The Capitalist (use of) Sentiment

What role does sentimentality play in capitalist culture today? We need look no further than the X-Factor – a new series of which has just started, with its standard combination of hyper-sentimentality and cruel spectacles of ostracism, all underpinned by the ruthless pursuit of profit (which finds its pantomimic personification in the figure of Simon Cowell). The programme can be seen as epitomising the role which sentiment plays in the West with regard to the accumulation of capital. Take, for instance, the stage in the show when each judge retires to one of their many mansions with a group of contestants. After having sang, the hopefuls are then given a one-on-one session with the judge in which they are told whether or not they pass to the next round. Those who are rejected are understandably upset, but interesting here is the role which the judge Cheryl Cole/Tweedy normally plays in these scenarios. She – who is effectively inflicting this misery – commiserates dramatically with them, even sharing in their tears! In doing so, Cheryl attempts to highlight that she is a mere instrument enforcing the immutable laws of the programme, and as such not only is she exempt from blame for inducing this misery, but she should in fact be celebrated as a good person for attempting to partially ameliorate the upset which she herself has caused (and which is a fundamental aspect of the programme from which she profits hugely). This, then, is the role of sentiment in capitalist society: it is a conscience-pleasing mask underneath which the pitiless extraction of profit can be performed. For who is it really that is comforted during the maudlin embrace of Cheryl and her cast-off? It is Cheryl.

But sentimentality in the X-Factor is also a mask for the contestants, who upon entering the programme’s symbolic universe are expected to effuse saccharin gratefulness while articulating a sufficiently piquant life story to stimulate the sentimentality of the public. It seems that the contestants have to compensate for the banal selfishness of their idiotic dreams with these ritualised spectacles of mawkishness, in which is supposedly displayed an ‘identity’ through which a connection with the viewing public can be formed. The typical identity usually amounts to each singer’s idealised expression of their own myopic preoccupation with fame – but within this world the pathological pursuit of stardom is treated with respect. Although to ‘really, really want this’ is not in itself enough to get ahead in the competition, it is certainly enough to constitute an identity for the contestant, with this wanting-but-not-having of fame being considered fairly poignant by contestant, crowd and judges alike. Interesting here, though, is that for the contestant sentimentality functions in much the same way as it does for Cheryl – as an empty gesture of connectedness which conceals the ugliness of an ego gorging itself on wealth and fame.

In the X-Factor format the wider dynamics of the capitalist (use of) sentiment are thus apparent. Sentimentality transposes an ideal of beneficent selfhood onto the essential selfishness of the capitalist personality, imbuing the rampant individualism of society with a feel good sense of emotional – but not material – communism. For while in reality capitalism is an amoral, inhuman system that proceeds according to its own internal logic of growth and profit, terrifyingly indifference to the real-life concerns of people, the communal sentimentality which simultaneously cloaks and combats that system creates a sense of shared humanity within the fractiously iniquitous area of the social. Think, for instance, of the charity advert and its reliance on sentimentality to make the rich western public give money to the poverty-stricken Other – just as the X-Factor contestant must be made accessible by sentiment, so too it seems must the African be sentimentally subjectivised in order to receive charity. Sentimentality, with its privileging of virtues such as sympathy and its prioritising of the emotional over the political, therefore offers a way to rhetorically suture capitalism’s fragmentation of real-life relations – both global and local – between people living in radically different levels of material comfort.

But this suture of relations is only rhetorical – as Zizek has written, ‘Charity is the humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation...the developed countries “help” the undeveloped with aid, credits and so on, and thereby avoid the key issue, namely their complicity in and co-responsibility for the miserable situation of the undeveloped’. Furthermore, Zizek argues that capitalism is in fact fortified by the partially palliative nature of charity, since capitalism ‘needs extra-economic charity to sustain the cycle of social reproduction’. Sentimentality thus not only makes life tolerable by acting as a sympathetic counterweight to the pitiless machinations of capital, but in fact also aids the very perpetuation of capitalism: without the counterweight, capitalism would crash into the ground.

Sherlock: The Dispassion of the Saviour

The BBC’s recent showing of three hour-and-a-half-long episodes of Sherlock has been like a brief breathe of fresh air in the fetid atmosphere of summertime television – in which the terminally wounded televisual beast Big Brother howls out its last gasps, seemingly able to bore even those who aren’t watching it, and the Masterchef judges continue to harangue contestants and audience alike with their remorseless lack of charm or self-awareness. Sherlock – a re-imagining of the Sherlock Holmes character for the Google Generation – is an engaging portrait of the ‘consultant detective’, which is in fact – despite the iphones – a fairly faithful realisation of the eccentric spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original creation.

The plots of all three episodes have been ludicrous but enjoyable. However, the third and final (for now) episode was an interesting interrogation of the benefits of sentimentality in the face of violence. The episode sees Sherlock contacted by a master-villain who expects him to solve various mysteries in a certain amount of time. If Sherlock fails, then an innocent and random civilian (who for the duration of the task is being held hostage) will be killed. The result of this is a sense of potentially paralysing urgency which Sherlock must overcome. As ever, the trusty Dr Watson is on hand for support, but is increasingly made aware not only of Sherlock’s enjoyment of the macabre tests, but of his ability to undertake them without becoming overwhelmed with worry about the fate of the hostages whose lives hang in the balance.

Eventually, Watson finds himself objecting to Sherlock’s seeming indifference. The doctor increasingly sees Sherlock as something of an abomination because, while undoubtedly helping ameliorate crime, he displays no gushing sentiment towards its victims. ‘Will it help them?’ Sherlock asks caustically, to which Watson replies with a surly ‘No’, but as if actually helping them is not in itself the point. The point for Watson, the ‘everyman’ of the programme, is the gesture of sentiment itself – whether it is helpful or not. (There is also perhaps an element of the Big Other at work here – that even though the victims themselves are ignorant as to whether or not Sherlock betrays feeling for them, he is nevertheless expected to do so as a way of satisfying the Big Other’s expectations.) At one point, Sherlock, agitated by Watson’s sulky accusations of heartlessness, snaps: ‘There are plenty of people dying in this hospital. Go cry by their bedsides, see if it makes any difference’. Watson’s sentimental reaction is thus shown to be a facile, merely rhetorical palliative which Sherlock himself eschews in favour of cold – but ultimately more helpful – thought.

Redolent in the reaction of Watson to Sherlock here is Zizek’s observation that for most people ‘there is a sense in which a cold analysis of violence somehow reproduces and participates in its horror’. Opposed to this form of cold analysis is today’s predominant mode of addressing violence: in which the ‘fake sense of urgency that pervades the left-liberal humanitarian discourse on violence’ is underpinned by a ‘sense of moral outrage’ – both of which in reality operate as obfuscatory mechanisms that preclude any meaningful interrogation of the root causes of violent events. During the time that Watson is succumbing to sentimentality and moral indignation, he is in fact distracting Sherlock from what should be the more pressing task of actually solving the mystery and therefore saving the lives of the people held hostage. The bluff, caring, mawkishness of Watson therefore actually endangers the lives of the hostages, and yet it is Sherlock who during the exchange is tarnished with an air of impropriety.

Especially relevant here is Zizek’s take on a scenario which Sartre used to demonstrate existential freedom, in which a Frenchman is presented with a choice of either going to war to fight the Nazi invasion, or staying at home to nurse his sick mother. Only by exercising pure abyssal freedom (as opposed to adhering to preexisting moral codes of conduct) can this difficult decision be made. But Zizek offers a third option: ‘to tell his mother that he will join the Resistance, and to tell his Resistance friends that he will take care of his mother, while, in reality, withdrawing to a secluded place and studying’. What Zizek means here I think is that the hysteria of a morality grounded in sentiment – be it jingoistic, filial, or humanitarian – should be avoided when thinking about ways in which to actually improve upon the world. The dispassion of Sherlock’s approach means he avoids the mystification which Zizek claims is inherent in a direct confrontation with violence, ‘in which the overpowering horror of violent acts and empathy with its victims inexorably functions as a lure which prevents us from thinking’. Sherlock’s refusal to succumb to the effusive displays of sentiment expected by society is thus essential to his ability to actually help those affected by violence.

Unfortunately, the writers of the show were not brave enough to see the helpfully dispassionate intellect of Sherlock through until the end. Ultimately, Watson himself is held hostage. Following some twists and turns he is freed, upon which Sherlock seems to betray some brief gushing relief, therefore apparently absolving himself of his previous crime of callousness. It is a regrettable retreat into moral black and whiteness – Sherlock is revealed as merely Good, both in his nod to a sentimental normativity, and in his intellectual efforts to think himself and others out of a crisis. The more interesting point – that sentimental performances are potentially harmful in their ability to mask inaction with vacuous gestures – is abandoned.