Ashley Codner Prompt #5

Ashley Codner

COMM 123 - Professor Lingel

October 9, 2019

“Can We Talk?!”: Popular Culture in the Age of the Youtube Influencer

Jackie Aina’s 3.1 million-subscriber YouTube channel posts videos Tuesdays and Sundays, featuring a range of beauty-related topics from makeup tutorials and reviews to occasional fashion and advice-related content. Given the primary subject matter of the videos, they are catered toward anyone interested in makeup and learning how to use it. She often uses her own perspective and identity to filter the way she approaches the makeup, so a lot of her videos will comment on how the products cohere with her skin color, eye or lip shape, body type, and even ethical values. The majority of her audience most likely self-identifies in the same way as one or all of Jackie’s identifiers, and thus uses her judgement to inform their own purchasing or styling decisions. Jackie Aina’s most recent video, posted on the first of October, is a review of Lady Gaga’s newly launched makeup collaboration with Amazon. Titled “Gaga, Can We Talk?! Haus Laboratories Review,” the almost thirty-minute post is a first impressions video that offers a commentary on the rise of a “cult of personality” that is able to capitalize off of consumers’ ties to acquiring commodities in a way that appeals to their desire for a connection, or bond, created by the kind of exchange that takes place in the gift economy.

            The first level of the video’s reflection of the cult of personality is in the figure of Jackie Aina herself. The entire nature of the modern “influencer” lies in their ability to be someone that is relatable, or of the people. Benjamin could not have predicted the dynamic between the preservation of the aura and the design of the artificial personality that exists for YouTube stars; his description of an anxious actor’s relationship to their work and the “little contact with it as any article made in a factory” (Benjamin, 1935) does not account for the level of personability that is able to be achieved when one is able to simultaneously be the actor, director, and producer—even more so when one is “acting” out themselves. Nevertheless, his analysis on “the film industry’s response to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the ‘personality’ outside the studio” does resemble the natural distance that a camera creates between the object and the audience, as well as account for the level of theatrics within the video  (Benjamin, 1935). The video opens with a brief black and white segment of Jackie shaking dramatically while holding the package containing Gaga’s makeup line. It continues with Jackie saying the song-like introduction that opens each one of her videos. She emphasizes that her opinion is unbiased and completely honest in order to establish trust with her viewers. These theatrics and rituals are comparable to the kind of personality-creation that Benjamin describes in his essay. They give the audience someone to connect to by presenting a crafted persona, or aura, that is supposed to give the impression of a fun, energetic, trustworthy, and relatable woman.

            The carefully crafted artifice allows its creator to capitalize off of the connection that their audience feels to it by extending the brand to other commodities. There are advertisements before the video because Jackie Aina makes money off of her audience’s loyalty to her brand. Even Gaga’s creating a makeup line—no matter the extent to which it was successful—is out of an effort to capitalize off of the brand that she is known for. While Jackie says that she’s not necessarily a fan of her music, she is in tune enough with popular culture to know what associations Lady Gaga has in the eyes of the public. She states that the singer and actress’ establishing a makeup line is very on-brand of her, but that she is disappointed by the line’s lacking the extravagance and over-the-topness associated with Gaga’s reputation. Nevertheless, her launch represents an example of feeling established by gift exchanging. While there is no physical connection—there is no in-person hand-off between Gaga and her fans—the connection that they feel to her can be transferred to her product, thus elevating it beyond the impersonality of a typical commodity exchange: “if a value is placed on these (often essentially unequal) exchanges, they degenerate into something else” (Letham, 2007). The fans in the video’s comments express their support, and even love, for the woman and state their own associations with her: ”gaganess,” “dramatic,” “monster.” The title of Letham’s work, “Ecstasy of Influence,” is a fitting descriptor for the kind of loyalty and connectedness that fans can feel for those celebrities that they favor.

            Jackie’s video is one among an entire online culture of beauty influencers whose self-crafted personalities attract makeup aficionados of all kinds. The topic shows just how integrated popular culture can become, as well as how influencers can use their various media platforms to create a bond with their fans. Using Benjamin’s and Letham’s ideas on personality and commodification, respectively, provides a framework with which to analyze the various layers of impact that the video can have on its viewers and the implications for how people interact with popular culture—both on the side of its creators and its consumers.

References

Aina, Jackie. “Gaga, Can We Talk?! Haus Laboratories Review | Jackie Aina.” YouTube, YouTube, 1 Oct. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaQgls2SGfE.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Penguin Books, 2008, 57.

Lethem, Jonathan. The Ecstasy of Influence. Vintage, 2013, 66.