Cultural Production as Self-Surveillance: Making the Right Impression

Cultural Production as Self-Surveillance: Making the Right Impression Gordon Downie Part 1: Image Consultants First Impressions, Style Doctors, Total Image Consultants, Impact Factory, Image Maker, Appearance Management, Lasting Impres sions, Talking Image, QC Image Consultancy, Colour Me Beautiful, The Divine Image. THIS LIST represents a few of the scores of image consultancies that offer advice on personal and corporate branding, inter-personal behavior and business etiquette, successful small-talk and networking strategies, body language, and corporate hospitality. Their advice is Cultural Production as Self-Surveillance 195 oriented towards soft or aesthetic skills and includes recommendations on dress codes and wardrobe planning, cosmetics, style counseling, communication styles, dressing for the media, grooming, and profes sional profile management. The corporate website of First Impressions asks: Do your staff convey the right messages and echo your brand values? (First Impressions 2006a) and states that: What differentiates a successful organization is itspeople. Effective, professional and motivated staffare key to gaining the competitive edge and personal image plays a vital role in achieving this. First Impressions has an extensive corporate client list and has helped many individuals and organisations to get ahead. They continue: First impressions count. Your appearance and behaviour speak vol umes about who you are. Knowing how to convey the right image can make all the difference to your personal and career success. Whether you want to fitinor stand out from the crowd, boost your confidence or maximise your career prospects, our professional objective advice really helps. (First Impressions 2006b) First Impressions offers awide selection of courses that include: Impression Management?creating a positive and memorable professional profile Do the right thing?business etiquette in today's workplace. Personal Image and Impact?creating a positive first impression every time Testimonials and case studies claim that former clients no longer "have to worry about what to put on each day, as anything I take out of my wardrobe will be fine!," and "with the consultant's help I learned how to disguise my bad points." 196 PerspectivesofNew Music with writeWords you can write the rightmusic with the rightwords lhi?inra? albomiti ids inni(smni!b@[rs anirsa soonttastt At writeWords we have over 20 years experience delivering tailor-made program-note solutions to clients as diverse as the music they compose. Remember!You only get one chance to make thatall-important first impression. Studies have shown thatpeople make up their minds about someone within moments of meeting them. It's the same with a new pieceofmusic. Sowhy takechances? Whyget left behind? Commentary 1: Image Consultants Image consultants offer individuals or organizations advice on how to manage the impressions they give to others in order to achieve their goals, be successful, and maximize their strategic advantage inmarket society. From the perspective of an individual actor or employee, this advice is structured to enable the subject to adopt a repertoire of behav iors thatwill maximize their chances of achieving personal success within corporate environments, such as obtaining promotion, increased remu neration, or some other strategic advantage. From the perspective of an organization, this advice is structured to enable the corporate entity to impose a repertoire of behaviors upon itsworkforce in order for that workforce to conform to the corporation's brand identity and to those behavioral norms associated with corporate culture. Such advice may include recommendations on dress codes, discourse management, or successful networking skills. In all cases, personality and identity is recal ibrated, remodeled, and restructured in order to make workers more marketable and increase theirproductivity. This is achieved by the adoption Cultural Production as Self-Surveillance 197 of impression management techniques that control the image individuals and corporations present to others. This process represents the expan sion of Taylorization or scientificmanagement away from the types of menial task optimization characteristic of assembly lines, fast-food restaurants, and supermarket checkouts, to the detailed specification and penetration of worker psychology and identity.With the expansion of free-market neo-liberalization in the form of Thatcherite and Reaganite economics?a process continued in the policies of subsequent adminis trations of whatever political orientation?those performance measures associated with commodity form and behavior have spread to encompass not only public sector services such as health care...