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"By bringing together and posing a pack of rascals, male and female, dressed up like carnival-time butchers and washerwomen,  and in persuading these ‘heroes’ to ‘hold’ their improvised grimaces for as long as the photographic process required, people really believed they could represent the tragic and the charming scenes of history" -Baudelaire

After last week’s Oscar’s ceremony, a number of critics lauded Ellen DeGeneres’s performance as “warm,” "accessible,” and most interestingly, “democratic.” The gimmick, of course, which earned her the most attention was the big Oscar’s Selfie. After all, what could be more charming than everyone’s favorite celebrities acting like ordinary people; seemingly thrilled at the mere chance to be on television? Thinking about this selfie, and the comment that Ellen was so “democratic” brought to mind the oft touted expression that photography is “the great democratic medium.” In an interesting way, the Oscar’s Selfie is the perfect encapsulation of that saying.

The original reason for referring to photography as the democratic medium was because it blurred the class lines between the haves and have-nots. By today’s standards, where democratic photography means publishing photos of high stakes life and death revolutions on Facebook and other forms of social media, that might sound tame. But in the nineteenth century – the camera was a revolutionary tool in its own right, as it paved the way for a more empowered polity by contributing to the erasure between high and low culture.

By way of example of this tension, take Baudelaire’s famous polemic against photography and the plebeian masses from 1859, “In these deplorable times,” Baudelaire warned, “a new industry has developed,”

"An avenging God has heard the prayer of this multitude; Daguerre was his messiah . . . Our loathsome society rushed, like Narcissus, to contemplate its trivial image on the metallic plate. A form of lunacy, an extraordinary fanaticism, took hold of these new sun-worshippers" (Baudelaire 296).

It was also fittingly, a revolution which, from the start, was affiliated with acting. In a quote that is, by today’s standards, bemusing and irate, Baudelaire raves about ordinary people re-enacting scenes from history:

"Strange abominations manifested themselves. By bringing together and posing a pack of rascals, male and female, dressed up like carnival-time butchers and washerwomen,  and in persuading these ‘heroes’ to ‘hold’ their improvised grimaces for as long as the photographic process required, people really believed they could represent the tragic and the charming scenes of history" (Baudelaire 296). For Baudelaire, re-enacting the scenes of history was best left to master painters with proper training, not any "washerwoman" with access to a camera.

In the nineteenth century, photographs were often used for the purpose Baudelaire describes: to re-create scenes from the past. Perhaps we see the same impulse in our modern cinema being used to recreate the past. But to be clear, Baudelaire’s objection is not against all acting. It’s against the democratic masses “any rascals” or “washerwomen” believing that they, too, could represent the “tragic and the charming scenes of history” without the proper training, without the proper sanctified feeling of high-class stage actors. A sanctioned high art operation like the academy is not what’s under fire here. As Baudelaire continues, the actor is still “sublime.”

"Some democratic writer must have seen in that a cheap means of spreading the dislike of history and painting amongst the masses, thus committing a double sacrilege, and insulting, at one and the same time, the divine art of painting and the sublime art of the actor. It was not long before thousands of pairs of greedy eyes were glued to the peepholes stereoscope, as though they were the skylights of the infinite[i]" (Baudelaire 296).

It’s easy to see why members of the academy want to be in league with that wily democratic writer instead of the elite stage actor; why the stereoscope, an inexpensive and popular parlor amusement which was an early form of cinema, seems the cooler, more American side of history to be on. But don’t the members of our Oscar’s Selfie (like Meryl Streep, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, etc.) have a closer kinship to the celebrated “high culture” actors of the stage? So really, how democratic is Ellen’s performance and her Oscar’s Selfie?

The selfie wasn’t this year’s Oscar’s only attempt at seeming democratic. Nearly all of the skits and jokes from this year's ceremony showed a preoccupation with the erasure between high and low culture; an erasure most often performed through social media. Take Jimmy Fallon’s opening sketch, where he visits a “troll” tweeter who is insulting actress’s dresses. After zapping into her living room, he grabs her hand and the camera zooms to her fingers for extra effect. In a mock interrogation he asks that random everywoman with disdain: “what’s on your nails? Cheetos?” Then there’s the world’s luckiest pizza delivery guy sketch, where “one of us” gets plucked out of obscurity (and tipped graciously).

But why bother with all of these social media and everyman stand ins? Is it possible that our stars are afraid of losing fans to the more democratic enertainment forms on social media? Or do they pretend to be, so as to appear more like us? It’s a loop. Photography’s democratic promise has always been galvanized by a populist threat. With the photograph, one didn’t need a painter for a portrait, and eventually, people could make their own art. The selfie is the latest revolution in that vein: an instant portrait of the self one can take hundreds of at a moment– but could we ever be our own celebrities? And do we like the selfie because it’s that carrot at the end of the stick? It promises us that maybe, someday, we too could breathe that rarefied air.

Ellen and Jennifer Lawrence are two stars who have made a career out of this circular relationship between fame and us “ordinary people.” Midway through the show, Ellen shows that she’s a fan too (just like us!), when she fangirlishly pockets Lupita’s Nyong’o’s lip balm while collecting tips for the man who will only be known as The Pizza Guy. Meanwhile, Jennifer Lawrence tripped (again!) on her way in, and everyone loved her all the more for it, because it was the kind of mistake "real" people would make.

Morever, the selfie in question offers catharsis by showing gracious and glamorous people in a very ordinary scramble for affection and popularity (poor Jared Leto was cropped out). The Simpson’s Oscar Selfie spoof is humorous because of this: it shows the underdog homer, being trampled underfoot. And then there’s the playful reminders that Luptia Nyong’o’s brother, Peter Nyong’o, is “just a college kid” who got into the shot. On the Ellen show this was a cue for uproarious laughter, as Ellen notes that Lupita, the recognized Hollywood star, is left in the back, but . . wait, why is that funny?  Because, like the pizza guy, Ellen is implying that Peter Nyong'o is an everyman who doesn’t belong, but celebrities welcome him anyway (just for the designated Warholian 15 minutes that social media provides). Aha, right. So again, how democratic is it, really?

Still it’s impossible to escape the elephant in the room: that the Oscar’s was sponsored by Samsung Galaxy, and that all of these selfies were intermittently interrupted by commercials for the same phone that Ellen kept waving around. There are those who will say that it’s just grandstanding to say that photography is the democratic medium in light of a celebrity photo op like this; that some can’t afford a camera. Whatever the case, it does seem nice that the re-tweets inspired Samsung to give $3 million divided evenly between St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and The Humane Society of the United States. But what I find most interesting is the charitable message of the photo: that you, too, can be famous. And if that's the case, are we a step closer to completely decentralizing the old system of celebrity culture, anyway?

[i] Charles Baudelaire. Trans. P.E. Charvat. Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists. (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1972.) Print.