On Autographs

Very little has been written about autographs and the cultural and social processes that evolve during their making. Indeed I am not conscious of any work that deals with this topic. This is, in my opinion a serious mistake of the scholarly world for much can be learned about the theatre, the virtuoso and the social embedding of cultural events from closely looking at the process of acquiring an autograph. I will thus in the following develop two examples that might help to illuminate this topic.

Waiting for Patrick Stewart
I am at the stage door of the Gielgud Theatre in London. It is a cold night and Rupert Goold’s fantastic production of MacBeth is just over. I am still under the strong impression of the magnificent set-design and the brilliant performances and, of course, the haunting story of MacBeth. Me and about half a dozen other people are waiting for Patrick Stewart to come out to get his autograph. There is a huge, black Mercedes already waiting so we are quite positive that Mr Stewart will exit through this door. Everybody is rather anxiously looking at everybody else. Nobody knows how long Patrick will be here. Will he take loads of time to give autographs or just rush to the limo? Will everybody get a chance to get an autograph or just a few of us? We have all gathered together with a common aim thus we form a kind of spontaneous collective (though far from being a unity of any kind). On the other hand everybody is here individually with the aim of getting a signature on a piece of paper. We do not care if our fellow people will get the autograph as well. That is why everybody tries to position himself as advantageous as possible without being impolite (all the English rules of politeness and queuing apply, cf. Fox 2002). It is a strange collective really in which the mood oscillates between polite looks or smiles, signifying the collective aim, the shared admiration for the star and shovelling around trying to get a good position and getting ahead of the others. But the social structures of similar groups have been well explored and are not my main concern here (cf. Fox 2002).

I am concerned with the question: Why do I want to have an autograph of Patrick Stewart? The answer seems obvious: Because he was brilliant as MacBeth! Yes and no. Obviously his performance that night triggered my decision to wait for an autograph but it is not the main factor and I am quite positive that it is not the main factor for any of my fellow waiters as well. We all queue and wait because Patrick Stewart is famous. Because he is Captain Jean- Luc Picard from Star Trek. It does not really matter to us if his performance on that night was good, outstanding or mediocre. He is Patrick Stewart, celebrity, thank you very much. That is why we queue. Kate Fleetwood who gave a magnificent performance as Lady MacBeth, a part which is surely no less challenging, leaves virtually unnoticed we only reluctantly make way for her to leave (we might miss Patrick) and are glad when she is gone quickly. Surely Kate Fleetwood has all the quality of a virtuoso. Her performance, her craft and technique are fantastic and the piece of art she created that night was breathtaking. But we do not want her autograph because Stewart is the virtuoso for I would argue a virtuoso does not only need technical perfection in his art but also that tiny thing that we call celebrity (cf. Brandstetter 2007: 185). You cannot pin down what it is that makes someone a celebrity. Sometimes it is continuous hard work over years sometimes it is one movie sometimes even less. Fame is definitely a matter of luck. Hard as you may try you cannot force to become famous. Is it our luck that makes a virtuoso? I would argue, yes, it is luck and profound technical mastership in his art. It is the quality of being known to the man in the streets. A quality that is acquired through a great deal of luck. The virtuoso is as much admired for his performance and amazing technique as he is for celebrity itself. It is precisely the stories that are being told “around” an artist, the anecdotes and rumors, that make him all the more interesting and desireable.

So we have made some discoveries here. The virtuosos does not only need his supreme mastery of craft but also fame to be a true virtuosos and only of a true virtuosos will the majority of people demand an autograph. Yet, I have still not answered the question why people do want o have an autograph of a person.

Waiting for IanMcKellen
It is another cold December night. I am waiting at the stage door of the New London Theatre for Sir Ian to come out after the best performance of King Lear that I have ever seen. There are about a dozen people with me also waiting for Sir Ian to come out. All the rules of a true virtuoso apply to him perfectly. He is famous and he just displayed a supreme mastership of his craft on stage. So we wait to get his autograph. This little sign on a piece of paper that says “To Daniel Ian McKellen” - nothing more. A piece of paper with four lousy words on it, no photo, nothing else. Why is it that people want such a boring thing?

We should, to answer this question, maybe firstly make clear why people like or even adore a virtuosos. They primarily adore him for his art, but as we have seen above celebrity is also involved in this process. People who adore somebody do so in a very literal sense. The Latin rout of (to) adore, adorare means to pray to somebody or something. People who adore a celebritiy effectively pray to him or her. They do so in a very ritualistic and almost religious way. Instead of going to a religious service they go to cinemas and theatres to see their star or to celebrate a mass on his behaviour, to adore him. When they talk about him and praise his performance they do nothing else but reciting a prayer on his behalf. The virtuoso is a god. He is detached from the normal (and mortal) human beings. He is giant who overshadows us all.

What the admirer of the virtuosos desires is ultimately unity. Perfect unity that begins as a state of the mind but is a desired physical unity in which the admirer becomes the admired. It is a psychological process of desire that might stem from Freud’s concept of unity in the maternal womb (cf. Freud:). The devotee does not only want to be one with his star, i.e. be as close to him as possible. The devotee wants to be just like the start himself, for the star embodies all the qualities that are desireable and speak of perfection. We come back to the theme of a religious motive here. The ultimate desire of every one of the great religions is a desired final unity with a metaphysical entity that will last for eternity. This is the state of Elysium, of salvation. The virtuoso offers a part of this salvation to his devotees. As I have said before, he seems bigger to us than any single one of us. He has come further to perfection and divinity than any of us has. The follower now wants to be part of this unity or at least participate as much as possible in it. It is thus vital to him to be as close to the virtuoso as possible. Getting an autograph is thus a way of a) making contact with the virtuoso and b) an act of appropriation. The devotee is no longer an unknown nobody but can claim to have met the divine entity himself (a). Furthermore the virtuoso has blessed the follower by personalising or appropriating a part of the followers possessions (b). The virtuoso thus becomes part of the everyday life of the follower.

Of course this appropriation is not complete. If the devotee could, he would try to get something better from the virtuoso like say a photograph or a lock, i.e. something that makes the appropriation more complete. Indeed, if we keep in mind the goal of eternal salvation, i.e. eternal unity with the god, the devotee will try to be as much in unity as he can. The ultimate goal of an autograph is then to devour as much of the virtuosos as possible and make it their own to be in the desired unity with the god in eternal happiness. The ritual of giving autographs is thus very similar to the catholic ritual of holycommunion where, as we are being told, the lord gives us pieces of flesh and blood of his son to devour, to achieve unity with him. The virtuoso does the same. He gives away part himself, a very small part, some words on a piece of paper, but in doing so the devotee is able to appropriate a part of the being of the virtuoso, to become a part of him.

This may sound a little far fetched but I am indeed convinced that the same mechanisms as in a religious ritual are at work here. A god is normally not present in a visible and tangible form to us just like a virtuoso. But when he is tangible we try to encapsulate this very moment or apiece of the essence of this moment or indeed a piece of the essence of the divine entity forever. The meeting with the virtuosos is a chronotopian moment (cf. Foucault: 1986: 26) that needs preserving as it is invaluable and important. Just like every daily encounter the encounter with the virtuosos would vanish. But it must not vanish as it is our touching moment with eternity. Therefore we need a preservation of this moment and the preservation comes in the form of four lousy letters on a piece of paper. These four letters on a piece of paper then become part of a truly heterotopian moment (cf. Foucault: 1986: 23) which we try to store in a chronotopian room (i.e. the pages of a programme booklet). The encounter with the virtuosos becomes a museum, a shrine of remembering and eternal preservation of the sacred encounter.

The Answer
So far we have explored the mechanisms and psychological processes that are involved in getting an autograph. Still, we have touched but not fundamentally answered the question why people want autographs. Considering our findings before we may conclude that the acts described above serve the purpose of re-consecrating what has become profane. That is, in my opinion, the answer to our initial question. Our lives have become truly profane. What the church used to give us in terms of eternal salvation of spirituality, of the supernatural has been taken up by logic, science and the laws of the market inn our times. Yet, the human being seems to long for the supernatural connection to something higher, we yearn for a state where we are part of something that is bigger than ourselves. This state can be achieved in many ways. It is process of re-consecrating that follows a process profanation which took place during the latter half of the 19^th and most of the 20^th century. An autograph is then no more then the re-appearing of a desire that we have banned consciously from our minds but that we found we could not live without. It is an atavism that comes back to us.

Cited Works:

Foucault, Michel (1986), “Of Other Spaces”, In: Diacritics, Vol. 16., Nr.1, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 22-27.

Brandstetter, Gabriele (2007), “The Virtuoso’s Stage: A Theatrical Topos”, in: Theatre Research International, Vol.32, Nr.2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 178-194.

Daniel Schulze