Michael Carolan
makes many of the same points as Paul Duncum does in Visual
culture and an aesthetics of embodiment. Like Duncum, he
discusses the old carnivalesque body:
The carnivalesque body... represents mind dominated by body,
passion over reason. What and how we eat have slowly become linked to these
bodily representations.
When I read it, I wrote in my notes, "Yes!
Hunger! This is me! Passion over reason!" So I admit it. In many
ways, I am carnivalesque.
Like Duncum, Carolan also discusses the way consumerism
helped drive us away from our bodies.
.disgust that many feel toward...
bodily sights and smells. breast milk, bodily odors,
and sweat.. what terms do we use to describe the obese
or those who overeat? .a type of animal-a pig, hog, or cow, perhaps.
We may call them a slob, pronounce them gross or disgusting,
or say they are out-of-control or simply insatiable. And what
do these terms imply? Something resembling Bakhtin's image of
a carnivalesque body; a body ruled by passions, urges, and animalistic
desires. In this context we can begin to understand why those
abovementioned bodily fluids and behaviors-that of farting, belching,
various bodily odors, and the like-are found to us to be so repulsive, "uncivil",
and boorish: such acts remind us of our links to the natural
realm (Bell 1994). They provide us with the constant reminder
that ultimately we are still animals, in possession of many of
the same bodily functions (and fluids) that non-human animals
have. And in doing this, they present a hierarchy of being that
is not so hierarchical after all.
We've been driven away from our bodies, and
driven away from nature, as if we're somehow different
from nature. As if we were plunked here from the planet Tide,
where everything is clean, and tidy. Where everything smells nice
and is tightly under control. Not controlled by the powers that
be, but under our own rigid control.
A fit, firm, exercised, and well-regulated body...
symbolizes a personal triumph over bodily impulses; a body in control
of itself and, thus, in control of the world around it.
we are told to consume, consume. to release
control; to give in to the commodified world around us and indulge
in the pleasures of the sign. .we are also
conditioned to an ethic of hard-work, taught the imperatives of
saving, and are habituated to self-discipline so we will then have
enough money to purchase these products. .dual imperatives. of
our "work" and "play". .the workplace, the work day, and the work
week characterize asceticism and self-discipline. The
regulation of desire is a continual problem in consumer capitalism. .we
find ourselves continually barraged by tempting images, (and) we
realize that certain forms of overindulgence are socially condemned. .we
also recognize that the satisfaction (and indeed the overindulgence)
of certain desires and temptations is encouraged and required for
our current socio-political system to exist.
Oh, god, this is HUGE for me!
I wrote this elsewhere, but I
got it here. To have a consumer culture, you need to create need. You need people
to buy stuff... you need them to want to buy stuff. To buy food. We all want
to eat. We want to cram it into our mouths and bodies... to fill
up... with stuff. But how do we get all this stuff? We have
to discipline ourselves enough to go to work five days a week. A LIFE? What's
that? In our culture it's called a career. It isn't nature, it isn't thinking
or feeling our bodies, or being with friends and family. It's wearing the right
clothes, and driving the right car, and having the right body so we can get
a better job. Or no, so we can get get the best job, and get more stuff, more
stuff, more stuff. Why? To fill up the hole that's eating away inside us. And
the hole is there because we're all caught in this hamster cage that is LIFE.
What a fucked up life!
...I've always hated the 9-5, 40-hour-a-week
mindset, and I think everyone in our culture who buys it is insane. I make $20,000
a year. Barely. And I don't need a goddamn thing, because I have time to
think, to go to school, to write and to LIVE, and to me, that's a real life.
Exercise is a form of leisure. .the
need for exercise does not readily present itself until there is
also the potential for overindulgence. From the Middle Ages until
approximately the late-nineteenth century, exercise had a negative
subtext because it was associated with sweat, hard work, and exertion-things
which were then associated almost exclusively with the lower class
(Todd 1998). The elimination of physical exertion, on the other
hand, was viewed as the reward for those who attained social advancement-namely
the elites. And to look among the elites (particularly pre-World
War II elites) was to find the close approximation of this ideal:
their hands were soft and their skin was milky white-the product
of a life devoid of displeasing physical exertion.
I grew up with my grandparents, and they totally
bought into this message. And I absorbed it! I perceived their
elitism, and their belief that hard physical work is bad and sweat
is gross. Because they're associated with the lower classes, and
after reading that, I realized that for me, sometimes exercise
sometimes feels like death. Isn't that weird? But I think it's
true. And now people pay to exercise - it can be an expensive
commodity for the privileged class. Crazy, huh?
The moral codes that now accompany bodily displays
of either fitness or fatness represent the culmination of a historical
shift toward increasing secular bodily control. The equating of
body shape to moral character is thus a relatively recent phenomenon.
Yes, to be fat in our society is now seen
as transgression. Low and immoral, an out of shape body is now
a badge of the lower class.
.the modern regime of bodily control is
an analogue for our treatment of the environment. ...in our
quest to understand the embodiment of consumption, we must not
forget that the environment too becomes embodied....we have, on
the one hand, the embodied perfection of the commodified environment.
The environment of, for instance, ecotourism, which allows one
to experience an idealized "nature", full of "cute" and "exotic" animals
and plant species ("just like in books and on television!"), all
from the safe and removed space of a four wheel drive, air-conditioned
vehicle. Or take the "wilderness" of the National Park, whose so-called "natural
ness" is predicated upon,
among other things, heavy-handed fire suppression techniques (ecosystems
that, before state intervention, co-evolved with the destructive
and regenerative effects of fire for centuries [Budiansky 1995]).
Examples of these "purified" (Latour 1999) natures are numerous:
the utopic English hedgerow, the well-manicured garden, or the highly
managed river which never floods or meanders are just a few such
examples that come immediately to mind.
Control, control, control... It's like a drumbeat.
It's all about maintaining control, of the environment, of our
finances, of our impulses, and of our bodies.
A body with breast implants/a radio-tagged endangered
species. A corset/a dam. A well-trained body/a National Park. Ultimately,
the ontological separation of these things-these "hybrids"-is not
that great after all. The controlled, classical body and the controlled,
classical environment-each represent the effects of a disciplinary
regime of control that now pervades modernity.
Great writing, huh? The trouble is, it's true.
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