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Here's an idea: A selfie isn't EXACTLY a photo, and maybe that's why so many people
hate them.
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Alright everybody. Brace your faces. Because I am about to defend (bo v) ... SELFIES.
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Besides being a major part of the modern visual language(ngn ng th gic hin i)
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and language language, 'cause it was named word of the year by the OED in 2013--
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I also think that the collected vigintillion /va dntl yn/ selfies that have been taken
are an important and
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meaningful snapshot... of the present.
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But I realize that I am not in the majority here. There is PLENTY of revulsion for the
photo form.
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I will say that some of it is sorta fair, but you can't let a few bad-apple mugs ruin an
ENTIRE
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genre of photography. Or maybe you can. I don't know. I guess that's up to you.
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Lots of the ire, though, is not for the transgressive or inappropriate selfie, but just for the
selfie
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it...self. Chris O'Shea at The Daily Lounge says
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"You can argue that people hate political rants more than the selfie, but we disagree. The
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selfie ... is the most annoying habit."
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My favorite person in the world, Sherry Turkle, wrote that "Technology doesn't just do
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things for us. It does things to us. It changes not just what we do, but who we are. The
selfie
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makes us accustomed to putting ourselves and those around us "on pause" in order to
document
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our lives."
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Anyway, by now I'm sure that you get the... picture.
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But before we get into the thick of talking about why I don't think selfies are
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all that bad--
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Lets first talk for a second about photography and then social media and THEN the perfect expression
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of their hybridization.
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So! I'm of the solidly 20th century opinion that photography is a fine art. It's a
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big debate, and in some senses it's still going on.
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Not the least of the reasons why is that, nearly
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EVERYONE can be a "photographer" who can take high quality-READ, DEFINITION-photos. As a result
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lots of people see photography as having devolved into a kind of skillless
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visual art bluh.
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I have a camera. I snap a thing. It's where I am. I put it on the internet. WHATS FOR LUNCH?
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Taking a bad photo is very easy, BUT, by way of a very unfair comparison, I think, writing a
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bad *song* is still really hard; doubly so for painting, sculpture, programming, video games... you get the idea.
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Anybody can, and depending upon where you live, most people probably DO just ... PHOTO. Which
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to me is the beauty of the form but you probably already knew that.
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So but THAT is where the GREY area sits: at the Sonic near the intersection of "EVERYONE",
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"EASY" and "ARTISTIC MEDIUM" streets.
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We're gonna be talking mostly about Instagram, which as far as
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most people are concerned is where the selfies live.
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But I think that this also works for most of photography, and definitely
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mobile photography.
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So if photography is an artistic medium but snapshots of your lunch, the Brooklyn sunset, your dog
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and SELFIES are NOT... then, what are they?
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They ARE trying to capture a meaning. Maybe depict a thought or location or moment? They're
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trying to convey something to an audience. They're kind of like ... status updates.
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Status updates--like what you see on twitter and facebook--are these little quanta of text,
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usually descriptive and "creative"... though, unless you're Teju Cole, rarely seen as artworks.
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Status updates are more like a "speech act."
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Now, you might normally think, when you hear the words "speech act", of someone using
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their vocal chords to make word sounds that travel through the air bits.
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But a speech act and the act of actually speaking can be two different things; skeptical eyebrows
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and a cool guy headnod are two very effective speech acts with clear meaning, but
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no actual speaking.
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What all these things share is the *performance* of some communication--the utterance--the things referenced
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by the utterance, and the intention of the utterance, what you want to happen inside
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the person who is receiving it.
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Status updates-- and not just the text but the whole set of actions and context comprising
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them--are more like speech acts, I think, than they are like capital-R Writing.
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In the same way, a lot of Instagram, and most meaningfully the SELFIE--
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--not just the photo, but again, the whole kit-and-photo-caboodle--
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you know where you do the thing with your arm...
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--is more like a speech act, than it is like PHOTOGRAPHY.
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Sometimes the social media photo is art for art's sake but within the context of sharing
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and liking and comments--that's hard to do.
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Mostly, Instagram is about letting people know where you are or were. Showing people what you're doing or looking
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at. Showing them parts of your life... like your face. Which is part of your life. FYI.
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In my mind a selfie is not neccessarily a photo, but a hyper-effective block of text
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communicated in photographic form: it describes what you look like,
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where you might be, how you're feeling or maybe who you're with.
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A selfie, as most status updates are, is like, talking about yourself.
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James Franco--YES, that JAMES FRANCO--wrote "Of course, the self-portrait is an easy target
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for charges of self-involvement, but, in a visual culture, it quickly and easily
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shows, not tells, how you're feeling, where you are, what you're doing."
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Meaning, these pictures now have more than one intent: depiction and explanation. Insofar as the
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medium is the message, these messages are getting a little muddled.
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Is it a visual and aesthetic experience? Is it a description of the person who took
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it? Or is it both? The hate for selfies, or at least part of it, I think, comes from this confusing situation.
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It is not classically a photograph. Or simply a status update. And while it's weird,
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that might be part of its beauty.
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New York Times tech reporter Jenna Wortham wrote that "selfies strongly suggest
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the world we observe through social media is more interesting when people insert themselves into it.
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Now, if you hate selfies because of the parts of the world into which people choose to insert themselves, that
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is another thing entirely.
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To which, I'd say: Don't Hate The Selfie, Hate the... Selfie...er? Selfer? Self. Selfie Taker?
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What do you guys think? Why do people hate selfies?
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And don't just say narcissism. We're all a little narcissistic.
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Admit it. Let us know in the comments and, actually hold on. Just pause for a second here.
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What were we doing?
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In my mind there is only one true Anime-- Rugrats.
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Let's see what you guys had to say about Avatar being Anime.
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Sedona Parnham and Olga Abbiani point out what I think was the most interesting thing that I learned
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from this episode, which is that for a lot of people, the designation Anime goes beyond genre and
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actually implies a kind of value judgment. That calling something Anime means that it is
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either better, or in, it seems, fewer cases, worse. And Alaik Lamba points out that this might
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be a particularly Western attitude, or really, American attitude. Which
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is another thing I didn't know. Which is really interesting. Also, all three of you have great names.
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To Chad, yes, I know. Bending is not magic. My justification was that for people not familiar
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with Avatar, that was the quickest way for them to understand what it is, but yes, yeah...
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I hurt inside for having called bending magic. Please accept my apology.
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LostinNumbers makes a really interesting comparison between the designation Anime
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being like the designation "Hollywood". That it is both a kind of quality and a
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geographical designation, which I never heard before, and I wonder
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how many other people feel this way about Anime. NerdyBandit wrote a really amazing
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comment about the circular influence of Anime and Western animation, so we'll just
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scroll through this right here. But it's totally worth a read. So we'll put a link to it
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in the description. Along with, probably all the other comments from now on
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because you can do that on Youtube now. Which is sweet. Jmdj530 points out that Boondocks is
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Anime because it is animated by Japanese and Korean animation studios, but guess what?
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So is Avatar. They even share one. It's also animated by MLI animations. I think, if the
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argument is then that the founder of the idea is American, then, as Griffin Ham points out on Twitter
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the studio that made tekkonkinkreet has an American head so does that then threaten
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its Anime-ness? This is a can of worms, isn't it? Can of worms.
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Nnnnnoo. You stop.
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Well...
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JDKins Lee says that we maybe need a new word to describe some of the different breadths
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of animation that exist throughout the world and this makes me wonder whatever
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happened to Japanimation as a thing, which I think that's what I said when I was in middle school. Is that
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like, not cool any more? It's fine if it is, I just need to know.
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And as a parting thought, consider the following: I got more mean emails and messages
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about last week's episode about Anime, than I did about the trolling episode.
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Which is, interesting I think.
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Anyway, this week's episode was brought to you by the hard work of these mecha-pilots.
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We have an IRC, a Facebook, and a subreddit. Links in the description.
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The tweet of the week comes from Soulful Chris who points us towards an interview
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with anime writer Dai Sato who says that the Boondocks are in fact Anime, and that
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Japan has no exclusive right to making Anime.
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And for our first brand new record on the wall, we will be replacing Nina Hagen with
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Nina Hagen.
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Good bye to Nina Hagen and hello to... Nina Hagen.. band.