“Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there—I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television--you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.”~ Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
“You're not anybody in America unless you're on TV. On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what's the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody's watching? And if people are watching, it makes you a better person.”~ Suzanne Stone Maretto (Nicole Kidman), To Die For, 1995
On Monday, June 3, 19 68, Valerie Solanas—the troubled, feminist anti-hero responsible for the S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto—traveled up the elevator at the Factory in clothes suspiciously bulky for the summer weather and shot Andy Warhol. He didn’t die (not until many years after), and she confessed readily, but the incident forever changed the way Warhol thought about himself, his work and his relationship to other people. The shooting also made both Solanas and Warhol more famous than they ever would have been on their own (though Warhol had clearly already made a name for himself, without him, Solanas would have certainly faded into complete obscurity).
Warhol had a curious relationship to fame. With fame came money and influence and renown in the art world, but his fame is probably also what got him shot. By all accounts, he was one of those amazing creatures who both courted and eschewed their own cult of celebrity in equal measure, and often those around him—like the tragic Edie Sedgwick or, of course, Solanas herself—were briefly subsumed in his aura of cultural capital. As for television, Warhol loved it for all the “wrong” reasons: the comforting repetition of watching the same show over and over again, the blankness of the screen, the pleasure of boredom, the lack of affect in the medium as compared to film. For example, Warhol writes about his relationship to television that “…most people love watching the same basic thing, as long as the details are different. But I’m just the opposite: if I’m going to sit and watch the same thing I saw the night before, I don’t want it to be essentially the same—I want it to be exactly the same. Because the more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel” (POPism: The Warhol '60s). When he writes, as in the epigraph above, that real life is like watching television because “you don’t feel anything,” it’s as if he’s suddenly realized that either his life is like television—unreal—or that television is like life in general, never more than “half-there.” And that’s the way he likes it.
Two things drive Suzanne’s all-consuming lust for the televisual. The first is, of course, the quest for fame. And the second? For all her posturing and scheming, Suzanne honestly believes that life isn’t worth living if no one’s watching (in this sense, television is us bearing witness to ourselves—the digital age’s answer to the God question: someone is always watching). As much as she puts herself into television, it puts itself into her: she derives her power to influence everyone around her from television’s cultural authority. Her measly job as a small-town weather anchor would never lend her enough cache to pull off all the machinations of the film’s plot, but her proximity to television, her willful embodiment of its ideology of fame and celebrity, does.
Both Warhol and Suzanne’s narratives indicate, whether in real-life or fictional terms, the ways in which fame can beget fame and how a mere association with mass media can render life seemingly unreal. To bring us to a more germane association with contemporary culture: how far removed is Suzanne’s observation, “what’s the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody's watching?” from the inexplicable celebrity of someone like Paris Hilton—merely famous for being famous—or the notoriety of former tween pop idol Britney Spears (famous for being famously reckless) or, indeed, the fifteen minutes of wacky/stupid/haphazard fame sought by most reality show contestants? And how many times have we seen celebrity overwhelm celebrities? In the past few years, this has happened most notably with young stars (Lindsey Lohan, the Olsen twins, Nicole Richie, etc.), but it’s not a new phenomenon by any means.
But is there more than just the siren’s lure of glimmering cameras (later crushed under the heavy burden of scrutiny and paparazzi shutter-clicks) permeating our collective subconscious that inspires this vicious cycle of fame/infamy? Could it be that perhaps, as life becomes more and more televisual—that is, as reality becomes increasingly codified by how it can be expressed in images (rather than words or thoughts)—we rely on mass media to “learn about who we really are”? After being shot, Warhol suddenly realized that he was watching television, that “it’s all television.” Likewise, under the auspices of celebrity culture, “who I am” quickly becomes “I am who everyone is watching.” If the visual image supersedes the “real,” then the actor, she who is watched, morphs seamlessly into the celebrity, she who watches herself being watched.
After all, what’s the point of being famous if nobody’s watching?
Warhol had a curious relationship to fame. With fame came money and influence and renown in the art world, but his fame is probably also what got him shot. By all accounts, he was one of those amazing creatures who both courted and eschewed their own cult of celebrity in equal measure, and often those around him—like the tragic Edie Sedgwick or, of course, Solanas herself—were briefly subsumed in his aura of cultural capital. As for television, Warhol loved it for all the “wrong” reasons: the comforting repetition of watching the same show over and over again, the blankness of the screen, the pleasure of boredom, the lack of affect in the medium as compared to film. For example, Warhol writes about his relationship to television that “…most people love watching the same basic thing, as long as the details are different. But I’m just the opposite: if I’m going to sit and watch the same thing I saw the night before, I don’t want it to be essentially the same—I want it to be exactly the same. Because the more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel” (POPism: The Warhol '60s). When he writes, as in the epigraph above, that real life is like watching television because “you don’t feel anything,” it’s as if he’s suddenly realized that either his life is like television—unreal—or that television is like life in general, never more than “half-there.” And that’s the way he likes it.
Two things drive Suzanne’s all-consuming lust for the televisual. The first is, of course, the quest for fame. And the second? For all her posturing and scheming, Suzanne honestly believes that life isn’t worth living if no one’s watching (in this sense, television is us bearing witness to ourselves—the digital age’s answer to the God question: someone is always watching). As much as she puts herself into television, it puts itself into her: she derives her power to influence everyone around her from television’s cultural authority. Her measly job as a small-town weather anchor would never lend her enough cache to pull off all the machinations of the film’s plot, but her proximity to television, her willful embodiment of its ideology of fame and celebrity, does.
Both Warhol and Suzanne’s narratives indicate, whether in real-life or fictional terms, the ways in which fame can beget fame and how a mere association with mass media can render life seemingly unreal. To bring us to a more germane association with contemporary culture: how far removed is Suzanne’s observation, “what’s the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody's watching?” from the inexplicable celebrity of someone like Paris Hilton—merely famous for being famous—or the notoriety of former tween pop idol Britney Spears (famous for being famously reckless) or, indeed, the fifteen minutes of wacky/stupid/haphazard fame sought by most reality show contestants? And how many times have we seen celebrity overwhelm celebrities? In the past few years, this has happened most notably with young stars (Lindsey Lohan, the Olsen twins, Nicole Richie, etc.), but it’s not a new phenomenon by any means.
But is there more than just the siren’s lure of glimmering cameras (later crushed under the heavy burden of scrutiny and paparazzi shutter-clicks) permeating our collective subconscious that inspires this vicious cycle of fame/infamy? Could it be that perhaps, as life becomes more and more televisual—that is, as reality becomes increasingly codified by how it can be expressed in images (rather than words or thoughts)—we rely on mass media to “learn about who we really are”? After being shot, Warhol suddenly realized that he was watching television, that “it’s all television.” Likewise, under the auspices of celebrity culture, “who I am” quickly becomes “I am who everyone is watching.” If the visual image supersedes the “real,” then the actor, she who is watched, morphs seamlessly into the celebrity, she who watches herself being watched.
After all, what’s the point of being famous if nobody’s watching?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
(Next Week: “Television Delivers People,” in which I consider Richard Serra and Carolta Fay Schoolman’s 1973 video, Television Delivers People, alongside commercialism, spectatorship and the pleasures of mass media consumption.)
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