Mięso przekazu czy skorupa ciała: dylematy odbiorcy współczesnej kultury audiowizualnej

The Flesh of the Message or the Bodily Shell: Dilemmas of the Recipient of Contemporary Audiovisual Culture The point of departure for the present article is a debate around the image of Izabelle Caro, which has proven to be received as shocking not because it transgresses the taboo of nudity, but because it violates the taboo of the ideal body. The model’s body has been presented to the broad audience in its “raw,” unbeautified state, thus forcing the viewers to acknowledge the existence of an ill body, a body remote from the preferred ideal, and―most importantly―a body which has become ill as a result of the strife to live up to the ubiquitous template of perfection. In the case discussed by the author of the article, the result which such a struggle yields stands in direct opposition to its goals. Pretending to be natural, the fully digitized―or, in fact, digitally generated―body of the model is painfully confronted with what apparently is the same body, yet a body entirely natural, although degraded and exhausted by the destructive power of the former. The viewer facing the image, in which the body is central and its background reduced to a blur beyond signification, confronts the exposed and emphasized discrepancy: its immediacy does not allow him or her to remain indifferent. However, the lack of background results in the model’s suspension in vacuum: her body fails to harmonize with its surrounding, as is the case with bodies functioning as empty or void indices. It is for this reason that an average “consumer of the image,” lacking proper interpretive tools, is likely to fail to tame such an image or to acknowledge its authenticity. Rather than that, he or she may be inclined to reduce the final outcome of the photographer’s work to computer manipulation