Feminist's Views on Androgyny

As promised and for what it's worth, an outline of my presentation in two weeks. It might not help anyone else, but I find outlines, as opposed to prose, sometimes more helpful to my understanding. I focused on androgyny almost entirely and found the relevant information in the readings. I will also come with a more informed reading of Judith Butler in a few days. Don't miss the lyrics to a Replacements song at the end of the outline. Any thoughts as to their meaning? There is some ambiguity--just like androgyny itself, right?

Feminists’ Views on Androgyny

Bruzzi, Stella. “The Erotic Strategies of Androgyny.” Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies. (Routledge, 1997.)

Key Terms from Dictionary.com:

Androgynous: Both Male and Female OR Sexually Ambiguous (“The Body”)

Hermaphroditic: Both Male and Female Sexual Organs (“The Body”)

Cross-Dressing: To Wear Clothing Usually Worn by the Opposite Sex (External, Masquerade)

Transvestic: To Wear Clothing Usually Worn by the Opposite Sex to Satisfy Sexual, Psychological Desire (“The Body” and External)

CLIP:

Morocco (von Sternberg, 1932) with Marlene Dietrich

*Deitrich: Aloof – appealing to men and women in the film audience.

*Stakes claim for androgyny and cross-dressing

*Cross-dressing: a collision of genders that are “nevertheless identifiable” (176).

*Dietrich as androgyne: “…multiple erotic identification…” (174).

*Double Observance: The audience in the film. The audience in the cinema (174).

*Androgyny: “blurred sex” (174); “the diminution of difference” (176); “a softening of the contours between corporeality and metaphor, male and female, straight and gay, real and imagined” (176).

*Sontag: “sexual attractiveness consists in going against the grain of one’s sex” (177).

*Sontag: androgyny is an exaggeration; “hysterical;” “camp” (Jayne Mansfield, for instance) (177).

*Fashion: Androgynous Style (trousers, coats): “hiding femininity” (177).

*Difference between “masculinity of the clothes and femininity of the body” (177).

*Yves Saint-Laurent: “woman who dresses like a man must be infinitely feminine in order to wear clothes which were not meant for her” (178).

*Calvin Klein: androgyny “synonymous with pubescence and precocious sexuality” (178).

*Jean-Paul Gartier: feminine men’s fashions: male skirt

*Klein and Saint-Laurent: sensuality of clothing. Gartier concerned with the intellectual transgressive potential of cross-dressing” (178).

*androgyny: “sexual attraction grounded in unease and doubt” (192).

*indication of tranformation.

*Dollimore: androgyny a “genderless transcendent which leaves sexual difference in place” (198).

*eroticism of androgynous ambiguity vs. non-sexual state

*androgyny (not cross dressing): “possesses the capacity for mutability and transformation” (199).

*androgynous clothing: “forms of consolidation and social communication” and “testaments of fantasy and desire."

Bordo, Susan. “‘Material Girl:’ The Effacements of Postmodern Culture.” Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Univ. of California, 1993. 269-75.

*old Madonna: “fleshy, feminine,” refusing the androgynous styles of today(269)

*new Madonna: lost weight, exercises out of embarrassment and shame.

*in “Open Your Heart:” final scene: changes into little boy’s clothes: sexual identity becomes play and nonsexual pleasure; a refusal

*night: porn; day: an androgynous innocence

Berry, Sarah. “Suitably Feminine.” Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2000. 142-89.

*1930s: the working woman portrayed in films: transgressive

*many trans- associated with androgyny

*more female spectators “working outside the home” (143).

*Garbo: men’s clothes “for camouflage as well as comfort” (145).

*Morocco: film audience in caberat scene: rude disapproval changed to applause

*Dietrich: does not wear men’s clothing “to be sensational” but “thinks she’s more

alluring (146).

*Dietrich: men’s clothes worn offscreen as well

*gender contrast: women’s body vs. men’s clothes

*Deitrich: associations withEuropean lesbianism sought “male voyeuristic interest.”

*perhaps “appealing to female viewers of color whose sexuality did not rely on identification” (147).

*women’s play with gendered dress “increased freedom to move between social roles and identities” (148).

*athletic clothing, boilersuits, overalls, pajamas

*Garber: cross-dressing: “a sign of the provocative destabilization of gender;” “not just a category crisis of male and female, but the crisis of category itself (151).

SONG:

The Replacements. “Androdynous.”

Written by Paul Westerberg

(my own comments are in brackets)

Here come Dick, he's wearing a skirt

Here comes Jane, y'know she's sporting a chain

Same hair, revolution [song from 1984; possible Prince reference?]

Same build, evolution

Tomorrow who's gonna fuss [in the future there will be androgynous bodies]

And they love each other so

Androgynous

Closer than you know, love each other so

Androgynous

Don't get him wrong and don't get him mad

He might be a father [sexual reproduction], but he sure ain't a dad [androgyne not loving or responsible?]

And she don't need advice that'll center her [a center residing between male and female poles]

She's happy with the way she looks

She's happy with her gender

And they love each other so

Androgynous

Closer than you know, love each other so

Androgynous

Mirror image, see no damage

See no evil at all

Kewpie [hard to tell the sex; looks like Teletubby] dolls and urine stalls

Will be laughed at

The way you're laughed at now [in an androgynous future, heteronormative disappears]

Now, something meets Boy

And something meets Girl

They both look the same

They're overjoyed in this world

Same hair, revolution

Unisex, evolution

Tomorrow who's gonna fuss

And tomorrow Dick is wearing pants [clothes, fashion]

And tomorrow Janie's wearing a dress

Future outcasts and they don't last

And today, the people dress the way that they please

The way they tried to do in the last centuries [traditional notions of gender, i.e eunichs]

And they love each other so

Androgynous

Closer than you know, love each other so

Androgynous

The Threatening Scent of Fertile Women

NY Times: The Threatening Scent of Fertile Women

By JOHN TIERNEY

Published: February 21, 2011

Men in a relationship, unlike the unattached, tell themselves that a fertile woman isn’t really that attractive, researchers say.

Obligatory link to Oscar Slideshow

Here's one from Gawker.  There snarky one-liners are quite nice...Enjoy.
Also, thoughts on this dress???  Or any others?

Bruzzi, androgyny and sexual agency.

To my mind, the very concept of Androgyny is erotic precisely because it does not use as justification a bodily differentiation or the existence of a compulsive lack. The androgynous person embraces equally the ideologies of being a man and a woman unlike the transvestite (who identifies with the opposite sex) or a hermaphrodite (who, as the possessor of both male and female genitalia,). As a behavioral choice, it is rife with agency. Speaking of agency, though, I always find myself intrigued when attempting to examine the agency that is granted (or not) to people exhibiting gender aberrations that are not merely ideological.

I do wonder what Bruzzi would have to say about the sexual deviance expressed through the social behavior of eunuchs –men who, traditionally, were castrated at a young age, usually for a specific social function, a marginalized community that exists only in India now. How do we assign (if at all) any sexual agency to this social category that does not always neatly fit within the biological makeup that is its very definition. The earliest existence of eunuchs in India dates back to their employment as servants for female royalty. The absence of the male organ, combined with the sheer physical strength of a man made eunuchs a ‘safe' choice to take care of the women in the palace. There was a hierarchy in place within the eunuch community, which saw a chief eunuch overseeing the work of his subordinates. As opposed to their current reality, in those times they enjoyed a position in society that was enviable enough to compel people of lower classes to castrate their sons and pass them off as eunuchs just so they could gain a position of high standing.

Over the years the term ‘eunuch’ has blended into a more ubiquitous category called ‘hijra’ which denotes a community of people that may or may be castrated men but adopt the appearance of drag queens, dressed in female attire and outlandish make-up that is entirely at odds with their heavy, male voices. Often seen begging on city roads, hijras are an ostracized community whose primary source of living is derived from social traditions such as marriage and childbirth. They assemble in groups outside the bride/ groom’s house or the marriage venue, singing raucously and demanding money; not just any small amount of money but usually outrageous amounts that run into the equivalent of hundreds of dollars. In effect they use their physical otherness as a tool with which to extort money from which, inevitably, they are always given. So great is the fear amongst Indians of being ‘cursed’ by these people and thereby of casting a shadow on the holiness of the ceremonies about to take place that people willingly part with huge sums of money for no reason other than the threat that their families will be cursed and that the hijras would resort to taking off their clothes, revealing their malformed bodies.

This fear of sexual ‘otherness’ is not an oddity in popular Indian culture; most Indians vehemently abhor any form of gender aberration, especially when it involves men playing roles traditionally assigned to women. And rather than confront this otherness in any form whatsoever they are willing to “pay” for the right to dispense with any contact, temporary as this eschewal may be. Otherness, then, works in strange ways as this shunned community is feared as much as it is revered –their word is considered potent, whether it takes the form of a blessing or curse.

I am curious to know what Bruzzi would have to say about eunuchs; do they function on the borderlines of gender codes and hence are immune to being eroticized? If so, how does sexual longing as it exists for intersex people (who, arguably, possess the physical representation of androgynous characteristics) compare with that which is experienced by this community of men who are either born without the male genitalia or castrated in their youth? Following Bruzzi’s argument about the perfect androgyne being one who is capable of ‘passing otherness off as the real’, would it stand to reason that eunuchs, by virtue of their very visible otherness, are able to perform their artifice? As I mentioned in the beginning, I suppose my question has more to do with the ability of Bruzzi’s (and to some extent Butler’s) argument to extend into areas that move beyond ideological androgyny.

Born Against

Waaaay back in the day I was in a hardcore band that did a cover of a song called Mary and Child, originally by a band called Born Against. I was reminded of it during the Bordo reading when she talks about Foucault, Kruger, and "the metaphor for body as battleground." (263)

It's a fun song, so I put it up for you here.

 Lyrics:

Once again the battle field is your body and those who want control have laid down their terms
in black & white
and red all over
they keep the backstreet butchers in business
as advertised from a bullhorn

and the all knowing man has set up his make-believe graveyard with tiny white crosses
for millions of make-believe souls
someday I'd like to see a cross set up for a real live human being
who bled to death to maintain the sanctity of mary
mary & child, scream the bigots who couldn't care less

they couldn't care less about human life
obey their self-righteous lies
while your sisters & daughters die
all decisions are final
your body is forbidden

Andrej Pejic and Stella Bruzi

In Bruzzi’s The Erotic Strategies of Androgyny,  she says “on the androgynous body is enacted ambiguity, the diminution of difference, and what is manifested is a softening of the contours hetween corporeality and metaphor, male and remale, straight and gay, real and imagined.” (176) In this vein, I want to mention 19-year-old Andrej Pejic, a male model, known for his androgynous appearance, who has just been signed for an ad campaign with Jean-Paul Gaultier.

With his high cheekbones and long hair, Pejic passes for, and is hired to walk with, female models. Yahoo! News calls Pejic "part of fashion’s new “femiman” trend" and calls him "the leader of a new gender fluidity in fashion, in which traditional male and female attitudes are starting to matter less." And from jezebel, "Does Pejic represent the evolution of the hipster? Is his look the next logical step after metrosexuality? Is he an antidote to both the 'roided macho physique of the Jersey Shore gentlemen?"

America the Beautiful/Happy Birthday Allure

This month, my favorite fashion magazine is celebrating its 20th anniversary. To mark the occasion, the March Allure issue got appropriately retrospective, with features like a center-fold time-line of beauty milestones (including everything from the publishing of Wolf's The Beauty Myth in April 1991, to the release of the Nars blush called "Orgasm" in November 1994).

The issue also boasts a quasi-sociological survey on the topic of "what's beautiful now," with the premise of comparing evolving beauty standards and preoccupations from twenty years ago with today (incidentally, Angelina Jolie was voted top beauty idol, replacing Christie Brinkley). But what was of real interest to me was Linda Wells' "letter from the editor." Priding her book on its journalistic investigations and instructive tone, Wells has always negotiated that delicate balance that Rabine detailed in her essay on fashion magazines--that volatile alchemy that must at once respect readers as savvy post-mod aesthetes who seeks outlets of individuation, self-expression, and resistance, while on the other hand, attracting, lulling, and luring them as consumers. Wells tends to be fairly self-reflexive about the impetus of the fashion-beauty complex, but she still needs to uphold her publication as an intimate confidante or instructor. Below is a transcript of her letter:

A lot of people have a lot of theories about the American dream, and here’s mine: In this fine country you can become anything you want to if you have a modicum of talent, a little opportunity, and an absolute abundance of will; you can even become beautiful. By that, I am not suggesting extreme plastic surgery. I mean more manageable improvements and a healthy attractiveness: clear skin, straight, white teeth; groomed hair; contact lenses; a fit body.

Part of the pursuit of happiness is this pursuit of beauty. It is distinctly American, and it’s a quest that transcends gender, class, race, age, and sexual orientation. In this country, we assume that we have the right to determine and improve our essential selves, psychologically and physically. The way we look—along with our social and economic status—is flexible and mobile. The idea that effort can beget beauty is incredibly tantalizing. And what could be more optimistic.

My goal at Allure over the past 20 years has been to make beauty accessible to every woman, first by demystifying it, and then by explaining it in practical terms. When I started the magazine in 1991, beauty was underconsidered and overcomplicated. It was tangled up with vanity and with pleasing a man. I wanted to extricate it from those old ideas and let it flourish on its own terms as an expression of self-esteem and strength.

Today, though styles and attitudes about beauty have certainly changed, my mission is the same: to offer information, provide perspective, give pleasure, and help women shape and achieve their own personal dreams. And through our readers’ hopeful pursuit of beauty, I continue to strive to make Allure, in some small way, part of the American experiment.

Her letter in this issue intrigues me, because the language is earnest, populist, realistic, and thus seductive. Were I in her place, I'd probably want to write something similar, but in the spirit of deconstruction, it's interesting to see how unflinchingly she uses the rhetoric of self-determinism and free choice when it comes to beauty practices (no sense of coercive, normalizing power here), which Bordo would likely lambast. Also of note, is how she conflates this freedom of choice and the fundamental right to attain beauty as being tied to nationalism, also assuming that being American is synonymous with equality; similarly she sees the quest for beauty as transcending differences of race and class, when they may in fact emphasize and reinforce those very hierarchies and gulfs.

Ofcourse it would be easy for us to tear apart all of her assumptions and essentializing, but I think there is also merit in her ethos and writing. As the editor of a beauty magazine, she's fulfilling her role admirably--utopian-tinged portraits of unity with a healthy dose of Jeffersonian idealism is a lot more appealing to readers than skeptical analysis--but I also wonder if those in the industry see themselves as perpetuating the problems in the "empire of images," or if they truly cast themselves as messianic purveyors of products and resultant self-esteem.

The Postmodern Quandrary

Postmodernism, Feminism, and the Academy

Susan Bordo’s critique and, to a lesser extent, her mitigating defense of postmodernism and its implication on feminist theory brings to mind some reflections on the nature of academic writing and where it is headed.

To begin with, Bordo critiques what she calls “cultural plastic” – how the intoxication with freedom from bodily determination meant an ideology where the materiality and history of the body could be overcome by choice. Self determination and limitless choice meant that the body, amidst everything else, was freed from “history, social location, or even individual biography” (251). This euphoria of freedom over fixity was one which celebrated putting on a different self everyday and reveled in the notion of “play” and “choice” when it comes to all beauty rituals – even those as problematic as black women who straighten their hair or East Asian women who go for double eyelid surgery. Extending this to academia, Bordo laments an atmosphere where particularity reigns and a fear of generality means marshalling a critique against cultural hegemony (e.g. the notion of a white feminine beauty as the inescapable Althusserian “ideology” which insidiously dictates all beauty standards) is seen as totalitarian and essentializing.

I am both sympathetic to and yet wary of Bordo’s take on the postmodern. Firstly, let me explain why I agree with Bordo to some extent. As an amateur scholar trying to figure out my mode of writing, I have found it challenging and at times suffocating to avoid a polemical mode of writing that was so evocative of pieces from the 70’s. In tip-toeing around ruptures, fissures, gaps, heterogeneous agency, polysemous identities, the fear of “speaking for” or “speaking to” has created a stutter which resulted in oftentimes not being to speak much of anything at all. I remember the most empowering literature I read as an undergrad which drew me to pursue graduate school, were those written by Edward Said, Toni Morrison, and yes, Laura Mulvey. Their politics had not yet undergone the infinitesimal hair-splitting and self-conscious qualifying/justification/reservedness which has beleaguered postmodern writing. Their polemics though clearly essentialist, resonated with the certainty of “speaking for” a marginal group, whether the Oriental/colonized or the female. The experience of reading these kinds of writing for me then was akin to surfacing from under a murky pond, and it was very enabling. I understood why Miss World winners always looked a certain way, and that different and problematic social standards were applied to girls, and that cultural institutions were open to question and deconstruction. I think academia loses a lot of its potential for critique and empowerment when such “against the grain”-type readings, which necessarily “risk essentialism” (to quote Diana Fuss) in order to rally its politics, become out of vogue. Until there are no more stakes in representation, until all power hierarchies are made even, would we then be in a position to move completely past modernist resistances towards the postmodern.

On the other hand, I still think there is still much to be recuperated from the postmodern in the academe and that Bordo’s take on the postmodern might not be the fairest, nor the most enabling one. To be fair to Bordo, she does acknowledge poststructuralism’s contributions to how we see the body not as a unitary, physiological reality, but as a cultural, historical and plural construct – 1. through Foucauldian notions of power as enacted upon and through the body, 2. through Derridean notions of the body and gender as that whose meaning is mediated by language. She also complements how Butler is able to denaturalize gender categories through her study of gender performativity and subversive bodily acts. These points I thoroughly agree with. However, Bordo on page 292 goes on to argue that Butler’s theories are useful only in abstraction and that, like most postmodern texts, Butler’s texts “become signifiers without context,” exhibiting “a characteristically postmodern inclination to emphasize and celebrate resistance, the creative agency of individuals, and the instabilities of current power-relations” (294). I suppose what Bordo is saying is: so gender is performative and fluid etc. etc., but “so what”? How is this discourse constructive in a world where women still experience the pressures of conformity to a patriarchal, anglicized culture?

I am sympathetic with Bordo, but I sense that this so-called postmodern “plastic discourse” is more enabling than Bordo gives it credit for. I think there is a difference between simply putting on blue contact lenses, and being self-reflexive about the ideologies one is buying into as one puts on blue contact lenses. Bordo might find this a postmodern cop-out but yet one cannot discredit the oft mentioned notion of personal female pleasures involved in having one’s eyes look a certain way, or arranging one’s hair in a particular fashion. If the personal is political, then not only the arrangement of the body but also the alignment of one’s pleasures must be legitimated. Furthermore, I find Butler’s argument enabling because it provides the possibility for one to play with and reconsider one’s “gender performance”. Gender is no longer physiologically prescriptive but something more open to reinterpretation, at least in our minds, if not in society at large. This is in itself, no matter how abstract and divorced from material/historical reality, is enabling.


One Last Note

There is no answer to this quandrary and I find myself wavering between these positions – the postmodern stutter has certainly come into play. Which is why I appreciated the writing of bell hooks in Black Looks. To write the way she did in 1999 requires conviction (as well as a well publicized academic career). Even though she never calls on an essentialized “Black female identity”, she nevertheless does not disregard a material, historical experience of black femininity which is still ongoing and still experienced everyday in ways which need to be addressed and spoken about.

It is disappointing therefore to have stumbled across this review of the book on Amazon. A reviewer for Black Looks, a David S. Burt, writes:

“I must say, Bell Hooks's ideas and opinions are right on the money. She mentions issues such as black male masculinity, feminism, and racism and breaks them down very well. She's not the average traditional black feminist. She's not afraid to talk bad about white folks (like Madonna) and she's brave enough to use the word "white supremacy"; not in a militant way, but more reserved. It's easy to tell she's a liberal, but she's not restricted to traditional left-wing philosophy because of her strong Afro-centric view-points. This is a must read for all Black people, especially Black women who hardly have any intellectual role-model to look up to.”

What an infuriating review! Nevermind how Burt conceives of the “average traditional black feminist”, and lets not even get started at his prescriptive notion that Black women should read hooks lest they descend into waywardness due to a lack of “any intellectual role-model(s) to look up to.” The notion that hooks is an acceptable read because of the perception that her criticisms are in any way “diluted” or less trenchant, was what I found the most troubling because this was not at all how I read her work. I thought it was incendiary because it was so nuanced and yet bold. I appreciate how she calls on the collective in order to challenge representations of black men and women (though her writing sometimes lacks historical evidence), but also does not essentialize this "collective". Perhaps then, we need more writers in this postmodern academic environment able to write both polemically and also with a consideration for postmodern particularities.

How Vogue Covers the Mid-East Crisis

Check out the Vogue piece on Asma Al-Assad, "the element of light in a country full of shadows," also known as the wife of Syrian dictator Basha al-Assad. Via Gawker:

"

John Cook — Did you know that today is a "Day of Rage" across the Muslim world, where bone-weary citizens are finally taking to the streets against their corrupt dictators? Seems like as good a time as any for Vogue to publish a fawning profile of the "glamorous, young, and very chic" wife of Syria's brutal tyrant, right?

Asma al-Assad is "a rose in the desert," according to Vogue. She's the first lady of "the safest country in the Middle East." She's "breezy, conspiratorial, and fun," and she jets around the country in a Falcon 900. Her husband, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, is a "tall, long-necked, blue-eyed" man who "takes photographs and talks lovingly about his first computer." He was elected president in 2000 with "a startling 97 percent of the vote" because "in Syria, power is hereditary."

He has also filled "Syria's prisons...with political prisoners, journalists, and human rights activists" and presides over a secret police that "detain[s] people without arrest warrants and torture[s] with complete impunity." Oh wait, those last quotes weren't from Vogue, they were from Human Rights Watch. Anyway, isn't that purple shawl gorgeous?"

ESPN and Manhood

Quite an interesting article posted last Monday, Courtney. I finally have the chance to catch up on this blog here, so sorry for not responding as I wanted to earlier.

Classical manhood is composed of many variables, and Feiler, in "Dominating the Man Cave," an analysis of ESPN, handles two which are particularly relevant to the channel and its fans. Male sports figures are athletic; they sweat; they exert physical strength and an acute knowledge of their own bodies; and they perform them on a level with which female athletes are unable to compete at the awe of many women and weaker men alike.

But off the playing field, men must appear gentlemanly: sophisticated, tempered, and refined. One effective way of doing this is by working on his appearance. For instance, a gentleman's "wardrobe philosophy," as Feiler puts it, suggests he has given great thought to clothing (in many cases a charade for a lack of philosophical acumen in other areas.)

These two variables factor enormously into ESPN's "gameplan." To elevate their status among other men (a bit of Darwinism here), many work in vain at solving this equation, and ESPN is quite telling of this. He asks, "How might I dominate the other guy while still maintaining a sensitivity to more effete pursuits (like fashion and style) and appear desirable to women? " It's a power struggle for having their way with men and women alike, and many sports figures are being pulled apart, drawn and quartered, by these forces. Some critics might feel that ESPN and other media avenues currently popular among men are at the root of this struggle , but an astute historian and critic will point at this classical tradition of manhood, informed by biology, at its source.

Plastic Surgery Niches and Breast Anxiety

The New York Times ran an interesting article about plastic surgery cultural niches in the New York area (thanks for posting the link, Tara). According to several surgeons, some of whom believe themselves to be "sort of amateur sociologists," they can tell what "job" the patient will want done by their ethnic background. The piece is full of egregious essentialisms and generalizations (made by patients and doctors alike) such as Latinas define themselves with their bodies, We always have curves," and Asians always want the double eye-lid surgery, not because of "assimilation," but simply due to the fact that "one of the traits of beauty os to have large eyes."

It's fascinating how the article reads the apparent enhancement of "racial traits" (Latinas want more butt, White women want less) not as a way of accepting the box one has been put in, but as a kind of belated, and well-deserved, pride in being who you are. Following the logic of the piece, by Sam Dolnick, it's clear that we have reach a stage in which women have finally accepted their ethnicity and, apart for Asians and some Russians I suppose, are happy to accentuate their "own" features, instead of trying to approximate a White beauty standard.

Another interesting point is a Dr. Elena Ocher, a Russian immigrant, who attributes the rise on Russian women's request for breast implants to Americanization, not Russian culture and wonders wgt America is always been so much into breasts, "What is this fixation?" The cliche goes that in America it's all about big breasts, whereas in Latin culture it's all about the ass. I'm sure there could be some great Freudian analysis about anality and orality to be developed on this. My first inkling is to align the fixation with the breast with a kind of (American) child that is, perhaps, less certain of having ever actually "had" the breast. At the risk of committing some egregious generalization myself, it would seem like the comparatively overwhelming presence, and expression, of maternal affect in Latin culture may lead to less anxiety concerning the breast.

Reshaping Bodies by Ethnicity

On ethnic differences in plastic surgery....

Girldrive: Criss-crossing America, Redefining Feminism

Embarking on a road trip across the U.S. to engage with contemporary women, writer Aronowitz and the late artist Bernstein (1985-2008) assert that "all we want is conversation." Through 127 casual discussions with female college students, burlesque dancers, musicians, nuns-in-training, single mothers, abortion clinic staffers and others, the authors privilege the unique experiences and perspectives of both established activists and women who hesitate to identify with any notion of feminism. Coupling luminous, enigmatic photography with insightful diary entries, the pair contribute sharp commentary on modern womanhood and gender issues. The project is most striking when exploring the personal stories of interview subjects, but the authors' ambitious scope makes some encounters feel repetitive. Clearly a work of passion for Bernstein (who committed suicide before the book's publication) and Aronowitz both, the authors share of themselves generously, imprinting the "open-ended, fluid conversation" with their voices, feelings and personalities.  (from publishers weekly)

Girldrive: Criss-crossing America, Redefining Feminism by Nona Willis Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein
(I'm on page 196/197.)

Daddies, Daughters, and Consumption

Just a quick Valentine's Day tale...

Let me preface this by saying that I am in no way a Daddy's girl--my father and I aren't particularly close, and he certainly doesn't dote on me or spoil me in the way that's associated with that label. My parents have been separated since I was twelve, and while we get along well, in a joking, pop-culture-reference-talking way, we don't have a deeper emotional connection.

In terms of material compensation, Dad's never been much of a gift-giver--he usually gives me cash for birthdays and Christmases/Hanukahs, and I think the last time he ventured into the world of girl culture was when he got me My Little Ponies in grade school.

So you can imagine my surprise when he showed up at The Cheesecake Factory during my shift, with a deliciously understated black Barney's bag, telling me it was my Valentine's present. Inside was an adorable, petal pink Marc Jacobs cross-body bag (the Percy turnlock to be precise). I was shocked, and very touched, but mostly shocked: he's never even attempted to get me prototypical feminine things, and even my close friends and ex-boyfriend who were familiar with my style, rarely ventured to purchase something as taste-specific as a purse for me.

Compounding my surprise, why would he get me something for the this hallmark paean to commercialized love? Usually he just gives me a Snickers if he remembers, and isn't Val day typically reserved for grand gestures sublimated into purchases and designated for your significant other (versus fathers and daughters)? So obviously I was completely floored by this incongruous and oddly romantic offering, even moreso when he animately explained his selection process: there was another bag he thought I might like, but they sold out, then he decided this one was more versatile etc etc--he was clearly so proud of himself for entering and successfully navigating the feminine sphere of consumption, since women and their shopping practices are constructed as mystifying and inscrutable in the male mind.

My favorite part however (besides my enjoyment of a luxe gift) was watching the surrounding female reactions. All the other hostesses and female servers noticed the chicly minimalist Barney's bag (a taste-culture signifier in itself), and when I showed them the purse, they made appreciative "oohs" and "ahhs," and to my bemusement, several of them said something like "Wow, you're so lucky your dad's does that," or "I wish I had a dad like that."--the reality is, no you don't, you have no idea about the fraught inner dynamics of this particular filial relationship, but in that moment, a fetishized commodity that represents high-end consumption and femininity temporarily stood in for happiness and love, and that seemed especially fitting for the holiday.

"Where black people and white people buy furniture"

It's received plenty of hits on You Tube already, but I thought I'd relay this commercial from a North Carolina furniture store that fits nicely into Tara's talk on an additive model of racism:

I've discussed this clip with many of my friends at school and on Facebook, and many (Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, etc.) find it terribly upsetting, regressive, and highly objectionable--particularly friends who are left leaning in their politics. As a *product* of the white South (to use consumerist language), I found it particularly resonant (and funny) because I was raised in this type of black and white, them and us, naive mindset (that has not served my academic career in any beneficial way I can think of so far so I'll spare you further details). What a furniture store (and is there anything more stereotypically working class than a furniture store??) in North Carolina considers progressive advertising is endearing and commendable. For the left to turn their collective noses up at this clip makes me realize why our country is so ideologically divided. When these working class guys, presenting themselves as interested in society's collective good, are a met with scorn and contempt, it's troublingly telling of these times.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day!

Dominating the Man Cave

Apropos of discussion from a few weeks ago, an NYT article about ESPN's construction of masculinity, including how to dress and whether or not posing half-naked is "feminizing"...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/fashion/06ThisLife.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=espn&st=cse&scp=8

Screen-to-Street Style and Southern Belles

Starlets, The Runway, and The Tabloids

In exploring the costume codes of Hollywood classical realism, Gaines left me with some questions as to what exactly her grievance or proposed alternative would be, or if she was even lamenting the hegemony of the era. Her discussion of naturalization (like most cultural studies-inflected uses of the term) suggests that there was an ideology at play that negated, refused, or suppressed other options—for a while I wondered what exactly she was advocating (if anything) i.e. if classical cinematic realism missed out on opportunities of unfettered aesthetic invention in favor of codes of continuity, legibility and harmony, “Thus it is that costume is eclipsed by both character and body at the expense of developing its own aesthetic discourse. Bound to character and body, it is socialized, conventionalized, tamed…In the ecosystem of classical cinema, telling the story requires subordinating an especially evocative aesthetic to narrative designs” (193-194).Would she have preferred discord and stark or antinomic juxtapositions? By page 203 I realized she was simply proposing spectacle-for-its-own-sake costuming as seen in the melodrama, but I’m still not entirely sure I’m clear on her argument, and if she prefers these instance of stylistic extravagance and excess, or if she is simply giving them context as anomalies (I felt Berry was a bit clearer on this point).

Since I’m still unclear on that score, I’ll move on to the idea of star creation and star persona and the tandem function of fashion. I found Gaines’ discussion of the mentality shift from silent to sound fascinating and especially relevant for today’s industry. She cites the initial assumption that screen style should be unobtrusive and pedestrian, matching what would be worn in real life, which was later upended as screen stars developed carefully cultivated personas that required consistency of image-management both in their roles and their off-set appearance “The earliest view of costuming, the silent film dictum that motion picture costumes for ‘true=to-life’ characters should be no different from street clothes was then reversed. The off-screen wardrobe now had to be similar to the onscreen costume in its exaggerated qualities and had to carry over a definitive style” (200).

This stratagem remains especially true in today’s tabloid culture, where were have access to essentially every moment of a star’s day, from getting Jamba Juice, to shopping on Robertson, to attending a red carpet event—every event is photographed and chronicled from the quotidian to the glamorous, so we have complete access to the star’s looks, and there is a new (unprecedented?) level of scrutiny and attention paid to star’s off-duty style. It’s entirely possible that our vicarious interest is the same as it was for classical era audiences, but our media coverage has expanded beyond the limits of paper publications like star mags, so that may have caused an amplification of the already existing interest. Hyper-aware of the constant paparazzi presence and the transmissibility of their image, stars (still armed with stylists but not necessarily star costume designers) have a new level of self-consciousness that any outfit they wear for even the most mundane activity will be photographed, publicized in an internet forum, and correspondingly judged. Some actors clearly don’t care and wear whatever they please (often landing them on worst dressed list and mocking sniping blogs—which seems so cruel, since they were just picking their dog up from the vet). Other stars however take the opportunity to cultivate and expand their image, eliding their projected persona even more inextricably with their fashion, leading to the creation of a “style star” whose fashion savvy has actually superseded her acting talents and careers.

Two such actresses are Rachel Bilson and Kate Bosworth, both winsome twenty -somethings, both poised on the edge of starlethood in the early 2000s, and while they have had some decent roles, their careers are what would be considered rather stultified. However they both have managed to maintain Hollywood currency and media coverage by parlaying their fashion and recognizable styles into fame. Bosworth has become a fashion show and red carpet darling, garnering praise for her ease and nonchalance with evening wear; Bilson similarly has become an improbable fashion icon for her unaffected street style, often cited as the queen of denim—from her shorts, floral rompers, straws fedoras and oversized scarves, magazines and websites heap adulation.

http://www.people.com/people/rachel_bilson/photos/0,,,00.html#20860509

Obviously she is quite aware of her created reputation for street style, so that must effect her choice of what to wear any given day (she was given official recognition by being made a contributing editor of InStyle with a monthly advice column). Incongruously, if you look at pictures of her on-line almost all of them are on the street with very few red carpets, and even when she is attending a movie premier, she is not in the film--she barely has what you would consider an acting career; she has instead morphed into a signifier, known for her look more than for her art, and in this case we have a extreme version of the star persona—she is now all style, as the person recedes behind the clothes. Incidentally, she often comes in to eat at the Cheesecake Factory, and the first time I saw her (in denim shorts, strappy sandals, a button down, aviators, intentionally rumpled ombre hair) I thought “Who’s this chick trying to dress like Rachel Bilson?....Oh”)

People.com’s style section is particularly interesting (and the source of many many wasted internet hours) Its sections include “Last Night Look: Hit or Miss?”, and while this user-generated poll is usually for glam events, the pictures include something as trivial as a coffee run, legitimating the idea of stars being “on” at all times. “Would You Wear These Trends?” is another section where they have a triptych of pictures, usually all street style and attempting to classify a few observations in to a coherent trend e.g. three actresses wearing purple shoes constitutes a trend. Another section of note is the “I Really Love My..”” , which is essentially a visualization of fetish objects as it tracks a star’s oft-worm or repeatedly seen accessory e.g. Gwen Stefani sporting the same coat three times:

http://www.peoplestylewatch.com/people/stylewatch/gallery/0,,20053264,00.html

These databases and comparisons and the attendant judgment and valuation (through voting) can only be achieved through today’s digital archives that make it possible to amass a huge volume of images. Tying into Berry’s work on stars occasionally having to refashion their image to remain fresh, E!.com is particularly virulent when it comes to identifying and then sanctioning an actress who has become too staid in her routine and expected style. In the Fashion Police section, each new acerbic picture commentary also contains links to previous photos, creating a visual archive and style history of specific infractions, so not only does an actress face criticism for her most recent look, but she will be called out for previous missteps or repetitions

http://www.eonline.com/fashion/fashionpolice/index.jsp#81373

http://www.eonline.com/fashion/fashionpolice/index.jsp#77999

http://www.eonline.com/fashion/fashionpolice/index.jsp#76578

I was intrigued by Berry’s exploration of the symbiosis between Paris runways and the Hollywood screen, especially her suggestion that this relationship was often unidirectional, with Hollywood more productively influencing high fashion than couture making incursions on the screen. Given the growing importance of remaining contemporary and in vogue, I would have thought that the runways might have a had a greater influence, so it was interesting to read about instances of failed collaboration or high fashion's cinematic incompatibility (Chanel). This ties into the idea of clothes needing to register and “act,” which is not synonymous with couture, despite the lavish and meticulously crafted artistry. Of course there are been profitable alliances such as Audrey and her famed relationship with Givenchy, who costumed most of her films and designed her “look” that has become absurdly iconic.

More recently, Natalie Portman requested and encouraged the designers from Rodarte (who already had a established a relationship with the actress for her red carpet appearance) to design for Black Swan, resulting in the avant garde reinterpretation of the 19^th century standards we are so accustomed to seeing. The ballet costumes were, for me, the only memorable part of the film and undeniably exquisite, so here we have a case of the couturiers importing the theatricality of their art to the screen in a manner than read perfectly and was intensely evocative. Of course this successful alliance may have to do with the fact that they were designing actual costumes, not just simulated daily wear but hyperbolic ultra-stylized tutus which may have lent itself to the textural excess that Gaines and Berry talk about—they don’t have to be subservient or quietly harmonize with the performance and the rest of the mise en scene—they can be that commandeering virtuosic solo that Gaines references; they can and in some cases should speak for Natalie, as dance is akin to silent film.

Fiddly Dee/Blush and Bashful.

Steel Magnolias is in fact painful for me to watch. I hadn’t seen it in a while, and all I could remember was a) the cacophony of unconvincing and inconsistent southern accents (why do they all sound like they’re from different regions?) b) Sally Fields cracking an obscene amount of eggs in the kitchen-confession scene (what they hell is she making?) and c) some pretty good one-liners from Dolly Parton, who incidentally comes across as the most authentic and comfortable in this film. Aside from being one of the pinkest films I’ve ever seen (the whole “blush and bashful” wedding colors monologue falls flat, since the entire film, from their skin tones to the mise en scene is insanely rosy), I can’t quite decipher the intended tone of the director, or the original intention of the playwright—is this a loving if sometimes bemused portrait of southern life and southern women? It is mean satirically for more jaded, coastal viewers to get a sort of ethnographic view of souther excess? Is it a celebration of the unique mix of tenacity and delicacy that fetishisizes southern women? Certain jokes seem to be at the southern women’s expense (especially in scenes that detail the often garish extravagance of Annelle and Truvy) which suggests that we are laughing at the women, but other moments allow us to laugh with them and their canny self-awareness of the signifiers and stereotypes about southern women (Ouiser has some illustrative lines like the one about old southern women planting vegetables). So ultimately I don’t know who the joke is on, if there is a joke at all, and in terms of reception I’d be curious to know how this film is received in the south—is it rejected or embraced?

Conversely, I love love love Gone with the Wind (and I’m prepared to defend it). Moving on the costumes, Gaines raises important directorial and design issues in terms of how to costume a star actress for key climactic scene and ones of intense emoting or vital plot development—should the costumes subtly undergird the emotion as to be almost invisible? Should they incorporate the tonal elements of the scene, but with out foreshadowing or telegraphing what will happen? etc.

The most famous and instantly recognizable dresses in Gone with the Wind also serve central narrative and thematic functions—the famous barbeque dress with its springtime pallet of frilly green and whites communicates Scarlet's fiddly-dee unconcern and girlishness—it shows her as a coquette and more importantly, one that is completely unaware of the larger issues going on in her world that is about to collapse; the green velvet curtain dress gets elevated to the level of character as the scene becomes about its construction and her ”moonlight and magnolias” performance that attempts to regain a semblance of her former southern grandeur; the fantastic red “fallen women” dress is similarly a self-conscious construction, as Rhett wants her to “look the part” in the low-cut, bejeweled column topped with marabou feathers—even the dialogue refers to the idea that clothes indicate and create the personality, and he uses this gorgeous but provocative dress as her punishment, branding her to the town as a brazen woman. All three of these looks (besides being beautiful) were clearly resonant in the public imaginary, because they are the ones that are most referenced and have even been memorialized in the Scarlet o Hara Barbie.

http://dollsaga.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/barbie-as-scarlett-ohara/

However my personal favorite look, the one that has inspired over-present narcissistic female identificatory pleasure in me, is the charming riding outfit she wears in the mill scene with Ashley when they are caught in an embrace. The white dress, with its nipped-in waist and lace overlay is cinched by a blue velvet bolero, both with a high neck and a low portrait color, topped by a peaked white hat that she references as her new bonnet. I love the silhouette of this look, which is more tailored and streamline that most of her antebellum gowns (post-marriage Scarlet’s fashion is more at the vanguard thanks to her European trousseau) and there a jauntiness and sportiness to it, an independence that reinforces her presence there as a business woman and entrepreneur—the mill, after all, is her venture, separate from Rhett’s money.

I think this costume is also an interesting choice given the potentially disastrous end to this scene when India catches them. Although Scarlet is presumed guilty and the rampant rumors begin, in this scene, for once in her life, she actually is innocent and unjustly accused—unlike other instances where she has consciously created her appearance for a desired effect or waited for Ashley “like spider”, here she was legitimately comforting him and adjuring him not to dwell in the past. Her disavowal of the past and her advice not to look back is subtly reinforced by her wardrobe—she is fashion-forward, moving on, decidedly not dressing like the old Scarlet who didn’t have a care in the world—her outfit represents modernity at that particular moment, and she is not moving back to the crinolines and massive skirts and silhouettes of her girlish past. Similarly, the delicacy of the color palate with the innocent sky blue and white, both colors that covey purity, honor etc ,might suggest that she is actually on the right side of morality at this moment. As the audience, we are privileged here to know what really happened and that there was no actual transgression, so I believe the costuming decision was meant to reflect that on some level.

The Sartorialist

http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

I love this blog (and Ms. Wintour's coat). Scott Schuman, who runs The Sartorialist, has said "I thought I could shoot people on the street the way designers looked at people, and get and give inspiration to lots of people in the process. My only strategy when I began The Sartorialist was to try and shoot style in a way that I knew most designers hunted for inspiration."^[3]

Work It: gender, race, and sexuality in pop professions

Work It: gender, race, and sexuality in pop professions

---A conference at USC on February 24, 2011 in association with the 2011 EMP Pop Music Conference

The biggest stars of the day from Katy Perry, Nikki Minaj, Lady Gaga, to Adam Lambert, play in the brightest lights with conventions of gender and sexuality, echoing and building upon traditions of pop performance as old as the stage itself. In basements, barrooms, concert halls and cafes across the country, artists of all types do the same—and more—while rooted in various political, performative, and social contexts they might hesitate to call “feminist” but will surely call “doing their thing.”

And at the same time, an industry shifts dynamically in the wake of dramatic technological changes, rendering concepts of “professionalism” in new light while the academy shifts to deal with popular culture in ways more inclusive than ever before (or not).

At this day-long conference, a group of music journalists, scholars, musicians, and music industry professionals come together to talk about the changing role of gender, race, and sexuality in the pop music world.

This conference is organized by Karen Tongson, Ann Powers, Daphne Carr, and Sarah Dougher.

Fetish, Costume, Sex, Hollywood, USC

Stella Bruzzi’s “Desire and the Costume Film” diverges from conventional, scholarly notions of costume dramas that typically center around three themes: a “sceptical distrust of the film’s motives, their prioritization of bourgeois ideals, and their conservative, nostalgic view of the past” (35). Because male writers have shied from the genre entirely, reducing costume dramas to something merely feminine, melodramatic, and therefore outside the canon of critical discourse, a dearth of scholarship has left Bruzzi with what she admits is a wide gap to fill. Her interpretation however is much more complex than the rather uncritical afterthoughts of male writers. Boldly, she goes beyond femininity and melodrama in her analysis of three films (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Age of Innocence, The Piano) that both typify and transcend the genre to suggest the costume drama’s power lies in the fetishistic and erotic potential of the costumes themselves.

Sex is always a difficult subject on which to write. Many in the academy, for better or worse, tend to fall back on what (I still hold on to feeling) are unfounded, dated assertions by psychoanalysts. Bruzzi addresses Freud and Lacan but does not dwell on their writings, moving on to more recent scholarship by Metz, Kunzle, Steele, and others, and ultimately tossing clothes into a series of binaries. The power of the fetish, she posits, lies in coalescence of the natural (the naked body) and the unnatural (clothes), pain (corset) and pleasure (tiny waist), the real (skin) and veiled (cloth), etc.

Not bound by in-depth, somewhat redundant, narrative analyses that characterize the Bruzzi essay’s second half, Jane Gaines in “Costume and Narrative: How Dress Tells the Woman’s Story” outlines an empirical history of costuming in Classical Hollywood, particularly how designers like Edith Head worked in the studio system. Unfortunately, Gaines’ essay steers clear of fetish, her history of silent and early sound film costuming devoid of sex, particularly when discussing star making. What of Mack Sennett’s leggy bathing beauties, Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland nearly falling out of their corsets in Gone With the Wind (a female melodrama in the guise of an epic) or a svelte, seductive Barbara Stanwyck revealing a line of flesh in a black halter top in The Lady Eve? Hollywood has always pushed the erotic envelope, something that continues to challenge Middle America’s values of decency and modesty. This is somehow sidelined in a rather dry but respectable run of scholarly work, limiting costume to its mere semiotic, exaggeratory, and storytelling functions.

The Hollywood fetish and male scopophilia (per last week’s discussion) is very important because its legacy endures: insecure celebrities demanding drastic plastic surgery (read: Heidi Montag); paparazzi chasing around skinny stars in bikinis (read: all actresses); and the American porn industry (read: creepy, old white men like Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt), all part of this wonderful tapestry called Southern California. In all seriousness and confidence, I think USC makes note of this exceptionally well.

Beyond Narrative Function: Costume, Visual Pleasure, and a Cinema of Attractions

Jane Gaines’s article, “Costume and Narrative” discusses how costume and narrative intersect, studying how costuming decisions are informed by decisions concerning narrative construction and character coherence particularly in the studio era. For Gaines, codes of naturalism in the Victorian age emphasized the notion of character interiority (as opposed to pantomimic expressivity) which could be rendered visible on the exterior through clothing (Gaines, 186). Gaines sees this as a tradition which continued from silent to sound film – where “discourse on costume remained centered on character coherence” (Gaines, 188). In service of character cohesion and narrative integrity, costume was subordinated to narrative designs “much like orchestral underscoring for Hollywood melodrama which was so carefully matched with emotional connotations that it was heard but not noticed” (Gaines, 195). Costume in Classical Hollywood, according to Gaines was so subservient to the function of the film as narrative, that costumes and their details were sometimes edited out of the final cut altogether.

Gaines, argument (which I read before coming to Berry’s) did not sit easy with me. I found Gaines approach, claiming that costume was in service of narrative, debilitating in that it did not legitimate my own viewing pleasures in costume. One need only think of our assigned screening this week Gone With The Wind to see instances where the display of costume provided for visual and almost tactile pleasure beyond the function of conveying narrative information. For instance, the camera hangs long enough on Scarlett’s green ribboned bonnet for us to marvel over its beautiful folds or lingers on a long shot so we might take in the glory of her frothy green and white “barbeque” dress. These lingering shots do little for narrative function where a quick edit would otherwise suffice to illustrate, for instance, young Scarlett’s wealthy background or her flirtatious nature. These edits, rather, stretch out a moment such that it goes beyond conveying narrative/character information and function instead as a conveyance of visual pleasure.

Such an observation might recall Mulvey’s theory of the female image as a visual spectacle which suspends or disrupts the narrative. But, I believe there is a lot more going on in such scenes than just male scopophilic pleasure. Rather, these lingering edits become the space where multiple and gendered pleasures might occur simultaneously – an issue which Sarah Berry takes up in her study of costume and female fandom broaching the notion of how costume spoke to specifically female modes of viewing pleasures.

Sarah Berry’s chapter discusses how costume was in fact central to the historical costume drama which later became known as a woman’s drama. Using the example of Scarlet O’Hara’s barbeque dress, costume for Berry became the selling point of films where the costumes, more often than story, became their distinguishing feature. She discusses how costume operated extra-textually as a space for female fandom, leading to a symbiotic relationship between Hollywood and fashion. I found Berry’s section far more enabling because it accounted for a more independent space where pleasure, specifically feminine pleasure, might be obtained from the moving picture in spite of narratives which often punish or sideline female agency or desire. I enjoyed Blonde Venus for instance because I could relish in Dietrich’s costumes even though her character was being punished for her adultery and then subdued within a charmless marriage – a story which I could not for the life of me empathise with.

On a final note, watching Edison’s 1895 one reel Anabelle Serpentine Dance brings to mind the function of costume as a cinematic attraction in early cinema. In these early Edison dance films, a single girl is featured dancing on stage with swirling skirts. Her hypnotically twirling dress was hand-tinted with a shifting palette of colours. It proved so popular that Anabelle was filmed dancing again by W.K.L Dickson and for Pathe. To use Gunning’s seminal concept, costume functioned in these early examples as pure attraction before the star system and the consolidation of film as a narrative medium. This example from early cinema might lend some credence to the notion that costume, its textures, its flow and movement, offers visual pleasure in and of itself.



Here's a link to Edison's Annabelle Serpentine Dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNXNfcEo5dQ

And W.K.L. Dickson's Annabelle Dances and Dances: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unfh-_BiIrs

Open Question

In class yesterday, one I hope you all found very interesting and thought provoking, psychoanalysis was given a lot of attention. Some of the comments from Tara and others in class certainly left me curious. A few of you thought psychoanalysis functions in the academy as a common ground or a common language. Without thinking if this is either a good idea or a bad one, I really want to know exactly how this is used in practice. Psychoanalysis and all its strands (i.e. Lacanian, Deleuzian, Freudian) are so complex, where can you go to really engage with others in this rigorous stuff? Is it really the goal at school, in our writing, or at conferences to use language as potentially alienating as a psychoanalytic one? Yes, the academy should maintain a level of rigor or else it risks becoming a dumbed-down, pedestrian institution, and while I think psychoanalysis is one viable antidote for that risk, it's not something in my short time at the academy that I've ever seen as intstrumental in forging relationships with other intellectuals. Am I missing something?

I love to ask questions and I think that's a good approach to take at school because many intellectuals love to give answers -- and good ones at that. And so this is the question I now pose to you, and maybe it can somehow lead us to better understanding concepts like feminine (and masculine) masquerade, double consciousness, etc.

'Remembering women: psychical and historical constructions in film theory' (Mary Ann Doane)

http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/1.2/Doane.html

It was strange to read about masquerade and the representation of women in cinema during a week where I was also casting three women for two upcoming short film projects. The strangest/most difficult part of filmmaking has got to be the casting. You post a role, you get literally hundreds of applicants, there is absolutely no way that you can audition them all so you start narrowing them down solely based on their physical characteristics. It is unavoidable but the superficiality of it is a bitter pill. (Actors must have a very resilient personality type if they can face rejection day after day and keep going.)

As Sangeeta mentioned below, I am also trying to wrap my head around psychoanalysis and many of this week's readings were difficult to process, like Riviere’s conflation of womanhood and masquerade. In Mary Ann Doane’s article, Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator, she talks about the ownership given to viewers of cinema. “A ‘plastique pertinent to the camera’ constitutes the woman not only as the image of desire but as the desirous image—one which the devoted cinephile can cherish and embrace. To ‘have’ the cinema is, in some sense, to ‘have’ the woman” (page 26). Although Doane continues this by referencing characters of films, specifically Now Voyager, and speaking about male and female spectators, this “ownership” that she mentions is really possible because of the cinema’s re-playability and reproducibility. Theater and other forms of live performance may also incite a lascivious gaze but do not carry the same implication of ownership of the characters being viewed.

Other note: I appreciate Gaylyn Studlar’s clear distinction between sadism and masochism in her article, Masochism, Masquerade, and the Erotic Metamorphoses of Marlene Dietrich. Studlar says that while sadism “demands a true victim, masochism is a contractual alliance” (pg 235). She uses this distinction to say that Marlene Dietrich’s actions “do not belong to the domain of sadism.” It makes me wonder how we would categorize others?

More Dietrich...

“I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men.” – Marlene Dietrich

"Yeah, well at least I'm not ugly."

My post’s title is a quote from American Beauty, in the scene where the sensitive emo artist and his quirky rebel girlfriend renounce the self-absorbed cheerleader. As Jane (Thora Birch) dismisses her, Angela (Mena Suvari) throws out the worst and most hurtful insult her value system can conceive of “yeah well at least I’m not ugly!” Clearly, this is the facile gambit of a superficial and insecure teen, and the film’s ethos makes us understand that Jane, the intelligent iconoclastic, is the superior character. However, there is the inescapable reality of female beauty on screen, and in that sense, Angela, with her conventionally good looks (pouty lips, big blues eyes, blond hair) is the most attractive and magnetic figure, which complicates the moral reading in this scene: yes, it’s great to be interesting, but in the celluloid world, isn’t it better to be pretty? For me, this line articulates the overwhelming currency of female looks on film, which constitutes the basis of the makeover narrative.

Now that’s what I call psychoanalysis

In my discursive, somewhat synoptic exposure to high theory over the last few years, I’d assumed that I had feminist psychoanalytic theory down with decent conversance: camera as patriarchal investigatory gaze, how to neutralize castration anxiety in 2 easy steps etc. etc.—most of my exposure to psychoanalysis and Freud have been second-hand through the appropriation and redeployments of later scholars (Mulvey) or in the critical reassessments of those works (Jane Gaines, Patricia White, Kaja Silverman et al). I’m rarely confronted with the thing itself, so actually encountering the density of true, undiluted, hard-core psychoanalysis with the Riviere piece was a bit shocking—I had a similar reaction a few weeks ago in Priya’s historical film class when we read excerpts from Freud’s dream work. In the diction, the analysis, and the conclusions, I can’t get over the tone of authority and incontrovertibility in these seminal texts—there is seemingly no space left for alternative positions, and we are constructed as being helpless under the implacable weight of pathologies.

There is something so invasive about Riviere’s “Masquerade” piece, even though it’s written by woman; it feels cold, probing, judgmental—not on our side. I wonder if Riviere’s very detached tone and lack of empathy (as opposed to the very personalized, engaged styles we will see with feminist writers) was her form of masquerade. By adopting the paternalistic, almost condescending and highly rational lexicon of her male counterparts and mentors, was this her method of disguising her "masculine" qualities (i.e. her intelligence, her professional eminence, her acumen). Not that I expected her to devolve into the language of feeling, and risk becoming the over-present female who is too emotionally involved with her patients and subject of study, but she seems to betray no concern for womankind, for being inscribed in this apparently unalterable state of compensation, fear, and falsity. You wonder what was a stake for her as a woman writing this, and if she had to subsume her personal interest in favor of a medicalized, institutional gloss that would allow her entrance into the big boy’s arena.

Daddy’s girls, Doctors, and a sick symbiosis

Extending again into Riviere’s personal life, I think it’s significant that Heath opens up with some biographical speculation about her and her possible entanglements with the men in her life, “The situation thus created is common enough in the early years of psychoanalysis, with Freud and a forceful male disciple exchanging a woman for analysis in a complex erotic imbroglio” (45)—I found the acolyte-master triangle very unpleasant, as well as the men’s comments and assessments of her being a fine companion but not a sexual attractant. There is a sense of her being their commendable, trick-performing, dream-analyzing pet. This ties into her observations about a woman’s minimizing herself when confronted with representatives of institutionalized patriarchies, “She feels herself as it were acting a part, she puts on the semblance of a rather uneducated foolish and bewildered woman." While “potentially hostile father-figures” (39) can be any official with authority, I think the doctor is a particularly troubled icon.

In terms of women's calculated diminishment, I think at some point in our lives we’ve all adopted a manner of submission, deference, feigned cluelessness or generalized cuteness when dealing with a man (if you haven’t, kudos I guess). This will vary person to person, but I’ve definitely had instances where I’ve raised my voice several octaves when dealing with a man in a superior (if only temporary and circumstantial ) position. This could be as mundane as the cable installer—I may outmatch him on many levels, but in his métier I am helpless and have to play the supplicant. Similarly, when I’m at the doctor’s, I slip into complete deferral mode, even when I suspect I should speak out. The idea of women shrinking or becoming demur in the presence of Dr. Daddy (and all the Freudian connotations of what a male doctor represents to woman) is so disturbing to me.

Note the moment in Now Voyager, when the spinster-version of Charlotte briefly becomes possessor of the gaze as she watches Dr. Jaquith, armed with her glasses and enhanced vision, which Doane will sight as an almost transgressive accessory for the pre-made over female, “The intellectual woman looks and analyzes, and in usurping the gaze she poses a threat to an entire system of representation” (27). She stares at Jaquith with what looks like a mixture of lust, admiration, and gratitude. She tells him “I should think you were the least clumsy person I’d ever met” when he admires her scrimshaw skill and deprecates his own lack of dexterity, and when she offers him one, “You may keep one if you like, ” there is a definite sense of sexual offering. I’d never seen the film and I thought this sudden attachment would go deeper, but it actually never resurfaces—he becomes a mentor, friend, and sparring partner, but I don’t think the suggestion of her sexual attraction to him manifests in the film. However, in this scene she is like a starved animal—perhaps it is only because a man has entered her sanctum of repressed imagination and dried up hopes, or perhaps it is his authority as a man of medicine, but there is this intense look where for a moment he becomes the object of her desire.

Ugly Ducklings and Swans

In “Film and the Masquerade, “ Doane quotes Charles Affron’s analysis of the cinematic and psychological impact of the post-makeover reveal, “The viewer is allowed a different perceptual referent, a chance to come down from the nerve-jarring, first sequence and use his eyes anew,” (20) and this attention to the formal techniques and tropes of the make-over is key, since it will crop up in so many films. The cinematic makeover itself is frequently achieved through montage, and in more playful films, it often has a music video style in terms of editing and tone, with closeups of the sites of transformation (Tai’s makeover in Clueless is a good example); then the reveal itself has an established cinematic syntax such as using camera movement like a upwards pan to reveal the transformation from feet to head; or languorously showcasing the physical change with a slow-motion entrance, typically accompanied by appreciative or surprised looks. The movie makeover, in all its variations, has become so familiar that it can be achieved through a filmic shorthand of cinematic techniques, even to the point of cliché and parody—Not Another Teen Movie has some particularly apt satires, including the “makeover” consisting of taking the nerdy girl glasses off (and suddenly she’s super-hot), of having the newly transformed girl fall down the stairs in the middle of her slow-motion-camera-panning-up-her-body reveal.

Moving beyond the formal to the psychological, I think there is also a great sense of satisfaction, pleasure, and even relief in the makeover scene. I don’t know if anyone else felt this but during the powerful reveal shot in Now Voyager, I felt this immense sense of relief, like a tension had been lifted: I thought, “Ok, there’s Bette Davis, now I can look at her again, now things will be ok, no matter what emotional trauma the narrative may bring, her eyebrows will never revert to that bushiness again..." The expected image and star persona was finally and appropriately returned to its natural state. Perhaps that’s why “ugly” roles that last the entire film garner Oscar nominations—its seems somehow more arduous or courageous. Interestingly you don’t see “makeunders” or reversals if the makeover is deemed successful by the films logic, i.e you won’t see the swan return to being an ugly duckling. The only time a character may eschew her newly acquired accoutrement would be if the film posits the transformation as some how unethical, undesirable and ultimately false, i.e. if she’d lost a part of herself or her values , renounced something dear to her, became a bad person through the change etc. We see subtler forms of this in movies like Mean Girls (Lindsay Lohan ditches the mini skirts and labels for “nice girl” jeans and Ts) but it's usually not a full scale reversion to ugliness or plainness— more a softening or toning down of the exaggerated qualities, But Now Voyager is the classical makeover approach and we know that once reintroduced as glamorous Davis with her familiar star persona in tact, she will remain true to that image.