Art critic, John Berger, has some fascinating points on Western Art in his book Ways of Seeing. In the third chapter, for example, Berger points out the ways in which the objectifying ads and pornography of today visually and conceptually mirror what we might think of as traditional/renaissance painting. In fact, I referenced this idea in the demandit.org documentary that was recently released. The reading is academic, but certainly valuable if you’re up for a challenge.

I wanted to take some time to present some more of his ideas, so grab your librarian glasses, a cup of coffee, and ponder this first quotation:

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relationships between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object — and most particularly an object of vision: a sight. (47)

Another way of thinking about it might be: while boys are conditioned to use their bodies as tools, girls are conditioned to see themselves as decorations, as objects to be looked at.

How often do you live your life in the “third person” — as a constant observer of yourself? As a small example, I’ve recently noticed how nearly every time I walk by a reflective surface, I watch myself. It’s practically automatic. While many Americans are obsessed with money and fame, is this push for popularity and “stardom” also based upon the idea of imagining oneself? Are we subconsciously placing our faces on the covers of magazines as we look in the mirror? Turning the corner as if we were on a catwalk? Posing like a singer in a music video? Are we striving secretly for envy? For glamour?

Though the book was written over 30 years ago, it’s mind boggling how little has changed since then, especially Berger’s points on publicity. I saw many similarities between Berger’s ideas of publicity and Jean Kilbourne’s ideas about advertising. She must have been familiar with/influenced by some of his ideas.

Berger defines publicity as

a competitive medium which ultimately benefits the public (the consumer) and the most efficient manufacturer — and thus the national economy. It is closely related to certain ideas about freedom: freedom of choice for the purchaser: freedom of enterprise for the manufacturer. The great hoardings and the publicity neons of the cities of capitalism are the immediate visible signs of “the free world.” (131)

According to Berger, publicity

• offers us shallow choices “between this cream and that cream, that car and this car, but . . . as a system only makes a single proposal” (131).
• “proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more” (131).
• “proposes that it will make us in some way richer — even though we will be poorer by having spent our money” (131).
• “speaks in the future tense and yet the achievement of this future is endlessly deferred” (146).
• perpetuates a fake democracy (148 and 154).
• “remains credible because the truthfulness of publicity is judged, not by the real fulfillment of its promises, but by the relevance of its fantasies to those of the spectator-buyer” (146).
• persuades us that a transformation is possible “by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable” 131.

What I found most profound, correspondingly, were his ideas about envy and glamour. Glamour is defined as “the state of being envied” (131), and “the happiness of being envied” (132). It made me think of the magazine Glamour, among other things.

He says, “Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest — if you do, you will become less enviable” (133).

The same concepts exist in paintings as well, in which upper class characters appear impersonal and inaccessible to the viewer. Correspondingly, publicity depends heavily upon the types of images used in European oil painting (which, until the invention of the camera, dominated the west for four centuries). To prove it, Berger juxtaposes images from both time periods.

In our cold, capitalistic, apathetic, individualized, and isolated world, the aforementioned quotation couldn’t be more true.We really are a culture that desires to be envied — to be glamorous.