Document 7 of 13.

SHOW: Oprah Winfrey (4:00 PM ET)

March 3,1999 Wednesday 5:55 PM

LENGTH: 2895 words

HEADLINE: OPRHA TALKS WITH THEORISTS, PLATO, LACAN, ZIZEK, JAMESON, TURKLE, STONE, HAYLES, HARAWAY, VIRILIO, MCLUHAN, BENJAMIN, BAUDRILLARD, LYOTARD, DELEUZE AND GUATTARI, AND EAGLETON ON REMEMBERING YOUR SPIRIT

ANCHORS: OPRAH WINFREY

BODY:

OPRAH: Hello, how y’all doing today? I’m excited, we’ve put together a wonderful program. Today we are going to visit the tragic case of Mary Kay LeTourneau. I don’t know if y’all remember Mary Kay, she is the women teacher convicted of raping her former student. Joining me on stage are 15 theorists with varying perspectives who are going to talk about Mary Kay. So let’s start with our one of our most influential guest, Plato. What do you think about Mary Kay?

PLATO: Thank you Oprah. Reality exists in a limited number of eternal forms. Truth, justice, and beauty are some examples. Unfortunately, contemporary media systems diminish our ability to understand and experience reality. Consider my Allegory of the Cave, where a person’s stimulus is limited to shadows and paintings on a cave wall. That person knows nothing else to be real. If he or she were to experience the world outside the cave, disparity would result from the newly intense stimulation. The person would long for the cave and the surface level projections on the wall. The enormity of media messages is similar to the cave. Mediation of Mary Kay’s case is only superficial discourse regarding her situation. It does correspond to the eternal form of justice. She committed a crime and was punished. Society longs for the reality of justice and is satisfied with the mediated representation of it that are akin to the cave.

LACAN: Reality is just an illusion. You see Oprah, human development reaches a critical point around the age of one. During this “mirror stage” we realize that the world consists of things that are outside of the Self. It is the point where we recognize that our image in a mirror is separate from our Self. We internalize this difference through language which results in a lack between the Self and the Other. Basically, people define themselves by their perception of the Other. The Imaginary is where the process of sign construction fabricates the Self through language. It seems that Mary Kay is stuck in her Imaginary and she constructed her own reality that is congruent with her own desires. The problem is that reality (Real) has no referent because language and signs are constructed from the Self. Yet for Mary Kay, her Imaginary has taken over forcing her to base herself completely in the Other. Simply, she has lost her ability to differentiate her Self from the Real. In effect, her unconscious desire gained control of her actions and is manifested in her affair with the student. Our society is attracted to this phenomenon since she is acting on her true desires, behaviors that are nearly impossible for the rest of us since our Self is constructed through language.

ZIZEK: Exactly, consider public discourse surrounding Mary Kay for a moment. The media either scrutinized her for not acting within her moral or ethical boundaries or blamed her situation on something external to Mary Kay, primarily her diagnosis of bipolar disorder. These are characteristics of all public discourse, where one can not act outside of existing cultural norms. Essentially, social ideology prohibits us from saying/acting upon on our authentic desires. However, Mary Kay actions are authentic-she suppressed her own principles of sufficient reason that are attributes of the late capitalist system and acted on her unconscious desires. For example, Dr. Julie Moore and David Gehrke (Mary Kay’s attorney) publicly medicalized her actions with the bipolar defense, destroying Mary Kay’s authentic state. After the trial, Mary Kay stayed true to her subjective Self by stating that she still loves her former student. Thus she has not compromised her desire.

DELEUZE AND GUATTARI (speaking in unison): Lacan’s and Zizek’s perspective is too structured Oprah. Knowledge and human identity does not stem from a single event, the mirror stage, as my colleagues assert, rather they are structured like an interconnected web with multiple nodal points, not just one key event. Simply knowledge is similar to rhizomes not trees. Further, desire is not Oedipal, it materializes as a political response to capitalism. Hence, “productive desire” is a feature of political economy, creating a self sustaining process that collapses culture and restructures it simultaneously. As a result of capitalism, Mary Kay subverts culture by behaving in ways that are against normative structures. It is a social stigma for teachers to be sexually involved with students, especially students that are under the legal age of consent. At the same time, many people justify her actions, declaring that she is in love and should be left alone. In this situation, Mary Kay is redefining our social system by creating new definitions of appropriate sexual relationships, with modified rules. Hence, Mary Kay’s condition is schizophrenic for her and the rest of society.

JAMESON: Yes, May Kay is schizophrenic, but her condition is caused by our centerless society attributable to capitalism and language deficiencies. This is true for the rest of us, as well. Capitalism commodifies culture to the point where all we have is a dizzying array of images. This “culture industry” had created numerous messages about Mary Kay’s case in diverse media. Each outlet, including you Oprah, is rewarded financially for their accounts of Mary Kay. Even further, the onslaught of images fractures space and time distinctions. The repetitious nature of Mary Kay mediations does not allow us to adequately construct meaning of the events. Instead we are lost in a mediated world of smoke and mirrors, and caught in perpetual presence. Mary Kay herself, and the rest of us, is fractured by the multiplicity of images. This process leads to schizophrenia of identity, with no center. By examining history our society constructs meaning regarding appropriate sexual behaviors. Mary Kay broke those norms and subsequently was punished.

TURKLE: It is true that technology tends to fragment us, but it seems that we are now in conversations with technology rather than manipulated as Jameson asserts. For example, people who participate in MUDs and MOOs create their own identity during those computer mediated interactions. We have the capability to create our own self each time we log on. Think of computers as either a prosthesis/extension of the body or as an information space where our simulated self can communication other simulations. I assert that television has instigated this phenomenon. People are increasingly recognizing themselves as a simulation and television reality is full of artificial places that seem real. The bar on “Cheers” is one penitent example. Considering May Kay, she has multiple selves that manifest in each distinct media representation. Simultaneously, Mary Kay is a: mother, adulterer, teacher, criminal, victim, prisoner, etc. As a society, we are trained into thinking of reality at interface value, and the multitude of mediated responses to Mary Kay exemplifies this situation.

STONE: Yes, we all live according to multiple self constructed categories. Mary Kay’s fiduciary subject is being created by the numerous discourses that surround her. By declaring her love for her victim, Mary Kay is locating herself as a mother in love. Essentially, this is a self appointed construct that is fueled by her desire to find love and security in a multi-experiential reality. I label this process “warranting,” where physical and discursive entities merge to create a self. Contemporary society instigates a fragmented self with various possible constructions of individual identity. Desire fills in the blanks, so to speak, between the multiple categories. It seems that Mark Kay has allowed her own desires to overtake her behaviors instead of locating herself in another category, as a teacher for instance. Socially, the general public undertakes this process concerning Mary Kay, as well. For instance, I have heard people forgive Mary Kay for her actions using bipolar disorder, her troubled marriage, a learned behavior from her father, etc. as justifications for her actions. Here, people interpret mediated responses to Mary Kay’s crime while combing those with normative expectations of what it is to be a mother, teacher, lover, etc. to determine an appropriate outlook on her case.

HAYLES: Media content of Mary Kay is fragmented, but the other panelists fail to recognize is that Mary Kay ruptures socially constructed dichotomies regarding gender. Even though the Mary Kay narrative is not strictly cyborg, it provides interesting distinctions from “traditional” media discourse. Cyborg narratives are not based in human life cycles as established narratives do. Focusing on mechanistic operations cyborg stories tend to de-emphasize traditional thought and uphold gender ambiguity. Mary Kay as a non-traditional offender also displaces common stereotypes regarding normative social roles. At the same time, media discourse about this case is based on social norms and values. The displacement of and collaboration with instituted narrative forms obscures the meaning of “women” in contemporary society.

HARAWAY: True, Mary Kay is a binary buster, but unfortunately, she only supports the binary system that she is circumventing. It is evident that Mary Kay is a non-traditional offender, however, she was punished and severely ostracized for committing the offence. In effect, her actions marginalized her to the point where the only excuse was that she is a casualty of bipolar disorder. Now, she is still a victim of the patriarchal criminal justice system and can not function without help from something external to herself. Mary Kay has accepted that she is a cyborg, a revolutionary attack on the historic construction of gender. Sadly, media responses to her actions have not recognized the true meaning of her criminal acts, and have reduced the social discourse into a problem of coding. Not literally, but metaphorically reducing Mary Kay’s life into the “teacher who raped her student.” Numerous media organizations have followed the story, and until Current Affair disseminated the name of the victim, Villi Faulau, all news media concealed his identity. The obscured victim allowed news agencies to cover the story with experimental cyborg type content laced with ambiguity and multiple characterizations of Mary Kay. However, once Villi’s identity become public knowledge mediated representations returned to traditional sexist constructions.

VIRILIO: I think Haraway is correct in that media discourse has an inherent power built into it, yet I see it differently. Currently, the media is a vision machine that acts as a surveilling force in our society. For example, inmates have television sets in their cells. The sets replace the authoritative watch of the prison guard by exposing prisoners to television advertisements that remind inmates of what they can not have. This is especially true for Mary Kay, who can witness the multitude of media content about herself, reminding her that she has no access to her children or her new lover. Socially, the gaze of mediation has profound effects on us. The projection of impartial responses to criminal acts, legitimizes our criminal justice system. Here’s how it works: a crime occurs, police capture the suspect who is convicted at a trial, and is sentenced (punished). The crime destroys normalcy, since an injustice had been done. Criminal justice agencies sufficiently responded to the criminal act restoring normalcy. During the whole process, media agencies cover the story, acting at the “watchdog” for the public, yet the news only reports what happened without a critical perspective. However, the message is that “crime doesn’t pay” which in turn, legitimizes the state and news organizations that are acting under the guise of the “watchdog.” Thus, the inherent power differential is subverted, and the authoritative gaze of the media is projected to society without our knowledge.

MCLUHAN: True, the media alters social reality, but technological aspects are most influential in this process. More important, the content of any mediated message has less of an impact on society than the actual form of the medium itself. Toady, we are in an electronic age where information is instantaneously transmitted across the globe. These technologies incorporate both visual and auditory aspects of communication, similar to pre-literate tribal cultures. In contrast to many of the other theorist here, I suggest that this tribalization of information is making us whole again, not fragmented. Messages about Mark Kay circumvent the world at rapid speed. A television viewer in Sydney receives video feed at nearly the same time as a person in Seattle. All of humanity becomes aware of Mary Kay’s crime through wonderful communication technologies. Both have the same opportunity of exposure to identical messages, so it is the medium not the message that counts. Think of global media systems as extensions of the human mind where information is brought to us instead of the earlier systems where it was dependent on transportation technologies.

BENJAMIN: Very good, new media technologies have a positive impact on society. The ease of reproducibility of the image extends access to the masses who were historically restrained from frequent exposure. Mary Kay’s aura is lost in the mediation of her trial and actions. The representations are not authentic since they are stripped from all contextual factors and reduced to a video clip or magazine photograph. Now society participates in media events like Mary Kay’s trial and is able develop meaning about the case. As a result, culture evolves by incorporating this highly unique case into mainstream politics. We are able to discuss questions like: is the criminal justice system sexist, at the first trial should she have been sent to prison, what are appropriate relations between teachers and students? etc. Basically, social discourse about Mary Kay allows our society to question normative structures, very similar to political art that criticizes the status quo. If were not for the reproducibility of images, this situation would never occur.

BAUDRILLARD: Interesting, however, the reproducibility of messages has an entirely different impact on society. All discourse, including this one Oprah, about Mary Kay is simulation. We live in a world where representations have replaced the objects being represented, where the hyperreality of multiple signs are reality with no referent to actual things. Who is Mary Kay? A teacher, rapist, mother, psychotic etc. nobody knows, all we experience are mediated representations of her. Each is a different symbol of Mary Kay but none are true. However, we all have come to understand Mary Kay through the media and prefer the representations over obtaining depth of meaning. Examine news stories for a moment, virtually all forms of news content on her case provides superficial coverage of the “facts.” It is impossible to adequately tell Mary Kay’s story in 2 minutes or 1,000 words. Yet, news producers and viewers assert that stories are long enough. Mediatization is the process of the saturation of a media event through efficient technologies. So we experience multiple simulations of Mary Kay and “interact” with each media product. By communicating our opinions that are based on surface level simulations, we valorize those symbols into “real” facts. This is the case with Mary Kay. It’s all simulation.

LYOTARD: We have heard a lot of perspectives on Mary Kay today. The problem is that every theorist is just playing the language game of science. Let me explain. In tribal cultures narrative discourse is used to educate members, creation myths are examples. The story itself is part of culture and is legitimized through presentation. Scientific discourse can not create legitimacy through presentation only. It depends on two metanarratives that guide scientific discourse and serve as a credibility agent. The first is the Enlightenment search for knowledge and truth. The second is that science is an evolutionary entity that will produce a unity of wisdom. The other discussants here realize that these metanarratives are failing to guide scientific thought. To account for this, performability is now the new standard that establishes legitimacy. If a fresh theory can be applied to multiple situations it is reliable. If enough people understand this new theory they can discuss it with others, it becomes legitimate through the repeatableness of the theory itself. Essentially everyone here today is saying that what I say is true because I prove that it is. My response is, what proof is there that your proof is true? Thus I chose not to comment on Mary Kay, avoiding the trap of science’s language game.

OPRAH: Even I can see the tautology there…As you all know we like to save a little time at the end of our show to remind of us true meaning in our lives. We call this remembering your spirit. Take a look at a what Terry Eagleton, author of Literary Theory: An Introduction has to say about remembering your spirit and Mary Kay.

EAGLETON: In the afterword of my book I trace the history of literary theory. The main point is that all theory is connected to the social, political, and cultural contexts of timeframe in which it was conceived. Today may of your guests have disputed Mary Kay with the help of postmodern ideas. Cultural theorists are attempting to study culture and reconsider traditional science, but they neglect to see is that they are part of culture and impact it to varying degrees. Development of theory without exquisite consideration to its historic precedents yields disjointed perspectives. Fragmentation may very well be the sign of the times, but theory may contribute to this line of thought. It is like being a fish and studying the water while ignoring what is outside the bowl. Or even better, we may be trapped in a bubble that expands as we become closer to the edge, and therefore, do not have the capability to see the bubble from the outside.

OPRAH: I’d like to thank all our guests. We learned a lot today. Please tune in tomorrow for secrets on how to kill the Y2K bug. See ya.

LANGUAGE: English

LOAD-DATE: March 5, 1999