Television and online videos : life is a spectacle.

Screen shot of Channel Four’s Super skinny vs. Super sized, Isn’t It a Pitta.

Channel Four have produced a life style programme entitled Supersized vs. Super skinny (Jessen & Richards, 2009) which is a documentary that invites paired participants who have an eating disorder to consume each others daily food portions for a week. The programme titled “Isn’t It a Pitta” places these participants in an Eating Clinic with some medical supervision afforded by the co star called Dr. Christian Jessen. While watching this episode I felt the main focus of this short video appeared to be about the spectacle of the vast array of food that was to be consumed by the under eating participant and the meager amount of rations which was to eaten by the overeater.

            This particular episode with its visual abundance of food usually consumed in a 24 hour period by the over eating participant and the miniscule amount for the under eating participant only serves to reinforce the stereotyped view many people harbour towards people with an eating disorder. It represents a view that people who have eating disorders can exercise the same control mechanisms attributed to everyone including the choice to over or under eat. The term spectacle (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001) was first used by Guy Debord a French theorist to explain how visual representations viewed by masses of people can manifest a normalizing view of the dominant culture and society.

            If this view is the dominant message getting through in the media and if repeated enough times people actually begin to feel that this view must be true. Messages that deal with aspects of behaviour directly attributed to choice and the consequences of those choices begin to take on a moralising effect, as we somehow judge people with eating disorders as behaving in a way that is not like everyone else and therefore wrong.     

            This predisposition to judge is historically apparent in Hieronymus Bosch’s 1485 painting titled ‘The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things’ which served as a visual reminder about indulging in vices such as gluttony, avarice, sloth etc and the subsequent consequence of Hell, Heaven, Judgment and Death. 500 years on and we still have the propensity to make judgments based on what we hear and see whether it be through the visual media of 21^st century video or medieval paintings.

Hieronymus Bosch (1485), Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things.

Oil on wooden panel.

References :

Jessen, C. Dr. (presenter) & Richards, A. (presenter) 2009. Richard Thomas (Head of Production). Isn’t It a Pitta. Britain: Channel 4.

Sturken, M. and Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of looking an introduction to visual culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Images:

Jessen, C. Dr. (presenter) & Richards, A. (presenter) 2009. Supersized vs. Superskinny.[video webcast]. Retrieved 28 September, 2010 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BUzYNJzzMo

Bosch, H. (1485). Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things.[Image]. Retrieved 27 September 2010 from commons.wikimedia.orghttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hieronymus_Bosch-_The_Seven_Deadly_Sins_and_the_Four_Last_Things_-_Gluttony.JPG