The Inscription of the Body:
Modern society is perverse, not because it has tried to repress sex and succeeded only in producing deformed expressions of the sexual instinct, but because of the type of power it has brought to bear on the body. Far from limiting sexuality, it has extended its various forms, penetrating it with its power..... those identified with certain places (the home, the school, the prison - (my addition:Hollywood producers and actors) - all correspond to precise procedures of power. They are extracted from people's bodies, from the infinite possibilities of their pleasures, and frozen into a particular rigid stance (read Taylor Lautner). (Michel Foucault The Will to Truth-Alan Sheridan p. 175-6)
As Foucault demonstrated at length in "Surveiller et Punir" it is these micro-mechanisms of power that, since the late 18th century, have played an increasing part in the management of people's lives through direct action on their bodies: they operate not through a code of law, but through a technology of normalization, not by punishment, but by control, at levels and in forms that go beyond the state and its machinery.... We must free ourselves from this image of power as law and sovereignty, says Foucault, if we are to understand how power actually operates in our technologically advanced societies. Foucault has two aims in this proposed series of studies: to show that sex - an area where, above all others, power seems to function in terms of prohibition - is not, in fact, subjected to power in this way and, second, to formulate an alternative theory of power, 'another grid for deciphering history'. 'We must at the same time conceive of sex without the law and power without the king.'(Sheridan MFTWTT 183)
.... Power is ubiquitous, not because it is able to assemble everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced at every moment, at every point, or rather in every relation of one point with another. (Sheridan MFTWTT 184)
Power is everywhere: not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere...One should probably be a nominalist in this matter: power is not an institution, nor a structure, nor a possession. It is the name we give to a complex situation in a particular society. (Foucault's History of Sexuality 93)
This inscription of the body penetrates the organs, the muscles, tendons, cellular structure, skin, blood flow, heart rate, in fact, the entire body outside and in.
To demand that an actor gain weight, lose weight, etc is to exert a certain kind of power over the body by capitalistic entities is to inscribe the body, to change it often permanently and this is demanded now if one is to inhabit the skin of the character. It is clear none of these people have seen Grotowski or Yoshi Oida become fat, thin, starving, old, a child, crippled, weeping, laughing hysterically, sexual, repulsive with thousands of faces at each moment and all before their eyes while they are just standing there in front of you. This recent emphasis on the literal is mind boggling. Wanting Rob as Eric Packer to work out until his chest is excessively barreled is sheer stupidity. Yoshi Oida could stand there before you and create the illusion of a huge barreled chest in minutes. What is this obsession with working out?
And why are Rob's fans so in thrall to this absurd and controlling ignorance of the suits?
The Hollywood suits hate Robert Pattinson. Rob has adulated Cronenberg in public at the Golden Globes. They hate Cronenberg who pokes fun at them. Rob did not come up through the ranks. He did not serve his time. He did not proceed by slow progression (linear time ghosting) to achieve stardom. He does not espouse all that they hold dear. Instead he reads, for crissakes. Books! Can you imagine that! He talks about them, he talks about auteurs like Godard who sticks his finger at commercial films. Even his own that succeed he sees something wrong with them. Robert Pattinson is here because of one seventeen year old girl who said, "It has to be Rob." "She threatened me," says Catherine Hardwicke.
