On Television, Interpellation and the big Other

It is practically a given that every person living in a modern, first-world society owns a television — and not just one, but many. There are exceptions, of course, but I think this is a fairly uncontroversial claim. Most television is quite awful, barring, at the moment, The Daily Show & Colbert Report, Nip/Tuck and The Wire. Again, probably an uncontroversial claim. Consequently, most of what I watch is strictly limited to what I’ve illegally accrued thanks to broadband and BitTorrent. Nevertheless, even though I objectively know that what I have on my computer will provide for me more entertainment if I desired, more intellectual satisfaction in some cases, or perhaps more bragging rights after having seen some “classic” film, the television continues to exert a rather fascinating power. Although I know that I will be subjected to commercials, terrible writing and a complete lack of satisfaction with whatever it is that I am watching (save the aforementioned shows), I am compelled to turn it on and watch.

What is this draw, this pull, if not the Lacanian notion of the big Other; that is, the symbolic fiction which structures “reality.” What watching a film on the computer lacks is precisely the overlapping of the gaze, the positing of “Others” who are out there watching the same thing that I am, thereby depriving my circumstance of its socially isolated character. Yet, these Others are themselves entirely fictitious: although it may very well be the case that other people are out there watching the same television show as me, my satisfaction deprived from this “direct coincidence” of gazes makes it no less perverted. To make it more concrete, what a computer viewing experience (or, for that matter, watching a DVD on one’s TV) lacks is precisely gaze qua objet petit a, what is “in the gaze more than the gaze” — a surplus enjoyment derived from a purely mediated experience through the Other’s gaze (much like when we hand in a paper to a professor that we’ve proofread hundreds of times, the experience of proofreading it after having handed it in provides more satisfaction because we experience the professor’s gaze…).

The anti-social experience of watching television is then transfigured into a social one by means of this overlapping of gazes, this positing of a fictitious “big Other.” However, the television also utilizes this enjoyment to its own ends; it barrages us with questions: do you need this? are you suffering from that? These questions have the effect of producing a feeling of impotence on behalf of the fewer, of a fundamental lack attributed to ourselves. This questioning (the Marxian dimension of which shouldn’t be ignored) is a crucial aspect of ideological interpellation: while advertising isn’t directed at us as particular individuals, we can’t help but feel that it is. “Do you need this?” “Me?” This “Me?” is precisely what produces us as subjects qua homo economus: the ephemeral nature of use-value is constituted upon this lack or void, as, again, objet petit a, what is in the object more than itself. This cyclical movement can thus be read as Freudian death drive: what drives us to watch TV is a desire to fill the void of a certain lack (boredom, anti-social feelings… typically a “negative” quality), and yet, what we get in return is our own message inverted: the “big Other” asking us what else we’re missing from our life that makes it feel incomplete, without ever mentioning it. The it, of course, being the pure medium by which interpellation is disseminated.

As I’ve said above, the big Other is defined as a symbolic fiction, that is, it doesn’t really exist. Nevertheless, it is what allows society to gain some ontological consistency: without this fiction, we would lose reality itself. The decline in symbolic efficacy under late capitalism can be linked to the gradual realization on the part of society that the “big Other doesn’t exist.” I think one way that television has reacted to this is through reality television. We all already know that everything on television is staged, scripted, etc., but with reality television things at first appear to be more “real,” more intimate, so we got back some of this closeness, this “social” quality. The phenomenological superimposition of gazes thus became reified within the television qua medium. But I think this explanation is extremely naïve. I don’t think that anyone actually thinks reality TV represents “noumenal,” unmediated reality. The way it functions is precisely that everyone treats it as a joke, as ridiculous kitsch. But wherein resides the enjoyment of reality TV, if it now already contains this ironic self-distancing? It is precisely because of this distancing, this absurd boundary between form and content, that those who watch it are able to take satisfaction in their intellectual superiority of having realized the “joke” — that is, that it isn’t serious at all and is completely staged (e.g., wrestling) — in contrast to the stupid Others, the subjects supposed to believe, and how they react to the show: with a child-like innocence of pure enjoyment, incapable of comprehending the “truth” behind the mask.

What reality television does is therefore constitute a new “big Other”: that of the innocent idiot, the uneducated troglodyte whose “pure enjoyment” constitutes the form of Absolute idiocy. Yet, this person “does not exist.” All people watching reality TV defer their enjoyment to this new symbolic fiction so that they, too, can partake in new forms of social abstraction, of mediated desire, of overlapping gazes. This is what we might call the “post-modern television experience,” the big Other reconstituted through this ironic self-distancing, of “not taking it seriously.” That’s why the condemnation of reality TV as not being “true to its title” or of being “exploitative” isn’t effective. It doesn’t reveal the viewer’s obscene enjoyment, not because of anything they’re “objectively” watching on the TV, but for WHOM their enjoyment is now being deferred to and, consequently, reconstituted through.