Scream Queens and The Girl in Horror
Alyssa Renck
The Girl as Media
December 7, 2015
K. Wark
Originally formulated as a paper that explores one of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s infamous creations, American Horror Story, through the lenses of horror film critics and theorists, the concept has developed into a focus on their latest masterpiece: Scream Queens. Though their first horror television series deals with many of the important figures and tropes of the traditional horror film such as ghosts, aliens, haunted houses, insane asylums, clowns, witches, terrible people in general, and most recently, vampires, there is just too much information for one paper. Instead, this paper will explore the methods and tropes of horror films as they are fulfilled and criticized within Scream Queens, with particular attention paid to the image of ‘The Girl’ and her role in the story. With only the first season recently released, there is just enough information to examine in order to discover how the show compares to traditional horror films.
Exploring the work of famous horror theory writers such as Carol Clover, Barbara Creed, and William Schoell, as well as many others, this paper will develop an argument about where Scream Queens fits in the spectrum of the horror genre. Additionally I will be looking at a few key works that focus on the image of “The Girl,” including Tiqqun’s Theory of a Young Girl and Baudrillard’s Seduction. Through these readings this paper will explore the place of “The Girl” in the horror genre, and specifically in Scream Queens.
Synopsis/Reviews of the Show
Scream Queens is the latest creation of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk in concert with Ian Brennan. Set on a college campus and focused on the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority, the first season in the “horror-comedy anthology” is “a 20-year-old bloodbath mystery” with “fast-paced, pop-culture-zinging scripts,” according to Dominic Patten of Deadline (Patten). His review finishes with him arguing “that Murphy, Falchuk, and Brennan actually are interested in handling some serious topics of wealth, race and gender in contemporary America – and doing it well” (Patten). Following the ranks of scary movies that blatantly poke fun at themselves, Scream Queens has been crowned “the true adaptation of Wes Craven’s Scream that MTV’s version simply failed to be. Like the 1995 feature, Scream Queens exists in an insane hyper-reality that never lets up for a moment from its twisted sense of humor” (Barr). Indeed, “Mr. Murphy has described it as Halloween meets Heathers,” but reviews have also labeled it “Scream meets Animal House or Friday the 13th meets Legally Blonde” (Hale). It may be a show that borrows from previously successful film formulas, as well as directly from Murphy and Falchuk’s other works, however, part of the humor and brilliance is in the amount of cultural references and self ridicule the show fits into an hour a week. Merrill Barr agrees saying the show will “appeal to both college-age viewers and their parents, who will recognize many of the Scream Queens’ pop-cultural references” (Barr). With a star studded cast and at least one character dying every episode, Scream Queens is a whirlwind combination of humor and violence as well as mysteries that keep the viewer wanting to know who dunnit until the very end.
Though there is a range of main characters, each one zanier than the last, the audience is grounded by Grace, a pledge at KKT who is plucky and curious and wants the sorority to be a family, like she imagines it when her mother was a sister (Lowry). The rest of the cast of characters includes mean girl and president of the house Chanel Oberlin, her rival Dean Munsch, the token black girl Zayday, and a troupe of “misfits.” According to Barr’s review “the most interesting characters are the misfit pledges…these women get all the best one-liners, and they also serve up the smartest meta-commentary about race, gender, sexuality, and class, which might make you assume that the show sides with these so-called losers” (Barr).
Representations of The Girl
As its title suggests, the show is focused on the girls in the KKT sorority house. Though the cast is teaming with attractive male characters, the main people being targeted, tormented, and surviving are the girls, with less attention paid to the male deaths. With such a wide range of characters, many of the modern day stereotypes of who “The Girl” is, are represented. One of the more obvious stereotypes, pointed out by Barr, who chooses to focus on the “quasi-glamorized, quasi-villified mean girl” represented to the extreme by Chanel Oberlin. A version of the mean girl can also be seen in Dean Munsch, who is constantly in competition with Chanel and could be read as the older version of her character. There is the intelligent, “good girl” which can be seen in Grace and who will be discussed in depth as the possible “Final Girl.” Finally there is the independent, stylish leader found in Zayday, who wants to be President, both of the sorority and of the US. The “misfit” characters include a lesbian, a candle vlogger, a Taylor Swift fan, and a girl with a neck brace. However a main plot point centers around the struggle for power among the key characters and it could be viewed as a struggle for what the true meaning of “The Girl” is.
Both Jean Baudrillard and Tiqqun have works that define aspects of “The Girl,” these will be applied to the characters listed above in order to place them in the spectrum of girl types. In his work Seduction, Baudrillard discusses the art of seduction and what it is and is not, including the belief that “the strength of the feminine is that of seduction” (Baudrillard, 7). Both Chanel and Dean Munsch are active sexual characters, however it is frequently pointed out as part of the comedy how terrible they are at seducing their love interests, to the point of pathetic desperation. This could be an example, not only of their questionable femininity, but of their place in the power system, as Baudrillard points out “seduction represents mastery over the symbolic universe, while power represents only mastery of the real universe” (Baudrillard, 8). It could even be said of Chanel “precisely because of her nothingness, each of her judgments has the imperative weight of the whole organization of society,” that her leadership of the sorority is based on her fulfillment of “The Girl” stereotype (Tiqqun, v). Dean Munsch is old but knows herself to be young, a contradiction that defines “The Girl,” according to Tiqqun (Tiqqun, 1). This brings up the question: can “The Girl” be old? The image of “The Girl” is perpetuated in all of the Chanel’s in their uniformity and their pursuit of “plastic perfection in all its forms” while they all struggle with a “constant effort to remain adequate to [their] visible being” because they are “all too insufficient” (Tiqqun, 6, 21, 29, 14). In contrast, Grace very obviously fulfills the “still-virgin space” of “The Girl,” another factor that will contribute to her role as the “Final Girl” (Tiqqun, v). With Zayday, who “knows that she dominates,” however so does Chanel, this struggle being one of the less in depth plot lines in the show, provides a necessary fight for power between two versions of “The Girl” (Tiqqun, 24). Interestingly, in her book Monstrous Feminine, Barbara Creed argues that “as with all other stereotypes of the feminine, from virgin to whore, she [The Girl] is defined in terms of her sexuality” (Creed, 3).
Horror Movie Tropes
The idea for this paper began with a reading of Carol Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws. Her first chapter in the book discusses the “Final Girl” in slasher films and the overall formula that many cult classics from the 1970-80s follow (Clover, 35). Clover’s emphasis on the importance of the formula is key to the success of Scream Queens as well as other satires such as Scream or the Scary Movie franchise (Clover, 9). Not only does Scream Queens take the formula for the slasher film and follow it for the most part, but it gets its roots in Glee and American Horror Story, two formulas for shows that were ridiculously successful. Clover argues that the formula is like a kind of ritual for viewers and its predictability makes it entertaining for them (Clover, 9, 23, 26). James Twitchell believes “horror sequences are really formulaic rituals coded with precise social information needed by the adolescent audience,” he sees horror films as useful guides to surviving, especially for teenagers (Twitchell, 7). Scream Queens fits into this category with its exploration of life in college, a very challenging time in most young people’s lives. In her detailed description of the formula, Clover explains that the “killer [is] propelled by psychosexual fury” due to the lingering figure of the mother who is usually dead (Clover, 27). This is what eventually becomes clear as the motive for the “Red Devil Killer” in Scream Queens who is supposed by the other characters to be a set of twins who were born in a bathtub in the sorority house two decades ago, followed by the cover up of their mother’s death. One of Barbara Creed’s main arguments about “one of the major concerns of the sci-fi horror film…is the reworking of the primal scene, the scene of birth,” though referencing a slightly different genre, this argument holds true for the bloody, gruesome death of the mother after giving birth in the first scene of the show (Creed, 17, 49). Additionally, Creed discusses woman’s desire “represented as a form of internal rage – a rage against the mother,” which we can see in Grace’s obsession with reliving her mother’s college years in order to connect with her memory, but finding halfway through the season that her mother was a very flawed person (Creed, 46). The first half of the season, Grace believes it was her mom that died in the bathtub and that she is the baby that was secretly taken away from the sorority house that night, however it is discovered that it was in fact twins who are now running around campus as the Red Devil Killer. Creed references Freud when talking about three categories of the “uncanny” these include “the notion of a double…twin…a multiplied object,” “castration anxieties expressed as…dismembered limbs,” and the “feeling associated with a familiar/unfamiliar place…a haunted house” (Creed, 53-54). Not only are there twins, but they chop people’s limbs off frequently throughout the progression of the show. Additionally, the sorority house acts as a place of refuge that is also tainted with terrible acts from the past and acts that continue to happen as the killing spree progresses. Clover argues that in traditional slasher films, killers have an identity while victims are faceless, an argument that would seem to make the audience empathize with the killer, however Scream Queens reverses this trope by having anonymous masked killer(s) similar to Scream so that the mystery revolves around who the actual killer is until the very end (Clover, 30).
The weapons used by slasher film killers are usually items that require “closeness and tactility” because of a “pretechnological” aspect that, in turn, causes the killers to get personal and physical with their victims (Clover, 31-32). Creed’s definition of the slasher film is helpful in drawing the connection between the genre and Scream Queens:
In general, the term 'slasher' is used to define those films in which a psychotic killer murders a large number of people, usually with a knife or other instrument of mutilation. In the contemporary slasher film the life-and-death struggle is usually between an unknown killer and a group of young people who seem to spend most of their time looking for a place to have sex away from the searching eyes of adults. The killer, who is usually - but not necessarily - male, stalks and kills relentlessly; his powers seem almost superhuman. His weapons are sharp instruments such as knives, pokers, axes, needles, razors. His bloodbath is finally brought to an end by one of the group - usually a woman. Intelligent, resourceful and usually not sexually active, she tends to stand apart from the others” (Creed, 124).
Here there is a glimpse of what Clover defines as the Final Girl, who “is presented from the outset as the main character” and usually shows “more courage and levelheadedness than their cringing male counterparts” (Clover, 39, 36). It is unclear yet, due to the finale not being out, whether Chanel, who would appear to be an important character, or Grace, who would at first glance fit the Final Girl description, will be the survivor, indeed, both are suspected as killers at this point as well. Benedict Singleton wrote an interesting article about “The Last Girl Scout,” in which he argues that “the last girl scout is not the final girl, but the figure the final girl must become in order to survive,” with the “Last Girl Scout” as a sort of transient idea that allows the Final Girl to survive by kicking in when most needed (Singleton). However, Dean Munsch could also be seen as the Final Girl in the episode before the finale when Chanel and Grace try multiple times to kill her without success. Clover states the Final Girl’s “will to survive is astonishing,” a statement that brings to mind the locker killing scene in Scary Movie when the cheerleader gets her head cut off and keeps talking (Clover, 36). Dean Munsch’s ability to survive impossible situations like blowfish venom, being in a cryogenic tank for over an hour, and even her impressive fight against three killers after the shower scene, a nod to her mother’s famous scene in Psycho, is possibly a comment on Jamie Lee Curtis’s status as the original Final Girl. Clover’s main argument centers around the Final Girl not being sexually active, while all the other victims of the killer are promiscuous and therefore must be punished (Clover, Chapter 1: Her Body, Himself). This concept is partly supported by the plot of Scream Queens, but there are certain instances when the show completely disregards that trope, for example frat president and cheating boyfriend of Chanel Oberlin, Chad Radwell, sleeps with most of the campus and sorority sisters, but has survived thus far, unlike all of his fraternity brothers. And William Schoell disagrees with Clover saying, “the raison d’etre of such scenes [of death after sex] is that they pander to the audience’s delight in the sex-and-violence connection…nude people, whether in the shower or in bed, are vulnerable. Nakedness also adds extra titillation” (Schoell, 48). In the end, however, there is always the Final Girl, whom Clover argues “exactly reverses the look,” referring to the male gaze that Laura Mulvey discusses in depth regarding cinema, the Final Girl assumes the gaze of the spectator causing the male viewer, as well as the female viewer, to identify with her (Clover, 60 | Mulvey).
This identification by the audience with the Final Girl is important to many horror theorists, especially feminist ones. Even Schoell argues, “the bodies pile up so quickly…that the audience is carried along in the excessive ghoulishness to the point where it cheers the girls on when they finally turn the tables on their attacker and give him an all-too-fitting demise” (Schoell, 52). Clover describes them as having “intentionally outrageous excess” (Clover, 41). The descriptions given slasher films help to understand the importance of Scream Queens within the genre: Twitchell says “they are fantastic, ludicrous, crude, and important distortions of real life situations, not in the service of repression…but of instruction” (Twitchell, 7). His argument revolves around the social implications of horror myths to young audiences, an important point that Kathleen Kendall takes up as well. Kendall performed a study on young school girls in England who were interested in horror movies and found that “media studies generally fail to consider young people’s own perspectives and understandings” especially females and specifically within the horror genre (Kendall, 82). An important issue that Scream Queens has appeared to acknowledge is the fact that girls do watch horror and most horror doesn’t have anything for them to identify with while also actively engaging with the media itself (Kendall, 87). Scream Queens blatantly and to an extreme, bring into question the message most horror films were sending to girls, according to Kendall’s study: “fit in with the crowd, don’t do your own thing, make sure you become popular and do what you should. Judge people on their appearances” (Kendall, 87). This can clearly be seen within the Chanel characters who dress in the same color and walk around together as the popular girls on campus, even sharing one name and insulting everyone. In his essay on the Final Girl, Donato Totaro agrees “there is no pleasurable room for female spectatorship, or more directly, does not address how the horror film may speak to female empowerment” (Totaro). Though the show has mean girls to the extreme and its comedy feeds off of the stereotypes of today, especially those of nerds or outcasts and Greek life, it is also centered on the success and intelligence of women with most of the male characters either being complete idiots or possible murderers, although even then a woman is behind the whole plan.
A few final tropes to look at in relation to the show include the house as an icon of the horror genre, the conflict between certain social systems and the killer, and the inability of the authorities to control any situation. First, the sorority house is central to the plot of Scream Queens, the story begins with the bathtub birth and it continues throughout the house and over time to be a location for safety and for murder. Though it isn’t haunted it still “contains cruel secrets and has witnessed terrible deeds, usually committed by family members against each other,” in this case sorority sisters (Creed, 55). These deeds are usually tied to the origin story of an individual, in Scream Queens it is both the killer and the Final Girl, which are of course linked to the primal (Creed, 55). Creed argues, “the house becomes the symbolic space – the place of beginnings…where these dramas are played out” (Creed, 55). This is also linked to the importance of institutions as conflicts, the sorority house being part of the college campus, which Dean Munsch oversees and the power struggle between Munsch and Chanel that is prominent throughout the show. According to Creed, “the horror film consistently places the monster in conflict with the family, the couple and the institutions of patriarchal capitalism” (Creed, 61). The Red Devil Killers are seeking revenge for their mother whose death was covered up by Munsch and the university; indeed there is the smaller institution of the sorority within the college system that is specifically targeted. Finally, with attention to the purpose of the Final Girl, there is the incapability of the authorities within horror films. Benedict argues “the location of events and the means of contriving a sufficient degree of isolation” requires there be “no possibility of simply engaging the authorities” (Benedict). This is part of the comedy of Scream Queens because of the few incapable, yet entertainingly idiotic authority figures. In the second to last episode, when attempting to get ahold of the homicide department, Grace and her father are faced with the fact that the incompetence of the department has gotten them all fired and they are completely without any authorities in the middle of a serial killing spree. Another example is the security guard hired for the sorority house who “enumerates the obviously ineffective ways in which she’ll provide security for the sorority” (Hale). This final issue is usually hard to believe, however in the surreality of Scream Queens where most of the characters seem to only be obsessed with their own status in the social world, its not improbable that most of them get killed off without help from any authority figure.
Conclusion
This paper has explored Grace’s character, who serves “as a sort-of-surrogate for the audience,” as the Final Girl in the formula of Scream Queens (Lowry). This is based on multiple authors’ similar definitions of what constitutes the Final Girl, but Singleton defines it most concisely:
She “is an adult, but still young, just beginning to rehearse the stereotypical obligations of Western grown-ups. She is engaged in dry runs of familial responsibility…[she is] just starting to form relationships with men; yet she is fiercely independent, and – to the exasperation of her flirty best friend, provided for contrast – unwilling to reshape herself to be what they want” (Singleton).
Grace, who is starting college, must learn to live on her own; though not for long as her dad’s overprotectiveness brings him to work on campus. Her strong will and independence are apparent and when she meets a boy and her focus is on finding the killer, not sex. Zayday could be seen as the contrasting friend, though she also has a strong will and independence that most people find intimidating. However, Singleton’s explanation of the plot formula for most slasher films does make one question who the Final Girl will actually be because with only one episode to go, there are still six sorority sisters that have managed to survive close calls with the Red Devil Killers.
“The final girl finds herself in a danger that has come from nowhere, without warning…The plot is structured as a countdown, its development recorded in a tally of fallen friends, until she is the last one left alive…and must engage in a final confrontation in which she is hopelessly outmatched. Her survival is all the more surprising, in the world of the film, as she is deliberately pitched as unprepared, untrained and unremarkable: pure civilian” (Singleton).
At this point, it could be any of the girls, who have, in their own way, shown their pluck if not their intelligence up to this point. Though the obvious choice is probably Grace, Murphy, Falchuk, and Brennan enjoy throwing curve balls at the last second and the audience may never even get a Final Girl.
The basis of Linda Williams’s essay lies on the connection between the woman and monster within a horror film due to their sexual difference from male figures and therefore their “similar status within patriarchal structures of seeing” (Williams, 62). This is an interesting way to look at Scream Queens because at this point in the story, the audience is convinced the killer is a woman, the twin sister from the gruesome bathtub birth that started the whole story. If this is the case, Grace already has an affinity with the killer because they both lost their mothers at early ages, and the assumed motive for all the killings being to avenge her death. In fact, Totaro sees Williams essay “as a bridge from Laura Mulvey to Clover by positioning the woman not only or just a victim, but as a symbiotic double for the monster” (Totaro). Creed agrees that Williams’s argument “has important implications for the female spectator” and that it allows for the “discussion of woman’s ‘power-in-difference’” (Creed, 6). This argument is important to the idea that men fear women not because they are castrated, but because they are “intact and in possession of all [their] sexual powers” and have the capability to castrate the man, therein lies their power (Creed, 6). At this point in the plot, only a few male characters remain, one possibly involved with the killer, assumed to be a woman. The power of women is evident within the show as men prove to be relatively useless.
Overall, the success of the show lies not only in its comedy and wit, but also in its fulfillment of certain desires of the audience for that excessive violence against characters they love to hate. Indeed one reporter believes the
“outright cruelty might be slightly more thought-provoking than the type of facile anti-bullying message that allows viewers to pat themselves on the backs…the idea that empathy might stem from self-interest also feels like a sly indictment of the viewer. Don’t we love to watch devil-masked killers stalking young women because we like to fantasize about what we’d do if it happened to us?” (Barr).
How can one argue with the selfish fact that as an audience member it is exciting and thrilling to watch people die and place oneself in the position of the Final Girl who heroically survives. Additionally, the emphasis on fetish and the strange, always prominent in Murphy/Falchuk productions, is especially visible in Scream Queens with all of its pop culture references, fashion and excess, as well as horror movie tropes. Creed states “the horror film offers an abundant display of fetishistic effects whose function is to attest to the perversity of the patriarchal order” (Creed, 5). Even Baudrillard believes “fetishism is the seduction of death, including the death of the rule in perversion” (Baudriallard, 128). By creating something new that is based in and strongly questions something that has been popular for decades, as well as creating a visual feast of beautiful people and gory deaths, Scream Queens has the potential to bring the horror/slasher genre to a whole new level of cultural reflection.
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Databases & Interfaces:
The Revolution of Dating Apps
Alyssa Renck
December 16, 2015
Critical Media Theory
K. Wark
The dating app phenomenon is far from a new fad, however, my recent obsession with them triggered the idea for this paper. The current market for apps that help you find your soul mate or hookup buddy is so saturated its almost impossible to choose – so I downloaded seven. Through my research for this project I have learned about even more niche dating websites and apps as well as exclusive versions that require invites or membership in an elite group. This paper will look at the current trend in dating apps and the game like quality that most of them perpetuate, through the lenses of a few key theorists from the semester (Wood). Lev Manovich’s idea of software in flux that acts as “our interface to the world” will be important to my argument regarding the inundation of our daily lives by these apps (Manovich, 2). I will look at Hiroki Azuma’s work regarding the otaku as database animals and how dating apps have turned their users into database animals as well. Maurizio Lazzarato’s concept of “machinic enslavement” is an important idea to examine regarding, in general, our use of technology for everything, but specifically how dating apps have changed the way we find human connection (Lazzarato, 12). Some attention will be paid to Alexander Galloway’s idea of the interface and its position as “an allegorical device that will help us gain some perspective on culture in the age of information” (Galloway, 54). Finally, and possibly most important, will be Hito Steyerl’s work regarding “the poor image” and “image spam” which will help to dissect the current circulation of multiple social media profiles and identities presented through databases, specifically dating apps and how this may define our current society (Steyerl, 31, 161). With a focus on Tinder, but keeping in mind OkCupid, Happn, Hinge, and Bumble, this paper will examine the current state of American culture based on the influence and accumulation of dating apps, specifically relating to the development of personal human relationships.
With the barrage of articles written about the consistent popularity of dating apps, especially Tinder, which is defined as one of the first heterosexual match making apps, there is definitely a kind of moral panic in the works (V.v Magazine, “Best Dating Apps 2015”). Half of the articles discuss the liberation and the accessibility that dating apps have created, while the other half preach the end of dating and the growing prevalence of “hook up” culture (see Nancy Sales for Vanity Fair). It is important to point out the difference in perception between men and women regarding dating apps and understand that as a female writing this paper, I will have certain biased opinions regarding the subject. The women interviewed by Sales in her article “Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse” come off as used and disheartened when asked about the idea of finding true love (Sales). However, a few articles written for Vogue.com by Karley Sciortino from the blog Slutever put the woman in control portraying the men she meets as rather empty shells of stereotypes (Sciortino, “Social Scene” & “Taking a Swipe”). Whether there is a moral panic or not about all these apps, the truth is that dating online has become the norm, in fact an article from Appzoom.com declares, “By 2040, 70% of all couples will have met online” (Torkington). How can we better understand the popularity of these apps and their persistent success? We must look at our culture’s media development and how that has influenced interactions between people.
Manovich believes “software has become our interface to the world…a universal language through which the world speaks, and a universal engine on which the world runs” (Manovich, 2). He argues “at the end of the twentieth century humans have added a fundamentally new dimension to everything that counts as ‘culture.’ This dimension is software in general, and application software for creating and accessing content in particular” (Manovich, 32). His examination of software and how it is used universally, shows distinctly how important our connection with and accessibility to that network has become. Manovich’s idea of software’s influence is particular to culture, which is highly relevant when examining dating apps and their shaping of our cultural landscape. Indeed, there is a distinct “shift towards dating-on-demand” in which “we’re collectively ditching serendipity in the name of algorithms” which is “affecting how we understand love and relationships” (Torkington). This significant shift can be seen in association with the ease and accessibility of the smartphone and new technologies that came with it (Bromwich). With the ability to quickly and discreetly “swipe through an app” users could do away with complicated and time-consuming online profiles (Wood). Additionally, the “simple, flirty interface” of Tinder “that is undeniably fun” (Wortham, “Tinder”) turns dating into a kind of game (Wood). Personally, I don’t open the app thinking I’m going to find my one true love, I open it when I’m bored and want to be entertained, shallowly swiping aimlessly through people’s profiles. Many articles also described the format of the apps to be “clearly addictive” (Wortham, “Tinder”), with one article focusing on other “Tinder-Style Apps for Everything” because “swiping is incredibly addictive” and you “get into a certain ‘swiping flow’” (Groot). Our seemingly obsessive behavior and attachment toward the software that mediates our interaction with cultural phenomenon as well as other people can be seen as a kind of transition into database animals.
Azuma discusses the choice the otaku make to live in fiction over reality because they believe it is more effective for human relations (Azuma, 27). He also argues that the world is a database, which is a grand narrative (Azuma, 39), and “the behavioral pattern in database consumption, where the body of a work is understood as a database (the invisible), while the simulacra (the visibles) are extracted from it based on the preferences of the consumer” (Azuma, 102). I read this in relation to dating apps as the ability to view a multitude of people, which are really just profiles, in one single database, which creates a sort of imaginary reality of people. Sciortino phrases it perfectly: “Tinder is a catalog of every type of person you can imagine” (Sciortino, “Social Scene”). Though the bulk of her article would appear to go against the otaku culture described by Azuma, which involves plenty of solidarity and avoiding of the real world (Azuma). Sciortino argues dating apps can act like the “only escape from our increasingly self-referential social circles. Forcing ourselves out of the pattern of our lives can be a really good thing” (Sciortino, “Social Scene”). In a sense, though, there is still an essence of isolation whilst using the apps and CEO of Tinder, Sean Rad, was quoted saying “it solves the problem of helping you get acquainted with new people you want to know” (Wortham, “Tinder”). Not only are they easy to use with plentiful options, but also the apps themselves are doing the hard work by finding the people for you. Indeed, “these apps unlock entirely new ways of interacting with an augmented world around us” (Wall). Could they possibly be our entry into other human’s field of vision, which is now so limited to ones own smartphone?
In his work, Signs and Machines, Lazzarato explains his idea of “machinic enslavement,” which “dismantles the individuated subject, his consciousness and representations, acting on both the pre-individual and the supra-individual levels” (Lazzarato, 12). Additionally, Galloway explains the importance of the existence of the internal interface because of its indication of “the implicit presence of the outside within the inside” (Galloway, 42). These small devices, which carry a whole network of databases and software have enslaved us, while still giving us the illusion that we have the possibility of interacting expansively with the rest of the world. In addition to having our full attention most of the time, we use “phones as credit cards, gaming consoles and movie theaters” so why not add dating to the mix (Bercovici)? Here I would like to focus on the capitalization that large companies have made on these apps. Lazzarato mentions “immense ‘databanks’ which function as market apparatuses” which could easily be used to describe dating apps (Lazzarato 37). IAC/InterActiveCorp is the main company that has bought up most of the dating apps over the years; it is the owner of Match.com and OkCupid as well as other well-known niche sites like BlackPeopleMeet.com (Kaufman). They declare they “are the only acquirer” of these apps, as though they are collecting a very rare item (Kaufman). But dating apps are not rare by any means and their market has grown universally (Kaufman). As a format, most dating apps have automatically tapped into our culture’s consumer mentality, literally turning “people into merchandise, enabling us to shop for lovers the way we shop for handbags on eBay” (Sciortino). One man who was interviewed by Sales agreed Tinder was like Seamless, an app from which you can order delivery from almost any restaurant, for sex partners (Sales). Sales even says “the act of choosing consumer brands and sex partners has become interchangeable” (Sales).
The fact that the same company already owns most of the sites and apps is more than a little disconcerting (Lempert). But, now that most of the bugs have been smoothed out, the most the creators can do is change up the interface slightly and figure out how to turn this goldmine of users into a profitable business (Bercovici). Apps have started to offer premium features that users must pay for in order to enhance their user experience and potential to meet their perfect match, but they have also started having ads (Bercovici). Just like the dreaded day when YouTube began forcing you to watch the trash you thought you were avoiding by not using your TV, the dating apps have had to find ways to make you look at other products to increase their profit. On Tinder, while you are swiping through, you may get a profile that is really just a series of ads for CoverGirl makeup or a new movie and on OkCupid after you send a message you must sit through an ad about a new game or cat food. Unfortunately, this works, as it does with any other app that has ads, because when people are invested in something like their love life or their pretend love life, they will overlook any obstacles in order to continue searching for their perfect other half. Lazzarato argues, “subjectivity is a ‘key commodity’ whose ‘nature’ is conceived, developed, and manufactured in the same way as an automobile, electricity or a washing machine” (Lazzarato, 55). An article in The New York Times believes “the city’s vast and constantly replenished pool of daters mirrors the capitalist principles of mass production and planned obsolescence” (Feuer). People’s desires are turned into sellable products.
Hito Steyerl discusses the prevalence of the “poor image” and how it “ends up being perfectly integrated into an information capitalism thriving on compressed attention spans, on impression rather than immersion, on intensity rather than contemplation, on previews rather than screenings” (Steyerl, 42). To Steyerl, the poor image is the imperfect, low res image that is constantly being generated and floats around in our databases, it “is a copy in motion” (Steyerl, 32). This statement, about information capitalism that thrives on short attention spans is very much a definition that can be applied to dating apps and their quick, easy user interface. The multiple profiles that are created for each app and the different images that are selectively chosen in order to best represent oneself, “present a snapshot of the affective condition of the crowd” (Steyerl, 41). Steyerl believes “the more people are represented the less is left of them in reality” (Steyerl, 168). This is interesting to think about in regards to dating apps, especially since many articles seem to argue “the app [Tinder] replicates real world interaction better…in life, we make instantaneous judgments about the people we meet” (Sciortino, “Taking a Swipe”). Nick Bilton in an article for The New York Times argues for the importance of split second judgments are to accessing compatibility both physically and socially (Bilton). Though it may seem shallow, these apps that move quickly and easily through people’s profiles allow users to “pick up thousands of signals” from just one photo, and technically isn’t this how we decide whether or not to talk to people out in public as well (Bilton)? With a reported 30 million users globally on Tinder, the dating app universe is already bursting with poor images and this has become the representation of our society in the interweb (V.v Magazine, “Best Dating Apps 2015). Articles vary in opinion, but I think there is something to be said about the endless possibilities that are presented with these dating apps and their ability to turn us into “maximizers” (Reich). Although another article, written by a “psychological researcher who studies online dating,” states the benefit of an expanded dating pool, I believe this oversaturation can cause people to never feel completely satisfied (Finkel). One article explains, “New York’s bountiful supply of romantic possibilities can actually erode one’s dedication to any single partner” (Feuer). This may just mean our social customs are in the process of transitioning into a more fluid form of dating where people don’t feel the pressure to settle down, instead enjoying the company of multiple partners forever. With a constantly changing cityscape and collection of potential matches, “people tend to become dispensable. It lessens the value of each person you go out with,” turning them into their destined poor image (Feuer).
These apps claim to simulate the real world, which is true in many ways: you start up conversations with people who you are attracted to or who look interesting, not based on a detailed profile about themselves (Feuer). And perhaps it’s not the most antisocial activity, though many people make it out to be. By not only stimulating interaction with a bounty of random “people you’d never talk to in a million years” (Reich), but also turning the activity into a kind of game shared between friends, these apps are stimulating social interactions. Indeed, “these impromptu Tinder parties are the app’s best marketing weapon” (Bercovici). As a cultural phenomenon, dating apps can be looked at as “social lubricant for the tech-savvy, upwardly mobile cohort of 20-somethings” in any city (Feuer). With the majority of users being “busy, fairly wealthy transplants who have left their friends and families” and are part of a generation built on networking, dating apps are the perfect way to meet people outside of a professional circle – its like LinkedIn for romance (Feuer). People may have become cynical about finding their “soul mate” or “true love,” but these apps are making it easier to meet people and develop social connections quickly, providing quite a bit of agency to users regarding who they talk to and who they meet.
In a modern world that is rife with technology and consistently mediated through interfaces, online dating should be expected and accepted as a cultural norm. Whether apps are used for casual hookups, meeting new friends, or finding your next serious relationship, the truth is obvious: it is harder to meet new people in public places. A need for connection, especially in those young people who have moved away from their network back home, has made dating apps successful, especially in big cities. Though Lazzarato’s idea of machinic enslavement, specifically as consumers of technology, is rather depressing yet unavoidably true, I believe users have agency through dating apps to choose their social interactions, while the apps just act as facilitators in our fast paced, on-the-go culture. Steyerl’s rather sentimental view of the poor image and image spam is a good way to look at it: yes our society may be represented by a plethora of mirror selfies and posed group photos, but through all the clutter there are real people who have found connections that lasted and haven’t given up completely on the idea of love. If anything, dating apps are entertaining and give users access to other people whether they meet in person or not, giving a sense of connection mediates through interfaces and databases.
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