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VIRGINIA NIGHTINGALE

SHIFTY CHARACTERS &SHADY RELATIONS THE CHARACTER OF 'MAN' In The Ordero/ibtn[is, Michel Foucault (1970, 367ff) proposed that history, ethnology and psychoanalysis are the foundational disciplines of the human sciences and that they share an ideology which has selected 'man' as the object of their research. The epistemological field traversed by the human sciences was not laid down in

advance; no philosophy, no political or moral option, no empirical science of any kind, no observation of the human body, no analysis of sensation, in1agination, or the passions, had ever encountered, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, anything like man; for man did not exist (any more than life, or language, or labour); and the hmnan sciences did not appear when, as a result of some pressing rationalism, some unresolved scientific problem, some practical concern, it was decided to indude man (willy-nilly, and with greater or lesser degree of success) among the objects of science among which it has perhaps not been proved even yet that it is absolutely possible to class him; they appeared when man constituted himself in Western culture as both that which must be conceived of and that which is to be knmvn (Foucault 1970, 344-345). Foucault indicated not only that 'man' was invented as an object of study towards the end of the eighteenth century but that one day this preoccupation could end. He mused that as the result of some unforeseeable change to the arnmgements which today prefigure 'man', 'one can certainly wJ.ger tilat man would be erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea' (387) as the focus of the human sciences. In his later work, Foucault advocated a science of technologies technologies of production, of sign systems, of power and of the self - in which man is

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implicated, observed and studied but without being the reason for the research. Foucault's research centred on technologies of domination (power) and the self, and such preoccupation led him to select research objects on the basis of their centrality to social administration and 'govemmentality'. Issues of administration and govemmentality are central concerns of policy research and its methods ' vet when it comes to media ' audiences it is still too easy to avoid the conceptual difficulty they suggest, let alone the technology of domination they express. A naive and blissful trust in the survey and the interview blinds the novice to the fact that an audience is not a person (or a group of people) but a relation. The wish for an answer to the riddles of culture based on 'authentic' observ'J.tions, the word from the horse's mouth, convinces the researcher that a large enough sample of audience attitudes will prove conclusive. Yet somehow it never does. Undaunted by the definitional difficulty associated with the concept 'audience', media academics try to make the concept fit the functions others want it to perform, wilfully disregarding the theoretical and philosophical minefield into which they step. In the particular context of mass audience researd1, the audience assumes the classic guise of consumer, while in policy research another classic eighteenth century shape predominates - the citizen/the public, the political constituency. As industry and bureaucracy endlessly pass the audience parcel between them, its chameleon-like character is revealed. As an object of study, the audience assumes different phenomenal qualities depending on the power relations by which it is bound. Audience is an object which is always in a relation of symbiosis. It is a dependant object, part of a pair. To be an audience one must be an audience of

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something. Even an 'audience potential' is potentially an audience of something and not in fact an audience until that something else materialises. For this reason, I assert that it is nor really the people we need to know about, but the power relations into which they are bound as audiences.

THAT SHIFTY CHARACTER- THE AUDIEI~CE My first attempt to address the shifty character of the audience C'lightingale 1984) led me to propose that the audience could only be understood as a complex set of relations linked in a structured system of mass communication. At that early stage I thought of mass communication, perhaps naively, as a sort of interlocking system of audience relations, and hoped that I could control its character by pinning it down. I considered three relations likely to be particularly relevant: audience-industry, audiencemedium and audience-text. In terms of these relations, the audience can be seen tc be implicated at all levels in the system of mass communication, but to change according to the other term of the relation to which it is linked. If analysed in terms of Foucault's typology of social technologies, audienceindustry can be seen to involve the interaction of technologies of domination and production, while audience-text involves the interaction of technologies of sign systems and of the self. Given the prevalence of addiction metaphors attached to discussions of television viewing (Nightingale 1992), audience-medium relations can be expected to combine technologies of domination and self. As Foucault notes: these four types of technologies hardly ever function separately, although each one of them is associated with a certain type of domination. Each implies certain modes of training and moditleation of individuals, not only in the obvious sense of acquiring certain skills but also in the sense of acquiring certain attitudes (1988, 18·19). ln other words, studying audiences in this way should demonstrate that technologies of all four types are in simultaneous operation, and that the selection of the relation to be studied must be undertaken with care, in order to ensure that an appropriate object of research is addressed. For policy research, examination of the audience-industry relation as a technology of production, by means of which audiences are ----~

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produced as marketable commodities, would seem a necessary beginning. Treating the audience-industry relation as a technology of power, by contrast, could lead to a research focus which investigated the ways people are coerced to apply consumer and commodity ideas and ideals to the analysis of their own interest~. To my knowledge no-one has attempted such research. It is the sort of work an academic might choose, but which will also produce policy outcomes. It directly addresses the narcotised masses of the moral panic. For example, if people are unable to reflect on their audience experiences in terms other than those dictated by industry, might this not demonstrate a sense of powerlessness induced by totalitarian domination by industry of the audience-industry relation? Might this not in tum suggest a role for government in legislating for a more open audience-industry relation which will allow people greater access to production, and which might include video and popular music production as community arts for which access to broadcasting is possible?

RELATIONAL OBJECTS Before considering some examples of such relational research, clarification of the characteristics of 'relational objects' seems necessary. A relational object is symbiotic. lt is not another way of talking about a correlation between two objects or of analysing the variance between the occurrence of two things. The dimensions of a relational object are linked by definition, by logical necessity. Its terms cannot exist independently. Unless there is a text, a person, an industry, a medium, a system of publicity with whom/ which the relation is shared there can be no audience. A person can be a consumer of ice creams but will never be the audience of an lee cream. A person can both consume and use a refrigerator or an automobile, but will never be irs audience. Consumption and use are both, nonetheless, incidental or phenomenal aspects of 'audience'. They are necessarily part of being an audience, but not sufficient explanations of it. So, secondly, like 'consumption' and 'use', 'audience' is performed. De Certeau claims that the practices of popular culture 'bring into play a "popular" ratio, a way of thinking invested in a way of acting, an art of combination which

- - - - - - - - - - - - · - - - - - - - - - -.......

-

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Shifty Characters & Shady Relations

cannot be dissociated from an att of using' (de Certeau 1984, xv). Audience relations retain elements of giving patronage or service but may also offer freedom of expression, as when someone is given the right to speak in being 'given an audience'. The performance of an audience relation involves, at least potentially, a greater range of activities than using or consuming. Consumption and production are necessarily linked in the performance consumption-production which provides the construction work on which the audience-text relation is predicated. Thirdly, audience relations always involve the exercise of power- someone always has the power to offer 'audience' and someone else must respond by accepting or rejecting that offer. There is no requirement that audience relations be democratic- frequently, especially in broadcasting, they are not. Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly in mass communication, relations of audience are what I v.ill call, again following Michel de Certeau, 'operational', and their operationalism is linked to the power structures which govern the relation. In the audience-text relation this operdtionalism encompasses the transformation of the heterogeneous, hapha7%d particularity of the everyday into personal narratives which conform to generic cultural ideals. The audience relation is a means of transforming partJcular potential into examples of a cultural ideal and vice versa. In this sense it is educational (which is probably why relations of audience are exploited in pedagogy).

AUDIENCE-TEXT IN CULTURAL STUDIES RESEARCH Cultural studies has demonstrated a concerted and continuing commitment to text as the centre of its practice. All cultural forms are read as texts - whether the form is an institution, an advertising campaign, a book or a film. Therefore it is not surprising that the prototypical 'audience' relation for cultural studies has been that of audience-text The first attempts to address this relation supplemented textual analysLs with audience interviews and/or observations (eg Hobson 1982; Tulloch & Moran 1986; Buckingham 1987). The audiences involved were often committed viewers, fans, and as a result seem to have inspired studies of fans and their communities (Lev.is 1992; Fiske 1993).

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More recently, impersonation, a variety of fan performance, has become a popular research focus (Fiske 1993). Fans and their performances, whether in community or as impersonators, are excellent examples of the audience-text relation. For example, without impersonators, Marilyn Monroe exists now only as image. By offering their own bodies as substitutes, the cultural ideal Monroe became is kept alive as more than image - as a real possibility. Zizek has described impersonation this way: by means of the repetition of the past, we undermine this image of history qua the linear process of the unfolding of an underlying necessity and unearth its process of becoming (1992, 79). The repetition of Marilyn, in all senses, opens up the dilemma she lived (the given) to reexamination and scrutiny. Repetition allows the possibility of other endings to the story. 'Marilyn' can marry 'Elvis' (as in the SBS broadcast, Impersonators, june 1991), the boy next door or a girlfriend. For the impersonation yields information about the nature of the world which produced both Monroe and her impersonators. Being neither herself nor Monroe, the impersonator performs an option offered by the audiencetext relation; the relation becomes the means for a particular person to explore a cultural option reprce.sented by Monroe's image and the image gains a new lease on life through the impersonator. Thus the Monroe narrative continues beyond the grave, as has the Elvis narrative (Marcus 1991). Impersonation is a pivotal, totemic motif in Western culture. Every Christmas thousands of grown men put on red suits and fake be-ards, . take up residence in department stores and shopping malls, or pardde the streets, as Santa Claus. Their performance is tightly scripted. 'Have you been a good girl or boy all year?', a quick glance at Mum or Dad fur confirmation. 'What would you like me to bring you this Christmas?' 'lne impersonation is continued at home when parents complete the ritual, leave offerings of cake and wine for Santa on Christmas Eve, to sustain him on his annual epic journey around the world, and then secretly consume the offering and pretend that Santa brought tl1e presents and ate the cake and wine. These ancient rituals become templates for c:ontempor.uy fans; they suggest well-articulated and culturally logical ways of prolonging the life of a person whose life became a way of being. The

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template extends into everyday life. Comedians make a living by impersonating prominent people, and family members use mimicry to make fun of each other. Impersonation insinuates its way into everyday life in often surprising ways. For example, in a study of people watching Rugby league football on television (Nightingale 1992), different people were seen to impersonate different aspects of the game. Younger trulle viewers chose to re-enact incidents between players, while older male viewers enjoyed usurping the role of the commentator, a role increasingly reserved for ex-players who have proved their value as commentators during half-time breaks and as the teams come off-field. Women viewers were expected to attend to the men, providing them with beer or coffee at times when it would least interfere \vith enjoyment of the game, and being forced to re-enact a now oldfashioned patriarchal domestic power structure. This too is prefigured in the broadcast game - molhers and girlfriends are invariably present at the game as \vitnesses, as nurses (on one occasion I saw a llrstcgrade player's mother rush to wipe the blood from his brow as he left !.he field) or as an enhancement to !.he game (as cheerleaders etc). Such impersonation has long been noted in children's viev;ing, but in !.he example of televised football it is easier to appreciate the significance of a disciplining discourse at work The key to researching a relation like audience-text lies in recognising that it is a performance object and as such open to bolh observation and 'text-ure'. 1be relation is played simultaneously as both documentary (the story of a real person) and as fantasy (an imagined narrative improvised on the fragmentary remains of another's life). Impersonation and fandom represent the spectacular face of more widely practised improvisatory activities encouraged by the mass media. They have become globally recognised genres of stylistic specialisation in a culturally bomogenising world. That Elvis, Marilyn, Sherlock Holmes or Star Trek character impersonators are recognised world-wide demonstrates the significance of other activities perhaps less frequently recognised as examples of audience-text. For each impersonator there are no doubt thousands on thousands of improvisers, people who take a stylistic sign and use it to

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enhance their own main creation, their life.ln these lives it is not the sign but what the sign evokes, what it links them to, what it signifies it allows them to enact, !.hat matters. Improvisation, in this case role playing, is evident in !.he play relations reportedly established in the virtual worlds of cyberspace (see 'Death in Cyberspace', Sydney Morning Herald 4 April1994). In this electronic world, people are able to create characters and to play out their logic for better or worse. Yet such play occasionally reaches out and touches or is touched by real world dilemmas - such as in two reported incidents: the committing of virtual rape and the real death of a character's creator/player. The virtual rape resulted in !.he real expulsion of a player and the production of new rules to govern !.he virtual community -- a frontier virtual world was programmed to be more civilised in future through !.he re-enactment of a version of the democratic proce&s. In !.he second case, !.he death of an introverted nineteen year old precipitated a virtual wake both for him and for the character he had created, and real letters and phone calls of condolence to his parents. In each of these cases, a performance ensues which bridges the real with a shared fantasy and points to !.he prevalence of other less publicly acknowledged sharing. The public, real world disdpline of a character points to the reality of the particular sanctioned disciplining licensed by the programming which established !.he virtual community. The real life celebration of the rituals of death also marks a recognition of the dependence of the virtual world on the real, of the necessity for the players of a commensurability of the two, and perhaps even more importantly, of the importance of !.he virtual for the continuity of the real. A boy was woiking out his life, virtually, and a father was really comforted. The father, Tom Davenpon, believed that his son was reaching out in his last months. The famiiy were paying for counselling with a therapist skilled in treating addiction, and the sessions seemed to bring the ever-edgy Nalhaniel a measure of calm. But in his ques: to better himself, Nathaniel had also turned to the tool he was most comfonable with: he was using his character to explore social interactions, to learn to be funny, charming, direct. 'He was using the net,' said Mr Davenport, 'to work out his life' (Si'JH 4 April 1994, 15).

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Shicy Characters & Shady Relations

While cultural studies has so far concentrated on audience research by addressing the audience-text relation, the potential for policy research may be more readily available in expressions of audienceindustry and audience-medium relations, The audience-industry relation suggests, for example, the benefit of seriously questioning the necessity of the totalitarian reiation of mass broadcasting by comparing it with more 'democratic' enactments (eg some contemporary explorations of media cultures - Langton 1993; Nacify 1993). TI1e audiencemedium relation might emphasise situations of engagement and the performance of the relation as public or private, secret or shared, interiorised or exhibitionistic. And of course l haven't yet raised the matter of inter-relational research; that will have to wait for another paper.

REFERENCES Buckingham D, 1987, Public Secret1:· Eastenders and its Audience, BFI, London. De Certeau, M, 1984, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, Berkeley, Fiske,], 1993, Power Plays, Power Works, Verso, London and New York. Foucault, M, 1970, The Order Q{Tbings, Vintage Books, New York ---, 1988, 'Technologies of the SelP, in Technologies ofthe Self a seminar with Michel Foucault, eds L H Martin, H Guunan, and P H

Huttun, University of Massachusetts Press, Tavistoek, London. Hobson, D, 1982, Crossroads: the Drama of a Soap Opera, Methuen, London.

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Langtun, Marcia, 1993, Well, l heard it on tbe Radio and l saw it an the Teleuision, Australian Film Commission, North Sydney. Lewis, L, ed, 1992, 1he Adoring Aadience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, Routledge, London and New York

Marcus, Grell, 1991, Dead EM.s.· a Chronicle of Cultural Obsession, Penguin, London, l\acify, H, 1993, 1be Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, University of Minnesota Ptess, Minneapolis and London. l\ightingale, V, 1984, 'Media Audiences- Media Products?', Australian journal of Cultural Studies, Vol 2 "lo 1, 23-35. Nightingale, V, 1992, 'Contesting Domestic Territory• Watching Rugby League on Television', in Stay Timed! An Australian Broadca;1ing Reader, ed A Moran, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Tulloch, ], and Moran, A, 1986, A Count1y Practice: 'Quality Soap', Currency Press, Sydney. Zizek, S, 1992, Enjoy Your Symptom! jacques !J:Jean in Hollywood and Out, Routledge, l\ew York and London. This paper was delivered at the conference 'Culruml Policy Studies• Questions of Method' held at the University of Technology, Sydney, in April 1994, co-sponsored by the School of Humanities, UTS, and the School of Sociology, UNSW.

Virginia Nightingale is Senior Lecturer and Undergraduate Studies Coordinator in tJJ.e Faculty ofHumanities, University ojW'estem Sydney, Nepean, PO Box 10, Kingswood NSW, Australia 2747; Phone: (02) 678 7350.

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