The remote control and the couch potato
Introduction
It is not unknown for me to be completely engrossed in whatever programme is on the television, often irrespective of quality. I sit or lie on the sofa, remote control to hand and watch. I can watch for a long time. I can watch when I am clearly exhausted and should be asleep in my bed. I can watch when there are many far more pressing things to attend to. I can watch when the sun is beating down and there’s a gentle cooling breeze blowing. Occasionally, by my side, or in my lap, there’ll be a snack; more often, there’ll be a drink. I sit and I watch and flip through the channels. Every so often I feel little pangs of guilt – I should be doing something productive, constructive. In sum, I suppose I am being a couch potato.
Sometimes, after I’ve been away for a time – anything from a few days to the briefest moment – I discover that the remote control is missing. It is easy enough to switch on the TV; to change channels is a matter of raising myself from the sofa and walking about two metres, pressing the button and returning. Yet frantically I search for the remote . . . I am usually too angry and frustrated to see that this is ‘ridiculous’.
What are we to make of these episodes? As usual, many interlocking issues can be attached to these activities. Why do I do ‘couch potato-ness’? Why do I feel guilt? What are the discourses that resource these negative feelings? But further, what is the relationship between body, agency and technology that the remote control mediates? What does this interaction with the remote control presuppose about my body and that of others? How is this mundane technological artefact implicated in the heterogeneous ordering that comprises ‘television watching’ and how are we to understand its routine disappearance? More precisely, if in the preceding chapter we have shown how co(a)gents can be discursively assessed in terms of their propinquity to road rage, can we think of the absenting of the remote control as a form of heterogeneousdisciplining of the couch potato?
This chapter is thus concerned with exploring, through the figures of the remote control and the couch potato, the way that co(a)gents are scrutinized in discourse.
But, over and above this, I aim to examine how this process of scrutiny, assessment and judgement might not simply be the prerogative of humans, but is conducted heterogeneously – by co(a)gents themselves.
The chapter begins with a consideration of the relations between bodies and technologies. In particular, I address the idea that there might be a general trend to disembody humans, to circumvent the body, to attach directly the wills of humans to what technologies have to offer. However, despite these attempts to bypass the body, I will suggest that the body returns in various guises. I elaborate on this with reference to the remote control – an artefact to which are delegated the functions of various body parts, or rather, a body part complex. I also show how this association is thoroughly constituted – pilloried and valorized – in discourse. Thus, the couch potato – made up minimally of human body and remote control – is discursively surveilled (put under surveillance in a Foucauldian sense) in a number of ways, which try to recover the body, that is, that strive to purify this co(a)gent. In contrast to these ‘critical’ discourses, there are others that celebrate this association and extol the virtues of being a couch potato. Finally, I will suggest that this ‘policing’ of the couch potato is not exclusive to humans.
In exploring how the couch potato is ‘policed’ by other co(a)gents, I show how co(a)gents themselves ‘disassemble’ one another in unexpected ways.
Embodiment and disembodiment
No longer do sociologists complain about the lack of attention paid to the role of the body in social processes. There is a thriving intellectual industry examining the role of the body in a number of ways. Brian Turner (1994, 1996) identifies three areas where the body has been attended to in some detail: the body’s symbolic significance as a metaphor for social relationships; as a necessary component in the analysis of gender, sex and sexuality; and in the context of the study of medical issues. However, as Turner notes, within these various enterprises, the body and embodiment remain ‘illusive and ill-defined’ (Turner, 1994, p. x). Turner provides the broad outlines of what a general sociological theory of the body would require:
a complex account of the idea of embodiment which can incorporate the
‘systematic ambiguity of the body as corporeality, sensibility and objectivity’
(Turner, 1994, p. xi); a conceptualization of the social actor as embodied attached to an analysis of how the ‘body image functions in social space’ (Turner, 1994, p. xi); an understanding of embodiment as communal; a sense of the body as a thoroughly historical and cultural entity.
In the present context, this outline, highly suggestive as it is, strangely misses out on the relation between bodies, embodiment and technology. Or, rather, Turner does not explicitly mention the role of technology within the commonality of embodiment. This lack is thrown into relief when we recall Latour’s (1992; also see Falk, 1995) account of the delegation of bodily movements to the door groom, and the door groom’s part in the ordering of comportment. More importantly, if we accept Latour’s broader point, namely that technology is fundamental in the mediation of human relations, the absence of technology seems odder still.
Latour’s door groom example is primarily concerned with how an X (say, a hotel manager) delegates the bodily functions of a Y (say, a porter) to a technology. In this story, the will of the user of the door, which previously had to pass through
the unreliable body of the porter, now bypasses that human body altogether and hinges instead upon the door groom. Here we see an instance of the interlocking of human bodies and technology. It would seem that this is a process of dis- embodiment: certain functions are lifted out of a particular body and invested in a particular technology. Furthermore, however, we might suggest that there is, within the Western tradition, a more general ethos of disembodiment. By this I mean to connote the ways in which various activities are concerned with removing the body, making it redundant, delegating its functions, wholesale or in parts, to other entities. There is a sort of bypassing of the body, attaching human wills to the world without the interventions, the mediations, of the suspect body. Virilio puts it thus: ‘To expand, to dissolve, become weightless, burst, leave one’s heavy body behind: our whole destiny could now be read in terms of escape, evasion’
(Virilio, 1995, p. 80; see also George, 1998, whose equation of speed, ubiquity and power readily evokes the ethos of disembodiment). This can be supported anecdotally: in the Star Trek series, the move onto an advanced evolutionary plane seems always to entail the transcendence of materiality, let alone corporeality. Pure energy is a higher state of being. The idea of disembodiment is thus attached to a notion of progress. As such, it stands in contrast to Turner’s (1992) treatment of ‘disembodiment’ in relation to anorexia nervosa. He writes: ‘the anorexic avoids the shameful world of eating, while simultaneously achieving personal power and a sense of moral superiority through the emaciated body. Their attempt at disembodiment through negation becomes the symbol of their moral empower- ment. It is on this basis that we can connect the age-old practices of Western asceticism and saintship with the moral dilemma of Western affluence in a world of starving millions’ (Turner, 1992, p. 221). In contrast to this view of dis- embodiment with its version of asceticism that buys into gendered consumerism (the slim body), I am interested in disembodiment as a mode of luxuriance, where will is attached to the world without the unruly mediations of the body. Of course, as I note, this process is gendered too.
However, this ethos of disembodiment seems always to be undermined by what we might call the ‘return of the body’. In Latour’s example, the body returns in the form of discriminated-against bodies (and the bodies of allies) that must negotiate the door groom (see Chapter 2). Morse (1994) notes that (masculinist) dreams of disembodiment that take the form of becoming a cyborg in the sense of downloading consciousness onto the net are suspect repudiations of the body insofar as these dreams never escape the body. Slater (1998) provides an account of the limits of disembodiment and need for authenticity, including the display of the body, in relation to Internet Relay Chat. The point is that this ethos of disembodiment always seems to come to depend upon the body in some guise or other.
Here are some additional examples. In contrast to Latour’s door groom example where the will of one type of human actor is taken out of the body of another to be objectified in a particular technology, the following cases exemplify how one’s own will is taken out of one’s own body to be embodied in, and mediated by, a technology.
Recently it was announced that a remote control had been developed that could be activated by brain waves. In other words, the brain could act directly as a remote control. Brain waves are picked up, amplified and sent to ‘a second box [that] picks up the remote signal or message, kicks in and turns on the device (that is, the device to be switched on “by” the brainwaves)’ (see http://www.abc.net.au/
btn/storyhtm/96061808.htm – 28 January 1998). Here, what we have is a direct bypassing of the body, even of the fingers that are still necessary for the standard TV remote control. But, of course, this is not quite the case, for the remote control device has to be configured to the body and vice versa. Contacts have to be tech- nologically maintained, and the user’s body must also be reconfigured in various ways – for example, how does hair gel or dandruff affect the flow of information between brain and receiver? In other words, at this stage of the innovation process, we are still able to invoke the body and its vagaries which will eventually need to be ‘put right’ if the technology is to ‘work’. Eventually, the disciplining of the body, where we learn new regimes of scalp maintenance, will lead to its seeming
‘disappearance’.
In another case of technological replacement of the whole body, we find that the body is ‘discoursed away’, allowing for the exercise of pure and brilliant will.
Here we turn to the iconic figure of Stephen Hawking. Helene Mialet (1999) notes that he is totally dependent on a range of technologies and people to get through the day-to-day process of living. His body has, in large part, been replaced by a network which allows Stephen Hawking to function as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. And yet, this network – body-regime as Rose (1996) calls it – disappears, according to Mialet. What we are encouraged to see by admirers and, on occasion, by Hawking himself, is not a body – whether that be the disabled or the distributed one – but a pure mind that is in unmediated contact with the cosmos. Here, his medically undisciplined, heterogeneously hyperdisciplined body is discoursed out of view. But, of course, it returns – it is present in the labour of Hawking’s helpers, mediated in their obscured bodies that feed, clothe and clean Hawking. It is present in the form of those who put together and maintain the technologies without which there could not be the version of Hawking with which we are so familiar.
We can also consider how one’s will, embodied in particular body parts, comes to be mediated by technology. The functions of body parts are most obviously delegated to technology. For example, the zip is a convenience because it saves on the complex and repetitive manipulation of fingers and thumbs that was once necessary to use hook and eye fastenings. These body-part routines could be removed with the invention, and eventual ‘perfection’, of a mechanism that fastened two separate pieces of material together as the zip does. That is, these movements are delegated to the zip. Of course, there are a number of conditions that need to hold for the zip to operate in this way. First, the zip must hold the material sections together until the need arises to separate them. As Friedel (1994) documents, the early versions of the zip certainly did not fulfil this criterion. But a zip can be seen to ‘work’ according to other criteria, say, those of ‘convenience’.
So, by ‘lowering’, or rather by changing, the expectations of users – trading
‘convenience’ (speed of fastening) for ‘function’ (security of fastening), the zip can be ‘made to work’. Such a trade-off might entail new bodily practices where more caution is exercised in movement in order to ensure that the zip does not come undone. In the case of the modern, more or less secure, zipper, the shaping of our comportment is concerned with, for example, ensuring that surrounding material or proximal flesh does not get caught up in its teeth: we have developed new corporeal routines that serve the zip’s function. In sum, if certain body parts and their movements were removed, consigned to the workings of a technology, other body parts and their movements have developed to ensure the workings of that technology.
Another, more risible, example. What joy no longer to have to switch lights on manually. What a load off the houseworker carrying washing into a room. This was one rather unconvincing reason given by a Honeywell engineer for a particular design feature incoporated into the Honeywell smart house prototype. For Berg (1995), a ‘smart house’ denotes ‘the extensive application of information tech- nology (IT) to the dwelling of the future’ (Berg, 1995, p. 86). Honeywell’s main reason for the installation of motion-detectors, which could switch lights on and off in accordance with people’s movement through the house, concerned the attempt to increase energy efficiency.
To try out the system in a natural situation [Honeywell] invited several people to the test (smart) house for dinner. As guests entered the dining room, the lights obligingly went on. But when everyone had settled around the table and all was still the room was suddenly plunged into darkness. The Honeywell engineers had to ask their guests to flap their arms to activate the lights again.
On consideration, Honeywell now feel voice activation may have more potential, in combination with infrared remote control.
(Berg, 1995, p. 78) So, fine movements (instanced in the usual process of switching on a light), which were going to be rendered redundant with the new technology (which was operated by gross whole body motion), returned as the more or less skilled manipulations of vocal chords and arms, hands and fingers.
To reiterate, the purpose of this limited parade of examples is to illustrate the notions of ‘dreams of disembodiment’ and the ‘return of the body’. But what I have done here is simply exemplify, yet again, one of Latour’s (1993a) theses.
What we see in this ethos of disembodiment is the proliferation of hybrids: humans and technologies are mixed together in new, more convoluted and extensive, configurations. The ‘return of the body’ merely evokes the way that these hybrids
‘work’ – to function as designed – a whole range of other factors have to be in place, including the re-configuration of one’s own or others’ bodies or body parts.
Their ‘inventors’ have announced the arrival of such co(a)gents as the ‘smart- houseworker’ or the ‘brainwavechannelchanger’ a little prematurely: we can still detect those compliances that bodies and body parts will need to follow in order for these co(a)gents to become operational.
As we have seen in the preceding chapter, people do, on occasion, judge these co(a)gents: certain casons are regarded as more predisposed to road rage than others. In the following section, I will consider in some detail disembodiment in relation to the TV remote control, in the process documenting the various ways in which the body returns. Furthermore, I will show how one co(a)gent that is produced by the association between human and remote control can be, as mentioned in Chapter 2, named, objectified, rendered present and evaluated.
Sometimes there are complaints that it is a dangerous entity; sometimes that its full potential has yet to be realized. The point is that there are numerous discourses and practices out of which this co(a)gent emerges, sometimes stabilized, sometimes destabilized. However, as we shall also go on to consider, this ‘judgement’ might also be reconceptualized as a heterogeneous and distributed process where one co(a)gent constructs, or deconstructs, another.
The television remote control
‘Remote control’ is a very broad term that essentially describes the control of a device at a distance, where cause and effect are separated. Important here is the medium of communication between the control device and the reactive device (or receiver). There are numerous types of media. Sometimes these are physical connections – wires or cables – through which tones, for example, can be trans- mitted (as through telephone wires). Other times electromagnetic waves are used – infrared, for example. Infrared signals only work over relatively short (about 10 m) line-of-sight distances, especially as these signals are highly sensitive to atmospheric conditions that increase absorption and/or scattering of the signals.
In contrast, radio signals have the advantage of working through walls and radio frequency remotes typically have a range of 38 to 61 m (see http://hometeam.
com/lighting/remotes.htm – 21 January 1998).
The remotes with which most of us are familiar usually control the television and/or the video, and the hi-fi. In June 1996, the TV remote control was 40 years old. First introduced by Zenith as the Space Command Remote TV Control, it was marketed under the slogan: ‘Nothing between you and the set but space!’
The Space Command was a replacement for an earlier version that was connected to the television by a wire (the Lazy Bones model – The Daily Telegraph, 25 June 1996). According to Zenith itself, the first remote was the 1955 Flashmatic which shone highly focused light beams at four receivers situated around the screen.
Unfortunately, viewers often could not remember which receiver did what, and, moreover, sunlight could change channels. In 1956, Zenith started production on a remote control that used high frequency sound – this, the Space Command, was the first practical wireless remote. The most common TV remote controls now use infrared light. The remote control device flashes a rapid series of signals (like Morse code), each signal code designed for a particular function. The signals are determined by a microprocessor in the remote control, and are translated into infrared flashes produced by a diode located at the front of the remote. These different signals, repeated five times a second to ensure the receiver in the TV has