About the Author
This website represents the culmination of my time at the University of Texas at Austin receiving my Masters in Media Studies.
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I first began to take an interest in machine-human interactions and relationships in Dr. Sharon Strover's "Communication, Technology, and Culture" class, where I was first introduced to the digital influencer Lil Miquela. Miquela was the start of my thinking about the ways that we integrate machines and technology into our daily lives. In following this line of enquiry, I found myself contemplating the way that in taking a recuperative stance toward technology, and in looking at our images of machines and tech through a queer lens, can reveal new modes of being in the world. I found myself transfixed by the ways that these creations are frequently the backdrop that allow humans a way to imagine a different world and a different self. More often than not, these imaginings take on a distinctly counter-hegemonic sensibility.
Halfway through “Communication, Technology, and Culture” (Spring 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic forced us into remote online courses. I’m writing this section on the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring a worldwide pandemic. Since then, I’ve completed the majority of my Masters remotely.
"Speak Up"
A technological spectacle of the human
Directed by Elliot Sellers , Lil Miquela’s “Speak Up” music video contains scenes of apparent DIY aesthetics and video haptics to depict the unravelling of her and Nick’s relationship. The video, set in an urban center (Los Angeles) with product placement abounding, attempts using "visual haptics" and harkens to a DIY aesthetic, a queer mode of production, but ultimately falls short.
In attributing visual clarity as synonymous with narrative clarity, the video is unwilling to sacrifice, no matter how momentary, comprehension. “Speak Up” demonstrates a DIY aesthetic that has evolved to a level of "professionalism
that is aimed towards…economic sustainability” without truly engaging in DIY (Bennett and Guerra 7). In the following offshoot, I look at how Lil Miquela’s music video, “Speak Up,” engages with a shallow representation of haptic imagery to motion towards embodiment and engaging the viewer in Miquela and Nick’s relationship. I contend with the fact that its producers do not successfully bring the audience into Nick and Miquela’s relationship as they are too concerned with product placement. Due to this, the video consistently denies the audience an opportunity to construct themselves within the couple’s relationship and create a more embodied viewing experience in the process.
Motioning Towards Visual Haptics
In “Video Haptics and Erotics,” Laura Marks theorizes the differences between “haptic perception” and “haptic visuality.” Haptic perception is defined as the way we experience touch in two forms, externally and internally. Externally refers to the literal sensation of the touch, while internally is the feeling the touch creates inside of you. Haptic visuality is the feeling of touch constructed by sight. To put it simply, haptic perception is literally feeling touch by touching or being touched. Haptic visuality constructs those senses from a visual input. Haptic images don’t only invite identification between the image and the spectator but “encourage a bodily relationship between the viewer and the image” (332). In having to work to construct the image themselves, haptic images mean “participate in the production of the cinematic experience," as they have to “work to constitute the image” (339). The spectator cannot just watch the image as a third party. Instead, they work to construct the image and in doing so, place their body at the center as well. As haptic images are frequently blurry or in motion, there is a lack of mastery over the image, forcing more attentive engagement from the viewer.
Click here to read more on the importance of haptics in Spike Jonze's film, Her.
Mastery and Visual Consumption
In “Speak Up,” the audience is never invited to construct the image. They watch Nick and Miquela’s relationship tribulations from a distance. "Speak Up" lacks visual haptics because the audience is encouraged to consume the images of Nick and Miquela. Examples of this encouragement are most evident when the audience sees from Nick’s point of view. For example, in the first bed scene Miquela is shot in a medium shot, center frame, and slowly strips off her sweater to display her bare back to Nick (and us). Later, she lies down in the bed and looks directly up at Nick (and into the camera). Miquela is in focus and lying still for our consumption. We can see all of her immediately.
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We are denied viewing Nick from Miquela’s point of view. However, his body, abdominal muscles and tattoos are frequently on display for our consumption as well. In the moments that his body is available to us, Miquela is also in the scene, converting the audience into romantic voyeurs, allowing us to clearly see their relationship crumble.
To put it simply, haptic images confuse the viewer’s ability to understand the image because of the limited information immediately available. In confusing, haptic images force the audience to work harder and involve themselves in the image to distinguish what it is and what it means.
DIY (short for Do-It-Yourself) is a mode of creation frequently conceptualized as queer. It operates outside of structures of capitalism. It’s long had roots in the punk and zine scene tying it to anti-capitalism and anti-normativity.
This giving-over to the other that characterizes haptic visuality is an elastic, dynamic movement, not the rigid all-or-nothing switch between an illusion of self-sufficiency and a realization of absolute lack...a visual erotics that offers its object to the viewer but only on the condition that its unknowability remain intact, and that the viewer, in coming closer, give up his or her own mastery (20, my bolding)
Laura Marks, on haptic visuality
The “Speak Up” video invites the spectator to view Miquela’s and Nick’s relationship as it crumbles, yet it maintains enough distance to keep the spectator from bridging the gap and constructing themself within the relationship. In continuing to investigate Miquela and her embodiment of the possibility of a mundane coexistence between humans and machines, “Speak Up” functions as a representation of a world between two teenage entities. While this is valuable in and of itself, “Speak Up” does not go the extra length to involve the viewer in this coupling—instead, sacrificing the momentum it had built to ensure that the product placement takes center stage. It becomes obvious that Miquela is technologically constructed to be seen. The “Speak Up” music video acts as a spectacle of Brud’s ingenuity and Miquela’s character.
Looking Onward: Despite attempts at authenticity, Miquela and Nick's relationship reads as thoroughly constructed for consumption. How is Brud playing with familiar music video tropes to get Miquela into the "mainstream?"
Thoughts on the "Speak Up" music video? Or Lil Miquela's relationship with Nick? Tweet about it using #QueerHMrelations