Revisiting 2009 Scholar KCF at Christmas
As I was telling the automated robot system the make (Chevrolet), model (Silverado), and year (2008) of the truck we needed to jump because the battery decided it was too cold to rev up, I thought back to 2008 and what a different world it was. Well, maybe the world wasn’t so different, but the feelings I had about the world were maybe filtered through a more positive lens of hope, optimism and possibility. To fight through the current dystopian lens of fascism, religious fervor, and pessimism takes purposeful work in 2024. In 2008 I was still a graduate student. 2008 feels like less than ten years ago for me. In reality 16 years have passed. A teenager worth of time, and perhaps I’m reminded of the extreme hormonal rages and depths of despair of my 16 year old year of life from the vantage of 43. A good reminder that one is only 16 once, and those rages and despairs of then and now will too pass. Truly, nothing lasts forever. Though some things seem to persist, transform, and take new shapes and forms.
In 2009 I had the pleasure of writing a guest blog post on my friend, Dr. Sara L. Puotinen’s TROUBLE Blog (LINK). Sara’s Trouble blog was an active digital space she wrote and cultivated from 2009-2018 with the first four years being a regular space of contemplation and the remainders more sporadic. She notes the space was created to, “give serious attention to making, being in and staying in TROUBLE (emphasis hers) and to function as a writing, researching and teaching tool.” It is in the spirit of revisiting 2008-2009 scholar KCF that I present a gently revised version of the original blog post about the children’s toy - Elf on the Shelf. I’m intrigued by both my current nostalgia for a turbulent 2008/2009 era and the similarities and even more resonant need to explore the surveillance culture that has expanded beyond my wildest thoughts over the last 16 years. To be aligned with the Chicanx struggle, is to be inherently against surveillance mechanisms which I’m reminded of as this portent Latino USA episode on new border patrol panopticons called “The Border Has Eyes”. The Scholar KCF is busying writing the companion essay tracing the Elf on the Shelf to our current moment in accepting surveillance in new ways like with the rise of our data and online actions being mined by companies like Meta (Instagram launched in 2010) on a different timeline. Might we consider a direct link between Elf on the Shelf and our current resignation of simply accepting forms of surveillance as “normal” in the 21st century? The companion essay would also investigate the linking of consumerism and our current iteration of national identity fueled for some through the targeted advertisement of products we “need” through Meta (and other companies’) surveillance of our internet activities. As it is, current Artist KCF presents this portal to some thinkings from the past for the purpose of inspiring our thinkings in the present.
One last note before we begin, when the post came out in 2009, someone neither Sara nor I knew commented on the post that I was essentially a feminist killjoy. In 2024 I can’t locate the original comment, but in my recollection, she condemned my analysis because as a childless person I could’t know what it’s like to be a parent. And while I still remain childless, I do enjoy children and I care about their realities now and into the future. I will continue to share my thoughts on children’s toys because as an interdependently connected member of community, I care about these issues and will risk the label of feminist killjoy to which I will happily and boldly claim in 2008/2009, sixteen years later, and hopefully still sixteen and many years beyond.
The Elf on the Shelf and other Holiday Panopticonisms
It’s not very often that I am able to read Foucault for pleasure, and for that I must thank the wonderful scholar blogger, Dr. Sara Puotinen. Theory is only relevant when it can be applied to one’s own life, and so when I had a revelation when becoming acquainted with “the new holiday tradition” of the Elf on the Shelf that it actually is a representation of Foucault’s panopticon I just could not help but scream it from the rooftops for all to hear. When Sara asked me to do a guest blog on the subject I was more than happy to, because as she notes, troublemaking takes many forms and I have a hunch that my thoughts on Elf on the Shelf (and even the great Santa Claus) might cause some “trouble” for those who hold these figures of surveillance dear.
“The Elf on the Shelf is watching you…”
Scream
Let me take you back to the beginning of this story, last year one of my high school friends who is married with two children started photographing this skinny elf around her house in different positions and places. She called him “Eddy Peppermints” and I thought to myself, that’s cute, I wonder where she came up with that idea. I wasn’t surprised then when this Christmas rolled around Eddy re-emerged causing more mischief in her house for her boys. It was only when I spotted the “Elf on a Shelf kit” at the Highland Park Barnes and Noble that things began to take a dark turn.
When I picked up the Elf on the Shelf I realized that my friend had not simply made this up herself, but rather she was ahead of the Elf on the Shelf explosion where the Elf began showing up everywhere! (My chiropractor in between back adjustments exclaimed to me that her kids just love their little elf!) But what became the most alarming was the description on the back of the box detailing exactly how the Elf on the Shelf should function as your very own new family, Christmas tradition. I’m not sure if this exactly what the back of the box reads, but this is what I found on the official 2009 Elf on the Shelf website.
From My Family to Yours,
This charming tradition began for our family when my children were very small. Like most children through the ages, they wanted to know how Santa really knew who was naughty or who was nice. Their answer, as in my own childhood, came in the form of a small pixie-elf.
The first time the elf arrived at our home, my children officially adopted him by giving him a name. Each year he would arrive around the holidays, usually at Thanksgiving. His sole responsibility was to watch the children’s behavior and report it to Santa each night. The next morning after the children awoke, they discovered the elf had returned from the North Pole and was now resting in a new and different place. My children would race each other out of bed to try and be the first to spy him in his new position.
Over the years the tradition was perfected and rules were introduced. For example, to better preserve his mystique the children were not allowed to touch him but talking to him was a different matter all together. My children shared many secrets with the elf, and while he was under strict orders not to talk to them, the elf was under no such orders where grown-ups were concerned.
Unwittingly, the tradition provided an added benefit: it helped the children to better control themselves. All it took was a gentle reminder that the “elf is watching,” for errant behavior to be modified.
I never dreamed this simple tradition would lead to so many treasured Christmas memories for our entire family. It is my earnest desire that The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition will bring as much joy to your family as it has to mine.
Enjoy this tradition, and MAKE IT YOUR OWN!
Carol
Now, my partner and I read this and my immediate thought was, wow, what a great idea (sarcasm) nothing like creating fear in your children (in addition to already having to be good for Santa) now kids need to watch out on what the elf might report back to Santa!? Now, I must admit, I do not currently have children, but the fun “new tradition” aside, what types of messages are we giving to our children if parents are constantly employing methods of surveillance to ensure “good” behavior? Isn’t the point of raising children enabling them to make the decisions of what is good or bad, as opposed to simply scaring them with the illusion of “someone is watching you”? But I digress, the wording on the back of the box/website implied the underlying purpose of the elf on the shelf is to monitor children’s behavior, report back to Santa and to serve as the liaison between the big guy up north, parental powers and children’s innermost hopes and dreams during the Christmas season. I’ll come back to this in a bit. But the moment when it all became blatantly clear for me was when my partner and I were innocently watching a Christmas movie on ABC FAMILY when on pops a commercial for the Elf on the Shelf.
Scream
In Foucault’s chapter “Panopticism” in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977) he highlights the rise of the prison and the mechanisms that are put into daily practice when hierarchies are created to control those who do not fit the norm. Beginning with tracing the policies enacted when the plague hit Europe and then going on to discuss the measures taken within Bentham’s Panopticon in the prison context. Foucault deftly weaves together how the projects of exclusion (he uses the example of ridding the town of those with the plague or lepers) and how the image of the plagued person/leper becomes a stand in for “all forms of confusion and disorder” (199). It is both the processes of exclusion and the marking of the abnormal that becomes the cornerstone of disciplinary mechanisms created solely for the ridding and ordering of that which is not normal.
Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising individual control function according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding (mad/sane, dangerous/harmless, normal/abnormal); and that of coercive assignment, of differential distribution (who he is; where he must be; how he is to be characterized; how he is to be recognized; how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in an individual way etc.). (199)
For the sake of my argument, I would add in the “naughty/nice,” or in the language of Elf on a Shelf, “naughty/good” binary. Such that the Elf on the Shelf comes to represent the disciplinary figure and or mode of control that both names or “brands” a child naughty/nice in it’s ability to channel directly to the top of the hierarchy (they don’t call him the “big guy up North” for nothing) and enables constant, agreeable surveillance of children’s behavior. In the song the Elf sings, “the elf on the shelf is watching you, what you say and what you do,” which seeks to position an unknown yet known appropriate behavior in which children should engage. The Elf on the Shelf never dictates exactly what you should do, but the Elf’s sheer presence guides children to do what they perceive to be the “right” thing. The creator, Carol V. Aebersold mentions in her letter to parents that “Unwittingly, the tradition provided an added benefit: it helped the children to better control themselves. All it took was a gentle reminder that the “elf is watching,” for errant behavior to be modified.”
Chilling.
Foucault discusses how then the panopticon becomes an effective measure of disciplining those who are bad, naughty, abnormal, troublemakers you name it, “All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy” (200). In this case the Elf on the Shelf serves as the “supervisor” that children see, find in various locations at each new day’s sunrise while Santa (and parents) work as the power enforcing mechanism behind the scenes. They serve as the pinnacle of the hierarchy that ensures that the supervisor is doing what he should be doing. Here I would like to point out that I would be remiss not to mention that the creator and her daughter (who wrote the book explaining the Elf on the Shelf’s mission) are both former teachers – in many ways it makes complete sense then, if Foucault aligns the “prisoner” with the “schoolboy” modes of power work similarly in various contexts (the prison and the school).
As the supervisor in the tower the Elf on the Shelf keeps order, Foucault notes that this deployment of power through exclusion and surveillance works precisely because the subject being surveilled, “is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication” (200). From the hand and “tradition” of Carol and her elf, “to better preserve his mystique the children were not allowed to touch him but talking to him was a different matter all together. My children shared many secrets with the elf, and while he was under strict orders not to talk to them, the elf was under no such orders where grown-ups were concerned.” This clear pathway, or one-way communication, along with creating mechanisms to separate those in power (don’t touch the Elf) from those without (children) upholds what Foucault sees as the “guarantee of order” (200).
Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate [child] a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the [children] should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. (Foucault, 1977, 201)
Need I really say more? In essence the Elf on the Shelf serves as the panopticon, regulating behavior through its very presence, but has become a central figure with rules regarding children’s proper interaction with it for the intention of controlling children’s bad behavior (which is also vaguely determined). By this I mean, that so often the fallacy of binaries is that they are socially constructed, which is why the Elf on the Shelf becomes such a perfect, malleable “observer” in the tower. When children simply know they should be good and that they should fear being bad (because the Elf will tell on them to Santa and they won’t get any Christmas presents) what real lessons of morality are they truly learning? Again, I remain childless by choice and I imagine it must be easy to say things (when children are cranky/misbehaving) like “you better watch out, you better not cry…” oh wait, that’s another song about someone who “knows when you’ve been sleeping, he knows when you’ve been good or bad” or you know, some other type of scary off in the far away make-believe-land for threatening children about not getting their Christmas presents; but personally I would like to live in a world where children are able to make moral decisions without the need of panopticisms (in any form).
I would like to conclude with a few notes about race and gender in regards to Elf on the Shelf. In Foucault’s understanding of the ways power is manifested in society, he often fails to include the gendered analysis piece, whereby if the “inmate” or “schoolboy” are constantly observed and then kept in line because of the (presence or invisibility of an) “observer in the tower” what can we imagine happens to little schoolgirls within these mechanisms of power exertion? What I can assume is that these processes are even more dangerous. In many ways, girls and women are constantly observed by male power and the fact that Elf on a Shelf reads male to me, is disturbing. Little girls are often more tightly observed and their behavior more closely monitored (i.e. what is ladylike, proper for girls etc.) though certainly the processes of gender socialization require surveillance of gender norms regardless the body. And while I’m generalizing here, to me the Elf on the Shelf (as a male elf particularly) only seems to reinforce this type of thinking, that it becomes even more important for not just girls but boys to exhibit their “proper” socialized, appropriate, gendered behavior in the presence of the Elf on the Shelf. The makers of the Elf also problematically assume that “male” is normal, upon closer investigation of products you can purchase for your Elf on the Shelf is a skirt that transforms the male Elf into a female Elf. Seems like some Aristotle “women are incomplete men” propaganda to me.
Also, the politics of race (especially when examined under the context of the Elf on the Shelf as a commercial, branded and marketed product) seem problematic. In all of the representations of the Elf on the Shelf that I have observed –friends’ pictures on facebook, the Elf on the Shelf for sale at Barnes and Noble, the commercial, everyday persons’ homage to Elf on the Shelf on youtube– the Elf is always white. As though it were not bad enough to know that the most effective exertion of power in our society would be a white man observing any other group of people but in particular this becomes an issue when they are attempting to exert control over people of color. This brings up a lot of anxiety for me around historical memory and trauma for people of color, i.e. Spanish/English colonialists taking land away from Indigenous peoples with threats and acts of violence; white slave owners working their Black plantation and household denying enslaved folk the rights to read and/or learn, maintaining control over the enslaved with threats and acts of violence; Japanese American internment in response to an affront to our nation’s “security” rounding up and penning Japanese Americans with threats and acts of violence; U.S. Border Patrol killing Mexican and Mexican American peoples on the border, the threat and act of violence a reality in the borderlands…
Of course, the Elf on the Shelf is not the Border Patrol, Plantation Slave Owner, U.S. Military or Colonist but, for those of us who have this mechanism of power within our homes regulating the behavior of our children, it is implicated in the very systems of power that allows for and fuels the disenfranchisement of people of color in this nation. Especially when the panopticon is led by a white (specifically the language on the website notes “light skin tone”) figure. After recounting just a few of the horrors that white people have perpetrated against people of color I find it difficult to read the “dark skin tone” Elf as anything but a false belief in the potential of multiculturalism as the road to equality (get one of each color then white supremacy is destroyed) assertion.
Based on the history of the white male figure of control and domination as a reality in the lives of people of color, I find it difficult to believe that many people of color would want to have an Elf on their Shelf—neither the “light skin tone elf” nor the “dark skin tone elf”. Don’t even get me started on the fact that the elf gets named in the white version and is simply “Dark skin tone pictured” in the same mold of Elf, just a different color, version.
In essence, this “new holiday tradition” needs to be examined closely. Is it just “all in good fun” as many, I’m sure will argue? Or, is it a symptom of a larger structure of power that is always already constantly acting upon us and which we are also enacting daily? I believe that to not think critically about the representations of power, race, and gender even if that critique comes in regards to a “new holiday tradition” or children’s toys or popular culture is important to engage in. Especially if that means we can one day imagine a future where gender, race, sexual and class equality is a reality.
And this concludes the lecture. To see the original post feel free to visit SLP’s Blog!
From the Archive:
Four years ago Fear of Bats December 15, 2020
Three years ago Art as Legacy December 15, 2021
Two years ago I did not have a mid-December issue in 2022
One year ago The Art of Evaluation December 20, 2023
Artist Offerings
I’ve been getting lost in these paintings by John Miranda in particular, studying his compositional strategies
This thread and ink mashup by Bea Lema has challenged my notion of writing in all the best ways.
Been also lost in these exteriors and interiors that feature few straight lines/edges by Gabrielle Garland
I love a creative residency opportunity like storyteller in residence, Wendy MacNaughton sharing about Kerry James Marshalls’ work at the National Gallery of Art
Finalmente Yolanda López “gets her due”
Want even more of my writing? Check out this Op-Ed about Guaranteed Income that was recently published by Common Good
Creative Ritual
Since late November, I have essentially been living at the Fergus Falls Public Library as the current Artist in Residence. Beginning officially in mid-October I’ve been working on an interior painting of the library itself. The residency ends officially at the end of the year, but I need to finish the painting for the grant report that will be composed for the funders by the end of this week. I’m also trying to take a long break from the 21st through the end of the year so as to gain the energy I need to take on a very busy and full 2025 with a solo show of new works booked and duo show at the end of the year with new quilted painting works that are very time consuming to achieve. I attended the post-show artist gathering at St. Kate’s and it was so lovely to receive a catalogue of our Latina/Latinx MN show. As the end of the year barrels toward its closure I plan on one more email to you all. Selling paintings would be so lovely right now as I have major car troubles and unfortunately the shop doesn’t want to do a trade for a couple of my big works to cover the cost of replacing my engine. Life has been painting and car troubles as of late. And yet, still I persist!
Questions to ponder
What methods of surveillance have you agreeably opted into?
What methods of surveillance do you oppose?
How do you resist increased surveillance?
What could you do today to boldly embrace being a feminist killjoy?
Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time.
-KCF
PS: Another year of Ko-Fi Club where members get behind the scenes sneak peeks and the pleasure of knowing they’re supporting independent creation of writing, podcasts, painting and more! Join us!