Bodies Rule! the Embodiment of Power Between Fashion and Politics

JOMEC Journal Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies Published by Cardiff University Press Bodies rule! The Embodiment of Power between Fashion and Politics Antonella Giannone Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin Email: [email protected] Keywords Body Power Fashion Pop-culture Politics Abstract This article focuses on the construction of power via the body in the context of the Italian political scene of the last two decades. From a semiotic and fashion-theory perspective, the article interprets local peculiarities through the lens of more general issues concerning the way pop, mass and media culture have been transforming our relation to power, as well as to the high symbolic body of ‘the chief’. Clothing signs, fashion mechanisms and figures connected to fashion imagery have played an important role in redefining power as a gendered, bodily and visual discourse, which is not only carried on by media, but, above all, created in mediated contexts. Contributor Note Antonella Giannone teaches Fashion theory and Fashion history at the Berlin Weissensee School of Art. Her work and research is mainly concerned with semiotics of fashion and clothing, fashion theory and body culture. Among her publications: Underground Zone: Dandy, Punk, Beautiful People (Caratteri Mobili 2011) with Claudia Attimonelli; Manuale di comunicazione, cultura e sociologia della moda (vol. V: Performance, Meltemi 2007) with Patrizia Calefato; Kleidung als Zeichen (Weidler, 2005). Citation Giannone, Antonella (2015), ‘Bodies rule! The Embodiment of Power between Fashion and Politics’, JOMEC Journal 8, ‘Italian Cultural Studies’, ed. Floriana Bernardi. http://dx.doi.org/10.18573/j.2015.10029 www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal Introduction the media, but is essentially created in mediated contexts. This article focuses on the contemporary construction of politicians’ images via the The concept of power as a relation, body and its signs, as the result of dialectically binding the different significant shifts and transformations in subjects involved in it, is a central the way power is performed, assumption in my argument, since it communicated and mediated. Why is considers everybody's role and agency in what Belpoliti called ‘the chief's body’ so the different processes connected to its important for us to understand the construction. present (Belpoliti 2009)? To what extent is the bodily construction of power an issue that involves everybody? In this article, I address these questions Mass culture, pop culture and the underlining the high symbolic role the ‘fashion form’ chief's body plays in the construction of social relationships, in the fabrication of Mass culture and pop culture elevate our relation to power and institutions, as fashion to the status of measure and well as in shaping our approval or model of many cultural processes. This is disapproval of them. what Lipovetsky (1989) argued, when he stated that in the so called ‘mature My reflections on this complex topic are phase of fashion’ the ‘fashion form’ had mainly guided by a semiotic and fashion extended to all cultural spheres. This, he theory perspective. I consider the body argued, enabled the emergence of a mainly as a clothed body (see Calefato society dominated by ‘the logic of 2004), namely a body made significant fashion’ (Lipovetsky 1989: 5). In not only by clothing signs but also by opposition to dominant fashion theories, performing – through them – relations to Lipovetsky does not consider class other bodies. distinction as the principal support for the mechanism of fashion. Indeed, in his The body I deal with in this text is mainly ‘interpretive history of fashion’ he an iconic sign, since ‘the chief’ is mainly identifies the ‘expression of individuality’ perceived as an image circulating in and the ‘break with tradition’ as key different media. Since the second half of social logics underlying fashion, nurtured th the 20 century, media culture, pop by an overwhelming passion for novelty culture and fashion have jointly (Lipovetsky 1989). contributed to a widespread ‘iconisation’ of power in western democracies. In Pop culture can be considered as both recent decades, politicians have mainly the historical stage and ideal context in aimed at designing and marketing new which the principles of fashion identified and successful forms of leadership, new by Lipovetsky reach their climax and styles of embodying power relations, and come to realisation. The intimate new icons of power. Fashion connection between fashion discourses mechanisms, frames, codes and and pop sensibilities is now to be sought dynamics have played an important role in the way pop redefines the meaning of in redefining power as a visual discourse, the body and the relationships among which is not only disseminated through different kinds of bodies, combining processes of desacralization with ones of 1 www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal daily spectacularization involving The concept of the ‘pop body’ (Linck effectively ‘everybody’: stars, politicians, 2007; Giannone 2011: 73-74) identifies fashion models, as well as many the body’s articulation by pop culture common people. since the 1950s: the pop body constantly renews itself, and is therefore perceived The bond between fashion and pop in its newness with respect to the past. culture has been mainly researched in its most visible aspects, namely the way The affirmation of the pop body goes Pop Art innovations have been translated alongside the creation of youth (Savage into fashion clothing. This bond, however, 2009), a relatively recent invention, which can be traced even in the ways through is aesthetic, historical and mythical at which pop culture has sneaked into the the same time. Youth arose in the 20th roles and processes of creation, diffusion century, or what has been called the and consumption of ‘fashion bodies’, century of youth (Sorcinelli and Varni, transforming them from the roots, or 2004). Youth becomes much more triggering changes whose effects can be visible after World War II, when the seen now. Pop culture, in fact, is not to proliferation of different styles first be found only in the objects, symbols produces remarkable differences and gadgets that represent it, but also in between younger generations and their the subjects. Mecacci suggests that: ‘the parents. pop design of objects corresponds to an aesthetic parallel: the pop design of The pop body is in particular an urban subjects’ (Mecacci 2011: 11; my body that defines itself as it moves translation from Italian). through the spaces of contemporary metropolises, from which it absorbs suggestions, stimuli, and visual sensations, while losing the traces of Pop body traditions. It is also a scenic body, insofar as it contributes to the definition of The subjectivity of pop is essentially urban ‘scenes’, as well as to the expressed through the body and its multifarious role playing of modern looks. The body plays a central role everyday life, in which bodies are within pop culture, insofar as it involved in ongoing performances of the represents the converging point between self (Attimonelli, Giannone 2011). daily and spectacular practices, as well as the instrument of the dialectic Pop has ‘ordinarized’ aesthetic practices between high and low, and between of body manipulation and thus surface and depth, which is so dear to contributed to the internalization of the pop sensitivity. myth of self-constructability. This is the pivot around which the culture of body The intersections between pop and and clothing – presently conveyed by fashion began in the second half of the fashion – revolves (Mecacci, 2011: 116- 20th century, and continue today. During 117). In the legendary Andy Warhol’s this period, important changes have Factory, where individual desires and the taken place in the way bodies are Zeitgeist were mutually nurtured by the conceived, represented and performed street and the places of underground within fashion as well as beyond it. culture, a new fashion conception was created, in which the idea of the role 2 www.cf.ac.uk/JOMECjournal @JOMECjournal model was replaced by the individual connected with its being, as every body, performance – identities were now to be a fashion body, namely a body created and reinvented, day by day. depending on fashion changes and on the dynamics of ongoing renewal. The pop body was inevitably co-opted by the industry and the fashion system. In The well-known distinction Kantorovicz this process of appropriation, fashion has (1957) made in the context of the shaped its own body as a ‘young body’, a political theology of the Middle Ages, body excluding any aging or any form of between the two bodies of the king – the physical decadence. This body proposes natural and the symbolic body – remains itself, in the words of Roland Barthes, as a key frame of reference when one tries a glorious body, a state at which to map the ways power is represented everybody should aim (Barthes 2006: and performed via the body. The 142). symbolic body of Kantorovicz’s king, survives the natural, mortal body, Ambivalent as it is, the pop body moves because of its stability as value and in two directions, directions that are only symbol. apparently opposite: individualization is on the one side, and, on the other, This dual conception of the king’s body equalization. So, on the one hand, it is has experienced substantial redefinition the fundamental basis of aesthetic in different historical periods, practices involving every single man and culminating in the bodiless and abstract woman daily. On the other hand, and conception of power that originated in thanks to its structural transformability – the context of the French Revolution. even from the point of view of gender This was a consequence of the radical identity – the pop body triggers desacralization and desecration of both mechanisms of denaturalization, the symbolic and the natural bodies of desacralization and equalization between power that occurred in this historical cultural and social spheres that were context.

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