PHILOSOPHICAL EGGS

In January of 1972 BBC Two broadcasted a four episode television series called Ways of Seeing written and presented by John Berger (1926-2017). The series was subsequently adapted into the book Ways of Seeing which was published in 1973. Both the book and the series were influential in getting people to, among other things, not just look at works of art but to really see them in a more inclusive and philosophical manner. In particular, to see them in their social and political context and to be aware how often they are used as instruments to convey ideologies or distorted views of the world that serve those in power (unlike formalism which sees works of art as autonomous things which should be experienced on their own terms).

I encountered Berger’s book and series in my early twenties and I’ve been thinking about them for over 30 years. One network of ideas that really stayed with me comes in Episode 4. Berger claims glamour is the state of being envied and publicity is the manufacturing of glamour. Advertising often constructs images, based upon classic oil paintings, which try to convince us that, if we purchase certain commodities, we can obtain this glamour and avoid the fate of being “faceless” or overlooked by others as a non-entity (after all, what we are = what we own). He discerns three advertising “dreams” which contribute to this manipulation: (1) the dream of the good life of endless pleasure, social status, and leisure in which you are the center of attention; (2) the dream of pure skin, the skin without a biography, the pure state of innocence and beauty; and (3) the dream of the far away place of danger and adventure that delivers us from our boring lives. These dreams and many others generate fear and a lack of self-esteem that leads to over spending, over working, and a state of anxiety to obtain things which, ultimately, can’t give us the meaningful life we want anyway. 

But I think the insight that has haunted me the most comes at the end of Episode 4. I recently thought of it again as I was scrolling through the many images of Facebook during the COVID lockdown. The insight is this:

Any culture that can come to accept the juxtaposition of certain images, namely, images of trivial things with images of profoundly serious things, is, to use Berger’s term, mad.

Berger brings our attention to this newspaper page where we are confronted with images of both Pakistani refugees in dire need of help and a silly advertisement:

The first image appeals to our conscience and has the potential to generate action for the sake of others; the second appeals to our selfish need to be desired and has the potential to undermine the power of the first. Regarding this troubling juxtaposition Berger says: “The words and pictures on these pages all appear to be real and all belong to the same language. The text, the photographs taken in Pakistan, the photographs taken for the publicity, the editing of the paper, the layout, the printing. All are elements of the same culture, our culture. Yet between each page, there is such a fissure, such a disconnection, such incoherence, that one can only say this culture is mad.”

I think Berger’s term “mad” can be interpreted as the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy. Now at first glance this seems tough to accept: surely people, like us, who scroll through Facebook can, when faced with these kinds of juxtapositions, discern reality from fantasy. But what do we mean by discern here? If we include in our meaning something like experiencing with an appropriate emotional response then we need to ask: do we really discern the difference? We scroll and scroll and scroll and one image after the other goes by: a terrifying virus statistic, a cute cat, a happy wedding, a COVID death toll, a political joke, an appeal to help people in Syria, a cool video from the 80s, and a school shooting. One after the other. What can we really feel given this particular form of quick information exchange? There is an impetus to keep moving, to keep scrolling, to keep processing. And this impetus can allow us to remain relatively unaffected by the serious images we see. Of course, in some cases this may not be the case. There is much to learn from certain Facebook feeds and we can slow down, research, learn, and be moved to action. But if it is the case that we remain unaffected – and here we need to be honest with ourselves – then I think there is a sense in which we aren’t really discerning the serious images. And then there is the danger that they are becoming publicity images to which we cannot relate at all. In the book Ways of Seeing (Penguin, 1977) Berger explains:

“Publicity is essentially eventless. It extends just as far as nothing else is happening. For publicity all real events are exceptional and happen only to strangers. In the Banglaesh photographs, the events were tragic and distant. But the contrast would have been no less stark if they had been events near at hand in Derry or Birmingham….Publicity, situated in a future continually deferred, excludes the present and so eliminates all becoming, all development. Experience is impossible within it. All that happens, happens outside it.” (153)

This notion of processing images as both events and nonevents is, perhaps, a form of madness – or at least developing madness – against which we should be on guard as we “catch up” on Facebook and other forms of social media.

Watch Episode 4 of Ways of Seeing here.

Buy the book Ways of Seeing here.

For my post on the value of the humanities, go here.

For my look at the coronavirus pandemic with the wisdom of Edgar Allan Poe, go here.

For my many posts on aesthetics, go here.