[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
generated, within what Bourdieu might call the media or journalistic field
and refracted through the youthful female body. This is a relatively recent
phenomenon. Denigratory speech unashamedly, indeed spitefully, directed
towards girls by other girls is associated with pre-feminist old-fashioned
bitchiness , that is, it belongs to a time when girls were encouraged to see
each other as enemies in the competition for men. Hurtful comments about
body image, shape, style or poor taste would be considered as belonging to
the school playground, and vociferously condemned by liberal-minded
adults and teachers as a form of bullying. Likewise sniggers about living in
a council estate or having a mother who does not look well off, might be
expected to be met with a sharp reprimand.
Bourdieu s writing allows us to re-examine symbolic violence as a vehi-
cle for social reproduction, this time through a particular (post-feminist)
temporal nexus of female individualisation, the body and the world of cul-
tural objects. The victim of the make-over television programme presents
his or her class habitus for analysis and critique by the experts. The pro-
grammes comprise a series of encounters where cultural intermediaries
impart guidance and advice to individuals ostensibly as a means of self-
improvement. The experts guide the victims through a series of activities,
from shopping, cooking and interacting with people, to flirting and going on
dates. A key (entertainment) feature of the programmes (and one which
most invites a Foucauldian analysis) involves spying on the victims by
means of hidden video cameras, as a way of seeing them ethnographically
(that is, au naturel); the victims also have a chance to report back on their
progress with video diaries. Bourdieu is so useful here because he theorises
taste, while also understanding the body to be at the centre of what McNay
Uses Cultural Studies 10/3/05 11:52 am Page 148
148 The Uses of Cultural Studies
calls modern strategies of social control (McNay, 1999b). McNay also
reminds us that Bourdieu considers how social inequalities are perpetuated
as power relations directed towards bodies and the dispositions of indi-
viduals . Bourdieu focuses on constraint and injury, on practices of
symbolic violence and their effectivity. The corporeal inculcation of sym-
bolic violence is, McNay argues, exercised with the complicity of the
individual. These programmes would not work if the victim did not come
forward and offer herself as someone in need of expert help. On the basis of
her own subordinate class habitus, the individual will have a feel for the
game , a practical sense for social reality which means that in the context
of the programmes, she will instinctively, and unconsciously, know her
place in regard to the experts, hence the tears, the gratitude and the defer-
ence to those who know so much better than she does, and who are willing
to share in this knowledge and expertise. In the two programmes WNTW
and WLTM the habitual knowingness of the body is confronted with the
demand of the dominant field that the victim/participant copies or partake
in a kind of mimesis, so that the habitus might be modified to conform with
the requirement of good taste. If, as Butler suggests, the habitus is the space
for the generation of social belief in the obviousness of dominant social real-
ity, then the cajoling, reprimanding and encouragement of the presenters
and make-over experts provides clear insight into the operations of the
field as it attempts to alter the habitus, while also inculcating the realism of
the unachievable. As Butler again suggests, the habitus and the field move
towards congruence with each other through processes of practical mime-
sis (Butler, 1999b). But in these programmes the class field and habitus of
the cultural intermediaries must also remain separate (hence unachievable)
from that of the victims. There is no suggestion that the victims will ever
truly belong to the same social group as their improvers. This is made clear
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]