Selfies

Katrin Tiidenberg

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787543591
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book brings a rich and nuanced analysis of selfie culture. It shows how selfies gain their meanings, illustrates different selfie practices, explores how selfies make us feel and why they have the power to make us feel anything, and unpacks how selfie practices and selfie related norms have changed or might change in the future.
As humans, we have a long history of being drawn to images, of communicating visually, and being enchanted with (our own) faces. Every day we share hundreds of millions of photos on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Selfies are continually and passionately talked about. People take vast amounts of selfies, and generate more attention than most other social media content. But selfies are persistently attacked as being unworthy of all of this attention: they lack artistic merit; indicate a pathological fascination with one's self; or attribute to dangerously stupid behaviour.
This book explores the social, cultural and technological context surrounding selfies and their subsequent meaning.

1

WHAT ARE SELFIES?

When we talk about selfies, we mostly talk about selfies as objects. Popular writing and everyday conversations refer to ‘creepy selfies’, ‘beautiful selfies’ or ‘dangerous selfies’, indicating that they are things that have certain traits and carry certain values. Most headlines about selfies carry strong opinions. One recently insisted that celebrities ‘absolutely hate selfies’, which seems a tad melodramatic, if you ask me. Like, do they hate all selfies? Even the really cute one with my kid on his first day of school? Why? Selfies are even framed as a medical object that can identify physical indicators of health or diagnose mental illness. There is now an app that promises to measure your bilirubin levels based on the colour of the whites of your eyes, which should enable it to comment on the state of your liver. Also you’ve probably all come across a piece of news that claims that selfies are indicative of psychopathology (more on this in Chapter 3).

When objectified like this, the selfie becomes a carrier of multiple meanings, all collapsed into one entity, and while we might think we all mean the same thing, when we say ‘selfies are’ or ‘selfie culture’ or ‘selfie craze’, we probably do not. I’m not saying that objects are irrelevant or that we should not contemplate selfies as things, but the meanings people attribute to selfies stem from what people do with selfies, not what selfies are in themselves (discussed in Chapter 2).

Lucy Suchman (2012) uses the term ‘configuration’ to study how objects and cultural interpretations converge. The point is that separate material, technological and discursive elements in culture constantly combine in different ways, creating momentary and transient configurations of meaning. Configuration gives us an alternative term to thinking about trends or shifts in society. There are limitations to thinking in terms of epochs or phases, both of which indicate a sharp end of one thing and the beginning of something new. Configuration also helps us see that there are separate figures that combine (configure). This emphasizes both the separate existence of the elements and the assemblage they gel into. A configurational approach looks at the changes in the world by focussing on constant shifting. In this light, selfies are a new configuration, a moment of coming together, within a process of ongoing technological and cultural shifts in networked, photographic self-representation. Selfies are new, but not completely – a shift, but not a break in the historical process.

Overall this book emphasizes what we do with selfies, and how we do it, with occasional attempts to get at the why. In this chapter, we’ll start with thinking through the previous configurations importantly like selfies. If we understand those, we’ve taken a big step towards making sense of selfies themselves.

I turn to a brief selection of historical moments in terms of visual self-representation, photographic self-representation and networked self-representation so that we can reach a solid, grounded understanding of what selfies actually are.

To start, we first need to decide on the important features of selfies. Probably the most cited definition of a selfie, both in everyday and scholarly contexts, is the one by the Oxford English Dictionary, proposed in 2013, when they named ‘selfie’ their word of the year. According to this definition a selfie is ‘a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website’ (OED, 2013). Three properties emerge from this definition; selfies are:

• a photographic object (‘a photograph’);
• a self-representational object (‘taken of oneself’); and
• a digital networked object (‘taken with a smartphone and uploaded to social media’).

Long histories and traditions of visual self-representation, photography and networked self-representation give the selfie its bones and its baggage. These dense and tense histories feed into why we love and hate selfies, why we attribute particular meanings to them, and why they are so inescapably popular, even as they are so insistently shamed. What complicates matters further is that these three features – photographic, self-representative and networked – do not simply exist side by side in a selfie, they merge into something new.

There are many people who would argue that selfies are nothing more than the next iteration in photographic self-portraiture. This approach emphasizes the self-representational and photographic qualities of the selfie object and focuses less on the networked aspects. Proponents of this interpretation would argue that the photograph Robert Cornelius took of himself behind his family’s chandelier store in Philadelphia in 1839 is the first ever selfie. Buzz Aldrin seems to lean towards this interpretation, as he frames a photo he took of himself during a 1966 spacewalk as the ‘first space selfie’. Others go further, de-emphasizing the photographic aspects as well and viewing selfies as a progeny of all visual self-representation. This makes it possible to claim that the Mona Lisa is a selfie. Apparently there is speculation in the art history world that Mona Lisa may have been a hidden self-portrait of Leonardo DaVinci himself. These explanations unlink the meaning of selfies from networked communication technology, claiming that self-portraiture has always used technology and that previously this technology was brushes and mirrors.

Alternatively, the networked aspects of selfies are elevated as their qualifying feature. In this case, the focus is on the computational, shared and shareable aspects of selfies, and the smartphone with the front-facing camera is the leading ‘cause’ of the phenomenon. This interpretation conjures selfies as ‘yet another internet thing’, a realm that is spectacularly overburdened with high hopes and even higher anxieties. Those hopes and anxieties stem from what can broadly be called a technologically determinist understanding of the impact of technologies on the human world. Technological determinism is one of the big theories explaining the relationship between social change and technological change,³ positing the first as the result of the second. Those leaning towards defining selfies through their technological features will more readily place them in the long line of technologies that are said to influence people’s identity, relationships and social life – the effects of which have been interrogated since the invention of the alphabet. It was already in Plato’s Phaedrus, presumably composed around 370 BC, where the Egyptian God Thot, who invented the alphabet, has a conversation with a king of Egypt. In their fictional conversation, the alphabet and the techne, or technology of writing is accused of eroding memory and true wisdom because it gives people something to rely on instead of exercising their own minds. The logic is very similar to that of conversations we’ve had around the pocket calculator, the personal computer, the internet, various search engines, Facebook’s birthday reminding algorithm, and now, the selfie. Are they replacing something a human mind should be doing itself? And, if so, to what end? Technological change has always been feared and celebrated for altering the existing social order, rearranging social roles and changing how people think.

The more nuanced analyses of selfies and the selfie phenomenon emphasize that all three features (photographic, visually self-representative and networked) need to be simultaneously present for something to qualify as a selfie. This merging makes selfies unique among previous iterations of similar objects. So rather than just being a photographic object (like family photos or landscapes), a self-representative object (like autobiographical writing or a painted self-portrait) or a networked object (like a Tweet or a dating profile), a selfie is a configuration of all three and maybe more. I define selfies as self-representational, networked photographs. The order of the qualifiers in my definition is important. First and foremost, it has to be a photo, but it must also be intended and legible as a self-representation, and it has to technically afford easy sharing within communication networks. You may notice from the careful wording that I propose a selfie does not necessarily and only mean an image of your face. In one of my studies, for example, sexy selfies often omit or deliberately crop out the person’s face. It is more accurate to say that a selfie has the intent and legibility as a self-representation. A selfie could be a sandwich, even though my son dismissed this idea as soon as he said it because it seemed ridiculous. It simply needs to be self-referential.

A selfie also need not be shared to be a selfie. Many of us take selfies but choose to keep them on our phones, instead of posting or sending them. The digital format and the dominance of the internet makes it easier to share selfies and thus can be seen as an affordance. The ‘networked’ characteristic in the proposed definition thus emphasizes the possibility of sharing over the mandate that it must be shared to count as a selfie.

So in the remainder of this chapter we’ll take a quick look into histories of configurations that I think are importantly similar to the selfie. By understanding these, we can understand some of the hopes and anxieties around selfies, many of which focus on visibility, control and power hierarchies in societies (this will be addressed in more detail in Chapter 3). I will offer these historical reflections in their order of appearance, starting with visual self-representation, something people did long before the invention of photography; then I’ll look at the technological developments within photography, and finally I’ll turn to highlights from the past couple of decades of networked self-representation. This is not a full picture nor a linear history. Rather, I want to nod towards some important moments and situate selfies within those. I want to clarify some of the relevant (re)configurations of things, technologies and cultural imaginaries that have made the selfie possible.

A BRIEF EXPLANATION OF VISUAL SELF-REPRESENTATION IN ART HISTORY

What does visual self-representation mean, exactly? On the surface, it seems self-explanatory – it is whatever we do visually to represent ourselves, right? Breaking down this phrase is a useful way to find a more suitable and subtle meaning.

Stuart Hall (1997), probably one of the most cited authors in discussions of representation, defines representations as signs and symbols that ‘index, stand in for, or represent’ us to others (p. 1). A photograph of me on Wikipedia stands in for or indexes my person to others. However, representation is also the process of giving meaning to whatever it is that is depicted, in the example above, my person. It is the way we use signs to make meaning. The meanings attributed to representations are not universal and stabile, but they are always negotiated between the person using them and those interpreting them, and they always depend on the context. My ‘about to give a Ted X Talk’ self-representation in a selfie or a 17th century Dutch painter’s self-representation in a painted self-portrait with a fancy feathered beret can both be intended to index professional identity, or perhaps even, claim status. They can even be understood as such by the majority of their immediate audiences, but as different audiences, with different cultural backgrounds, gain access to them, completely different interpretations may emerge. Suddenly, the feathered beret may become a sign of vanity, or the Ted X stage a sign of pretentiousness. So representation as such is a complex process of using signs to depict something in particular ways. It is more than just some objective reflection of the self presented to others.

Okay, so that is representation. What about self-representation? In basic philosophical terms, self-representation is how we use signs to attribute meanings to ourselves via whatever it is we’ve chosen to stand in for us. However, it goes beyond this. Psychologists studying self-representation highlight identification as a key element of self-representation in the sense that your identity is the collection of things, people, practices, norms and conventions you identify with. Whatever it is we choose to stand in for us is important here. Whether visual or verbal, it has to be something we identify with, as it becomes something we are identified by. Self-representations then are deeply personal but culturally informed processes of using signs to express ourselves, and in terms of the discussion at hand, we’re interested in visual self-representation.

Often, when we discuss visual self-representation, we’re thinking art. This has the benefit of invoking the very useful concept of genre. A genre is defined as a set of shared conventions that guide the production and interpretation of content. So a genre means a set of features that make us recognize something as belonging to a somewhat bounded category. Visual genres like portrait, still life or landscape are recognized as such based on their tropes and their formal and structural logic. The painted portrait is usually considered to be a separate genre from the painted self-portrait. Some art scholars have argued that in self-portrait facial expressions and bodily poses are more intense, varied and revealing than in portraits. Art history professor Celeste Brusati (1990/1991) defines self-portraiture as self-imagery that focuses on the representation of the depicted person’s face and body, and where the clothes, facial expressions, gestures and demeanor indicate their social identity.

What does this mean? Social identity refers to our identifications across group memberships. Some of my social identities are that I am a mother, an internet researcher, a university professor, a fan-fiction enthusiast or an Estonian. In comparison, personal identity refers to those aspects of our self-perceptions, identifications and self-categorizations that position us as unique. So when I think of and define myself as ‘I’ or ‘me’, as opposed to ‘us’ and ‘them’, I am enacting a personal, rather than a social identity. The two are obviously overlapping, but for the discussion at hand, it is important to notice that in defining painted self-portraits, the emphasis is on the person’s self-perception and self-expression through their group membership. Painters painted themselves as painters, artists, masters, intellectuals or members of high class.

We know from archeological digs and the work of art historians that people have a very long history of creating objects that visually represent their own likeness. We have always been enchanted with ourselves. The 39,000 year-old stenciled outlines of human hands found in the limestone caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are currently considered the oldest remaining examples of self-representational art. However, the most well-known, and argued over, are perhaps the figurines of women, often referred to as the Venus figurines (i.e., Venus of Willendorf, Venus of Hohlefels and Venus of Dolni Vêstonice). Dating back as much as 35,000 years, but mostly about 25,000 years, into what the archeologists call the Gravettian period, these clay, ivory and stone figurines of women have been given many different meanings and functions. It has been suggested that they were made by men who used them as porn or that they were goddess icons, fertility charms or, most relevantly for the discussion at hand, that they were created by women themselves as self-portraits intended to help manage and understand their own reproductive cycle.

The archeological discussion around the meanings and functions of the Venus figurines is fascinating to read with selfies in mind. What would future archeologists say about selfies? Can you imagine – presuming humanity and the planet even lasts that long – a scholar extracting fragments of selfies from miraculously preserved memory cards 20,000 years from now? What would they say these might have been for? Would they say these are images taken by men to use as masturbation aids? Would they say the ‘duckface’ is a sign of bad taste, low class and questionable morals, like many cultural critics today say? Or would they make up an elaborate explanation involving religion, reproduction, labour and status? Would the pouty lip become a ritualistic symbol, indexical of some fantastical belief about the universe they consider normal at that time? Clearly this depends on what the power structures, worries and tensions of their own time are.

In recent decades, archeologists have moved away from trying to find a single, universal interpretation for why the Venus figurines were created...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: What’s The Big Deal, It’s Just Selfies?
• 1 What Are Selfies?
• 2 How Do We Selfie?
• 3 (Why) Do Selfies Matter?
• 4 Post Selfie?
• Conclusion
• References
• Index