Entangled Life
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/
more from this issue —
Since my parents died,
every death, the wilting of flowers, the ladybugs
in the vacuum bag, even historic deaths
of monarchs, celebrities, or neighbours,
hits like a siren stuck—
an empty vase falling . . . falling, displacing the air
in my ears with ringing in a withering murmur
of wretched families in limbo,
before touching the marble floor never
to be whole or rounded again,
no golden joinery here,
the same stone that sits above them,
their ashes now,
from the stifling afternoons of summer
to the icy blacks of winter—
an imperfect eulogy for the ones
who gave me this life, this ink,
this set of begrudging tears.
The wet face disabusing me
of the illusion that I can still reach them,
maybe through prayer, or palace intrigue,
or the white tilt of the bishop’s proper mitre.
Mourn her,
who reflects us in the whiskey’s grenade decanter.
Mourn him,
her gaffer and keystone since high school.
Mourn me,
her tree climber, a beachcomber, their fruit,
but who’s adrift
to watch the effervescence of beauty now,
always high,
always from a discrete distance—
as far as needed
to obscure the truth
about the iron black and gold filigree
spilling words out from the crypt:
forever together everlasting
that everything around me is moving
toward the undersea waterfall,
a colossal cataract
of urges trying to find, trying to stay,
trying to be wherein no one knows
the swirling and inviolate words spoken to me
by their upswept, enraptured tongues.
Appears in —
Mikal Wix
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