Within the art world, there are the few who influenced a great deal of
change to revolutionize our way of seeing art and the world, and among them is
John Berger, with his famous text “Way of seeing”, first published in 1972.
About the man himself, Berger was born on November 5th,1926 to a
couple of immigrant workers from Hungary. His father served in WWI and was
awarded the OBE, and he himself served in WWII, and later on studied in Chelsea
School of Art in London. His working class background and his participation in
the hardness of war has major influence on his political and cultural view as
an art critic, thinker and novelist. In text, he once wrote an essay titled “
Permanent Red” to show his political
affiliation. In art , he is a Marxist Humanist and was critical of western
ideas like modern art. In politics itself, he donated funds to the Black
Panther movement, and had refrained from criticizing the policies of the Soviet
Union only until the later part of the Cold war. With these ideas in mind, he
had produced several writings that covers a range of stimulating and all the
while politically controversial subjects from the alienation of English urban
life to migrant workers turning to the contemporary style of their European
counterpart. These works had a tremendous effect on Berger’s personal life,
going so far as exiling himself due to the frustration of the coldness of urban
life that they highlighted. This is where is most famous work, “Ways of
seeing”, come in.
Written and published in the 70s , at the height of cold war tension,the
counter culture movement , Vietnam and the battle between capitalism and
communism as a direct response to Kenneth Clark’s “Civilization” ,a 1969 TV
series on Western art, architecture and philosophy. Based on the premises that
what we see are dictated by our knowledge and beliefs , “Way of seeing” was a
critical jab at western culture aesthetic and capitalist publicity and
demonstrated quite clearly Berger’s political and social ideologies. Perhaps
this was highlighted best in this quote from the book, which will be the main
subject of today’s writing :
“Glamour cannot exist without
persona| social envy being a common and widespread emotion. The industrial
society which has moved towards democracy and then stopped half way is the
ideal society for generating such an emotion. The pursuit of individual
happiness has been acknowledged as a universal right. Yet the existing social
conditions make the individual feel powerless, He lives in the contradiction
between what he is and whet he would like to be.”
From a personal view, key terms that
we can pull from this are “Glamour” and “Envy”, which will be the 2 main ideas
that occupied most of the following points. A general break down of this quote
would be that glamour by its nature relies on envy to simply exist, and the
commodity culture / capitalist economy, where advertisement and publicity push
you to achieve an ideal life when the reality is that only the few privileged
can accomplish it is a perfect environment to generate envy, and in turn,
fuelled the idea of glamour, which itself then create even more envy. This
cycle is later on supported in the more contemporary works from Gundle and
Castelli (2006,2008), but also argued against in some aspect by Postrel (2013)
and Hughes (2007) ,whom works will all feature in this essay.
Perhaps it is best to put Beger’s
quote into the context of “Way of seeing” , as part of a bit on modern
publicity and how “ publicity is process of manufacturing glamour” (Berger,
1972, p.131). Within this, he compared the evolution from oil painting to
modern publicity, how it had change from a form of product that consolidate
one’s own value and enhanced one’s view of himself to a product that more or
less makes people feel less then they should: make the spectator
dissatisfied with their present way of life and then suggest that those who
have more are better, in doing so, push the spectator to achieve it by purchasing
the product that it is selling. In his views, publicity is essentially a product
to day-dream, where “the interminable present of
meaningless working hours is balanced by a dreamt future in which imaginary
activity replaces the passivity of the moment. In his or her day-dreams the
passive worker becomes the active consumer. The working self envies the
consuming self.” ( Berger, 1972, p.149), hence it is why even though it rarely
fulfil its promises , publicity still remain credible. This is where he turns
back to dissecting the notion of glamour, what is it and how does it work. In
Berger’s view, it is a modern day invention made by the process of creating
social envy and day-dreams among the masses as talked about in the above
passage and in the quote itself. Stephen Gundle, in his 2006 “The Glamour
system” , extend it’s history to the periods when aristocracy was eroding and
the aura of its power were being reproduced for commercial and social ends. To
that exten , glamour became in the bourgeois society something that can be
earned , not the a monopoly of nobility of the old days, and only grew ever
more as the idea of desirability changes with the advance of technologies to
something that is familiar yet allusive , bounding itself to only the
wealthiest, who then were considered “glamorous” and ensure their dominance in
the new capitalistic economy , going so far as becoming the symbol for the
system. This is quite apparent as history have shown us how Capitalism has
advertised itself to be the tool of achieving the things you want i.e “The
American dream” in the United States.
The
connection between publicity and the notion of glamour, envy and other points
in Berger’s quote becomes even more apparent, as Berger continue to criticise
how the commodity culture of capitalism and this idea of “you should be like this”
that is propelled by said notion of glamour, through the use publicity, has
eliminated one’s free will to make their own meaningful decision, masking and
compensating it by even more consumption, a substitution for democracy itself.
This notion is then supported by Gundle : “Glamour requires in order to exist , some sense of equality and
citizenship, but not necessary democracy ( Gundle , 2006 , The Glamour
system , n.p)“. In a way, it is this sense of “equality”, not like the equality
we hear of in the history books like racial equality or gender equality, but a
more direct, more blunt and more rough idea of “I want what you have” that
create individual/personal envy, which is what in her 2007 work “Sociology” ,
Christina Hughes acknowledged that is inevitable and a part of universal
psychological traits. (p.5). Combined that with Gundle idea of glamour can not
exist without mass involvement ,we can draw the conclusion that indeed Glamour
cannot be without social envy as an emotion.
For the most part, Berger’s idea are reasonable and
agreeable and reflect the reality of society very well, but a right a idea
isn’t always the full idea, as Postrel explains: “Glamour does not always
connect to social envy … as many of the resentments and hostilities of true
envy are missing from glamour….glamour maybe an illusion , but its rarely a
mean or vicious one…we aspire to be like those we find glamorous not to rob
them of the attributes we admired” ( 2013, The power of Glamour, p.31-p.32).
From a personal view of mine, I generally agree on this fact , that there
should be a distinction between the different sides of envy , the differences
between jealousy and admiration. Hughes also acknowledge this
fact , stating a research that pointed out that not all envy should be viewed
as a vice but the are forms that have no effects or can be beneficial to
society which are split into emulative envy, such as when your envy of someone’s
else happiness but do not bare them any ill will, and benign envy , where it
pushes people to achieve what they envy ,and in turn create a mobile and
dynamic society that continuously thrive to best itself- ambitions and
admirations. If we extend Berger’s quote , it says: “Either he then becomes fully conscious of the contradiction end its
causes, and so joins the political struggle for a full democracy which entails,
amongst other things, the overthrow of capitalism; or else he lives,
continually subject to an envy which, compounded with his sense of
powerlessness, dissolves into recurrent day-dreams”. If one’s pursuit of
personal happiness is a universal right, and in turn having that sense of envy
that will push him to become what he wants in order to be happy, to bridge that
gap between what he is already and what he can be , to have ambitions and desires
, is that not enough justification for his envy ? for the idea of being
glamorous ? In a way ,Berger’s quote has inadvertently put a limit on the human
ability to achieve, an ability that has driven our race since the time of our
creation.
With that
said , I think Gundle sums it up perfectly when he describe Glamour as full of
oxymoronic qualities. As a progressive and semi-socialist, I can agree upon
many of the facts stated by Berger in Way of seeing, but I also acknowledge the
complexity of social ideas and the psychology behind it, and would definitely
support the notion of having an “glamorous” goal that you can strive to
achieve. After all, there’s nothing wrong with having a bit of glamour in your
life
Bibliography
:
. Berger, J. (2008). Ways of seeing.
London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books.
. Gundle, S.
and Trini Castelli, C. (2006). The glamour system. Basingstoke
[England]: Palgrave Macmillan
. Gundle, S.
(2008). Glamour. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. Postrel, V.
(2013). The power of glamour. Longing
and the art of visual persuasion ,New York, Simon & Schuster
. Christina Huges (2007) “The equality of
social envies” –“ Sociology” vol.41 no.2
Sage publication ltd
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