The body in death

Death i feel is an elastic term. (So is the term body i guess). When you are dead though, you are dead– you cannot feel anything, you dont know anything. The individuals death is irrelevent to him/herslef. Social death, a life bereft of meaning or living, is far more grave than physical death.

Hockey and James state that:

“With the emphasis on young, healthy, sexually attractive bodies, comes the assumption that those with imperfect bodies have a lesser social presence.” – (1993, cited in Hallen:2001:66).

Here, they aknowledge that in society, our bodies are empty voids when we are aesthetic disatisfying. uglyness, and unattractivness are undesired attributes, therefore we shun and discount people who arn’t able to reach certain aesthetic standards.

In contrast, youth and beauty is glorified. iconic figures who have successed in resisting the aging process are praised. Prime examples are Madonna, Demi Moore, Ana Wintour, Goldie Hawne, George Cloony and so on. The most prominant role model at the moment is without a doubt supermodel Agnus Dean, who has glorified, simply because she is beautiful and full of spark.

Celebrities though who put on weight or have a bad sense of style/dress sense are ridiculled, deemed socially inept. Although media outlets, notably gossip magazines, do this for ecconomic benefits, they symbolise the way we ourselves shun ordinary people if they arn’t groomed and beautiful without even knowing it. In this sence, these people have commited a “social death”, no longer worthy of any real status.

Zadie Smith’s novel “On Beauty” illistrates this notion perfectly. There is a moment when lecturer notices a group of college girls walk past, and notes that:

“They were smooth and bright and their timing was wonderful, and they were youg and halerious. it was really something to see, they thought, and this was why they spoke loudly, and guestered, inviting onlookers to admire”

It is in this moment when not only does the lecturer fully understand the power of youth’s beauty, but also that the girls themselves are quite aware of their presence.

It is in this sense, our idea of “alive”, “human” and “worthyness”, are constantly overshaddowed with notions of beauty.

Cyborg machine

The cocept of the cyborg is an imagination; a ficticious being. By definition, a cyborg is half machine, half human. Yet since the advent of anime characters (lain, ghost in a shell, animatrix), the creature has become easily accepted and socialised into our conciousness.

It’s existence is hardly argued. We understand the parametres in which it operates- it is a cyber baby, connected to the wire, with the semblence of a human, sans doute. It is our understanding of science fiction genres and day to day amazement with technology that makes us indifferent to such a ficticous construct.

More importantly though, i think that our nonchalant attitude towards the concept of a cybourg is due to the fact that people in contemporary societies can easily realate to it. The cybourg symbolises what it means to be human in the modern world. We are, arguably, just as dependent on “the network” (internet, tv, radio, mobile phones) as the cyborgs are on their wire. Just to think, we are in contact with machines on a minite-to-minite basis. Mobiles are literally, “the extension of the arm”. Online networks such as myspace and facebook facilitate daily socialising and communication, and moreover act as a nursery where we can redefine ourselves. People construct facebook pages and blogs as self-imposed shrines, used to recreate a new or different machinic subjectivity, of whom they wish to be portrayed as.

The question this bears though, is that are these online personalities faithful to our true machinic subjectivity? Are they real identities?

Of coarse there is no “true identity”, as identity is flux, constantly changing with different people, contexts, agendas and regimes. The online persona is just as much a valid form of expressionn than in reality, the two are just different, exposing and downplaying different parts of our identity. In fact, i beleive the binaries between our day to day self and our online being are quite leaky, they are not mutually exlusive; we can essentially be both. Therefore, our dependence on “the network” and idea that machines are becoming added assemblages to our being is evident, similar to that of a cyborg.