In the café today I picked up a copy of the News of the World, which has a bizarre piece on Jade Goody of the Big Brother racism furore. Titled ‘Jade on Trial’, it has a large picture of her face contorted with upset (the tabloid obsession with Goody’s physiognomy is another issue), and claims to have extracted the ‘confession’ of racism from her. Not then an ‘interview’ exactly but a ‘trial’ or interrogation. Goody is clearly desperate, repeatedly insisting ‘I was wrong’, saying whatever she thinks is necessary, having to mouth words doubtless drilled into her by her agent along with the imperative Admit! What she must give up is her claim to be a rational agent: 'I'm not anybody to say what's racist and what isn't'. She must assume as her own the disfiguring perception of others. The paper has it on video too!

There is a kind of ‘show trial’ logic here - the spectacle is not the confession but the extraction of a confession. This is the real object of interest or rather enjoyment. This confession is extracted under duress but cannot be seen to be obviously (eg physically) forced. It is not a sign of external coercion but of subjective breakdown. .

The spectacle requires precisely that the audience is aware of the ‘untruth’ of the confession - the speaker has had to assume words that are not his/ hers in an attempt to save themselves. This is their humiliation. It's not that she has coughed up her soul, but that she has been made to perform the idiotic ritual of so doing. That it is performed is enough – the unforgivable thing would be to refuse to appear on stage. At the same time what this ritual (which passes under the pretext of a judicial process precisely visible qua pretext) celebrates is - as semblance - the power of an apparatus able to produce this abjection.

This little ritual, needless to say, isn't confined to today's NOTW.

(modified 24/1)