David Graeber, Michel Foucault, Parasocial Interaction, Ozark's dastardly characters

An inquire after the origins of inequality necessarily means creating a myth, a fall from grace, a technological transposition of the Book of Genesis – which, in most contemporary versions, takes the form of a mythical narrative stripped of any prospect of redemption. In these accounts, the best we humans can hope for is some modest tinkering with our inherently squalid condition – and hopefully, dramatic action to prevent any looming, absolute disaster. The only other theory on offer to date has been to assume that humans are naturally somewhat thuggish creatures and our beginnings were a miserable, violent affair; in which case ‘progress’ or ‘civilization’ was itself redemptive. It’s hardly surprising that most people feel a spontaneous affinity with this tragic version of the story, and not just because of its scriptural roots. The more rosy, optimistic narrative – whereby the progress of Western civilization inevitably makes everyone happier, wealthier and more secure – had also its disadvantages. During the nineteenth-century heyday of European imperialism, everyone seemed more keenly aware of it. While we remember that age as one of naive faith in ‘the inevitable march of progress’, Turgot-style liberal progress was actually never really the dominant narrative in Victorian social theory, let alone political thought. Few nowadays read the ‘traditionalists’ of the nineteenth century, but they’re actually important since it is they, not the Enlightenment philosophes, who are really responsible for modern social theory. It’s long been recognized that almost all the great issues of modern social science – tradition, solidarity, authority, status, alienation – were first raised in the works of authors like the theocratic Vicomte de Bonald, or the philosopher Edmund Burke as examples of the kind of stubborn social realities which they felt that Enlightenment thinkers (Rousseau in particular) had refused to take seriously, with (they insisted) disastrous results. These nineteenth-century debates between radicals and reactionaries never really ended; they keep resurfacing in different forms now. By embracing the notion that events unfold in cumulative sequences, as opposed to recapitulating some deeper pattern, has rendered us less able to weather the vicissitudes of war, injustice and misfortune, plunging us instead into an age of unprecedented anxiety and, ultimately, nihilism. The political implications of this position are, to say the least, unsettling. Historian Mircea Eliade had been close to the fascist Iron Guard in his student days, and his basic argument was that the ‘terror of history’ had been introduced by Judaism and the Old Testament – which he saw as paving the way for the further disasters after the Enlightenment thought. What we can now see is that the first two freedoms – to relocate, and to disobey commands – often acted as a kind of scaffolding for the third (freedom to create or transform social relationships). It’s clear that something about human societies really has changed, and quite profoundly. The three basic freedoms have gradually receded, to the point where a majority of people living today can barely comprehend what it might be like to live in a social order based on them. How did it happen? How did we get stuck? How did we find ourselves stuck in this form of social reality, and how did relations based ultimately on violence and domination come to be normalized within it? Perhaps the scholar who most closely approached this question in the last century was an anthropologist and polymath named Franz Steiner, who died in Oxford (UK) in 1952. In essence, Steiner's theory appears to be precisely about the collapse of what we would term the first basic freedom (to move away or relocate), and how this paved the way for the loss of the second (the freedom to disobey). Steiner's observations are also directly relevant to debates about the origins of patriarchy. Social theorists have a tendency to write about the past as if everything that happened could have been predicted beforehand. This is somewhat dishonest, since we’re all aware that when we actually try to predict the future we almost invariably get it wrong. Participatory democracy is natural in small groups but cannot possibly scale up to anything like a city or a nation state. —A New History of Humanity (2021) by David Graeber

Michel Foucault's overarching contribution to post-modernism is his theory on the way that power circulates in a society, not just the way power is delivered top down, but the ways in which people on the bottom actually subject themselves to power. Therefore, Foucault was also critical of the popular discourse that dominated the debate over sexuality during the 1960s and 1970s. During this time, the popular discourse argued for a "liberation" of sexuality from a cultural and capitalistic oppression. Foucault, however, argues that peoples' opinions about and experiences of sexuality are always a result of cultural and power mechanisms. To "liberate" sexuality from one group of norms only means that another group of norms takes its place. Although Foucault considered it impossible to step outside of power-networks, he thought it is always possible to change these networks or navigate them differently. According to Foucault, the body is not only an "obedient and passive object" that is dominated by discourses and power. The body can also be the "seed" to resistance against dominant discourses and power techniques. "The body is never fully compliant, and experiences can't fully be reduced to linguistic descriptions. There is always a possibility to experience something that is not possible to describe with words, and in this discrepancy there is also a possibility for resistance against dominant discourses." —The History of Sexuality (1976) by Michel Foucault

Parasocial interaction (PSI) refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers from the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms. Some viewers even come to consider a few of these media personalities as friends, despite having no real interactions with them. PSI is described as an illusionary experience, such that media audiences interact with personas (celebrities, fictional characters) as if they are engaged in a reciprocal relationship with them. The term was coined by Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956. A parasocial interaction, an exposure that garners interest in a persona, becomes a parasocial relationship after repeated exposure causes the media user to develop some type of identification. Positive information learned about the media persona results in increased attraction, and the relationship progresses, by observing and interpreting their appearance, gestures, conversation, and conduct. Noticing the importance of media in the area of psychological research, academic David Giles (University of Winchester) asserted in his 2002 paper that there is a need for PSI research to move away from the field of mass communication and into the field of psychology. In the past two decades, people have become increasingly interested in the potential negative impacts media personalities have on people's behavior. A study done by Keren Eyal and Alan M. Rubin in 2003 examined aggressive and violent television characters and the potential negative impacts they may have on viewers. The study found that more aggressive viewers were more likely to identify with aggressive characters and further develop parasocial relationships with them. More skeptical researchers share the idea of current Hollywood/TV as a social instrument mainly designed to "generate apathy or discord" through exhibitionism and mass manipulation.

Parasocial interaction has been linked to psychological attachment theory and its consequences have seen the same dramatic effects as real relationship breakups. However, the emotional distress experienced after the parasocial breakup was usually weaker than that of a real life interpersonal relationship. Though PSI with disliked figures occurs less likely than with heroes and positive characters, the situation of "love/hate" relationship with disliked characters still occurs. The positive aspects of PSI: media user's bond with media personas can lead to higher self-confidence, a stronger perception of their problems, and a stronger sense of belonging. Some results indicate that parasocial relationships with media personas intensify because the media user is lonely, dissatisfied, emotionally unstable, and/or has unattractive relationship alternatives. Experiencing negative emotional responses as a result of an ending parasocial relationship, i.e. death of a television persona in a series, is known as a parasocial breakup. 

According to Professor Jonathan Cohen (from the Department of Communications in University of Haifa), the level of distress to the individuals experiencing parasocial breakup depends on the strength of their bond. For other people, parasocial breakups can be as simple as avoiding the content concerning the subject of their parasocial bond. The most used measurement is the Parasocial Interaction Scale (PSI Scale), which was developed by Rubin, Perse, and Powell in 1985 to assess interpersonal relationships with media personalities. In 2012, Mina Tsay and Brianna Bodine developed a updated version of Rubin's scale by addressing that parasocial relationship engagement is dictated by the media user's motivations. They identified four distinct dimensions that address engagement with media personas from cognitive, affective, behavioral and moral perspectives. For example, if a scandal were to occur with an actor, individuals who had parasocial connections to the character they played, the media users may reevaluate their opinions on the fictional character. A parasocial breakup may occur with a fictional character, as a result of a scandal. However, the reverse, where a positive impression of an actor is created, does not apply the same way. Fictional characters, in this case, are seen as separate from the actor's good personality or behaviour outside of their role. Source: journals.sagepub.com

There’s been a lot of talk about why we watch (maybe even root for) dastardly characters, and the answer is because they’re such nuanced, compelling figures we become magnetized by their contradictions and mixture of charm and malice. Ozark challenges that assumption by giving us an antihero so plainly ordinary that there’s no sheer glee or revulsion in watching Marty try to outsmart his foes. When Mason tells Marty, “There’s gotta be a god, because there’s the devil. I think you’re the fucking devil.” That statement is a shock to Marty—and maybe the audience too. Marty is a drab fellow whose best quality is his ability to lie his way out of conflict. Jason Bateman takes his usual dry comedy style and turns it into a darker, more bitter tone. His forte is showcasing a non-chalant pessimism, delivered in a furtive manner that actually deepens it. Bateman addresses the possibility of a season 5 of Ozark or a movie down the line. First airing on Netflix in 2017, Ozark quickly became one of the streamer's most critically-acclaimed series. Much to the surprise of many viewers, the Ozark finale sees the entire Byrde family make it through alive, with Jonah shooting private investigator Mel Sattem. While the Ozark season 4 ending isn't what many audiences would call "happy," it does certainly leave the door open for additional stories in the Ozark universe.

Jason Bateman touches on the possibility of an Ozark revival, saying he's receptive to the idea. Bateman, who also served as executive producer on the show, explains: "Any job or work environment that was positive, and where you loved the people you were working with and you loved the product you were creating, you’d love to return to it. It’s hard to maintain something that is really pleasurable all the time. And we had that with Ozark. So I’d do it again in a second, because what we had just doesn’t happen often." Ozark season 5 or even an Ozark movie would provide the opportunity to further explore the Byrde family, since Jonah shooting Mel in Ozark's final moments sets up potential trouble for the Byrde family down the line. Source: screenrant.com

Justine Bateman: "The top TV Netflix show right now has numbers that would have had it cancelled after its first episode had it aired in the ’80s. Family Ties had a 32.7 rating at its height, meaning 32.7 percent of all Americans who owned a TV set (practically every household) had the show on every week during that period. The population in the US then was about 242 million, so that’s about 62 million people watching me every week. It was the Emmys, 1987. My second nomination. My companion was my younger brother Jason. I had bought my gold dress in the Mark Wong Nark store on Beverly Boulevard. Designers didn’t send you dresses for the awards shows yet. No one had stylists back then for awards shows. My Gold Dress landed me on the dreaded Richard Blackwell’s worst-dressed list. But this photo has been the identifying Wikipedia entry for “1980s in Western Fashion” for years. A real honor. Just sorry Mr. Blackwell isn’t alive to see that. One day, I’m in a movie theater, there by myself. I notice that a very famous actress is sitting in the row in front of me. This is a pretty big “sighting.” I lurch forward and tap her on the shoulder. “I love your work,” in a loud whisper. “Thank you,” she smiles back. Now, I didn’t like her work at all. So why did I do that weird thing? What was with the sycophantic “I love your work” from me? Regardless of my opinion of her work, she was spectacularly famous. I guess I just reached out compulsively, because it was Fame, right in front of me. It happens. 

Writer Buck Henry told me about this time he was at one of Colleen Camp’s famed parties at the Sunset Tower. Lots of actors and actresses there. He finds himself face to face with a very famous blonde star. He says that a few minutes later, he felt like he was “having an out-of-body experience.” He was there, outside of himself, watching himself, prattling on and on with this star who didn’t know who Buck Henry was. The prolific Buck Henry (The Graduate, What’s Up Doc?, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Heaven Can Wait, The Player)? So he can’t stop talking to her, outside himself. Fame is just this strange, societally made structure we keep alive so that we can have the hope that things can get better for us. The Fame structure in our society is really just us imposing our self-will, trying to force some “nice provision” for ourselves. As if to say, “I heard your music/I watched your film. I opened a vulnerable part in myself and I let you in. You are some artist that I don’t know, someone who acted vulnerable through their music, their acting. You and me, meeting in that place. I let you in and we felt safe.” That’s the best part of Fame. That creative identifier." —"Fame: The Hijacking of Reality" (2018) by Justine Bateman