Post-Media Operators: ‘Sovereign & Vague’
easily acquired virtue, because quite simply, conformity is dependent on the continuing acceptance of what is.5 They are seen as ‘virtues’ because, in relying on the suspension of auto-theorising and adhering to the job specification, they are socially adaptive.
Media Whores? Everyone knows a media whore when they see one. It’s pointless making a list because most people have their own. They’re the ones that crop up everywhere and at every available opportunity. It’s not so much that they are acclaimed by many or that their persisting visibility is a mark of ‘quality’. No. The media-whore is one on their own. One of a kind. A grafter in more ways than one. A grifter and a grafter. A convenient success symbol for the ongoing pliable acceptance of the non-guaranteed freelance culture of ‘creative’ self-exploitation. It is a question of professionalism meeting professionalism, of slotting into the requirements with all the smooth politeness of a parasite. Thus the media whore (one long disavowal) is trusted. Deadlines can be met. Appointments adhered to. Soundbites well rehearsed. There will be no time wasting. No arguments about context because the media whore is the context. A one-man band; a one-man context. So, not knowing the full extent of an activity the media whore springs to mind as the delegate of that activity and is endlessly invited to appear, perform and contribute by people hoping to attract enough of an audience to justify the grant. For the more the person-product is seen and reported, the more it becomes increasingly predictable, the more its repetition attracts the hip academics who come to view the output as having the necessary consistency to merit coverage in overviews. In this way the already mediatised is further mediated but this mediation doesn’t stop because the media whore, being under contractual pressure to produce, will never complain about how s/he is to be represented because representation (the marketing of the ‘self’) is all that is wanted and the more prisms of representation (advertisements) there are to refract through then the more the hall of mirrors reflects, rather than distorts, the face of the media-whore. This is the instantaneity of the ‘year zero of faciality’ which Deleuze and Guattari vehemently speak out against: It is not the individuality of the face that counts but the efficacy of the ciphering it makes possible […] This is an affair not of ideology but of economy and the
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