Body as Prior Text: Talbot

What strikes me most about the Talbot reading is the existence of gossip as a solidarity-creating feature, much in the vein of Tovares’ work on television gossip. Gossip inevitably creates a third party against whom some other set of parties are aligned and delineated—the gossipers become one group by virtue of their alignment in opposition to the one gossiped about. Tovares explores this in terms of how women discuss the women on the TV show Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire, in which the show itself allows the women, or a woman and her husband to align in opposition to the way the show presents itself and the women on the show. In the ads, however, first the “gossip” must be constructed, by use of features such as inclusive we and the response to “unasked” questions in the testimonials. These language features provide a site of “gossip” and thus create alignment in the group of women toward whom the ad is focused.

With regard to my own research, it is apparent as I’ve mentioned previously, that the women involved in these fic-writing communities create solidarity through their uses of language. Talbot’s work here gives me a good jumping-off point for looking at the ways in which the texts of the fic communities create “gossipees” to encourage alignment between the people who are doing the gossiping. The community of fic writers are in their own way a synthetic sisterhood, although perhaps a slightly more “real” sisterhood than the consumers of the lipstick ads in that they are able to communicate directly with each other and even meet up outside the internet. Nevertheless, the creation of community via these types of positioning moves I think will be a useful angle by which to explore the process of WK.