Jon Erickson
The Ohio State University
Presented August 4, 2000 at the ATHE Conference in Washington D.C. on the panel, "Roundtable on Liveness." See the other papers.
I am in total agreement with Philip Auslander's critique of Phelan's ontological absolutism, especially as she defines performance in terms of its singularity of value in relation to "political" use (see more below). I am less convinced that his own critique - or rejection - of her ontology is entirely historicist. (There is no such thing as an entirely historicist argument, since that would mean historicizing one's point of departure in the present, which is impossible). He makes what I believe is an unnecessary argument, trying to prove that the very nature of television has the same temporal status as Phelan's live performance (scan lines, persistence of vision: true, but not in relation to the reproduced and replayable product), as well as the "micrological" (trivial in terms of general perception) idea that the degradation of videotape proves its temporal status as well. The problem: no matter the visual condition of the tape (b&w or HD even), the performance recorded on! it remains the same: the actor's words, intonations, gestures, actions. This is one of various instances where Auslander conflates form and content, although at certain crucial instances he does distinguish them (it does not appear in his legal distinction between copyrightable recording and noncopyrightable performance, of which he approves).
These are not historicist arguments against ontology, but ontological arguments about the nature of video against the ontology of live performance. That the ontology of television or video changes over time through new developments is not the issue-- it only confirms that history and ontology are not antithetical. In fact, Auslander's use of Benjamin's point about "proximity and intimacy" (bringing things closer) in mechanical reproduction seems like an ontological argument, as if the very DESIRE for proximity and intimacy were PRODUCED by media like television instead of those long-standing desires being REALIZED by it (sort of like claiming it was the invention of the airplane that produced the desire to fly). I want to advance a more-or-less argument in relation to history and ontology, rather than the either/or argument Auslander implies by his rhetorical phrase "against ontology," which seems no less absolute than Phelan's ontology. On the other hand IN PRACTICE his arguments do indeed operate along the lines of more-or-less - a better critical stance against nuances of the live/mediatized dialectic (and in this lies the enormous value of the book for future researchers). Of course, the fact that he still makes his arguments through more-or-less interdependency of live/mediatized implies that there is a minimal ontological distinction at work, however it may be used historically.
The idea that the Greeks couldn't have had live performance because they had no means to record it appears provocatively true at first glance, but upon reflection shows itself more of a semantic quibble. The use of "live" may have appeared only when recording gives it a contrastive frame of meaning, but what it represents -- physically-present bodies performing before other physically-present bodies in the same space and time -- nonetheless retains the same ontological meaning. This is not to say "live" performance has exactly the same EFFECTS once the possibility of mediatization or recording informs people's experience of the live. Auslander's historicist point, I believe, is that these effects are enough to eradicate the very possibility of speaking about the live in ontological terms (although that possibility remains in his live/mediatized distinction). Those effects seem to come into play through the historical nature of human desire (although that, I believe is never total, see above).
Auslander equates simulation with the rise of mediatization, but Plato was certainly concerned about simulation. Plato called it "acting" or painting or sophistic argument. His concern was with the manipulation of one's reality by another through dissimulation. His mistake was identifying acting (whose framework of simulation is self-evident) with sophistry or con-artistry (whose framework is invisible), which exploits and betrays our trust for purposes of power (certainly a political problem). But his connection was that of "infectious simulation," in which the simulations of art negate all necessary concern for truth (in terms of politics, justice, ethics, etc.) Jonas Barish described the history of this anxiety about simulation in "The Antitheatrical Prejudice," and it was a major theme in Shakespeare as well as the motivation for Brecht's theory in our own century. (As well as propaganda and mob psychology studies, of which Auslander's theory of televisual programming of audience response could be a part). The point of Auslander's use of Milli Vanilli fans doesn't have to do with the actual triumph of simulation over reality, but the fan's absolute INDIFFERENCE to the distinction. This indifference may not be a problem if it remains in the realm of art, or even complacent and economically- secure citizens' cynical attitude toward the political process, but it becomes a problem the moment one is arrested, "down-sized" from their job, or one's child is a victim of a high-school massacre.
Plato's anxiety about simulation is mistaken in terms of art, but remains a problem in terms of say, courts of law, where the stakes are certainly different (judgments of life and death). I would simply call Plato's idea of acting "mediation," and "mediatization," is only a further extreme of it, which in certain ways realizes the nature of his fears.
Acting indicates that something can be both "live" and "not real," or "inauthentic," in that the actor speaking is not the character and the words are fiction. And yet the expression produced can be authentic and truthful. Rock "authenticity," of which Auslander's analysis within a mediatized culture is superb, in fact conflates liveness, realness and authenticity in the person of the musician that ignores such a possible distinction between "real" and "true" which is common to the history of literature, art and theater. This is a holdover from a romantic ideology of the artist. (In fact this romantic ideology informs autobiographical performance art's animus against theater). The "remaking" of one's identity or image found in Bowie that Auslander refers to as "authentic inauthenticity" sounds very close to what we would appreciate as fine (or fun) acting (although it straddles the romantic line of self-invention). On the other hand, I could say that "nonmatrixed acting" is "authentic inauthenticity," insofar as it purports not to be (interpretive) acting (similar to Mamet's current agenda). "Nonmatrixed acting" can only correspond to an Eisenstein montagist form of editing found in sci-fi, horror and action films, but can't work in serious drama (If this were so, there would be no "Best Actor" award at the Oscars).
Auslander's "paranoid" scenario of MTV's response to Milli Vanilli with "Eric Clapton Unplugged" is fascinating, although I believe the manipulation was more fortuitous than planned. But it points to the central problem of authenticity again. Clapton's son's fatal fall from a high window was real, as I believe was Clapton's expression in his song responding to it. That MTV's simulation of the framework of authenticity through which this song was presented by Auslander as a cynical response to Milli Vanilli, to put themselves on the side of "authenticity" by hoping the authenticity of Clapton's song and his son's death would itself "authenticate" the framework is clear. But even if the framework is simulated, it doesn't mean the song isn't an authentic expression of Clapton's feelings. It almost feels as if Auslander is claiming the inauthentic nature of the production de-authenticates Clapton's song or even his son's death! Again, the idea that the authenticity of performative context must match the authenticity of performative expression ignores the history of theater, art, literature, and their truth.
When I expected Auslander to demolish the value of Phelan's either/or distinction privileging the live over the mediatized, I was surprised that he ended up affirming it within the most important socially-defining context: the law. And in two particular sites: the noncopyrightable performance within the copyrightable recording, and the evidentiary site of the trial itself. Nonetheless it sill defeats Phelan's premise that live performance is that which eludes "The Law" as opposed to being the very site in which it is enacted. One major problem here is that "the Law" is construed in a monolithically metaphysical way typical of poststructuralism, a Kafkaesque all-determining force that appears almost entirely out of our power, that is merely the oppression or "productive negation" of individual life. That is, rather than a SYSTEM of laws within a democracy determined by citizens through the mediation of politics to create the most just system possible. The former view sees the law as DEPRIVING us of freedom, the latter as that which GUARANTEES our freedom in the first place. Clearly as Auslander shows, corporations do their best to mess this up, but that is not a reason to reject our system of laws altogether.
Phelan's absolutist use of the term Law as depriving us of self-determination (something neither Lacan nor Freud believed, though her approach is psychoanalytical) and her ideas about resistance through disappearance, far from being "political," are not political at all. For politics -- in any democratic sense -- has as its GOAL the formulation or alteration of laws or the system by which the laws are enacted. A "politics" that has as its goal the complete evasion of "the Law" is not a politics at all but mere solipsism. I invite anyone who reads performance theory that uses the word "resistance," to replace that word in every instance with "evasion" to see if it makes more sense. Then compare the law-accepting and yet particular law-resisting nature of true civil disobedience. Since Kant the foremost condition for a democratic politics is PUBLICITY, not "invisibility," as well as -- as far as possible -- the transparency of the process itself. The invisibility of the process is nothing other than the force of simulation. (Regarding transparency, one assumes that all ideological critique has that as its goal as well). To identify corporate power with "the Law" itself is to give up all hope in politics, and a "politics of invisibility" is SURRENDER to that corporate power, just as an acceptance of the inevitability of simulation is.
Auslander's response to law's affirmation of Phelan's valued liveness is that it "allows" for it, as if by some magisterial act of grace, when in fact, in a democracy, law DEPENDS upon its relative spontaneity and freedom to function in the first place. If all means of argument and interpretation were controlled and determined in advance, whether by "scripts" or reproductive media, the possibility of locating truth in as transparently fair a process as possible would be foreclosed; liveness is more conducive to transparency or at least a citizenry's TRUST in an apparently transparent process, which may be just as important.
I find a unidirectional movement -- an either/or -- in Auslander's argument that "I'm not sure he's entirely behind: that the "mediated as imitation of the live" has been entirely replaced by "the live as the imitation of the mediated," with the latter simply continuing to increase in power. What appears to be the case of the live imitating the mediatized to the point where there is almost no distinction between them, is really a question of flipping back and forth, because while "liveness" depends on mediatization, mediatization depends upon a sense of liveness as well. Auslander responds to the mirrored infinite-regress argument of his colleague by saying "If the relationship between the live and the mediatized could be understood as the infinite regress this image suggests, then one would expect that after live performances had become more like mediatized ones, mediatized performances would start to resemble live performances that had internalized mediatization" (162). This gives the perpetual edge to mediatization, since presumably liveness can internalize mediatization, but mediatization cannot internalize liveness (that isn't always already mediatized). But then liveness ceases to have any quality at all and the whole productive distinction collapses. For the argument to make sense, SOME minimal qualitative ontological distinction or claim must remain. If this distinction ceases to be true in entertainment, it can never be entirely true with the news, with its scenes of human suffering and death, or our personal experience of these things, or in courts of law, where our judgments have real consequences for people's lives or deaths.
Finally, Auslander says virtually nothing about the rise of "real TV," whether on networks or even MTV. It's not really a question of whether or not media can simulate realness, since most of his argument depends upon a lack of interest in the distinction (a la Milli Vanilli), but a question about a DESIRE for the real beyond simulation, indicated in the famously lowtech production of "The Blair Witch Project," which played on just this desire, and which contrasts with the capitalization of the usual big-Hollywood special effects. Desire for the ACCEPTED simulation (a la acting) of WWF wrestling, is matched by the interest in the deadliness of "extreme sports."
Auslander wants to keep open a hope for future possibilities for human creativity and will, but it is a hope which he believes will be largely determined by adaptation to technological innovations along the order of simulation. He believes this hope can be maintained by not prejudging such innovation in terms of its apparent threat to past values based on naive ideas about immediate experience. His historicist and "anti-ontological" assumption is such that such past values no longer apply. His cool and almost indifferent style of reportage and argument (though carrying a vaguely anti-capitalist tone to it) gives us room to speculate on the moral and political implications of this. But it also seems designed not to foreclose on the accuracy of his prophecy by making premature value judgments (he follows Baudrillard in this). But his very reserve in this regard, while providing us with a great deal of information regarding our politico-economic dilemmas, seems also in danger of confirming a kind of cynical complacency via its own sophistication. But then again, as my friend Rob says, what doesn't?