A BRIEF HISTORY OF MANUFACTURED NONCHALANCE

A friend sent me this article in the New Yorker today by Rachel Monroe about "the bohemian social media movement" #vanlife, yet another glamour-based aspirational lifestyle turned carefully-curated visual product. The foundational abstract idea of this particular strain is "freedom," but the exterior narrative follows the same inevitable trajectory as every other such phenomenon, ending in manufactured nonchalance. Monroe describes the #vanlife photo shoot process towards the end of the piece:

“Smith had a particular image in mind: King sprawled in the back of the van, reading a book about Ayurveda with Penny nestled next to her, and an “Outsiders” decal featured prominently on her laptop. As Smith shot from the front seat, King tried a few different positions—knees bent; legs propped up against the window—and pretended to read the book. “Sometimes it’s more spontaneous,” she said apologetically.

“It’s about storytelling, and when you’re telling a story it’s not always spontaneous,” Smith said. “Lift your head up a little bit more, look like you’re reading.””

Our cultural obsession with nonchalance and this particular breed of mythmaking long predates Instagram, as does the desire to manufacture it. You can trace the seeds of the idea back to the tale of Pygmalion in Ovid's Metamorphoses ("The best art, they say, / Is that which conceals art"), but the first explicit reference I'm aware of is in Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, where it goes by the name sprezzatura. His is still perhaps the best definition of manufactured nonchalance out there:

“I have found quite a universal rule which in this matter seems to me valid above all other, and in all human affairs whether in word or deed: and that is to avoid affectation in every way possible as though it were some rough and dangerous reef; and (to pronounce a new word perhaps) to practice in all things a certain sprezzatura, so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.”

Virginia Postrel refers to this same passage in The Power of Glamour and returns often to the impression of "effortlessness" as a central manifestation of glamorous visual communication. Building on Castiglione, she argues:

“Sprezzatura makes its possessor seem like a superior being and the observer feel momentarily transformed, enveloped in that aura of confidence and competence. Like the glamorously streamlined surfaces of the Chrysler Building, however, sprezzatura is a facade—a form of artifice that demands care to create and maintain.”

Manufactured nonchalance appears frequently in fiction as well. A neat little example from Anna Karenina:

“Anna had changed into a very simple cambric dress. Dolly looked attentively at this simple dress. She knew what such simplicity meant and what money was paid for it.”

In Ian McEwan's Atonement, Cecilia Tallis even more explicitly seeks the same effect:

“Relaxed was how she wanted to feel, and at the same time, self-contained. Above all, she wanted to look as though she had not give the matter a moment’s thought, and that would take time.”

Again and again, nonchalance is something we want to build with images but tear down with words. On some level we all understand it is an illusion, so why do we keep falling for it? 

Social media has created a more robust strain. Sprezzatura is no longer just for courtiers; the art which conceals art has been democratized and demographized, with a feed for whatever your subjective tastes require. It is a glamorous distraction, but it's also a personal expectation.

Check out this no-holds-barred exposé from Rachel Cusk's 2014 novel, Outline:

“He was, in effect, manufacturing an illusion, no matter what he did, the gap between illusion and reality could never be closed. Gradually, he said, this gap, this distance between how things were and how I wanted them to be, began to undermine me. I felt myself becoming empty, he said, as though I had been living until now on the reserves I had accumulated over the years and they had gradually dwindled away.”

#vanlife is a metonymy of our culture, of our very world right now; we are all increasingly defined by our roles in this simulacra-based digital ecosystem. Disillusionment with it, the realization that "freedom," or whatever else you fetishize, is staged--this is the crisis of our time for people who aren't stuck in Syria.

SELFIES AND THE INNOVATION OF SELF-MYTHMAKING

Paris selfie - croissant in tow.

The mere mention of Paris conjures up images of lovers: walking along the Seine, kissing, maybe sharing a croissant. But on this trip, it has been the mass-demonstration of another kind of love that's struck me. It shouldn't have. Selfies are, by now, so ubiquitous that they are no longer even embarrassing (as in the decadent Rome of Cavelli's opera Eliogabalo, "where everyone is guilty, everyone is innocent"). In Japan this Spring, I saw more signs regulating selfie sticks than bicycles. Here in Paris, they're more easily procured than miniature replicas of the Eiffel Tower. 

The bewitching appeal of self-love is hardly new. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, wise Tiresias rhetorically asks Narcissus:

Caravaggio, Narcissus, ~1597-9.

"Why try to catch an always fleeting image
Poor credulous youngster? What you seek is nowhere
And if you turn away, you will take with you
The boy you love. The vision is only shadow,
Only reflection, lacking any substance."

Looking at Narcissus's conundrum as a design problem, he faces two main issues:

1. Lack of control - Narcissus's image is "nowhere," eluding capture
2. Impermanence - Narcissus's image is "always fleeting," eluding documentation

I think the selfie is so successful as an innovation because it seems to solve for both of these long-standing problems with Narcissism. It provides the subject with the impression of control over his or her self-image as actor-director, coupled with the ability to "immortalize" it on the internet.

CONTROL

When I look at photographs from childhood trips, taken by friendly strangers (or in this case, probably my mom), there are usually other tourists in the background. I don't think it's a coincidence that one of the main things selfie sticks and digital enhancement allow for is their removal. As Jonathan Franzen writes in Freedom, "nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special."

Selfies give us the impression of control on two levels: first, directly from our perspective, and second, recursively from the perspective of others, dreaming of the illusions we will create in others' dreams. 

As the ultimate manifestation of images "known to be false but felt to be true," selfies glamorously highlight some details while obscuring others to reinforce our own specialness. 

The fantasy of someone else fantasizing about you is an even more cunning trick of mind. While, as Virginia Postrel points out, "Glamour is not something you possess, but something you perceive," the recursive perception of another's perception offers the illusion of possession--an illusion that can be seemingly quantified and insatiably fed by "likes," and archived for posterity on Facebook or especially Instagram, everyone's personal museum, digital formaldehyde. 

IMMORTALITY

Selfies thus offer intimations of immortality on our own terms; they are a modern form of mummification. It's really no wonder that people are, increasingly, willing to risk dying for the perfect shot, and actively want to plan for their "digital afterlife." 

Evan Carroll, the founder of Loggacy, a digital afterlife platform, explains that "the emergence of online digital legacy tools, that provide us with the opportunity to record our lives online and leave an everlasting legacy, provide a meaningful solution to the...conundrum concerning 'immortality.'" 

That's a lot of provisions. The thing is, we're not preserving a record of our lives--selfies are carefully-staged simulacra, not faithful representations. Archiving them offers the promise not of self-history, but metamorphic self-mythology.

I'm reminded of a book I vaguely remember from childhood, where the main character is a little boy in search of perfection. He eventually finds it, if I remember correctly--and it's this boring room filled with people doing nothing. Perfection, he realizes, is way overrated; flowers are glamorous, but it's way more fun to be a boy.