This may seem an odd or marginal topic for a post, given that I have only seen two different examples of the practice, but I think it's worth thinking about what those two instances imply. I am talking about efforts to hypothesize and simulate the nature of prison life for famous celebrities undergoing trials, most notably celebrities like Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson.
You remember the jokes tossed about as cameras surveyed Martha's likely new "home decor," as the paucity of craft opportunities and lack of high-class status symbols were pointed to as evidence of the true torment imprisonment held in store for her. Cameras scanned the likely cell from left to right, slowly drinking in its small size, as voice-overs spoke of the trial proceedings and image montages showed Martha in various stages of composure, with looks ranging from classic Martha pristine to something more like disheveled criminality. More recently, MSNBC's Abrams did a special on Michael Jackson's potential future quarters, and the special looked as if it had been scripted by the same production crews responsible for the earlier Martha stories. They joked of the lack of decorative armbands on the prison uniform, about how no sheriff deputy would hold umbrellas for Michael Jackson, and about how cramped the gloved one's quarters would be, a far cry from the sprawling demesnes of Neverland.
So here's my question: why this obsession with simulating the prison life of these sorts of famous celebrities? Why this production of what might be called a "simulacron P?"
I suppose the obvious explanation works best, that a culture that fetishizes celebrities for their fame and their high-end lifestyle loves to imagine that their lifestyle could come crashing down, and that these stories serve to turn that fetishized celebrity status against the subjects who possess it.
But it seems like there must be something more going on, because there's something distinctive about the visual simulation of what prison life will be like for these celebrity figures. For example, the prisons are never shown populated, and one of the biggest changes for these celebrities will be their inability to cultivate that sense of isolation that is so important for particularly famous people. In addition, why emphasize so much about the visuals of the prison, while stressing so little of the context of criminality, or the principles of incarceration? To a certain extent, whatever the fetish-envy dynamic may provide as a motivation for people interested in the "fall of the celebrity" narrative, I think these stories also show how impoverished is the belief in the correctional potential of the prison system.
These cases - Martha and Michael - are extremes, no doubt, and lie at the limit condition for any analysis of attitudes towards prison. But it's because of their extreme status that they might prove insightful, precisely because unlike the forgotten humdrum of the everyday incarceration, these extreme cases present an amazing and extremely infrequent opportunity to discuss, and visually disclose, life in prison. That none of this is happening shows both how powerful is the televisual interest in the individual, but also how little belief there is that prison provides anything besides an alternate set of scenes and props, that it is no longer a correctional institution but just a debased set of living conditions, which seem particularly awkward and debased contrasted to the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Comments (2)
To sound (gasp) ever-so-briefly like Zizek: The exception proves the rule!
I think you've really hit on something unmistakable but seldom talked about, here.
Posted by Matt | June 10, 2005 10:14 PM
Posted on June 10, 2005 22:14
Thanks. I suppose it's part of the larger interest in security rather than reform or rehabilitation, but I haven't thought about it enough to really figure it out. If you get any ideas as to how we got here, feel free to let me know.
One jovial aside: to really sound like Zizek, you'd have to ask a somewhat awkward rhetorical question and then act as if that question leaves no doubts about the rightness of your position, kind of like: "Isn't this the identical structure by which the failure of the symbolic in fact proves the symbolic relationship to the real? Following Lacan, one can thus understand the truism at the center of ideology: that the exception proves the rule!"
Posted by Kenneth Rufo | June 11, 2005 9:32 AM
Posted on June 11, 2005 09:32