the reality show Utopia is still a capitalistic one. So what is it about reality television that draws people other than watching themselves play out a day-to-day routine? Slavoj Žižek perhaps gives one of the clearest (and most obscene) examples: “On the southern side of the demilitarized zone that divides North from South Korea, the South Koreans built a unique visitor’s site: a theater building with a large screen-like window in front, opening up onto the North. The spectacle people observe when they take seats and look through the window is reality itself (or, rather, a kind of ‘desert of the real’): the barren demilitarized zone with walls etc., and, beyond, a glimpse of North Korea. As if to comply with the fiction, North Korea has built in front of this theater a pure fake, a model village with beautiful houses; in the evening, the lights in all the houses are turned on at the same time, people are given good dresses and are obliged to take a stroll every evening… a barren zone is given a fantasmatic status, elevated into a spectacle, solely by being enframed.” The reality show is exactly this barren zone. Only because we can look at others play out the theatre of ‘real life’ can we come to terms with the role that the Big Other (a paternal or divine gaze, or rules in society) has in our life, as we can elevate ourselves from ‘the one being watched and judged’ into ‘the one watching the spectacle.’ Here we can perhaps find the true meaning of the title Utopia: we are momentarily freed from being judged by others because in front of us is a small group of people that allow us to judge them. The stable viewer ratings and relative success of the constant flow of new reality television suggests a problem, which lies deeper than just that of bad television. It signifies a big paradox in our perception of self in relation to society. The shows provide some kind of relief from the gaze of the Big Other, something we are taught as being a bad thing – “don’t let anyone judge you, you are your own beautiful individual.” An example of this is that arguably since the sexual revolution the paternal rules that were very much alive at the beginning of the twentieth century have since lost a lot of ground; sex before marriage was taboo, not because it didn’t happen in the days before the sexual revolution of the ’60s, but just because there was a stronger sense of following moral dogmas in society: “You’ve had sex before marriage but you can never mention this to anyone because you will be subject to universal judgment.” This particular gaze gradually lost its grip on a large part of society. In the progression out of the gaze and into a more individualistic state of being, the paradox becomes apparent. I always like to think of the tattoo trend where people get the following line tattooed in big block letters across a body part: “Only God can judge me.” This act exemplifies the feeling of being watched in a contemporary sense, even though one doesn’t need to get a tattoo to relate to it. The tattoo itself basically says: “I don’t care what you think about the way I live my life, only God can judge me.” This acknowledges first and foremost that there is a feeling of being judged that needs to be relieved. Hidden in the words that “only God can judge me” lies the true separation from the gaze, because either the bearer of the tattoo knows that he or she isn’t living life according to the rules of the God they refer to, or the reference itself is the only remnant or talisman left of the taboos and rules in society before the rise of the ‘individual’ after events like the sexual revolution of the ’60s. This is the paradox of constantly being taught to not care about what others say because you are an ‘individual.’ It means that perhaps the belief in a God doesn’t even have to be present but simply the fear of not being watched at all anymore. The ‘individual’ succumbs to an encroaching feeling of loneliness, and being able to watch and judge others on reality television just might give back the feeling that there is also a Big Other watching over our shoulders. Then we don’t have to be alone anymore. |
Pamphlet. Magazine - 2014 -