Presumed Intimacy: Parasocial Interaction in Media, Society and Celebrity Culture

Chris Rojek

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780745671116, 9780745671109
• eBook ISBN: 9780745698120
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

'Presumed intimacy' refers to a relationship that requires instant trust, confidence, disclosure and the recognition of vulnerability. Chris Rojek investigates the impact of relationships of 'presumed intimacy', where audiences form strong identifications with mediated others, whether they be celebrities, political personae or online friends. Arguing that the way the media are able to manage these relationships is a significant aspect of their power structure, the core of the book is an investigation into the complicity of the media in encouraging presumed intimacy and the cultural, social and political consequences arising from this. Beyond this, it examines how intimacy is performed as a masquerade in many social settings – the scripts we follow in social settings that try to manufacture a shortcut to intimacy.

A compelling look into mediated relationships in the network society, Presumed Intimacy will be a key contribution to the critical analysis of society, media and culture.

1
Living with Statistical Men and Women

Modern democracy is speared with a sharp paradox. Formally, it is a body of life and blood equals, primarily consisting, at the level of experience, of empty apparitions. For the greater part we are oblivious to the details of the real circumstances and destines of the human species of which we are a part. Yet we glimpse fractured aspects of them through media transmissions of various sorts. It is certainly not out of the question that we may be moved by the apparent circumstances, conveyed via the media, relating to multitudes of people, who we have never met, do not know and, in all probability, will never know. For a variety of reasons, relating chiefly to the force of the media in organizing moral density, we may have the temerity to feel that we belong to their story and vice versa. Notwithstanding this, for the most part we confine ourselves to issues surrounding our families and friends. Of course, some of us are passionately devoted to justice and matters of human dignity involving the lives of others. Nearly everyone respects a person of this stamp, even if they disagree with their specific political views. However, despite paying lip service to venerated Enlightenment ideals of individual responsibility and civic action, we are wary, highly provisional, travellers in the art of global human fellowship. The global media provide an outline of the conditions of the lives of the aggregate. As watchers we are party to the shallow surface of what we see. Because the TV eye and the world wide web seems to be empowering in exposing data for us, we may even affect to grasp a little bit more than the ordinary person might know about what is going on, out there in the world of people who are separated from us by the magnitude of distance. ⁽¹⁾ Some of us care enough to dig deeper. There are cases of individuals in the affluent societies of the West forsaking all, to engage in struggles that are situated way beyond their doorstep. A case in point is the activism and horrific death of the 23-year-old American protester, Rachel Corrie, killed in 2003 by an Israeli armoured bulldozer, while protesting against the policies of Palestinian land clearance. ⁽²⁾ The Rachel Corries of this world are brave, idealistic, worthy of our respect. ⁽³⁾ Still, they are very much exceptions to the rule. We may register global emergencies, injustice and suffering but for the most part we let them pass us by as distant, glancing relations having no direct, durable bearing on our personal responsibilities or sense of self. This is not necessarily a cause for self-reproach. How can knowledge of the global aggregate be anything other than shallow? The numbers in the world are so huge and diverse that their details exceed the capacity of the individual brain to capture them. We identify with the lives of others, but only with strings attached. Our lives, and the lives of those immediate relations who depend upon us, impose obligations and duties that are too relentless and unyielding. Their clamour for our attention, even while we register and feel for the pain and mortality of others, is insistent. So we devote the greater part of our lives to pursuing our narrow, private ends and those of the kith and kin networks to which we are attached.

However, global media society insistently imposes a counter-life upon us. We are constant, often furtive, watchers of the lives of others. Usually, we become activated only when the media seize upon an event, episode, incident or emergency deemed worthy of public attention. Even then, our emotional connection is tenuous and capricious. We live in a world of statistical men and women. Typically, our leaders speak of abstract numbers, rather than flesh and blood people, and champion or condemn them through briefings via press attachés and researchers rather than direct experience. There is a real sense in which relations in democracy are stamped with the mark of being once removed. Much of the mandate for official action is sheer word magic. The political challenge in the art of political rhetoric is to utter passable empathy with others. The combination of democracy and the global media impose presumed intimacies of the counter-life upon us. Not to care about the lives of others, or the condition of the planet, is to risk being stigmatized as selfish, irresponsible and heartless. Fiormanti (2014) shows convincingly that credit ratings, growth figures and other ‘hard data’ have a powerful influence in public debate. But he also raises the point that these numbers are often misleading and are typically selectively constructed and applied in order to suit the needs of vested interests. Presumed intimacy can be a political tool. It gains votes. In public life its assembly and presentation often follow hidden agendas. Global statistical men and women constitute a multi-dimensional category. Yet they are generally politically represented too us in no more than one or two dimensions. Can we really know the lives of those who live in politically troubled areas such as Sudan, Syria, the Gaza or North Korea? Can we truly grasp the actual context in which they find themselves or the indivertible forces which they confront (with only a slender chance for inserting their own agency to make a difference)? Yet governments and activists reduce complexity by making schematic statements about the lives of others in these geo-political hot spots. This should not be a cause for surprise. Social statistics are not independent of social relationships. Rather, the correct way to analyse and understand them is to see them as products of social relationships (Best 2001). If we incubate and exhibit presumed intimacy for the lives of others, it is partly because our propensities in these respects are framed by political leaders and media pundits. It would be rash to proclaim that the fundamentals here are new. Humans have always passed their lives with others who are obscurely acknowledged, but never encountered. They are impenetrable features of our social landscape. Their co-existence is recognized as a fact of life, but it hardly prohibits us from going about our own lives. It has been ever thus. At the same time, possessing awareness about the lives of others is a more prominent aspect of what might be called, favoured identity, that is, the positive status differentiation which represents a relevant, decent, caring person. The sheer volume of data about the lives of others that we are privy to, is unprecedented. Everyday cable, satellite and other forms of digital communication carry fact-finding bulletins and op-ed pieces on conditions in distant places, the geography, culture, religion and history of which are fuzzy to us, but about which we feel obscurely connected. Numerical force is frequently the basis for moral force.

News about the lives of others is often troubling or downright bad. The media tend to concentrate upon dramatic episodes that correlate with high human interest potential because this is what wins ratings wars. In communicating troubling data to us, they have developed codes of propriety and conventions of disclosure to convey and register emotions in an approved, acceptable manner. These instruments of exchange marry up with emotional management technologies developed in professions and occupations where handling and communicating bad news is a significant element in case-load performance (Furedi 2003). In this study, the term presumed intimacy will be used to refer to the skills required to provide concrete feedback to an individual who has done something wrong, to deliver bad news to those who may be dismayed or troubled by it, and to assert authority over those with whom one disagrees at work or in other public settings. It is a tool to smooth-out awkward situations and avoid negative or destructive behaviour. Typically, it works through the disclosure of empathy and offers an action plan to overcome blockages, disruptions or difficulties of one sort or another. In a wired-up world, where more people are in one way or another in touch with each other than ever before, it is ubiquitous. Agents of persuasion use statistics about the relationships of opportunity, risk and threat with statistical men and women as the pretext for moral and economic action. The role of the media in delineating these issues for the public is decisive. However, framing only has purchase because we spend a large part of our life alone or with others, not acting, as such, but secretly watching.

That old technological determinist, Marshall McLuhan (2001) knew this only too well. He famously speculated that ‘cool’ technologies of audio-visual communication would galvanize human sympathy, break down social, political and cultural divisions and create ‘the global village’. For McLuhan, it was inevitable that watchers of the world would unite. History has not turned out like that. On the contrary, cool technologies have proved fully compatible with thin readings of social reality. Greater data about the lives of others does not necessarily assist sound moral judgements or moral action. Our lives are passed in a condition of data overload. Under its sway, we find it difficult to work out what data to believe and what to question and reject. The more informed we are, the more we hedge our bets, since we are conscious that the information upon which our perspective is founded is necessarily partial. For every point of view, there is a counter-point of view. Modern men and women are mostly sharply conscious that they lack the knowledge and time to decide on global issues by themselves. Democracy is a proxy form of government which empowers elected representatives to take these decisions for us, and to subject themselves to accountability via the due electoral process. This has ramifications for the emotional density of the counter-life they share with others.

Amid a sense of obscurity about the lives of statistical men and women, naked fear is an element that it would be unwise to underrate. Since 9/11 the West has learnt to view globalization more widely than questions of deregulation and outsourcing. ⁽⁴⁾ The terrorist threat, itself mostly obscure, is acutely stressed by the authorities, especially in metropolitan cultures. Vigilance and awareness are promoted as public necessities. It is short sighted to soldier on without even a dim awareness of the world out there and the hidden risks that it conceals. But it is a peculiar feature of modern life that this awareness, which can be like lighting blue touchpaper when it comes to emotional transference, is actually a darkling place where it is difficult to see the wood for the trees. 9/11 has been instrumental in standing the logic of vulnerability upon its head. We are inured to thinking of men and women in the developing world as worthy recipients of aid. The unbearable, patronizing backdraft of this outwardly benign Western outlook has been rightly deplored by critics (Moyo 2009). Now the statistical men and women who share our world may take our jobs, claim welfare benefits that we have paid for and may plot and take steps to kill us. Removed intimacy is the opposite side of the coin of presumed intimacy. That is, the social condition in which presumed intimacy based in care and respect for the lives of statistical men and women is withdrawn and inverted by redefining them as a threat or risk.

This darkling sensibility in the public mind is exploited and developed by political leaders of all stripes. Presumed intimacy can turn into aggression in the wink of an eye. It also points to something sociologically important, and little considered, in the ways that we go about relating to others in the world. What does it mean to live with statistical apparitions? And how is this category used by leaders for the ends of power and influence? And what does it mean to be a furtive watcher?

Familiar Strangers

Goffman (1963) put ‘the nod count’ (the number of people with whom we are on ‘nodding terms’), at a hundred. The core consists of primary relationships with family and friends. Nonetheless, a considerable proportion fall into the fascinating and little understood category of ‘familiar strangers’ (Milgram 1992: 67–9). That is, persons who populate our known social landscape, yet with whom we never interact beyond a glancing recognition. Like the famous ‘lost letter experiment’, the subject reveals Milgram's lifelong interest in the nature of modern altruism. ⁽⁵⁾ The springboard for this research question was the anonymous people Milgram saw regularly on the station platform where he caught his subway train into Manhattan. The familiar stranger relationship is not the absence of a relationship, but a ‘special kind of frozen relationship’ (Milgram 1971: 71). Basic to it is a history of principled non-communication and the acceptance of this as the normal state of affairs. This supports a system of non-negotiated, restraining conventions which is mutually accepted, but turns out to be rather odd on closer inspection. For example, you are more likely to ask a total stranger for the time than a person that you have seen for years but never spoken to. Why? What is the inhibition that stops us from asking someone who we have watched as a familiar stranger for months or years, and what is behind the preference for asking a bona fide stranger? Doubtless, it is a matter of not wishing to be emotionally beholden to familiar strangers. The glance or the nod are enough.

Still, Milgram held that in exceptional circumstances familiar strangers may become ‘real people’. As an example, he (1992: 68) refers to a woman who slipped and hurt herself on a Brooklyn street, close by her apartment. She had been known as a familiar stranger by another resident for years. The resident immediately came to the assistance of the woman. Not only that, she organized an ambulance and accompanied her to the hospital to ensure that she received proper care. This suggests that triggering real interaction seems to be associated with out-of-routine encounters. Yet typically, the chief identifying characteristic of familiar strangers is that they remain recognized but unknown to us. By extension, we do not want to know more about them.

The analytical import of Milgram's discussion is that there are latent ‘background expectancies’ in social relationships with persons who are manifest to us as strangers in everyday life. ⁽⁶⁾ There are unwritten rules that govern the extent of our moral involvement with men and women that we do not directly know. Familiar strangers seem to switch to direct encounters only when a crisis or emergency occurs. Milgram (1971: 74) is very much a man of his time in posing the question: ‘Is there any way to promote solidarity without having to rely on emergencies and crises?’ However, this over-dramatizes the occasions in which familiar strangers become ‘real people’ for us. For example, should you bump into the man who has sold your bottle of mineral water to you for years, some form of greeting, more elaborate than a nod, is highly likely. The decisive factor in unfreezing the relationship is not the presence of an emergency or crisis, but a de-routinized encounter. Yet in our day the question of using this as a basis for constructing solidarity seldom arises. Routine and semi-detachment are ascendant. When they do break down can we really be certain that it leads to emotionally satisfying, durable relationships? As we shall see in the last chapter of the book, the de-routinization that accompanied the Occupy demonstrations in the autumn and winter of 2011 to 2012 established the broad notions of the 99 per cent and the one per cent. But at the society-wide l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Epigraph
• Title page
• Copyright Page
• 1: Living with Statistical Men and Women
• 2: Chimerical Risk Management
• 3: The Shockwaves of Trauma
• 4: The Lost Neighbour Proposition and the Collateral Damage Problem
• 5: Horizontal Frontierism: The Juggernaut of Character
• 6: The Accentuation of Personality
• 7: Vertical Frontierism: Four Case Studies
• 8: Cracks in the Mirror
• 9: The Gestural Economy
• 10: Institutional and Counter-Institutional Gestural Economies
• 11: Nuda Veritas
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• End User License Agreement