Supermarket As a Site of Spectacul-Art Pedagogy
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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Arts and Architecture SUPERMARKET AS A SITE OF SPECTACUL-ART PEDAGOGY A Dissertation in Art Education and Women’s Studies by Dai-Rong Wu © 2010 Dai-Rong Wu Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2010 The dissertation of Dai-Rong Wu was reviewed and approved* by the following: Yvonne M. Gaudelius Professor of Art Education and Women’s Studies Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Charles Garoian Professor of Art Education Joan B. Landes Ferree Professor of Early Modern History and Women's Studies Christine M. Thompson Professor of Art Education Karen Keifer-Boyd Professor of Art Education and Women Studies In Charge of Graduate Programs in Art Education *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT In 1967, French cultural theorist and situationist Guy Debord published his work, The Society of the Spectacle, in which he asserted that spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images (Debord, 1994, p.12). Debord’s prophetic assertion has been realized in today’s society due to the improvement of technology and the instantaneity of Internet-based activities. No matter what the form of visual culture, we project our desires on it, withdraw fragments of desire from it, and even map our understandings of people and things through our readings of it. It is in our gazing, reading, interpreting, and even our bodily encounters such as touching, smelling, and tasting the texts of visual culture that the social relations of class, gender, race, and ethnicity are embodied. The role of Wegmans Food Markets as embodied spectacle was almost equally important to me as that of the graduate school during my six years of graduate student life at State College, Pennsylvania. To paraphrase Austrian coffeehouse poet, Peter Altenberg’s words, if I am not at home or on campus, I am at Wegmans or on my way to it. The supermarket, a seemingly ordinary place, is in fact a site where the complicated and subtle operations of the consumerism spectacle lurk. To borrow Debord’s concepts of the spectacle, I deem that the contemporary spectacle of Wegmans sophisticatedly manipulates visual culture and corporeal experiences to embody a worldview which mediates our relationships with others. Knowledge within this worldview endorses the iv authenticity of facts and realities re-presented in the spectacle. Situated in the nexus of visual culture and contemporary feminist studies, this research thus aims to comb the twisted roots and intricate gnarls of visual culture and to examine through a feminist methodological lens how knowledge and experience are structured in this supermarket spectacle. The flâneuse, inspired by Walter Benjamin’s flâneur, is the feminist methodological device of this research. Her perspective, which is a critical and gendered standpoint of a cultural female Other, is applied here in order to examine this specific everyday place. In addition, the flâneuse’s corporeal experiences are brought into my field research which investigates the dynamic interactions between spectacul-art (pleasant/tasteful visual culture and spectacular/lived performances) and spectator- consumers. In so doing, this research aims to answer the following questions: How does the supermarket spectacle as embodied in Wegmans make spectators consumers? How are consumers tamed by the supermarket spectacle and urged to take actions? What kind of knowledge and experiences are constructed in the supermarket spectacle through visual culture? How does the supermarket spectacle deepen learning in accordance with its ideology through exhibition strategies? v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................... vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... ix CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION .......................................................................... 1 Visual Culture Matters .......................................................................................... 1 From the Society of Spectacle to the Society of Extras .......................................... 5 The Supermarket as Embodied Spectacle ............................................................. 10 Knowledge and Experience Produced in the Embodied Spectacle ...................... 19 The Flâneuse’s Gaze: A Methodological Lens to the Embodied Spectacle ......... 26 Research Questions and Chapter Layout .............................................................. 30 Use of Language ................................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER TWO REFASHIONING THE FLÂNEUSE ......................................... 35 The Creative, Artistic, Inquisitive, yet Gendered Flâneur .................................... 35 Feminist Critiques on Experience and Gaze Embodied by the Flâneur ............... 40 Re-fashioning the Flâneuse ................................................................................... 48 Flâneuse, the observing and participating feminist stroller ......................... 49 The insider-outsider flâneuse ........................................................................ 53 Body matters: The flâneuse’s body as a site of investigation ........................ 61 CHAPTER THREE BEING-IN-THE-SPECTACLE: BECOMING THE SPECTACLE OF EXTRAS ................................................................................. 666 Guy Debord and The Society of the Spectacle ..................................................... 66 Re-defining the Spectacle ..................................................................................... 71 Wegmans as Embodied Spectacle ........................................................................ 79 The Spectacle of Extras ........................................................................................ 92 CHAPTER FOUR THE NARRATIVES OF THE FLÂNEUSE ............................. 100 Map as Narrative: Pre-reading of the Spectacle-scape ......................................... 100 A Study of the Stroll ............................................................................................. 105 The Wegmans Way: The Visual Narratives and Bodily Encounters Engendered through Flâneuse’s Strolls ......................................................... 115 Who Shops at Wegmans? Taste as a Social/Cultural Classification ............ 116 Sketching Ms. /Mrs. Consumers: Gender Issues Embodied in the Spectacle ................................................................................................. 123 vi Tasting/Performing/Seeing the Others: Race Issues Embodied in the Spectacle ................................................................................................. 134 Postscript of the Stroll .......................................................................................... 139 CHAPTER FIVE THE SPECTACUL-ART PEDAGOGY ..................................... 142 Visual Culture as a Way of De-mystifying ........................................................... 145 Visual Culture as a Way of Constructing ............................................................. 150 Visual Culture as a Way of Naturalizing .............................................................. 157 The Spectacul-art Pedagogy ................................................................................. 163 I Shop Therefore I am ........................................................................................... 169 CHAPTER SIX CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 181 Okay! The Spectacul-art Pedagogy, So What? .................................................... 181 What Can We as Spectator-consumers of the Spectacle Do? ............................... 187 Implications: Artistic Practice as Social Interstice ............................................... 192 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 202 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1: Invitation to Grand Opening of the American Supermarket New York. .. 13 Figure 1-2: Andy Warhol at The American Supermarket Exhibition. ......................... 14 Figure 2-1: The Mother and Sister of the Artist (Reading). ......................................... 44 Figure 2-2: The Cradle................................................................................................. 45 Figure 3-1: The façade of the Wegmans State College store. ...................................... 82 Figure 3-2: A Cheese Shop at Wegmans. .................................................................... 84 Figure 3-3: 99 Cent II .................................................................................................. 89 Figure 4-1: Wegmans State College store map. ........................................................... 101 Figure 4-2: Wegmans Fairfax store map. .................................................................... 101 Figure 4-3: A Produce Department at Wegmans. ........................................................ 110 Figure 4-4: A French-inspired Patisserie at Wegmans. ............................................... 111 Figure 4-5: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. ..................................................................... 112 Figure 4-6: Store