Cyborg-Femme

Copyright 1999 Björk Overseas Limited / One Little Indian / Elektra Entertainment / Warner Music 

Advertising a Post-Human Ideology: The Media and Cyborgological Evolution

Richard Birch
December 01 2004
SOCI 3076 Media and Culture 1
This work Copyright (c) 2004 Richard Birch

Selective breeding enables us to take pace on nature’s somewhat sluggish progression and procession of evolution as far as animals are concerned. Whether the positive selection of genetic characteristics, or "good" qualities, or the eradication of negative, or "bad" qualities can be argued to be intrinsically reasonable or morally repugnant as it has been since the mid-twentieth century, it cannot be ignored that innovative and recent scientific advances of many areas of study will make the alteration of humans through chemical, electronic and mechanical methods achievable (O’Mahony, 2002). Instantaneously, social and ethical questions about the regulation and use of such technologies come to mind. For example, how can such a culturally significant ideal such as mechanized body modification affect the prejudices that already divide, destroy and define nations and societies? Or, as more relative to this specific study, what social institutions are at play in the creation of a mechanized human-form ideology that has created a culture that now demands such a paradigm? The notion that we are free to live in an egalitarian state, that a realm of social choice and social hegemony can easily be questioned when examining the immergence of post-human cyborgology in Western culture media and the use of advertising. In a production based state-capitalist society, there is very little field of existence that is free from corporate authority by way of media intervention. Our very values, belief structures, social norms are in a constant systematic mode of evolution. No area of study can show this more than the area of human body imagery and post humanization. It is not an original concept that advertising and the media in a consumerist society are tied intimately to the social problem of body image and modification. Here I wish to take this study to another stage. I argue that mass mediated advertising in a production based consumerist society is now initiating the next posthuman stage of human evolution.

Cyborgology and Body Perfection
As Marie O’Mahony writes in her 2002 study of the enculturation of post-human cyborg technology, "The cyborg’s abilities extend beyond human limitations by mechanical, electronic or chemical means incorporated within the body. Like evolution, Cyborg technology provides the elements necessary for genetic isolation and speciation" (O’Mahony, 2002). The essential component of the use of cyborgology in post-human society is the ability to be able to change any aspect of our physical selves in any fashion and at any time we choose. But choice as an open element of our lives is questionable. At any moment in our post-modern lives our very identities are socially constructed through the homogenization of mass mediated messages and images of what it is to be a person. As production-based capitalist principles continue to maintain influence in how the ideal body is to be portrayed in advertising, how soon would it be before current socionormative aspects of the physical human becomes outclassed?

Cyborg technologies in production and under development have the potential to carry innumerable benefits to humankind. Medical advances being researched in this area are immeasurable in current standards. However, as mass media becomes increasingly sophisticated in it’s ability to reach any specific demographic representation of society as one could choose, there is no valid reason to disbelieve that advertising and consumerism, the fundamental principle of media and culture in post-modernism would become tied to cyborgological thinking. Cyborgological consumerism is a logical next-stage in the globalization of body image industries.

As written by Stanislaw Lem in his vision of modern society in 2039: "If prostheticism is voted in…in a couple of years everyone will consider the possession of a soft, hairy, sweating body to be shameful and indecent. …In a prostheticized society you can snap on the loveliest creations of modern engineering. What woman doesn’t want to have silver iodide instead of eyes, telescopic breasts, angel’s wings, iridescent legs, and feet that swing with every step?" (Lem, 1974) (See Appendix 5). From this fictional account the message is based in ideology derived from systems of oppression. It is arguable that this passage was more prophecy than narrative. Are we not already in an age where a prostheticized existence in a consumerist culture is clearly promoted and viable? Aspects of ourselves can be augmented or improved to extend our ordinary human capabilities (O’Mahony, 2002). That is the basis for post-humanism: to augment human life. However creating a necessity for this augmentation must fall upon criteria, and where one can measure criteria one can implicate purpose. Purpose as derived, written, transmitted, monitored and homogenized by the social monocultural institutions in place who require this purpose to be animated in post-humanism.

Cyborgs were a dream long before there were even machines. It is conceivable that some of the stories we have in mass mediated pop culture, such as in films like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and Steven Spielberg’s A. I. Artificial Intelligence (DreamWorks, 2002), and in music videos such as Björk’s All Is Full of Love (One Little Indian, 1999) could actually become reality, just as "old stories of seamless artificial limbs or creating talking machines have now been instantiated in flesh and metal" (Gray, 2001).

Prostheticism & Rationale
The notion that artificial enhancement is a relatively fresh concept indigenous to Western culture is quite false. It has been prolifically represented in other civilizations. For example by the Ibibio tribal culture of Nigeria whose mythology includes the belief that the human form in its natural condition is an incomplete design. Artificial modification was not only fashionably accepted but also considered socially necessary to achieve perfection and status. Consequently ritualistic scarification was developed (O’Mahony, 2002). This differs modestly from modern cosmetic surgery enhancements that now permit an individual of any gender or age to acquire a tiny waist, slim midsection, or a defined musculature. Yet this is not without cost as depicted by the "no pain, no gain" mantra of the fitness industry.

The loss of a limb is costly as well, potentially costly to one’s psychological health as a result of trauma. However in sociological terms – it is also costly to society. The amputee not only suffers the loss of part of his or her human physicality and existence, but also in their place in the productive order of Western culture. Much like the aged eventually must compete with the young for resources for employment and status, the amputee or disabled who in essence is treated as the "aged–in-masquerade" must also compete for resources of social status and mere recognition (See Appendix 1). This is illustrated in society by the only recent attention paid to incorporating architectural compatibility for those with disabilities. The connection between the prosthetic and able-embodiment was naturally inevitable.

Evolutionary patterns are of manifold embodiments. As society has advanced into post-modernism so has an ideology of the purpose of the human form, a purpose based on a progression of deliberation that connects consumerism and technology. To be disabled is no longer merely associated with this message of functionality, that the body is thus machine in production. The body is now the message. The message that is mediated from the source of social definition and production-based capitalism will ultimately be the message of perceived truth and social foundation.

Dystopian Metamorphosis and the Drive to the Mall
As technology grows in its abundance so does the consumer’s demand for "human-centred machines that enable and encourage interaction" (O’Mahony, 2002). However what drives demand? Scarcity is instrumental in answering this question. Consumer goods are continuously replaced. Electronic products seemingly are coupled with the concept of designed obsolescence. Think about the parallels that can be made to machines and the human form in this regard. The human body inevitably becomes obsolete during one’s life. There is no stopping the occurrence of physical degeneration and the breakdown of biological synergy as predicted by our genetics. But there is a strong sociological element to this. The obsolete or devalued human image. Our very physical forms are under constant evaluation in society. What typically is valued to be usable, correct, fashionable, and worthy in the physical form is that globalized human form that enables production – the essence of perfection in the human body. The physical archetype of strength and beauty is equivalent in the machine-world to the variables of productivity and efficiency. Where there is perfect form and physique, there is efficient production of the consumer.

The body is the message. The message is perfection. Create the perfect human form – you create the perfect commodity. More importantly, if you create the perfect endeavour for perfection – you create the perfect consumer. Make this endeavour accessible by providing the public the ability to choose from a limited selection of designer mechanized forms with artificially enhanced physicality as depicted in mass media advertising, then you have the perfect state-capitalist society. The Venusian and Adonisian models of the desired target market as products of culture described to us by advertised messages from the corporate producers of a "cool universe of digitality…The principle of simulation wins out over the reality just as over the principle of pleasure" (Gray, 2001).

Posthuman Subjectivity
At the centre of this study of cyborgology as a vehicle for post-modern consumerism and advertising is the notion that the human body and people in general are things that can be made (Gray, 2002). We now fashion physical aspects of ourselves in methods that could be compared to industrial modes of production. The obese and aesthetically disenfranchised can now employ a surgeon to complete an overhaul of their physical appearance as if they were sending their automobile to the garage for service. Bodybuilders directly insert themselves into a series of machines designed to manufacture and mechanize new muscle tissue as if were a factory’s production line set up to build the automobile. Technopunks pierce their own bodies for sexual display and pleasure as if they were automobiles being fitted for a boat harness (Gray, 2002). However technology is efficiently harnessed by conglomeration as such also controls it.

Cybernetics has progressed beyond such crude interventions. Bodies can now be made technologically to serve those who seek experiential physical and emotional gratification. For these individuals it is an experiential foreplay to consumerism and advertising in a market-based culture, as well as to serve those who seek to profit from such gratifications. Is it a symbiotic relationship? Unlikely. For symbiosis to exist there must be an equal balance of give and take. Human technological aesthetic reconstruction will serve those who dominate pyramidal models of oppression in a state-capitalist society and those who maintain control over the posthuman cyborgological industries.

Technos of Posthuman Cyborgology
Body modification though being increasingly used by males and young adults in modern society has conventionally been an area of study associated with women. The modern concept of the perfect consumer has typically been that same model and component of society since the dawn of the industrial era – the postmodern woman. Corporations became enlightened to the fact that if they wish to infiltrate the mindset of the Western household and dominate the purchasing choices and politics of the consuming family, they must penetrate ideologies that dictate what the women of a household will choose to purchase for the home through the manipulation of advertised mediated iconography. Cyborgological consumption has it’s roots in the twentieth century when women we beginning to be recognized as the primary users of everyday technologies (Weber, 2004). Household technology and the icon of the happy house maker became synonymous with the domestic sphere as developed in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The gradual integration of electric household commodities in this period became an empowering phenomenon. The sexless, efficient woman (by virtue of modern patriarchy), who was not really seen in early advertisements as having physical contact with these new components of modern everyday life, could be marketed in a way where the pure stereotype of the house maker and the role of domestic women could be connected. Most ads did not show her using the clothes washer or the new dishwasher, but rather her fulfillment of her domestic place in the productive order through her mere associated ownership of such products. This systematic synergy of associated imagery and commodity cleared the way for current methods of product association. It was during this time advertisers could create a shift in focus and momentum from the household archetype of femininity, to the sexual imagery of the postmodern embodiment of consumerism.

The introduction of the sexualized feminine archetype in fashion advertising of the 1960’s and 1970’s created a paradigm shift in modern media usage where ideals of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality blurred. Sexualized femininity in advertising, which originates primarily from the patriarchal order of the advertising industry in the Western commercial sphere set the precedence for using the body to sell technological commodities. Today some of the latest ads for digital cameras and computers represent postmodern female identities assimilating the technology shown in the context of the ad. In a recent Sanyo magazine ad promoting it’s Xacti camera we see a motionless young women. Her human form is hardly represented by the dark clothing that fades into the background of the shot. Her black austere hair seems almost to be carved onto her scalp and is shaped perfectly in view but away from the digital camera which has been affixed to her left eye. Her skin tone is equivalent to the silver and grey tones of the camera. The camera’s aperture is removed and instead we see her left eyelid exposed through the device ready to snap the reader’s photo. In this ad we see the message very clearly that the cyborgologically-enhanced body is the message of perfection. Incorporate the attractive elements of the commodity and you will capture the very essence of the perfect productive order within your appearance. Through flesh-techno synergy the ideal consumer is symbolically achieved in such advertising. The sociological aspect of this advertisement relates to the use of equal skin tone. The skin acts as the boundary between the flesh and the environment. In promoting the Xacti camera, Sanyo made this border ambiguous and the flesh no longer separate from technological enhancement and connectivity (Weber, 2004). The wearing of technology as by definition is that of the modern cyborg. The sexualization of female iconography is the vehicle of which the technos of the ad is crafted into mainstream advertising media, which then in a productive order is authenticated and legitimized.
Another example of this is the 1999 music video All Is Full Of Love by Björk (See Appendices 2-4). The video which acted primarily as an advertisement for her 1997 Elektra/Warner release Homogenic and her subsequent Europa world tour helped push the concept of the cyborg to a new frontier by encapsulating not only postmodern technological connectivity but pansexual ideology into the video’s cyborg narrative. The video directed by filmmaker Chris Cunningham opens with a complex shot of a female robot being crafted by other generic and slightly cruder robots, which are more reminiscent of those of an automobile manufacturing facility. However, the video’s mise-en-scène represents this productive environment to be extremely sterile yet somewhat organic. The visual use of flowing water and iridescent lighting circulating around the electronic components snapping into one another provides an organic montage of assembly, efficiency, and organic sexuality. While this assembly takes place the camera shows us several angles of Björk’s face who’s skin tone matches the iridescent contours of the plastic, metal, and glass body which is being fashioned around it. We are not given the impression that her face which is becoming attached to the machine body is also machine, but almost a surgically connected component of her sexuality from her own organic self. Halfway through the video, the cyborg now complete in its assembly and assimilation to the singer’s identity, a sterile and hypersexualized robot image appears. The cyborg while singing the song’s lyrical climax looks up to see another female Björk robot of the same design singing back with hands outstretched towards her. The two female cyborgs proceed to embrace and then engage in cybernetic lesbian sexual interaction while the assembly equipment continues it’s symbolic technos to craft additional female cyborgs. The promotional video ends with the two cyborgs engaged in cyborgological reproductive activity, symbolizing cultural productive order in its new posthuman form. The body is the message and the message is of ideal perfection. Through the symbiosis of technology and organica, the message can be attained through the acceptance of the productive order of society with all of its freedom from sexual oppression and patriarchal sexual regulation. The cyborg in this promotional video is the ultimate prosthesis for sexual freedom and consumer behaviour. The cyborgological referencing utilized in this promotional video helped shape a critically acclaimed body of artifice that transcended into a myriad of cross-promotional opportunities for Warner Music. The video and song went onto become a highly successful publishing asset that generated additional licensing revenue from the use of the song and the video for other forms of advertising and film synchronization.

Female iconography is not alone in this regard as male archetypical cyborgological references do exist in advertising. The male physical archetype has its roots in classical origins. Advertisers to align themselves with the posthuman male have utilized the union of masculinity and muscularity extensively. This impact of this can be measured by looking at what is called the Adonis Complex, the male equivalent to female body crisis. A study conducted by Dr. Louise Payne of St. Mary’s Hospital in London, England of adolescent boys aged 11-16 found British teenage boys are infatuated with their appearance. "A third of those surveyed wanted to lose weight and more than half said they would prefer to be better looking than play better football. Nearly a quarter would prefer to be handsome rather than wealthy and one in eight would consider plastic surgery to improve their looks…Our society is saturated with images of the people we ought to find attractive, and there is considerable pressure on adolescent boys to conform to these ideals." (NetDoctor.co.uk, 2004).

Many of the most influential cyborg references in popular culture appear as hypermasculine killing machines, which are more akin to Marvel Comic male archetypical iconography than of humanity (Graham, 2002). Their appearances as "armoured prostheses, with physical and mental powers exponentially enhanced by various technologies…a transhumanist craving towards invincible, omnipotent post/humanity" (Graham, 2002) supplies the observer with the ideal image of the artificially enhanced male form, enhanced which places the characterization on a different plane than organic humanity. The social building of the male human physique can be characterized by the increasing muscularity of action figures sold as toys to young boys over the last 25 years. The Kenner Toy Company at the time of the original Star Wars film (1977) marketed action figures of the characters Hans Solo and Luke Skywalker as almost proportionally accurate to the actors who played them. By the mid 1990’s when the film was re-released in an enhanced format, so were the action figures. They now have acquired the physiques of body-builders with exaggerated pectoral and deltoid muscles.

Trends such as this have been argued to help develop the male body crisis equivalent known as the Adonis Complex (Pope, Phillips & Olivardia, 2000). The role of the male physique in capitalist production has grown more important especially in the men’s’ health magazine advertising industry, the keystone for male body perfection and iconographic portrayal. Muscularity as described in the theory of the Adonis Complex has become increasingly important because it has always symbolized masculinity. Socially constructed definitions of male masculinity are based on the premise that the male sex role be powerful, strong, and efficacious. Views of masculinity of both men and boys that have been researched show that well-proportioned muscularity is considered to be the iconographic definition of masculinity (Pope, Phillips & Olivardia, 2000). Advertisers who wish to embark on infiltrating the new generations of male target markets know that portraying this limiting idea of male body image to mass populations can win the attention of those who endeavour to encapsulate the perfect physical self – thus becoming the perfect posthuman consumer.

I argue that mass mediated advertising in a production based consumerist society is now initiating the next posthuman stage of human evolution. Advertising has become the cornerstone of mass media where ideas and concepts can be created, developed and transmitted to the masses that await the next ideal of physical identity. Scientific and technological advances in cybernetic medicine have opened a new consumer market for the individuals who comprise the subordinate position in the production-based pyramidal oppressive order. The potential for a classification system of people based on the utilization of cyborgological body modification technologies is strongly suggestible when examining how the very notions of what our physical selves are to exist as, especially since our primary place in postmodern society is as consumers. The ideal physical self, whether female or male, adult or child, human or posthuman is subject to corporate interplay of commodity rhetoric and financial subordination. Through deconstructionist examination of examples of advertised mediated messages aimed at aligning consumer products and properties with the focus of physical human imagery, it can be easily seen where patterns of social oppression from capitalist patriarchal ideology can lead the posthuman being to. The outclassed vs. the classed – the human vs. the posthuman – the subordinate vs. the evolved. Cyborgology potentially is natural selection in its most unnatural invariant form.

References
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