The Art of Self Invention : Image and Identity in Popular Visual Culture

Introduction : Hollywood stories ; The art of self-invention ; The visual world ; Faux identity ; Self-fashioning ; The popularity of disguise ; Love for sale ; Life imitates art ; The following chapters -- pt. 1. Self-invention. -- The impostor, trickster and spy : Martin Guerre ; Agnes ; Anthony Blunt as Victor Maskell ; Appearances matter ; Everyone lies -- Manners : The welcome guest ; Rules of the game ; History of manners ; Antique cool ; Deception and invention ; The modern subject ; On being calculating ; The science of the self ; Society as surface ; Playing the game -- pt. 2. Looking good. -- Identity : Status symbols ; Looking good ; Coded identity ; Finding the subject ; Self as surplus ; The irresistible allure of identity -- Advertising : The advertising industry ; The unnatural world ; The afterglow of advertising ; Subjectivity on sale ; Searching for the self ; Lives gone wrong ; Looking -- Fashion : The eye of the beholder ; The fashioned self ; The mind's eye ; Being conspicuous ; The depths of fashion ; The ethics of appearances -- Afterword : Visual culture ; Self-invention. "Both an exploration of the ways in which we fashion our public identity and a manual of modern sociability, this lively and readable book explores the techniques we use to present ourselves to the world: body language, tone of voice, manners, demeanour, 'personality' and personal style. Drawing on historical commentators from Castiglione to Machiavelli, and from Marcel Mauss to Roland Barthes, Joanne Finkelstein looks to popular visual culture, including Hollywood film and makeover TV, to show how it provides blueprints for the successful construction of 'persona'. She also discusses the role of fashion and of status symbols and how advertising sells these to us in our never ending quest for social mobility. Finkelstein's interest here is not in the veracity of the self - recently dissected by critical theory - but rather in the ways in which we style this 'self', in the enduring appeal of the 'new you' and in our fascination with deception, fraudulent personalities and impostors."-- Site web de Bloomsbury Both an exploration of the ways in which we fashion our public identity and a manual of modern sociability, this lively and readable book explores the techniques we use to present ourselves to the world: body language, tone of voice, manners, demeanor, "personality" and personal style. Drawing on historical commentators from Castiglione to Machiavelli, and from Marcel Mauss to Roland Barthes, Joanne Finkelstein also looks to popular visual culture, including Hollywood film and makeover TV, to show how it provides blueprints for the successful construction of "persona". Finkelstein's interest here is not in the veracity of the self - recently dissected by critical theory - but rather in the ways in which we style this "self", in the enduring appeal of the "new you" and in our fascination with deception, fraudulent personalities and impostors. She also discusses the role of fashion and of status symbols and how advertising sells these to us in our never ending quest for social mobility Cover Contents Illustrations Introduction Part I - Self-Invention 1. The Impostor, Trickster and Spy 2. Manners Part II - Looking Good 3. Identity 4. Advertising 5. Fashion Afterword Bibliography Index