Lifeimitatesart’s Weblog

tutorial question: Consider Guattari’s idea of ‘performative subversions‘ in relation to Shameless and other screen examples of trans-social excess.

Felix Guattari’s notion of ‘performative subversions’ can be explored in relation to the extreme characters and situations featured in Paul Abbot’s series Shameless. Additionally, when studying the narrative of Shameless we can look to Guattari’s notions of ‘machinic subjectivity’, and in turn explore the concepts of disinformation, class and anarchism.

Created by Paul Abbott, Shameless follows the internal relations of the occupants of a Manchester community, with its primary focus on members of the Chatsworth Council Estate. In a 2005 interview, Paul Abbott outlines his own destructive childhood and his family’s continual struggle with poverty. In bringing aspects of his past to the screen, Abbott situated Shameless within a mode of story telling and a format popular in television ’soaps’, that of the internal relations between characters. Thus, the ‘real life’ nature of Shameless was clearly influenced by Abbott’s own personal reality, this of which caused a struggle for screen time in the initial stages of production.

Abbott states…

‘I had to fight tooth and nail [to get Shameless commissioned] because it’s not the kind of telly that other people were used to. There’s a lack of real life in TV drama. I wanted to put something like Shameless on telly and show a world I know exists, but not in a documentary form because that would be confected’ – [to sweeten up, to manufacture ‘sweetness’. It can be suggested that the documentary form as a genre would assume a more political personalized stance and thus would evoke sympathy from audiences].

…

FELIX GUATTARI – ‘REGIMES, PATHWAYS, SUBJECTS’ (1995) MOLECULAR REVOLUTION & CLASS STRUGGLE (1984)

Published in 1995, Guattari’s ‘Regimes, Pathways, Subjects’ states…

‘…the contents of subjectivity have become increasingly dependent on a multitude of machinic systems… This leads one to wonder whether the very essence of the subject – that infamous essence, so sought after over the centuries by Western philosophy, is not threatened by contemporary subjectivity’s new “machinic addiction.” (pg. 112)

Additionally…

In ‘Molecular Revolution and Class Struggle’ (1984), capitalism is suggested to reduce ‘everything to a state of shit, of an amorphous and simplified flux from which everyone must extract his own share in his own private and guilt-ridden way.’ (p. 253)

Both the excessive and exaggerated situations and characters in Paul Abbott’s British Channel Four series Shameless seem to reinforce this notion of capitalism as contributing to the establishment of a social hierarchy continually fed by capitalist consumerism and the sense of a society as ‘failed’ and about to destroy itself.

Each of Abbott’s characters depict some form of social perversion or ‘disability’, whether extreme or mild – none conform to notions of normality within contemporary society.

FRANK GALLAGHER (played by David Threlfall)

As an unemployed, alcohol and drug consuming, poor excuse for a father figure, Frank Gallagher epitomizes the fall of man. Totally disillusioned and disenchanted with the state of contemporary society, Frank sees no hope for the future and thus makes no attempts to better himself. Yet, Frank seems fully aware of the capitalist machine. In season two, when Frank’s father chastises him for not having a job and thus being unable to support his family, rather than make an attempt to find one, Frank pretends to go to work each day and instead hides out in the local pub. Thus, Frank refuses to become a part of the labour movement that fuels his society. It is as though, albeit exaggeratedly, Frank realises Guattari’s notion, that capitalism ‘has reduced everything to a state of shit’ and Frank ‘extracts his own share in his own private and guilt-ridden way’: drugs, alcohol, and a complete refusal to fit into a normative mold within both the family institution or the wider social community. (Guattari 1984: 253)

…

SHEILA JACKSON (played by Maggie O’Neill)

agoraphobic, nymphomaniac, paranoid

…

MARTY FISHER (played by Jack Deam)

tourettes syndrome, pyromaniac

…

KEV BALL (played by Dean Lennox Kelly)

illiterate – does not have access to the written word

As Adorno and Horkheimer explore, in ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as mass deception’, ‘the individual is an illusion…tolerated only so long as his complete identification with the generality is unquestioned.’ (1993: 41)

Thus, it can be suggested that these excessive characters are essentially by-products of the capitalist machine. They are the left-overs of a society where materialism and the accumulation of wealth govern an individual and collective groups position within society. The Gallagher family and the surrounding occupants of the Chatsworth estate are thus the ‘lowest’ – a social group that capitalist consumerism has left behind. Furthermore, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that ‘the only reason why the culture industry can deal so successfully with indiviudality is that the latter has reproduced the fragility of society.’ (1993: 42) The ‘left-overs’ of the Chatsworth estate, thus work to serve to support the ideology behind the culture industry – what becomes of those who do not conform to contemporary societies capitalist norms.

Moreover…

‘All the capitalist cares about are the various desire and production machines that he can link up to his exploitation machine: your arms in you are a street sweeper, your intelligence if you are an engineer, your looks if you are a cover-girl… Any voice that might be heard speaking up for other things can only interfere with the order of his production system… What we have to find out is whether this alienating control, which is believed to be legitimate and indeed inherent in the social situation of human beings, can ever be overcome.’ (Guattari 1984: 256)

The alienating control Guattari refers to here can be thought of as the result of contemporary societies new machinic subjectivity. Where do characters like Frank and Marty fit in within the ‘capitalist machine’ and is there any upward movement within this society; some hope for the future? The first four seasons of Shameless seemingly represent the notion that one is unable to overcome ones position within capitalist contemporary society.

In season one, episode one, Fiona Gallagher (Frank’s oldest daughter), discovers that her [future] boyfriend Steve comes from a family of upper class doctors, and had the choice to follow in their footsteps by going to medical school, but instead, chose to steal cars for a living. Steve and Fiona outline their class differences, differences that are finally broken down when Steve reveals the dishonest mode in which he ‘pays his way.’

In considering Frank Gallagher’s character, I was reminded of Tyler Durden’s (played by Brad Pitt) infamous apocalyptic tirade on capitalism and consumerism in David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club (based on Chuck Palahniuk’s novel of the same name (1996) – many of Palahniuk’s novels are worth having a look at (Survivor, Choke in particular) for the way in which they satirize commercial culture within American society and envision an apocalypse at the hands of capitalist society.) Fight Club employs unconventional visuals combined with a complex narrative structure to adapt Palahniuk’s written narrative as it relates to masculinity, memory, including schizophrenia, and emotional wounding in what both the novel and film propose is an increasingly empty and numbed public existence as a result of the deforming nature of capitalist consumer culture.

‘Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.’ – Tyler Durden, Fight Club (1999)

The following quote from Fight Club could have come straight out of Frank Gallagher’s mouth. Cue the Manchurian accent…

‘You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.’ - Tyler Durden, Fight Club (1999)

Here, David Fincher, like Paul Abbott in Shameless, explores the notion of disinformation at the level of the culture industry – at the level of capitalist consumerism. As Tyler Durden states, ‘advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.‘ ‘Advertising’ here is established as a form of disinformation, a ‘capitalist lie’ fed by the psychoanalytical and Freudian machines and other modes of authority (education, religion, law enforcing systems?), which in turn feed class distinctions and establish a hierarchy of social wealth and power which contributes to a social/cultural hegemony – the dominance of one social group over another. (Tyler is himself a schizophrenic construction in the nameless narrator/main characters mind – a construction that can be suggested to metaphorically stand in for the schizophrenic nature of contemporary capitalist consumer culture). Thus, this is an example of machines feeding machines – a process that continuously loops. Disinformation feeds the culture industry, consumerism, which in turn feeds class and wealth distinctions.

In Molecular Revolution and Class Struggle, Guattari proposes that Marxism and Freudianism have been neutralized by machinic entities (such as the workers movement, the psychoanalytical movement and the education/academic systems), that not only to they upset nobody, but they even become guarantors of the established order… that their (the theories) original message has been falsified and one must get back to the sources.’ (1984: 253) Is it that the psychonalytical terms have become jargon – terms and slogans that are strategies to merely reinforce the established order? To fuel capitalist consumerism? Guattari, thus raises one of the big issues we have been asked to think about when exploring the texts in this course, modes of address and the way a text speaks to its audience, and how in turn we choose to read it, whether as merely viewers watching the texts for pleasure or as students.

Guattari looks at the psychoanalytical machine and Freud’s attempts to explore social order through theories of repression and schizophrenia, the super-ego and castration. (Guattari: 1984, 257) For Freud normality ‘was identified with the acceptance of family life’… Freud thus fails to see perversions in family life as a result of ‘resistance’ politically. As Guattari states ‘the question is whether the super-ego is a creation arising out of the social structure and handled on via the intermediary of the family, so that the individual comes to actually want repression and to accept it as passed on from one sources to the next, starting with the father, or, whether it is rather a matter of accepting it as a necessary break within the psychic apparatus area, the only way a person can achieve the right balance, the only way the ego can adapt properly to reality.’ (1984: 256)

Looking beyond the internal structure of the series and into the structure of the television industry, Abbott has turned this ‘waste’ into a commodity itself. The entertainment industry is first and foremost a quest for profit in a competitive marketplace. The series, which is currently in its fifth season and has been sold to countries all over the world has in turn become a commodity.. This depicts the (vicious?) and inescapable circle of the state of capitalism, everything, even the ones capitalism has left behind, can in turn be commodified, and sold to the industries and societies that created it in the first place. What makes ‘real’ shows like Shameless, and others such as The Office (UK & US) and Weeds so appealing to contemporary audiences? Is ‘real’ an appropriate way to describe the situations that face the characters, and indeed the characters themselves within the series?

And now this brings us to the concept of

disinformation.

‘The important thing is to not stop questioning.’ - Albert Einstein

… and this is something that the characters in Shameless appear to adhere to.

‘Lies can travel half way around the world, lies are our currency’

- Frank Gallagher – Shameless, Season 3, ep. 1.

Shameless deals with the notion of ‘disinformation’ and information control, the selection and framing, and inclusion and omission of information, through structures of authority in a number of episodes throughout the series.

The first episode of Season 3 revolves around the notion of disinformation as it relates to religious beliefs and the institutions that reinforce these beliefs. In this episode, the idea (as stated by Frank in the internal voice over at the beginning of the episode) that ‘lies can travel half way around the world, lies are our currency’ – this of which is a statement that further emphasizes Frank’s disenchantment with the world that he envisions as collapsing around him, is exaggerated by the denouncement of God by youngest member of the Gallagher family, five year old Liam. In a Catholic School religious play, Liam states ‘god doesn’t exist, he’s a made up person and the bible is all pretend stories to make the people be good.’ As is to be expected, this proclamation infuriates the heads of the school who visit the Gallagher home and insist that Liam should ‘never say it again’ Thus, the Church as an institution, as a mode of authority, is established as the antagonists in their attempt to silence a five year old.

‘Christmas Special

‘God doesn’t exist?’ Frank Gallagher’s version of the last supper?

Similarly, in the episode two of season three, the leader of a catholic youth club approaches Kash, Ian’s lover, imploring him to join the club, in the not stated, but implied attempt to try and convert his homosexual orientation, to set him back on what is supposedly the ’straight and narrow’ path.

Guattari proposes that we need to look at examples of trans-social excess in alternative ways, to critically analyse the way in which we address different concepts of society. Is Marxism and Freudianism as adopted by the capitalist society a form of disinformation? If so, how do we get away from the novelty and back to the sources?

DISINFORMATION IN THE CAPITALIST WORLD:

9/11 sparked conspiracy theories all over the world. The Terror Conspiracy. Not only raises issues concerning September 11 but also the more general question of FOX NEWS – fair and balanced? Jimmy Walter on FOX NEWS.

THE HIV AIDS VIRUS A LIE?

DISINFORMATION & THE US. MOON LANDING. A HOAX?