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Progress and other poems

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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Progress

The wood of the whistle-stop platform
grew right where the track now lay
and its ancestors powered the engine
that fuelled towns along the way. 

 

The stare of the vacant windows
reflect the missing sounds, 
the bustling, rustling muster 
that used to enchant the town. 

 

It’s moved just miles away now
festooned with imported grace, a
spur of the mainline railroad to
keep up with the quickened pace. 

 

The angled rays of summer sun cast the
flowered fields aglow, while the verdant
forest and nearby hills speak softly
down below. 


Meanwhile, decay has settled 
on the bones of winter dreams
though not upon this broken town
but the one with the platinum gleam.

The Bookseller’s Bouquet

There is an invisible curtain
pulled aside 
upon entering a house of books.
The lifted veil provides 
a potpourri of pages, 
an intense incense of the old
with its earthy musk 
of ancient spines, 
an aphrodisiac for the written word.
They are the forgotten firecircles
with the dark spaces for stories
passed from mind to soul. 
Each home and hearth 
possess their own 
but always yearn for more.

Appears in —

Jason de Koff

Jason de Koff is an associate professor of agronomy and soil science at Tennessee State University. He lives in Nashville, TN with his wife, Jaclyn, and his two daughters, Tegan and Maizie. He has been published in a number of journals including Ayaskala, and his chapbook, “Words on Pages”, is currently available on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3eookJk.

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