The art of self invention : image and identity in popular visual culture

264 Pages·2007·2.65 MB·English

by  Joanne Finkelstein.

The Art of Self Invention

The Art of Self Invention
Image and Identity in
Popular Visual Culture
Joanne Finkelstein
Published in 2007 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
In the United States of America and Canada
distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © Joanne Finkelstein, 2007
The right of Joanne Finkelstein to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, De-
signs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or
any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 84511 395 7 (Hb)
ISBN: 978 1 84511 396 4 (Pb)
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Typeset in Warnock Pro by Sara Millington, Editorial and Design Services
Printed and bound in Great Britain by T.J. International Ltd, Padstow,
Cornwall
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Introduction 1
Hollywood Stories 1
The Art of Self-Invention 3
The Visual World 6
Faux Identity 7
Self-Fashioning 11
The Popularity of Disguise 14
Love for Sale 18
Life Imitates Art 22
The Following Chapters 26
Part I – Self-Invention 39
1. The Imp ostor, Trickster and Spy 41
Martin Guerre 41
Agnes 50
Anthony Blunt as Victor Maskell 61
Appearances Matter 67
Everyone Lies 68
2. Manners 75
The Welcome Guest 76
Rules of the Game 81
History of Manners 85
Antique Cool 89
vi CoNTENTS
Deception and Invention 92
The Modern Subject 96
on Being Calculating 99
The Science of the Self 104
Society as Surface 107
Playing the Game 113
Part II – Looking Good 119
3. Identity 121
Status Symbols 121
Looking Good 122
Coded Identity 126
Finding the Subject 130
Self as Surplus 135
The Irresistible Allure of Identity 138
4. Advertising 147
The Advertising Industry 147
The Unnatural World 148
The Afterglow of Advertising 155
Subjectivity on Sale 158
Searching for the Self 165
Lives Gone Wrong 172
Looking 179
5. Fashion 187
The Eye of the Beholder 187
The Fashioned Self 191
The Mind’s Eye 196
Being Conspicuous 201
The Depths of Fashion 205
The Ethics of Appearance 211
Afterword 219
Visual Culture 219
Self-Invention 222
Bibliography 231
Index 247
Illustrations
1. Makeover (Shirley Cass, 2005), with kind permission. viii
2. Pillow Talk (Ronald Grant Archive, 1959), with kind
.
permission 38
3. Mystery of Life (Shirley Cass, 2005), with kind permission. 40
4. After You (Shirley Cass, 2005), with kind permission. 74
5. Down with Love (Ronald Grant Archive, 2003), with kind
permission. 118

6. I had $23,000 Worth of Liposuction (advertisement placed by
Citibank in the New Yorker, 15 December 2003). Every
attempt has been made to source the original owner of this
image and we extend our thanks for its use in this publication. 120
7. Cars Love Shell (Shell advertisement, c.1955). Every attempt
has been ma de to source the original owner of this image
and we extend our thanks for its use in this publication. 146
8. This is Not a Kiss (magazine advertisement). Every attempt
has been made to source the original owner of this image
and we extend our thanks for its use in this publication. 186
9. Successive Stages From Frog to Apollo (as used by J.C. Lavater,
c.1795, original ownership unknown). Every attempt has
been made to source the original owner of this image and
we extend our thanks for its use in this publication. 218
1. Makeover (Shirley Cass, 2005).
Introduction
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Hollywood Stories
eception and a good dramatic performance are difficult to
D
distinguish. A deliberate lie and a practised turn of phrase
can sound the same. By the same logic a fashioned appear-
ance and self-invention are dangerously alike. The popularity of decep-
tion as a narrative device permeates the Western canon. It animates
Aesop’s fables (sixth century BC), Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s
Dream (1600) an d Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (1911) as well as the re-
cent film Mr and Mrs Smith (2005) starring Angelina Jolie and Brad
Pitt.
Hollywood has made extensive use of deception as a narrative de-
vice. Countless couples, partners and lovers remain mysterious to one
another while they enjoy other lives behind a polished surface identity.
In Mr and Mrs Smith, a bored married couple find themselves locked in
mortal combat, commissioned by separate sponsors to kill each other.
The film is a high-action imitation of the earlier Prizzi’s Honor (directed
2 THE ART oF SELF-INVENTIoN
by John Huston, 1985) and it borrows from True Lies starring Arnold
Schwarzenegger (directed by James Cameron, 1994) and Danny De-
Vito’s War of the Roses (1989). The allure of the film is that behind the
apparently lacklustre surface of Mr and Mrs Smith’s ordinary marriage,
where the unhappy couple are resigned to a slow death from boredom
and neglect, there is another seething world in which both parties are
smart, savvy, athletic killers driven by high-energy desires and living by
different rules.
The ubiquity of deception in popular culture is an invitation to con-
sider the possibility that behind the surface of appearances there are
other realities. In this book, I draw on this idea to argue that deception
and invention frame the production of every individual’s ordinary so-
cial life. We are continually introduced to situations in which lies and
distortions are exercised; however, this does not lead to the conclusion
that all social life is riddled with trickery and calculation. From a socio-
logical point of view, society rests on assumptions of trust and reciproc-
ity. We must believe that the trains will run on time, that money will
hold its value, that people are not murderous and that traffic rules will
be obeyed. At the same time, we know these principles are constantly
violated. We live with contradiction and become alert to the existence
of paradox. While we enjoy the orderliness of the surface life, we know
there are irruptive tensions beneath the thin surface membrane, ready

to ‘flood out’ the situation (Goffman, 1963). To participate in society we
cultivate a public persona, a manner of being in the world that works
to sustain our engagements with others. Much of the training for this
dual and divided mentality is delivered through popular culture, and in
the following chapters I explore how we have become attuned to the re-
quirements of an invented self-identity that is displayed daily through
ordinary activities.
The focus of this book is on the role of popular culture in the pro-
motion of particular cultural practices that instruct us in how to pres-