On March 25, the death of Loana Petrucciani was announced in the press. While some articles focused on the sexist violence that accompanied her public life, few contextualized this violence or offered in-depth analyses of the issue. ---- Loana Petrucciani was the first major reality TV star, at a time when the format was unprecedented. Watching episodes of Loft Story, and in particular the prime-time show of the first season[1], reveals the lack of experience with the format at the time, even among television professionals: the barely manageable latency period when the housemates arrived on set, the chaotic set design by Benjamin Castaldi interrupted by the "unpredictable nature of live television" that could have been anticipated... All these indicators reveal the absence of established practices and the lack of experience of an entire society, upon which a television concept was introduced without any possibility of anticipating its effects.
The contrast with the professional contestants of today's reality TV shows is striking. By participating in the first season of Loft Story, they did not benefit from the professional experience of their peers, in addition to bearing the brunt of the fledgling productions that, moreover, had little interest in ensuring the well-being of the participants.
A pervasive voyeurism
In this particularly isolating context, the contestants had to rely solely on their existing social and psychological resources to cope with the unknown of the "aftermath," which was all the more brutal because the closed-off format of the Loft prevented them from adjusting to their growing notoriety, thus exacerbating social inequalities to an extreme degree.
This context also amplified the sexist mechanisms at work in the staging of women's bodies: the presence of cameras throughout the day allows for the scrutiny of the slightest deviations from expectations and blurs the lines between the private and the public. This blurring of boundaries is not specific to reality television: it is part of a broader trend of staging intimacy in the media sphere, in programs that blend biographical testimony, production team intervention, and the staging of psychologists called upon for advice[2], but also in more insidious institutional structures that make social assistance conditional on the most vulnerable members of society being exposed to their agents. The television format is only one aspect of this global voyeurism, which normalizes self-presentation for access to support.
The exceptional nature of season 1 of Loft Story lies not in the intrusion of cameras into the lives of the participants, but rather, on the one hand, in the sheer size of the audience that became participants in this process, and on the other hand, in the artificial separation of the contestants from their environment, depriving them of any control over the narrative of their lives by depriving them of the information necessary to tailor their presentation to the public. In conditions that have become extremely blurred between intimacy and performance, the contestants most accustomed to these intrusions become the most vulnerable: those who have been victims of violence in their private lives and childhood become prime candidates. This is what fascinated viewers about Loana Petrucciani and undoubtedly contributed to her victory: she appears human, sensitive, far from the stereotypical image of the bimbo expected by television viewers; she touches them with her sincerity, and it is this sincerity that seals her fate.
Loana Petrucciani cannot know it, but from the moment she enters the competition, she is condemned to endure contradictory demands, even in her private life, splashed across the newspapers: she is expected to strictly adhere to beauty standards, but she must not exploit them or use them for personal gain; She is meant to be the object of fantasies, detached from reality, but when the public learns that she has entrusted her daughter to care, she is accused of being a bad mother. She is asked to expose her life, but with each appearance, her palpable distress and the poverty from which she has never escaped are met, at best, with pity, and at worst, with contempt and mockery. While after leaving Loft Story, Jean-Edouard fades into obscurity, and Steevy becomes Steevy Boulay and appears as a commentator, Loana Petrucciani remains Loana, infantilized and scorned, punished for not being able to publicly conform to one of the two stereotypical tropes of femininity: nurturing or being the object of fantasies.
Establish and exploit the norm
From the very beginning of the show, Loana Petrucciani's image has been relentlessly exploited and commented upon: her distress and poor health are met with disgust and raise questions; the media's trial of her abandonment of her daughter is endlessly repeated; and her visible exhaustion, in the face of the mistreatment and trauma she publicly endures, is condemned. Her suicide attempts are treated as tragedies and the ultimate proof of her instability, never as the only escape left to someone deprived of her life for decades. Her attempts to limit the sharing of her private life after the show ended, to protect her medical information, and her repeated refusals to capitalize on her image, interspersed with attempts to publicly testify about her life, are interpreted as further proof of her instability, never as attempts to regain control of her public image in a context that completely dispossessed her in her absence. Her coming out as bisexual is an excellent example: the announcement of her attraction to women, followed by her relationship with a woman, without explicitly stating this sexual orientation, and at a time when her body seemed too far removed from societal beauty standards, prevented media attention from a male gaze[3]that would have turned her back into an object of fantasy. By coming out under these circumstances, Loana Petrucciani made it very difficult to monetize her sexual orientation; she is therefore rendered invisible in almost all articles following her death, including those from activist circles.
Loana Petrucciani's story reveals much about the workings of the culture industry, highlighting its dual function: reinforcing oppressive norms while simultaneously exploiting them, finding in them the primary source of its profits. An industry that, like others, exploits to the point of death, and that continues to normalize the punishment of the most oppressed classes, still perceived as transgressive in the face of contradictory injunctions that leave them no escape.
Marco Pagot
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[1]Available on YouTube.
[2]Dominique Mehl, *La télévision de l'intimité*, Paris, Seuil, 1996.
[3]The male gaze is a concept designating the cisheterosexual male perspective imposed in the dominant culture.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Loana-Petrucciani-Telerealite-surveiller-et-punir
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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