While Oprah does not economically profit directly from the Book
Club,x there is the question of other forms of revenue. The claim that there is “no
way to buy” Oprah evokes reminiscences of Bourdieu’s ideas in “The Forms of Capital,” wherein he writes of the
embodied form of cultural capital and asks,
How can this capital, so closely linked to the person, be bought without buying the person and so losing the very
effect of legitimation which presupposes the dissimulation of dependence?
To unfold this question we must examine the means by which Oprah was designated as a person having a large amount
of cultural capital. Considering Oprah’s autobiographical tale (recounted and referred to often on the show and
in interviews): she was abandoned by her parents at a young age, raised by poor, uneducated yet striving
grandparents, pregnant at fourteen and working in journalism immediately after high school; a tale that usually
wouldn’t qualify someone as having a high amount of cultural capital. Specifically, Bourdieu identifies three
manners by which individuals accumulate cultural capital: family education, diffuse education, and
institutionalized education. Without a familial background that ascribes forms cultural knowledge associated with
distinction, or the influence of culturally apt social members, or a college degree, Oprah would traditionally be
considered deprived of cultural capital.
Yet, without the benefits of presupposed cultural or symbolic
capital, Oprah found means by which to accumulate enough capital that today affords her the power of consecration.
In 1993, when Oprah first reformatted her show to “disassociate from the ‘trash pack,’”16
she took an economic risk by challenging what Nick Couldry saw in the 1980’s and 1990’s as the “increasing
predominance of economic interests in the media field as a whole.”17
At the risk of losing viewers, hence ratings, hence advertisers, hence money; she effectively disassociated herself
from an externally imposed social network which recognized her as part of the daytime television talk shows and
solidly implanted her in the field of ‘low media.’
But low media had its economic benefits. Since forming her own
production studio (marking her first cultural trajectory from one field to another), Oprah received more direct
profit from her show than any of her competitors. Thus, because of her economic capital and security, she was able
to take a risk; exchanging economic capital for symbolic capital. This exchange was fostered by the new format of
the show, with its empowering theme song, celebrity guests and ‘serious’ issues, which granted her show greater
cultural legitimacy and transferred upon Oprah a form of symbolic capital whereas she was “recognized as [having]
legitimate competence as [an] authority”18 on subjects that were considered
economically unprofitable.xi
However, the risk paid off, literally. It turns out that
Winfrey had discovered a use value in the creation of ‘Oprah.’ This new figure represented an accessible
“wise woman,”19 prestigious and honorable, yet friendly and approachable for
her audience. In 1993, Oprah began using Whitney Houston’s hit song, “I’m Every Woman” as her show’s anthem. This
choice exemplifies Oprah’s creation of a social network with her audience—one in which she holds a dominant
position. In this manner she manages to identify with her audience, thus maintaining her symbolic capital without
alienating those without it and gaining the capital afforded through “mutual acquaintance and recognition”20
in the informal institution of womankind.
Through celebrity, wealth, and social networks, Oprah was able
to begin accumulating cultural capital. In many instances she did so by vocalizing her respect for culture—
implying her ownership of cultural capital in its embodied state—with such statements as the greatest pleasure in
life “is to be reading a good book and to know I have a really, really good book after that book to read,”21
and her contribution to the “Who Reads What”22 list including the titles
The Color Purple and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Other times she simply unveiled her compilation
of cultural goods—cultural capital in its objectified state—through her clothes, house, book collection and
favorite gadgets. Through capital conversion, Oprah occupied a new position in the television arena, offering
audiences a new option and thus altering the relationships of various position-takings of her competitors.
Yet, even as she held the economically dominant position in the realm of daytime television, she still resided in a
space determined and defined by both lower and higher forms of media.
Thus, as Oprah struggled for cultural legitimacy she also had
her audience to contend with. They had displayed their loyalty to her cultural and symbolic authority by sticking
with her through her shifting positions within the culture industry. Yet the problem remained that she was still
within the culture industry—a field which limited her cultural authority simply through its mass appeal. Oprah’s
numbers and her “bourgeois” audience restrained her from attaining the distinction associated with the cultural
fields. Enter the introduction of the book club.
By 1996, Oprah was already considered the
“Queen of Television,”xii a title owing to her symbolic and economic capital
earnings. But could the queen maneuver between two polemic fields and simultaneously imbue herself and her
audience with cultural competence? She had demonstrated her ability to arbitrate taste for commercial items to a
mass audience and as we have seen earlier in the essay, the influence extended into the literary realm. In a weird
contradiction of value, Oprah started distinguishing herself from her audience while concurrently inviting them in.
In the same breath, she renounced television stating, “it promotes false values,” and “I don’t watch TV, ever,”23
while acting as one of television’s greatest baits.
Although receiving these mixed messages, Oprah’s audience seemed
to grasp the latent implication: they too could increase their cultural capital by following Oprah’s lead. Oprah
had become one of the “educated members of the social formation” that provides cultural capital through diffused
education.24 In reading books selected by Oprah, they were simply extending
the reach of the show. Oprah already acted as a leader and star within the format of the talk show. Though
academics, experts, and celebrities shared the spotlight, Oprah acted as mediator for audience participation,
often directing comments directly to the audience and regularly receiving their feedback, then rewarded them with
token gifts from her show. Whether a book on dieting, a bathrobe, or a car; the audience leaves both materially
and ‘psychologically’ enriched, having had a piece of the cultural wealth that Oprah bestows upon them.
Hence, Oprah’s invitation for her audience to read with her
intimated a shared partaking of culture, an invitation immediately accepted as witnessed by the outstanding
increase in book sales. Oprah encouraged this cultural approbation through the very format of the Book Club shows
and segments. Farr notes that “While Oprah is modeling rich reading publicly, she also models public reading
richly,” then follows with a description of the typical Oprah Book Club dinners:
The stage was complete with thick carpeting, huge armchairs, heavy wooden bookcases, and a globe…no one,
not even the writers, wore denim…and the guests always looked as if they had just bellied up to the Estée Lauder
makeover counter. Oprah presided, often in a cashmere sweater and flashing diamond earrings, offering toasts in
crystal wineglasses…guests exclaimed over “seared yellow-tailed tuna roasted with pistachios and black peppercorns”
or a perfect crème brulée as they commented on the novels.25
Through such accessories as the globe and bookcases, Oprah creates a sense of academic literacy, for within these
fixtures is the objectified notion of cultural capital. The food and clothing worn by the women, authors, and
Oprah is symptomatic of ‘high class’ attire, associating reading with the upper-crust of society. “You too can
live like this,” says Farr of the Oprah Book Club’s message, “Not vicariously through the afternoon soaps.
Not sometime in the future after you achieve financial security. But here and now. By reading.”26
Some readers seemed to take this cultural advancement to the
next level. Although the Oprah Book Club shows attracted thirteen million regular readers, sales figures of the
books imply that even more people were buying the books, then not tuning in for the discussion.27
Like Oprah, they were turning off their televisions and turning to ‘higher’ culture. Often times they were forming
their own book clubs—as noted by numerous articles commenting on the rise of book clubs after 1996—experiencing
(or attempting to) the cultural riches in the flesh rather than the vicarious form of television.
Yet, what many women in their book clubs could not experience
was having the author over to dinner and discussing her creation together. The inclusion of the author in the Book
Club segments was a source of contention for many of its detractors. Initial arguments stemmed from the fact that
the Oprah Book Club only included selections from living authors: excluding valid literature and focusing on the
celebrity-status of authors rather than disinterested appraisal of the works. Later complaints arose from the
discussions of books themselves with critics arguing about the generative discourse and ‘right’ way to read.
In her comparison of Oprah Winfrey to Arnold Bennett as arbiters
of cultural taste, Rooney writes that Oprah, unlike Bennett encouraged superficial readings of texts:
Winfrey instructed her audience to experience the books in terms of how they personally related to the main
characters, focusing less on the novels themselves and more on how their own life stories could be understood and
improved in the process.28
Yet she also reflects that Oprah should not have followed an academic model wherein the books “would be elucidated
by a trained scholar (the professor as hierophant expounding on mysteries hidden to the uninitiated),”29
worrying that “the very authors she fed [would] turn promptly around and bite her hand.”30
Rooney’s worry eventually happened as witnessed by Jonathan Franzen’s reaction to Oprah’s selection of his novel
The Corrections.
Before Franzen, Oprah’s chosen authors seemed invariably pleased
and appreciative of the “O logo.”xiii Some openly pleaded for it, like romance
novelist Kathleen O’Reilly in her online diary:
Every writer has his or her own dreams of success. For some, it's the NY Times list, for some, it's the six figure
advance, for some, it's simply being published. I think, for me, it's getting to be an Oprah pick, which is so sad
because I don't have a chance in hell.31
Certainly, none had openly complained and every author immediately accepted the opportunity to be featured on her
show. In a field that features “the economic world reversed,”32 a trip to
the Oprah show was a venture for authors into the realm of mass audience and culture. For the literary field to
function, authorial positions rely on one another, whereby a ‘legitimate’ author is defined by the opposing role of
the mass-approachable popular author. Legitimacy is entwined in symbolic capital, which, in turn profits from
social inaccessibility. As Bourdieu explains, “discredit increases as the audience grows and its specific
competence declines, together with the value of the recognition implied in the act of consumption.”33
Thus, an author’s appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show nearly guaranteed an increase economic capital yet a
decrease in symbolic capital.
For new authors, this may not have been much of a deterrence.
For some, such as Billie Letts, they may have been unaware of the structure of the literary field and not realized
the risks they took in their appearance, jeopardizing their symbolic capital and the cultural capital imbedded in
their work. Some authors, solidly implanted in the middle ground of the literary field, were risk-free, as their
work already held low amounts of cultural value and could only increase profits economically. Others, already
residing in the academic or literary field, understood the risk, but having already attained cultural and symbolic
capital welcomed the economic profit—some using it as a means to disassociate from the academic field to
concentrate on the production of new work that would keep them within the literary field.
Authors that were highly acclaimed prior to Oprah’s selection
of their novels, were often careful in designating their distinction.xiv Toni
Morrison, one of Oprah’s proclaimed favorite novelists, said of Oprah and her house, “except for other authors, I
have very seldom seen a home with so many books…She’s a genuine reader, not a decorative one.”34
Note that she says “except for other authors,” this distinction operates twofold, it distinguishes Morrison as an
author, including herself in the implication that authors themselves are the basis for which cultural capital is
to be defined (i.e. authors have numerous books, not other, ordinary people.) The phrase also extends a partial
invitation to Oprah for inclusion in that exclusive inner circle of cultural authority (i.e. she is not an author,
but like them, she has read a lot of books—placing her above other, ordinary people.)
Morrison, as an established academic and author, had a
significant amount of symbolic capital at risk when she appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Yet, it may just be
because of this high and established amount of cultural and symbolic capital that she took the risk. Secure
within her position as a cultural creator in the dominant sector of the literary field, she paid no heed to Henry
Louis Gates Jr.’s prophetic statement, “Thomas Pynchon. Now there was someone you never saw on Oprah Winfrey.”35 xv
Unlike Morrison and the thirty-eight authors before him, Jonathan Franzen feared the consequences that came with an
Oprah anointment, well, at least he did so publicly.
Before Oprah selected him, Franzen had written two critically
acclaimed novels and an essay in Harper’s Magazine that bemoaned, “the failure of my culturally engaged novel to
engage with the culture I'd intended to provoke; what I got instead was sixty reviews in a vacuum.” Yet he also
mistrusted a public whose “social currency” is determined by “having caught the latest John Travolta movie or
knowing how to navigate the Web” rather than reading “the latest work of Joyce Carol Oates.”36
While not specifically mentioning Bourdieu, Franzen illustrated the struggles facing authors within the literary
field. Ironically, one month later, Oprah began the Book Club and novelists—even those creating “high”
literature—were given a vehicle to reach outside of the ‘vacuum.’
Yet when Oprah selected his third novel, Franzen vocally
contributed to the debate surrounding the Book Club, a move no authors prior to him had been brave (or in Rooney’s
and Farr’s opinions, unwise) enough to do. Paraphrasing Franzen, he was concerned that his Oprah anointment would
isolate male readers, lump him in with ‘low’ fiction, market him to an audience of inexperienced and mainly female
readers, and target him as a “sell out,” an owned and therefore economically dependent writer.37
Without ever expressing a knowledge of Bourdieu, Franzen employed the logic as outlined by Bourdieu’s analysis of
the literary field. What it boils down to is Franzen’s inherent awareness that mass-production and recognition of
his novel would lower his cultural, social, and symbolic capital.
Yet, he need not have worried. Upon hearing of his public and
“offensive” complaints, Oprah disinvited Franzen from appearing on the show and removed her logo from subsequent
printings. The controversy worked in his favor. His book sold over 930,000 copies in hardcover and 450,000 in
paperback the next year, and still went on to win the National Book Award. Thus, he successfully distinguished his
symbolic and cultural capital and still earned economic capital even from the very audience he insulted. The only
form of capital he apparently lost in the scuffle was some amount of social capital. Immediately following his
initial disavowals of the Book Club, individuals within the literary field attacked from all sides.
Oprah-chosen authors were the first of course; in doing so,
they validated the status of their books and continued their Oprah-sanctioned status (which could lead to future
Book Club selections) as well as ingratiating themselves to their established audience. Other authors quickly took
jabs at Franzen, as illustrated in an article by David Pesci, author of Amistad, where he relates Franzen to a
“spoiled whiny little brat with a full diaper” who should “contemplate such things as manners, gratitude and his
truly staggering intellectual narcissism.”38 Some literary critics followed
suit, though unlike the authors, they had little potential for being Oprah invitees. This didn’t seem to phase
Harold Bloomxvi who announced he “would be honored” to be invited on Oprah and chastised Franzen for wanting “to
have it both ways.”39 Thus, Franzen threatened his social capital within the
greater literary field, yet probably increased it within the social networks of ‘high’ authors.
Publisher’s and publishing houses were much less fussy in their
appraisal of the Oprah Book Club. An Oprah-anointed book meant million dollar sales increases for the publishing
house. Yet, they too were affected within the literary field as well as in the heteronomous economic one, the
field where Oprah and the masses dominate. As Bourdieu notes, while artists and authors may feel as though they
are purely autonomous within the greater field of power, publishing houses tend to recognize the field for what it
is: a field of production, “the site of the struggles for the monopoly of the power to consecrate, in which the
value of works of art and belief in that value are continuously generated.”40
As the Oprah effect hit the bookshelves, publishers scrambled
to get in on the action. As I mentioned earlier, publishers started searching for Oprahesque novels. In a world
where the publishing industry has become increasingly hegemonic with houses wrapped up in the monopoly super giants
of Time Warner, Viacom, News Corporation and GE, predicted sales figures have surpassed the literary value in
determining publishable books. Though frightening, it may have some benefits: new authors have a better chance of
being discovered as their work may reflect the criterion for an Oprah novel and/or publisher’s may take a risk on a
new author since Oprah tended to feature unknown authors; with increased economic capital smaller publishing houses
could afford to take risks with highbrow novels, novels which normally wouldn’t guarantee large economic profits;
and finally, this surge in powerhouse publishers searching for Oprahesque books and occupying the dominant position
within the hierarchy, created a new space of possible positions and position takings.
Snatching up these positions, new authors emerged, writing books
that defined themselves against the Oprah novel and often mocking the medium and society that created an Oprah
novel. Also shifting were the position-takings authors took within the field, reacting against the Oprah Book
Club like Franzen, who in his 2003 book took the safer road of publishing a collection of essays—a move that kept
him under the radar of Oprah novel selections and appealed to the highbrow consumer, or like James Patterson who
in 2001 wrote what critics called a “women’s weepy,” maybe attempting to be the next author featured on Oprah. New
publishers also grew out of this new space. Houses like McSweeney’s (started by award winning, avant-garde novelist
Dave Eggers) and Chronicle Books, began featuring highbrow and oftentimes quirky novelists—the type of authors you
would find on a “Books You WONT See on Oprah” list in a local bookstore.
Yet, these are just emblematic of the structural shift the
entire literary field underwent due to Oprah. When she restarted her Book Club in 2003, only featuring
“Great Books,” a term that mainly means “classics,” the critical response was surprisingly silent.xvii
Were cultural critics happy now that she was offering only highbrow literature to her mass public? But weren’t
the highbrow novels equally contentious during the old Oprah Book Club? I contend that the difference in response
is due to Oprah’s new status as cultural authority and the influence she exerted in the literary field, thus
changing it as we knew it. After Oprah started the book club she began winning awards, and I’m not talking about
Emmys. As Oprah infiltrated the literary field, she forced positions within the field to adjust, generally
creating a ‘you’re either with Oprah or against her’ environment. Most heard the call of “Red Rover” and ran right
over.
This union continued to reward Oprah with symbolic capital given
by literary powers and seemed to operate by assuaging each other with the belief that Oprah deserved to be in the
literary field. Within a year of launching the Book Club, Oprah received the Peabody award for journalism; the
IRTS gold medal; the following year, an adjunct professorship at Northwestern University; Newsweek’s “Most
Important Person in Books and Media;” The NATAS Lifetime Achievement Award; named one of the 100 Most Influential
People of the 20th century by Times Magazine; the National Book Foundation's 50th Anniversary Gold Medal; the AAP
Honors award, the Bob Hope Humanitarian award, four NCAAP awards; and several honorary degrees including one
conferred in 2002 by Princeton University.
Oprah’s symbolic power now seems to exist unquestioned. Even
Rooney in her ‘critical’ appraisal asserts:
Oprah Winfrey is, in fact an intellectual force…Like any good intellectual, Winfrey is demonstrably intelligent,
erudite, and well-spoken person. Additionally she teaches—both informally on her daily talk show and formally at
Northwestern University—and has produced a substantial body of influential work in the form of her show, her
magazine, and the very life she has led. Winfrey even articulates what amounts to a coherent ideology: “The
message has always been the same: that you are responsible for your life. Now we’ve evolved into talking about
how to live your best life. That’s the theme of my magazine. That’s also the theme of my talk show—to get people
to take charge. To get people to realize that things are not just happening to them willy-nilly.”41
Rooney continues, saying that like an intellectual generating new ideas, Oprah has done so by creating a talk show
that is “vastly different from typical talk show fare.” Without sounding too derogatory, I am forced to question
the validity of Rooney’s assertion. Oprah’s formal teaching position—one she shares with her boyfriend Stedman
Graham, co-teaching one course a year—like many of her other honors, came after she exerted such influence within
the literary field, and her new ideas and ideology, while not fitting nicely into specific academic fields, do have
a positive value in society. Oprah acts as a televised and mass mediated replacement for institutional academics.
Yet, I too, must accept this new position Oprah has created
within the literary field. But I wonder, what has it done to reading, to the books themselves, now that the
boundaries dividing high, less accessible, and consecrated art and its counterpart—low, popular, and mass-produced
art have been torn down. Now that Oprah has included classics in her canon, all forms of consecrated art have
suddenly entered the mainstream consumption. Is that problematic?
I invoke a passage from DeLillo’s White Noise, Murray and Jack
visit “the most photographed barn in America” where they find the usual signs of a tourist attraction—postcards
and calendars of the barn—and people, taking pictures of the barn with people taking pictures within them:
“What was the barn like before it was photographed?” He said. “What did it look like, how was it different from
other barns, how was it similar to other barns? We can’t answer these questions because we’ve read the signs,
seen the people snapping the pictures. We can’t get outside the aura. We’re part of the aura. We’re here, we’re
now.”42
I worry if this can happen to literature. When I see hundreds of people reading the latest Danielle Steele novel
on the bus, it does not bother me. When I see tens of people reading Jared Diamond on my way to work, I smirk and
include myself in the “I finished Guns, Germs and Steel and understood it too” club. But what will I do when I get
back on a bus and see thousands of women reading Anna Karenina? What happens when a classic becomes an ordinary
object?
Because I have seen thousands of prints of the Mona Lisa and
Munch’s The Scream, is my experience when viewing it in person devalued? I remember the first time I saw the Mona
Lisa, I was disappointed—it didn’t seem any different or more impressive than all the pictures I had seen in art
books. If classics start coming with reading guides, television segments and made-for-TV movies, will that
similarly affect the perception and context of the work? When I joined the Oprah Book Club website to peruse the
readers’ blogs, I found women writing about how they “hate Anna,” wondering if Vronsky “was suffering from alcohol
withdrawal, or maybe other drug withdrawal” and arguing over whether “Russian revolutionaries were leftists.”
However, all agreed that the book “sure is HOT!”43
A book is a curious cultural commodity—one of those rare
artifacts not destroyed in its consumption. Me reading Anna Karenina does not make it any less accessible
to you. Unlike fine art, there is little or no concept of scarcity to be applied here. Yet, can the mass
consumption of a classic or valued work of literature decrease its cultural capital? Because suburban homemakers
are now reading Tolstoy, will that effect its consumption within sanctioned institutional environments? Will the
‘decision makers’ and cultural arbiters of taste begin using polemic texts? Could contemporary authors replace
Shakespeare, Nabokov, and Melville as their cultural currency devalues through diffusion?
Bourdieu accounts for struggle within the literary field between
authors “who have made their mark (by producing a new position in the field) and who are fighting to persist
(to become classics)” and authors “who cannot make their own mark without pushing into the past those who have an
interest in eternalizing the present state of affairs and in stopping the course of history.”44
Yet when the drive to become a classic is bastardized by the ‘unconsecration’ of a work now mass-accessible and
thus devalued, would the avant-garde author take over? Could we witness a state of flux in which the critics,
authors, and institutions are in a constant search for canonical replacement in contrast to Bourdieu’s model that
affords consecration and canonization to a well-established hierarchy of critics, literary academies, and
educational systems?
Bourdieu argues that this is prevented by structural inertia.
Yet if the structure becomes sufficiently disrupted, could we witness a newly created and restructured literary
field? As of now, it is too soon to tell. I doubt Oprah has created any doomsday scenarios within the realm of
literature, and as of yet, there are some genres that remain untouched by “the Queen of Television.” Poetry,
Anais Nin, and Melville may be too chunky to feed to a populace used to ‘predigested and prethought’ culture.
