Jayne Raisborough Lifestyle Media and the Formation of the Self (2011)

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guy , she said, hopefully we will have a really long and happy future
together .
From this book s discussions so far, we could say that Stewart s
story, like many others circulating in lifestyle TV, is one of trans-
formation that holds out the promise of a happy ending. Through
expert assistance and his own labours Stewart is restored to a right-
ful life; he is now healthy enough to work, he is a proper partner
and he can declare his virile masculinity. His labours are affirmed
and rewarded by his partner for whom Stewart has converted from
74 Lifestyle Media and the Formation of the Self
a bad drunk to my dream guy and by medical science he passes
their tests and can claim youth as his reward. In common with other
lifestyle TV formats, Make My Body Younger devotes more airtime to
Stewart s becoming than to the transformed Stewart. His suffering
and his sheer hard work provide a prime example of Meredith Jones
(2008) argument that in the makeover culture the labours of becom-
ing are always privileged over the result. On one hand, Jones argues
that labours have to be visible public performances of moving from
one self to another (p. 57) in order for the new Stewart to have cred-
ibility and be recognised as authentic. On the other hand, labours of
becoming underpin and are constituted by the constant movement of
the makeover culture. As the previous chapter argued, to merely be
or to be satisfied in Bauman s (2007) terms is not enough ; to merely
be exiles the self to the nightmarish still life the living dead of the
go-getting neoliberal makeover culture. Avoiding this exile requires
the visible display of our ongoing improvement (Jones, 2008, p. 57).
Stewart s display is enabled through medical tests these are the
visualising technologies that allow us to see and verify his trans-
formation just as we can see a change when he picks up his roles of
partner, father and citizen. But, as Jones would argue, this is just the
start for Stewart: his transformation is the platform for more work at
being a better partner, father and citizen. This point is not lost on his
partner; she doesn t guarantee a long and happy future she just has
renewed hope for one.
However, there is an opportunity here to extend Jones arguments
by focusing on the visibilities and displays at work in Make My Body
Younger. There are two movements at work. The first is an aware-
ness produced through the visualisation of lifestyle choices that are
literally written on body this is Stewart s wake-up call , needed
to kick start and sustain his labours. The second is that of rehabil-
itation, the explicit direction and goal of Stewart s labour, which is
visually evidenced in his labours of becoming responsible, in the
battery of medical tests and through the success of his new life.
This movement renders Stewart s labours intelligible. Both move-
ments are specifically mediated through political orchestrations of
responsibility. Bluntly put, Stewart moves from irresponsible to
responsible by taking responsibility. It s helpful here to be reminded
that, for Foucault, power works precisely because it enables rather
Living Autopsies 75
than represses subjectivity (Lunt and Lewis, 2008, p. 19). This nudge
allows the question to arise of what self is enabled through media-
tions and movements of responsibility. This question drags another
in its wake with what consequence?
Responsibilisation and recognition
The previous chapters have argued that neoliberalism is characterised
by a displacement of state responsibility onto the private individ-
ual. It may be ridiculous to argue against self-responsibility (Butler,
2009), but it is important to unpick the relations of power operating
through its rhetoric and its movements. This means regarding the
shift of responsibility as involving more than an extension of an indi-
vidual s duties and concerns, such as, say, being responsible for one s
diet or exercise regime, or in Stewart s case, his drinking. Instead, the
shifting of responsibility is perceived as involving a specific shaping
of the self. The term responsibilisation is useful here because it refers
to the productions of the self through the dis- and re-placement of
responsibility. It speaks to the ways that the shifting of responsibil-
ity firstly depends on imagining the self as capable of enacting and
even as desiring responsibility a self that can be responsible. Sec-
ondly, it depends on the imagining of a self produced through its own
enactments and performances of responsibility a responsible self.
These imaginings circulate to ensure that moral, worthy selfhood is
increasingly produced and encouraged in terms of these capabilities,
performances and enactments.
Judith Butler (2009) reminds us that responsibility requires respon-
siveness; we have to respond to the call to take up responsibility and
to enact responsible actions . Yet, how we respond depends on the
ways the world, the self and Others are presented to us; responsive-
ness is not a subjective state, but a way of responding to what is before
us with the resources that are available to us (p. 50). It is in think-
ing about what resources are available that draws Butler s attention
squarely to the media. Her explicit concern is to address the media
which, as a powerful resource for knowing the world and its peo-
ple, sculpts favourable perceptions of the so-called war on terror. Her
argument is that mainstream media representations serve to justify,
or at best render ambivalent, the violence and acts of torture enacted
76 Lifestyle Media and the Formation of the Self
in the names of justice and security. She sees these media construc-
tions as a concerted attempt to conduct certain responses not just
to the idea of a war on terror , but certain responses of the self to
the self and of the self to Others in support of the war. Lifestyle
media may seem a world away from the news and war journalism
that preoccupies her, yet it s possible to apply Butler s link between
presentation (what she calls framing) and responsiveness. Do repeated
framings circulate in lifestyle media to encourage certain responses to
social issues, personal problems, to the self, to Others and even to our
insides ?
Butler s work reinvigorates that of Erving Goffman who had earlier
defined frames as a schemata of interpretation that help individuals [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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