Shopping Star as a semiotechnical code modulating Greek femininity in pharmacopornographic capitalism.
Shopping Star is a Greek reality TV show based on the foreign reality TV shows Shopping Monsters. Reality shows in Greece are having a huge comeback, allowing Greek television to finally gain back its long lost audiences. In the following paper I will try to review the impact Shopping Star has on audiences as an imposition of western governing subjectivities, addictions and desires on the Greek Female, through Preciado’s theory on pharmacopornographic capitalism. The show is an addictive media artifact that contributes to the circle of excitation-frustration by forming four overlapping subjectivities. Those subjectivities function as semiotechnical codes that promote consumerist behaviours and construct a technogender of the Greek Female with an intention of revitalizing the economy after the crisis.
In his book “Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era”, Beatriz Preciado defines our punk capitalistic hypermodernity as “pharmacopornographic biocapitalism” because manipulation of subjectivity is achieved through biomolecular (pharmacon) and semiotic-technical (pornographic) governing (Preciado 33–37). The pharmacopornographic regime produces and circulates subjectivities full of desires that can be transmitted globally but should never be fulfilled. Value is placed not on products but on the creation of desires, excitements, sexualities, seductions, and pleasures that keep the economy and the subjects longing for more. Those unfulfilled desires that are globally transmitted, those needy subjects that are always in a state of frustration guarantee the circulation of capital. Sexuality and gender play a crucial role in biomolecular capitalism because they define the role and the subjectivity through which someone will adapt in the circuit. In a sense Preciado is talking about the formulation of codes that are able to reform and police bodies from the inside out.
The show Shopping Star is a media artifact, a reality show that produces and mediates white heterosexual femininity in the Greek society. The ideal of the white heterosexual femininity is slightly tweaked and modulated in order to be adapted in the Greek context. Shopping Star is producing four types of interwoven subjectivities which are defined as: the fashion subject, the Greek Female subject, the condescending subject, the addicted subject. The production, control and mediation of those subjects allow the global reproduction of the pharmacopornographic regime. The media artifact creates desires (shopping and fashion) and subjectivities (fashion, Greek Female, condescending, addicted) that can never be fully satisfied and retain Greek females in the circuit of excitation-frustration. But above all, the behaviors and ideals mediated through the show are gradually transformed into semiotechnical codes of femininity and internalized by audiences to produce gender and sexuality.
Preciado reviews gender as a biotech industrial artifact and at the same time as a form of political technoecology. Male and female are terms that have been produced through industrial technologies (endocrinology, media, surgery) (Preciado 101). He views audiovisual techniques and media as an important factor in the formation of gender consciousness, together with body technologies and pharmacologic techniques (Preciado 117). In contemporary societies gender is constructed, reproduced and socially reinforced through media and medicine. Gender works like a network, raising the development of specific behaviors and subjectivities on semiotechnical codes that are being mediated through different platforms and formats (Preciado 118). The semiotechical codes of femininity and masculinity are unquestioned ideals that reside in the base of gender development such as Disney movies, heroes, Cosmopolitan articles, hormones, beauty ideals etc. Most of those perceptions have been circulated in society for such a long time that they are taken for granted. Those are the codes that form technogender in the pharmacopornographic regime. (Preciado 121–122).
Shopping Star first aired in Greece on November 2016. The show has made an impact on social media and contemporary culture with memes and short videos that ridicule both the show and the female behaviors it provokes. Each week five women are given a specific fashion theme, 4 hours and 400 euros to complete a look, while shopping in a new neighborhood of Athens. The show is presented by Vicky Kagia, an ex-fashion model, an entrepreneur and a fashion advocate in the Greek “star system”. Throughout the show an anonymous male narrator is commenting on the female contestant’s fashion choices and opinions, constantly mocking them in a profound way. The voiceover constantly makes statements about what all women do or like, recreating a specific perception about the “Greek womanhood”. This divine voice of male authority is a constant reminder that as Preciado puts it, “man is a perfect model of humanity and woman is a reproductive spectacle” (Preciado 73).
In the forefront of the show, appears the fashionable subject. The fashionable subject is portrayed by the ex-supermodel Vicky Kagia. She is a self-governing woman that knows how to dress well following the latest trends, her taste and age restrictions. In the beginning of each week, Vicky Kagia introduces a fashion challenge to the contestants such as “first date attire”, “stylish with sneakers”, “military chic”. The episode starts with an inspection of each contestant’s wardrobe. The woman demonstrates her make up ritual, her favorite pieces and outfits. The footage is then screened for the other contestants to critique. The commentaries are screened in parallel with the inspection of the wardrobe, to create tension. Although the contestants might have differing opinions, Vicky Kagia is presented as the voice of fashion authority. She is the fashion-police. As an ex super model and an entrepreneur she has the knowledge of what fits best and what are the requirements of a tasteful, classy and honorable woman.
After demonstrating her existing wardrobe, the contestant is taken to an unfamiliar neighborhood of Athens, where she explores the shopping market. She runs from one shop to another, trying on outfits while the parallel critique from the presenter, the male narrator and the other contestants continues. In the end of the shopping spree, the woman returns to the studio where she walks on the runway in front of the other contestants. After the runway the other contestants give her a critique and grade her look. On Friday, Vicky Kagia visits the studio and gives the final critique to all the contestants. Then the Shopping Star of the week is announced. Vicky’s grades have more value than the grades of the contestants; therefore her input is forming who wins each week’s prize.
It is obvious that through the idealization of Vicky Kagia, the creators of the show are trying to bring back into the Greek context the excitement towards shopping and fashion. Like in porn, the viewer consumes a fantasy that is embodied by Vicky Kagia. The rest of the contestants are only trying to reach this fantasy, forming the technogender and the new rules of Greek female sexuality. Their behaviors and their comments trigger the excitation-frustration circle (Preciado, 307). In a country that has recently been struck by poverty and an economic crisis, the subjectivity that is able to go out and spend 400euros in clothes, hair and make-up has seized to exist. The contestants in the reality show are not really there for the publicity or the final price; but for the opportunity to buy and keep expensive clothes. The shop owners have a chance at promoting their businesses on TV, while a spark towards shopping is gradually created in the gender codes of the audience. The ideal of the blonde supermodel is merged with Greek female attributes and a divine male voice over that polices female speech and defines appropriate female behaviors.
The fashionable subject lies only on the forefront of the show. In the background the show, the Greek Female subjectivity is being formulated. The Greek Female subject can be reviewed as the Greek femininity semiocode that forms technogender. The Greek Female subject is produced through the divine male voiceover, the portrayal of the everyday woman and the internal condescending criticism acted upon and through the mouths of everyday women. In this show the Greek Female takes all possible forms, it’s the student, the housewife, the mother, the grandma, the mathematician, but what remains the same is her mean criticism towards others and the strong belief that she is the fairest of them all. The Greek Female is defined and portrayed by the contestants, but through the male belittling voice over she is brought back into her position. According Preciado the body becomes an effect of widespread cultural mechanisms of representation and production (Preciado, 44). Shopping Star can be reviewed as an example of how technologies of communication and universalized media artifacts are trying to manipulate the female body and sexuality through representation.
The show circulates a code of internal female judgment, producing the condescending subject. The presenter, the contestants and the voiceover are all censoring behaviors, taste and choices. The audience at home is taking its own turn in repeating this circulation of criticism, not only on the contestant’s fashion choices but also on the way they behave, look, talk and speak. Audience, contestants and presenter, all female subjects repeat endlessly the practice of judgment and critique. The only male voice in the show defines what a female really is and what females should really do with comments like “all women love a wardrobe full of shoes”, “all women are indecisive”. If the female subjectivity cannot attire Vicky Kagia’s looks and taste, she should not be allowed to speak or have opinions. She is a worthless, female subject that deserves public ridicule for her fashion mistakes. The message is clear: only if you can follow the western ideals of fashion, you will be allowed to have a voice that will not be judged by the male voiceover and other women.
However the show itself and the process of watching it, creates a circle of excitation-frustration similar to porn, diets and other reality TV shows. According to Preciado although “the foundation of the pharmacopornographic regime is continuation of consumption” (Preciado, 343), “contemporary society has a tendency to film its own decay” (Preciado, 346). Shopping Star documents the death and fall of fashion and consumerism after the economic crisis. The shops are poorly equipped with all of their products being in clearance. Fashion rules cannot be applied because the clothes don’t follow foreign fashion seasons and many Greek designers are in prison or in dept. The show captures the death of the “fashionista”, the death of shopping as a recreational activity, empty shops and women who have to participate in a reality to fulfill their dreams of consumerism. When first encountering the show, I felt offended by the comments of the voiceover, disgusted by the behaviors portrayed and critical about its production and reason of existence. Although I had a critical approach, I gradually got addicted to observing the standard Greek Female in a fast forwarded shopping spree while she and other females where making fools of themselves by using the wrong fashion terms and offensive “backhanded” comments. Decay and fall of fashion and consumption in the Greek context was what initially drew me in to the show, but what I found there was the pleasure of laughing at the contestants, the Greek Female.
Shopping Star profoundly promotes the idea that criticizing and policing someone else’s choices is beneficial and pleasurable. Censoring and being censored by others gradually becomes common sense, for the viewer. The semiotechnical code of the show and the idea of self-critique gradually “get internalized by the viewer’s body and start penetrating daily life” (Preciado, 78). In Preciado’s theory femininity is equivalent with penetrability and the ability for the female to produce excitement in men. As Preciado states “contemporary biocapitalism relies on pharmaceutical and audiovisual digital industry to control the sexuality of those bodies codified as woman and cause the ejaculation of those bodies codified as men”(Preciado 52). The women who watch and play in the show have to unlock one achievement, to become fashionable and beautiful. This desire translates as an effort to achieve penetrability by the male figure and/or the capital. According to Preciado, all commodities lead to sexual pleasure (Preciado 309). In Shopping Star fashion, shopping, and self-governance become the means by which the female subject can achieve desirability or penetrability by the capital.
Shopping Star is representational content that can be read as a technology of sexuality and gender, trying to produce those subjectivities that circulate an idea of femininity while ensuring the circulation of capital through sexuality. Shopping and fashion, excite the viewers but the reality of poverty does not allow them to complete their desires. The stakes of becoming a fashionable subject are extremely high. To be fashionable becomes equivalent with being desirable and beautiful, it becomes equivalent with following the rules and the desires imposed on female subjectivity. The idea behind Shopping Star, the semiotechnical code behind the idea of womanhood, is gradually being digested by the addicted subject, while watching the show. According to Preciado, “surveillance and control have become internalized” (Preciado 79). The media product has achieved its goal through transmission. The audience has become a self-governing, self-criticizing female subject.
Bibliography
Preciado, Beatriz. Testo JunkieSex,Drugs and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic era. New York: Feminist Press, 2013.
