Selfies are made to appear casual, vernacular even, but they are far from. More often manufactured states of morose facial undress, the selfie is a casual snap of a serious endeavour in self-representation. Right now is the time of death chic, a death stare turned corpse bride, the new phenomenon in selfie taking is mimicking our best death bed look. Of course there are the smiling faces of some next to a jar of sourdough starter, a smile too thick and performed it makes you wonder how dead they are inside. I suppose there is more left to the imagination with the latter. Who isn’t rotten and dying inside, let it all burst forth on screen, however perfectly contained via post. While not strictly gleaning waif-like and emaciated bodies, but still fashioned with the calculated positioning of the chin, the cold stare, the vacant disposition so vying for depth it comes up shallow, this selfie phenomenon points towards a collective form of self-representation reminiscent of how the 90s heroin chic look reacted to the 80s health craze. Drowning doesn’t just happen. Is our new death gaze one that’s a reaction to the recent inundation of self-care rhetoric, that brand of wellness culture that instructs you to go back to work after you get your nails did for your funeral? What does it mean to pose an ideal self that looks closer to death than alive while also nagging for and craving not merely admiration but confirmation of one’s existence?
Selfie culture is self numbing. I am annoyed by my own participation and delete my image or have concocted a way (#educatingmarie) to still play but differently by snapping pics off the hip with the best possible view of my nasal cavity. Anything but a top right angle. A dopamine rush exists regardless. The unattractive angle is still perfect with its faults. I’m reminded by a follower: “you are a significant goddess and you pull off this angle better than anyone I know.” The experiment failed with that aggrandising comment when the intention was debasement. Thumb my self turned object with all those precious wee hearts.
A number of thinkers and writers have aligned the selfie with Lacan’s mirror stage. How could they not? The mirror stage is that moment of separation from the caretaker in conjunction with that moment our self becomes unified, becomes seemingly whole, to us, rather than perceived as parts interacting with parts. Now this mouth belongs to this body and that breast belongs to that mother. Furkan Sorkaç notes, “The selfie, if I may call it so, is the second stage within the mirror stage, a toy for the eternal infant by which he will continue the struggle of building a self-image and overcome the misrecognition he realizes unconsciously.” Yes, we are eternal infants, we are baby, compulsively identifying ourselves in a sea of others compulsively identifying themselves, both gestalt and ungestalt configurations towards actualizing the self by way of recognition by others. This part, this post, is how different from than that part, that post? We are eternal babies, because we are eternally addicted to the promise of self-realization that is perfectly espoused by the mechanics of the selfie. It is hard to stop looking at others and our constructed selves. It’s all make-believe until you clock how much time you might be spending swiping. That’s life not spent but spent.
Visualisation is a powerful tool that can fix ourselves to time and space. With one click you have become object, with one post you have sacrificed your self, you as subject, for the momentary bliss of being seen by friends and strangers, followers. A mirror replaced by multiple layers of glass and plastic, made highly conductive by other’s finger tips. The heat transmitted is mightier than any representation of a wee heart. The paradox is found in the confluence of contradictions that lend to the compulsive act to post a dead look: it’s a serious look that barely hints a smile, it’s a mug shot devoid of character but brimming with intensity, it’s tamed and regulated hysteria, it’s vacant, it’s nothing, it’s step-on-me-come-hither, it has to be seen in order to exist. It is dying to exist even under the absurdity of late capitalism. Nevertheless, the selfie has altered our relations to others and ourselves, this is also how we have adapted to late capitalism’s absurd logic. I think all of the dead eyes out there are haunted by this.