Studium and Punctum in the Selfie: the Gap Between Selfie-taker and Viewer

INTRODUCTION

Selfies are polarizing phenomena as they connote a never-before-seen, “rampant narcissism” of the young (Rutledge, 2013, para. 1). This may be the case on the surface, but when one delves deeper, one will find that the desire to control one’s public or social self-image is neither new nor consistently reflective of an inflated sense of self. Rather, the ideal selfie can be seen a “transitory” expression of one’s desire to be seen as multidimensional (Rutledge, 2013, para. 4).

However, the selfie is only that when shared with others; it becomes a “construction of the self within a network of actors…[who] view, comment on and [re]share the image” (Levin, 2014, para. 32). It is the viewer, not the selfie-taker, who ultimately has control over the way the image is perceived, “the construction and representation of one’s self based on the gaze of others as media consumers” (Miriou, 2014, Abstract para. 1). Therefore, the selfie can actually depersonalize if the viewer misperceives the transitory nature of the selfie as an authentic and permanent representation. Ironically, this would yield the opposite of the selfie’s ideal intent: the selfie can depersonalize by portraying only one dimension of the selfie-taker.

This conflict between selfie-taker intent and viewer perception in photography is theorized by Barthe as “a ‘co-presence of two discontinuous elements…the studium and the punctum’” (Houlihan, 2004, para. 3): the studium, that which the photographer controls in the image and on that which he/she wants the viewer to focus; and the punctum, that which the viewer has “suddenly, unexpectedly recognized and consequently remembered” (para. 3). Houlihan notes that the punctum not only “attracts and holds the viewers …gaze”, it also “pricks or wounds the observer” (para. 4). Here, five selfies will be examined for their degree success or failure to portray the selfie-taker’s power, representation, and identity via Barthe’s theory of studium and punctum in photographs. Are the selfie-takers represented as they originally intended, or has their power been subverted? If so, how, and to what degree?

ATTEMPTS TO EXERT CONTROL OVER ONE’S SELF-IMAGE HAVE A LONG HISTORY

Early attempts in the United States to control one’s photographic image came with US presidents’ own personal photographers. However, the press corps emerged with the first generation of mass-produced cameras and were granted their own position at press conferences and public events: “a large platform usually expressly built to give the press photographers an optimal viewpoint: they now act as lieutenants of powerful news organizations and millions of readers” (Keller, 1990, p. 148). This echoes the role of the Greek chorus: to act as an intermediary for the audience, to narrate the meaning of the actors’ motions, to fortify the play’s theme. However, the press corps are controlled by the media, which empowers them to portray politicians with bias or in one dimension.

The January 26, 1907 edition of Harper’s Weekly features a photo essay of then-US President Theodore Roosevelt giving speeches (Figure 1). All eight of the images are tightly cropped headshots, six of eight show the President’s left and right profiles, the profiles are positioned facing the magazine’s spine as though arguing with each other. The end shot is of the back of Roosevelt’s head, suggesting he has turned his back on his audience. Four of the images show the president craning his head forward; three of the images reflect a head tilt, indicating passion and intensity. However, all of the face shots show Roosevelt scowling or grimacing with his teeth clenched intimidatingly.

Figure 1 via http://app.harpweek.com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/IssueImagesView.asp?titleId=HW&volumeId=1907&issueId=0126&page=109&imageSize=m. 

The compilation of these shots work to distance the President from the common US citizen: the essay is not captioned, but earlier pages of the same magazine criticize Roosevelt as having “done and said a good many things that offend against propriety…hostile to our Constitution and form of government” (Harvey, 1907 p.113), possessing “a frame of mind which spurns restraint, despises law, and is dominated by despotic instinct” (p. 114). Roosevelt’s political activities, however, marked him a progressive advocate of the common man intent on strengthening the US via its governance over capitalist ventures (University of Texas, n.d.). It is likely that the neoliberal Harper’s Weekly’s viewed Roosevelt as too progressive a Republican president (Harper’s Weekly, n.d.) and chose to punish him for it.

The studium, the intent of the photographers, was to capture the President as he spoke. The editor, however, chose to compile the photos in such a way that skewed Roosevelt’s character. Readers who were not aware of Harper’s Weekly’s bias against Roosevelt may have found their perceptions of Roosevelt damaged as a result of this punctum. It is no wonder, then, that we all wish to “take control of how [we’re] seen!” by “serially producing” ourselves, a form of “crypto-defiance” (Horning, 2014, para. 5).

SELFIE PUNCTUM AS A DEPERSONALIZING ELEMENT

The January 24, 2015 selfie Lindsay Lohan took and posted to Instagram (see Figure 2, top) captures the studium-punctum conflict. Lohan wished for the viewer to focus on her underwear and narrow waistline with the caption: “‘#mycalvins are helping my fight off my chikungunya he he’” (O’ Neill, 2015, para. 3). 

Figure 2 viahttp://starcasm.net/archives/304083#disqus_thread

Once the selfie was posted, however, viewers focused instead on the punctum, “some very strange toiletry bottles [next to Lohan’s waist] built to lean waaaaay to the left” (Hawks, 2015, para. 2) (Figure 2, centre) and posted “more than 5,000” Instagram comments referring to the obvious and poor Photoshopping effort to narrow Lohan’s waistline (O’Neill, 2015, para. 6). Ana Hawks, a writer for Starcasm.net, “tried to ‘unalter’ the image by getting the little bottles to stand up straight and line up on the bottom with the bottle on the left. [She] also tried to keep the line in the background relatively straight,” resulting in a more realistic waistline as shown in Figure 2, bottom (Hawks, 2015, para 3).

The punctum of the Lohan selfie did wound some viewers who lamented society’s demand for perfection that distorts “teenagers and young kids”’ sense of what is acceptable (O’Neill, 2015, para. 13). Horning notes that “the selfie breaks us out of the cage of static identity, but the platforms they are posted to shove us back in” (2014, para.11). This was characterized in other viewers’ decrying Lohan’s attempt as self-depersonalization: “‘I don’t get it Lindsay,’ wrote another. ‘You looked so wonderful and healthy in ‘Mean Girls’…you looked real. And now it’s just…another person in the industry trying to uphold an image’” (O’Neill, 2015, para. 14). 

PLANNED TRANSITORY SELFIES:

Secondary Orality as Permanent Representation

Rutledge notes that selfies “allow us to take mini-adventures…into a different aspect of self or a relaxation of normal constraints” (2013, para. 13). The Instagram selfie taken by Australian field hockey player Jayde Taylor achieves both (see Figure 3). 

First, Taylor and Brooke Peris “‘planned it so that when she [Queen Elizabeth] came out the door she would be behind us,’ said Taylor. ‘And then she came out and smiled at the camera. We were in the right spot at the right time’” (O’Neill, 2014, para. 8). This speaks to the selfie-taker’s conscious intent to portray a different aspect of herself – an athlete worthy of royal recognition. Second, this planned selfie reaches beyond the normal constraints of protocol – the Queen does not normally pose for personal photos with commoners. This places the Queen on a more personal and human level and elevates the status of the selfie-takers. The punctum in this selfie, the black net, does serve as a metaphor for barriers between the social classes. However, the viewer is compelled to look beyond to the studium, the Queen, who looks as happy in the selfie as the selfie-takers.

Figure 3 via https://instagram.com/p/q1Ov1Bq2JP/

This planned photobomb is actually a stalkie, as it includes the authentic and spontaneous reaction of an “unsuspecting victim in the background” (weaby12, 2013, para. 1). This is symbolic of that which Ong refers to as McLuhan’s “‘planned spontaneity’” of a technologically-adept society. Ong noted that a society, in “its fostering of a communal sense, its concentration on the present moment….is essentially…more deliberate and self-conscious” in its self-expression, a “secondary orality” (1982, p. 54). The fact that technology provides a permanent record of our activities ensures that Taylor and Peris will always be known for this selfie; their expression of secondary orality has earned them temporary celebrity and permanent notoriety.

COMPLEMENTING THE SELFIE STUDIUM AND PUNCTUM STRENGTHENS THE NARRATIVE

The selfie is commonly employed as an agent for change: “We can directly challenge stereotypes and imposed invisibility with the click of a button…it is an act of defiance” toward social norms (D.A.K., 2014, para. 6)

On March 6, 2015 “about 20” Afghani men dressed in burqas and marched in Kabul to support gender equality in honour of International Women’s Day March 8 (Sanghani, 2015, para. 11). The selfie of one participant (see Figure 4) is composed carefully: he faces the camera, smiling, head tilted slightly to the right, indicating enjoyment. His burqa is pulled away to reveal his face; t-shirt and sweater are left exposed. His shoulders and arms are covered, but his form conveys assertiveness via his superhero-style pose (TED, 2012).

Figure 4 via

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11453879/Afghan-men-wear-burqas-to-campaign-for-womens-rights.html.

To unite the subject and his background, the man stands against a wall that is a similar colour to the burqa; this speaks to the depersonalization that married Pakhtun Afghani women are subjected to (Sherazee, 2014) and is symbolic of the struggle to “confront …culture with the images of those it tries to blot out, defying widespread silence and invisibility imposed on them” (D.A.K., 2014, para. 10). Only the upper half of the man’s body is included in the frame; he is not the primary subject, yet his presence contributes to the composition. To his right is a black stencil of a laughing child, leaning back and holding a slingshot to his left. Directly above the man is a black stencil of a cruise missile broken in half, with a red heart at the break, connoting that simple acts of love can combat aggression.

One’s focus is drawn to the selfie’s punctum as part of its composition. Faint black slashes of spraypaint around the stencil imply that whoever tagged the wall was in a hurry, that the act was illegal – this reinforces the distortive effect of a progressive event such as International Women’s Day. To the man’s left at shoulder height are Farsi/Persian/Arabic words; a Google search did not reveal their meanings. However, the fore and backgrounds are so well married in this selfie, they act to reinforce the studium and marginalize the punctum, so the viewer can safely assume that the words do not conflict with the selfie’s message.

The most important punctual element, though, is in the studium: a man, dressed as a woman, revealing himself. Rather than detracting from the message, it reinforces the struggle of gender inequality: a man is still needed to legitimize women’s status, underpinning the importance and significance of International Women’s Day. The complement of studium and punctum here reinforces the selfie’s narrative, and being able to share it facilitates “a new platform for self-made visibility” (D.A.K., 2014, para. 4), as “people like us who exist in one or multiple communities [can] engage in discourse and provide support” (para. 4). 

CONTROLLING THE SELFIE’S NARRATIVE VIA TECHNILOGICAL HYBRIDIZATION

Levin notes that “selfies are…both archetypical and individual, vacillating between the stability of convention and the variability of shifting ecological currents” (2014, para. 49). To combat this and retain control, the selfie-taker has employed variations (i.e. the stalkie, the wefie), filters, and has started to incorporate text. However, these efforts sometimes still fail to convey the intended narrative as the selfie is static self-representation, resulting in “the potential for unexpected forms of personhood” as the studium is vulnerable to the punctum (para. 33).

The selfie-taker’s desire to control the narrative by emphasizing the studium and minimizing the punctum means that the static selfie must eventually give way to a multidimensional form, thus the emergence of the velfie or video selfie (Arnold palmer, 2014). By incorporating the dimensions of time and sound, the selfie-taker is now able to exert more control over self-image and self-portrayal, exerting a higher degree of control over the viewer and conveying a heightened sense of authenticity. One of the most powerful velfies is by Amanda Todd, a teenaged victim of cyber-bullying (Todd, 2007) – a screenshot of its final frame can be seen in Figure 5, the video is embedded as Figure 6. 

Figure 5 via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOHXGNx-E7E#t=58

Todd exerted control over her velfie by choosing to control the image by facing the camera directly but secondary to the black-and-white cue cards upon which she had written her story. She rarely revealed herself and then only incidentally, implying that the focus was to be on her story and not her. Todd did not speak but incorporated a complementary soundtrack that included Sia’s Breathe Me; its official video features a stop-motion animation of Polaroid photos (Astralwerks, 2007). Finally, Todd appended her velfie with two full-colour body selfies: the first of a right arm, riddled with self-inflicted cuts; the second of a left arm, the tattooed words “stay strong” are upside down, suggesting that she can be no longer. This portrays Todd’s velfie as a technological hybrid, the link between selfie and velfie.

The punctum of this one-take, black-and-white velfie reinforces the narrative’s authenticity: Todd occasionally readjusts the webcam to frame the cards. The cards, held askew at times, contain mechanical errors typical of a 15 year-old girl. She dis not limit the time of the video, and the consistency of focus on the cards compels the viewer’s attention. The visual emphasizes the velfie’s factual nature, while the temporal emphasizes its importance.

Figure 6 via  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOHXGNx-E7E#t=58

The response to Todd’s velfie and subsequent suicide has been phenomenal: with her velfie, Todd has changed society’s perception toward cyberbullying, her actions have prompted changes to cyberbullying and bullying law, her story has served as the impetus for a paradigm shift of society’s perception regarding victims and victimhood: “Amanda Todd, thank you for giving a voice to every guy or girl who found themselves at the bottom. I promise I’ll do my best to prevent the hate that pushed you into this corner” (Austin, 2012, para. 7). Todd’s velfie will stand as an archetype for the selfie-taker’s control through complement of studium and punctum and symbolize her masterful use of multimedia to convey narrative.

CONCLUSION

Portraiture has always been about sharing one’s self-image with others. Initially expensive and exclusive, the scope of form was narrow and the subject formalized. Photographic technology has become faster and more intuitive; therefore, more are able to control their own self-image. Moreover, the numerous selfies a person takes reflects a broader scope of that which is acceptable by minimizing the length of the feedback loop, the time between taking, viewing, commenting on, and sharing. As such, the “construction of the self” is synergistic (Levin, 2014, para. 31).

Levin theorizes that the selfie characterizes society’s evolving sense of self-identity (2014). He notes that the selfie is a step in the evolution of media that can be characterized as a kind of cyber-ontology, a morphology of our progress: “ecological evolution and genetic recapitulation help describe both the inherent historical inertia of media, and their capacity for emergence” (para. 21).

The selfie-taker is pursuing the truth in self-identity; the selfie, Barthe theorizes, “‘makes permanent the truth’” (Houlihan, 2004, para. 4). Powell theorizes that, rather than competing, studium and punctum are complementary, derived the synergistic efforts of selfie-taker and viewer, resulting in a heuristic truth that is also permanent. Powell notes that derived studium incites intellectual interest, while punctum incites the emotional (2008).

Moreover, Powell believes that the two work to both reinforce and disrupt culture simultaneously. He emphasizes that studium evokes the norms of the culture portrayed in the selfie, noting Barthe’s concept of culture as “‘a contact arrived at between creators and consumers.’ I think this cultural middle ground is extremely important in the way ideas are put across from photographer to spectator” (2008, para. 3). Punctum, on the other hand, unexpectedly disturbs the studium, provoking a stronger emotional reaction from the viewer, “changing the ‘like of studium to the love of an image” (Powell, 2008, para. 8). The punctum’s “‘aberrant’” quality is what evokes phenomenological response. As such, the uncertainty that complements the punctum’s presence is that which makes the selfie compelling.

The selfie-taker cannot exert complete control over the selfie, which can result in misperception by the viewer. However, a misperception does not always represent a gap in communication between the selfie-taker and viewer. Rather, this disruption incites the viewer to participate and contribute to the new, hermeneutical meaning resulting from the synergy of selfie-taker and viewer participation via perception and response. 

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