Duck Lips: Selfies from Self-Portraits

Duck lips. While I can’t personally see its aesthetic value, the thing that disturbs me the most about the entire phenomenon, is that the second most prominent thing about it (aside from the visual itself) is the constant ridicule directed at young women from grown-ass men. In a very Baudrillardian way, it is not the original duck lips themselves that I remember, but its simulacrum, its imitations by the ‘funny dudes’ I’d watch on YouTube, like Ray William Johnson or Smosh or whoever else. And, in a feverish attempt to rise to their extremely refined standards of social critique, I would laugh along at these silly vain girls. I never once questioned the fact that people who had entire YouTube channels consisting of videos where the camera is pointed at their performative face were demeaning young girls for their performativity.

This is a general trend I’ve noticed: the shame around selfies and their association with vanity, self-absorption, and attention seeking. I think it’s appropriate here to quote directly from a recent Instagram selfie caption of mine: “When I was like 13-18(?) I thought selfies were soooo shameful and vain or whatever, but now I know that’s just internalised misogyny and this is way more fun”. There you have it! Article over.

Well, not quite. There is some interesting evidence in favour of this conclusion: have you ever heard of the TV show Selfie? It’s awful, so don’t bother. Basically, it’s about a girl who is social-media obsessed. A successful ‘marketing man’ converts her into a good old classy woman and, in the process, you guessed it – he falls in love with her, or more accurately, who he is turning her into. The programme itself has nothing directly to do with selfies, and I suspect it was named as much just to exploit the pop-cultural capital of the word ‘selfie’. It essentially used it to title a show that re-inforces the notion that the non-traditional route of achieving social and financial security through one’s image is inherently shameful – because that is supposedly not what strong smart people do.

What this assertion conveniently neglects to consider, is the prominence of the selfie – more traditionally known as the self-portrait – throughout art history. Have you trekked through the Brindabellas to get to the Yankee Hat indigenous rock art site, and while you were there, did you snicker at their vanity: all the art they could have drawn, and they drew themselves and their marital ceremonies? 1 Did you call Van Gogh vain while admiring his plethora of self-portraits? 2 Perhaps I am getting a little too ad-hominem here, but allow me this: if the difference is that the examples I just gave are skillful works of art, since when did the National Portrait Gallery get bulldozed?

https://visitcanberra.com. au/canberra-region/national-parks-and-nature-reserves

https://waldina. com/2017/03/30/happy-164thbirthday-vincent-van-gogh/

Selfies are not a new phenomenon born out of the self-obsessed ‘Age of Instagram’. In fact, they have been around since the art of photography was invented. Here is the first known selfie… 3

#lofi #alt #indie #tumblr #grunge #aesthetic #35mm #film

Now he was most likely just an attention whore. Hopefully, however, this proves at least part of my point: selfies are not just a vapid pre-occupation. They can be, and are, works of art. Not everyone can take a good selfie. It requires knowledge of lighting and angles – which, interestingly, often coincide with film and cinematographic technique. Remember the emo MySpace era, where selfies were taken from as far as your arms would extend upwards and outwards – the famous ‘MySpace angle’? This parallels the concept of the high-angle shot in film, where the positioning of the subject relative to the camera renders the subject small, vulnerable, and begetting of more sympathy and affection. 4

Not just to be appreciated aesthetically, selfies can have a social and political impact just as any other form of art can. The term ‘art hoe’ may, to those who are deep in the Instagram and Tumblr aesthetic pages, bring to mind white girls in overalls and Van Gogh socks, Tyler the Creator’s Flower Boy, and Dodie-yellow (a reference to a popular YouTuber and musician, Dodie Smith, and her aesthetic). 5

https://publicdomainreview. org/collections/robert-cornelius-self-portrait-the-firstever-selfie-1839/

https://www.impericon-mag. com/au/6-incredibly-emothings-we-cant-do-anymore/

But this aesthetic is a usurpation of a legitimate movement, the Art Hoe Collective, created by and for queer POCs as a method of representation and empowerment. 6 Founded by a 15-year-old girl, the movement involves artists of colour, in their selfies and unique methods of editing said selfies, reclaiming their bodies, which have historically been either unacknowledged or fetishized. 7 The Art Hoe Collective (prior to its re-appropriation) is, in my opinion, just a small example of not only the artistic and political power of selfies, but the general artistic trend towards self-portraiture in all art forms. From confessional poetry (think of Sylvia Plath’s solipsistic Ariel poems), to the explosive popularity of vlogging and insta-blogging, to reality TV, to niche memes, and to selfies – the artistic eye is increasingly finding itself as the muse. I personally, with much frustration, have found that every story I write features a protagonist that is just one of the different iterations of myself. I don’t think I’m alone – particularly because, as I have witnessed in my English literature classes here at ANU, so often we either apply the author’s life to the interpretation of the text, or use the text to interpret the author’s life (to the chagrin of our Professors). Roland Barthes, when he proclaimed the death of the author, did not realise how nosy we are – but that’s a hyperbolic over-simplification of his theory. Perhaps we are simply now coming to realise that the most nuanced character that we can ever hope to portray is our self.

http://i.imgur.com/jk9ocEc.png

@arthoecollective on Instagram

@arthoecollective on Instagram

Alessandra Panizza