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Broadway Night

The Social Gaze: On Watching and Being Watched

“Today everything exists to end in a photograph.”

 – Susan Sontag, On Photography

Sontag’s remarks were deemed controversial in the late 70s. In the digital age of image saturation, however, she’s the disseminator of the gospel truth. Everything today from our casual interests, beliefs, interactions across mediums, and even our personality – exists to end up in a 1080 x 1080 pixel and 4:5 aspect ratio photograph, nestled in a thoughtfully curated grid – for the feasting eyes of the other.

The malleability provided by social media platforms to alter our identities has been a matter of discourse since its inception. Our online personas have never existed in a vacuum. As social creatures, we’re in constant anticipation of the outsider’s gaze, in both awe and fear. The inherent need to be seen is always accompanied by the fearful clasp of judgment tight around its neck. The human herd instinct to seek approval makes most of our behaviour in social settings performative. From the clothes we wear and the movies we watch to the opinions we hold more often than not arise from the need to achieve a sense of belonging – the one slated third in Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs[1].

While the performances persist, it’s only human to slip up at times.
Entrée the power of social media.
Social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and X (formerly Twitter) allow us to not only create a production out of our existence but up the ante as well – we get to control who views our performance, along with the parts they get to see.

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine you’re (doom)scrolling through Instagram when you come across a post by a conventionally attractive, white woman. She’s seated in an outdoor cafe. The sunbeams bounce perfectly off of her black sunglasses. Her profile faces the camera as she peers into her phone’s screen, carefully reapplying her lipstick.

Seems cool enough right? What if you zoom in just a bit?

Those sunglasses are the coveted Tom Fords in Whitney, and her lipstick is the classic Rouge Dior. What else, the bottom half of the picture seems to cut off a pack of Marlboro Lights and what appears to be an incredibly expensive lighter!

There’s at least a fifty per cent chance that you’ll believe you’ve stumbled across the feed of an heiress out to lunch in Italy. Such is the power of branding. The mere association with brands established as luxurious converts a simple photograph into an identity definer, as Professor Nita Mathur notes, “commercial brands and luxury commodities have come to serve as signifiers of identity in society”[2], allowing individuals to construct, deconstruct or reconstruct their social identities.

References

https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm
https://sk.sagepub.com/books/consumer-culture-modernity-and-identity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14JGQ1JWSgc&t=632s
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2023/01/26/why-and-how-to-implement-social-media-branding/?sh=3c975389793b
https://internetprincess.substack.com/p/standing-on-the-shoulders-of-complex
https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/32/1/171/1796334?redirectedFrom=fulltext
https://www.wired.com/story/business-gen-z-social-media/
https://creative.salon/articles/features/is-social-media-over-for-the-younger-generation
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/new-nihilism-how-gen-z-is-embracing-a-life-of-futility-and-meaninglessness-20231016-p5ecra.html
https://www.businessoffashion.com/reports/news-analysis/the-state-of-fashion-2024-report-bof-mckinsey/

Appears in —

Kai

Kai is a student of literature and a fan of stories in all forms. Currently fidgeting behind a camera lens, she’s always struggling with thinking too much and not writing enough.

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After Nights on Broadway by the Bee Gees 

TW: Familial abuse

The radio was all we had after the divorce, and I was all my dad had. After 18 years, my mother and sister were finally free from the man that held them captive. They weren’t bound by physical chains and locks but from something stranger and more robust. The the court battle left me with my father and a house with bills he could no longer afford. We lived on borrowed time, and the bank statements and unpaid electric bills that were stained in claret ink were watching. One afternoon my dad emerged from my sister’s room with her old Bose radio. Later that day, he went to the local Dollar Tree and came back with several packs of D Cell batteries, and for the first time since my mom and sister left, we felt as if there was life in the house again.  

That night, by the light of the candles, my dad and I sat together on the couch in front of the radio, which was placed on the coffee table amidst an audience of various take-out menus. I watched as he scrolled through static waves before landing on FM 95.7. Then out came the voice of Barry Gibb. Suddenly, the man before me, whose excitement was only invigorated by the opening of a beer can, softened into the teenager that he was in his youth. 

“It’s Nights on Broadway by the Bee Gees,” he remarked in disbelief. Setting his Bud Light down, he began to sort of groove in his seat. The motion started at his feet, and it rippled up through him to his arms, to his hands that were now raised, but not towards me. 

“Blame it all on the nights on Broadway. Singing them sweet sounds…I will wait, even if it takes forever… Somehow, I feel inside you never ever, ever left my side, make it like it was before. Even if it takes a lifetime, even if it takes a lifetime.” 

Even if it takes a lifetime. I think about how 18 years was a part of my mom’s lifetime. I recall the nights she’d beg for deliverance from my father as he embraced her face with his palm, and how I’d retreat to safety upstairs in my sister’s bedroom. We’d sit and listen as they danced out their differences below us. Unlike what Barry Gibb sang, there was no way of making it like it was before, as this night on Broadway was just him and me. My eyes drifted to the candles burning next to the radio, and I thought about how they would eventually extinguish like the time my father and I had left in our house. But at that moment, the stage lights were on us, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I could see my father.

Appears in —

Syd Vinyard

Syd Vinyard is a poet, prose writer, and undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where they currently serve as the Editor-in-Chief for Furrow. This is their debut nonfiction publication.

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