Narcissism and abject aesthetics

In this article, we explore the tendency of a number of television and art shows to challenge the usual cosmetic surgery industry’s focus on the before and after images and instead bring to central stage the time of surgery itself, when the body is immobilized, cut open and remoulded. In this context, we refer to the television series Nip/Tuck and also to the art shows of Jonathan Yeo’ You’re Only Young Twice and Anthony C. Berlet’s I Am Art: An Expression of the Visual & Artistic Process of Plastic Surgery. What these television series and art shows have in common is an interest in what we call abject aesthetics, in which the anesthetized, immobile (docile) bodies are fully exposed to the viewer’s gaze as they are cut open to allow intrusion of blood into the diegetic space, creating a breakdown of bodily borders as faces and bodies are opened up and skin is pulled from side to side. We argue that the manifested and enjoyed aggressivity towards bodies is an expression of an increased level of social narcissism, which besides producing an obsession with (adulation for) an ideal body image it simultaneously fosters a strong feeling of aggressivity towards the very ideal, hence the creation in fantasy of scenarios in which the overly restrictive and deadening ideal is torn apart to reveal its abject underside. Finally, we explore the workings of this economy of revealing and concealing, by foregrounding the concept of the abject and by staging an encounter with the grotesque in order to offer a critical perspective on the beauty ideal.