Applying for a job

In this blogpost I will discuss some visual content that deals with a combination of orientalism and objectifying the female body. I chose two commercials from the same company to make the most honest and valuable comparison. I will discuss them briefly and will then talk about what I find problematic about it by linking my examples to what we discussed in class.

In both commercials the man and the woman are applying for jobs. We don't see them actually applying for it, but will follow them through their day waiting for response from their future employer. Their daily routines are supposed to be matching the job they are applying for. The guy is portrayed as an average dressed young white male that does not stand out in the street view, but is also portrayed as a very helpful person. As he is cycling through the city he waves at an older lady, then he notices someone’s backpack is open and let’s that person know. Then as he is locking his bicycle, he turns someone’s (bicycle’s) light off and holds the door for a woman with a stroller. The commercial ends with the text message from his future employer who confirms he gets the job.
The female counter video shows the daily activities of a young Asian woman that also applied for a job. She is dressed in clothes that do not match the rest of the people in the streets. For example, she wears two pony tails and a lot of pink which make her seem to be a young girl. The woman is on the phone during almost the whole length of the clip as she is also giving directions to the people she comes across in the streets. As a gesture of saying goodbye and saying thank you, she bows. The last person she runs into, seems to be someone familiar who she is surprising by closing her eyes from behind. As they are hugging and talking, she gets the text message that brings her the good news. She also gets the job. In one of the last shots, we see her at her new job behind her desk, bowing towards one of her colleagues.

There are two major issues that I’d like to point out here. In the first clip, the main message is that the man is suitable for the job because it matches his personality. However in the woman's clip, it is not only her friendliness and helpfulness that get her the job. Apparently it was necessary to make the girl extra interesting for her employer by using a stereotype for Asian women, that includes bowing down and being submissive. First of all this stereotype is harmful because it tends to enhance the biased view we, the West, have on Asia and Asian people.
Second of all, the maker of the video is objectifying her, by shifting the emphasis from her personality to her appearance, by dressing her extra prominently and different from the rest of the people.

So to conlude, I argue that according to these videos, when it comes to applying for jobs, women are not only judged from what they are capable of but also from the way they look. In contrast to men who are interesting enough for their abilities only.
Further more, the mocking of the Asian woman by using an offensive stereotype empowers the defensive view the western world has on other cultures.

'Elle' (2016) by Paul Verhoeven

This image by successful Dutch director Paul Verhoeven leaves you with more questions than answers.

The psychological thriller sets off with a devastating rape of the main character, Michèle LeBlanc. In this first first scene she fights her rapist off while she screams loudly in her great French court house. The only thing that hears her is her cat, even though the windows are wide open no neighbour seems to care. Through the entire first part of the film Michele gazes through her windows while she looks for a sign of the creeper which the handsome neighbour Patrick apparently fought off a few days later.
As the viewer, Michèle's actions leave me more unsettled than the persona of her attacker. Immediately after the rape she cleans the room, does not call the police, does not seek the heroic help of her neighbour Patrick which he so kindly offers again and again and finally, calmly tells her friends and ex-husband about the appaling act that has been done to her during a dinner at a restaurant.
During the course of her search for her attacker, she is being sexually bullied by an employee at her game company of whom she does not know the identity, too. She and the viewer assume it must be the same person. Even though she appeared careless of the event towards others, she roams arround her house waiting for her Gaze to meet that of the Other. The concept of Satre's 'look' (Being and Nothingness, 1943) applies here. Hereby she makes herself into the centre of her rapist's Gaze. The viewer however is left to question whether her world is broken down by this gaze or not. Later, before knowing Patrick is her rapist, she looks at him through her binoculars while she mastrubates. Perhaps, this is to counter the idea of her being captured by the Gaze, as she appears all sexual in front of the major French windows while she herself gazes at him outside.
On another note, Michèle is portrayed as someone who appears to be cold towards close-ones and her employees. This becomes more evident when her affair with her best friend's husband is shown. Yet, as the viewer would expect in a traditional image twofold, in her alone-time she does not appear to be more caring of others or more warmhearted. She rather not have any pictures of family or friends in her house and even when she does spend time with her son or old mother, she seems rather careless and emotionless. The viewer is not invited into her emotional struggles which leaves the viewer to disassociate from her in every way. Is the viewer's reaction her punishment? Was it Verhoeven's goal to sadistically punish her for her emotional strongness, aka her masculinity, from the very beginning on?
Does this phallocentrism go hand in hand with Michèle being object to Patrick's rape fetish, as a means to capture and fetishise the female lead character? When Patrick answers "Because it must be done" to Michèle's question as to why he sexually assaulted her, one is left to question his motives. Can Freud give an answer with his phallic coneptualisation of fetishises as "tokens of triumph over the threat of castration and a safeguard against it" (Fetishism, 154)? This stands in line with Lacan's interpretation of fetishes being a mode of accessing power. As mentioned before, this picture leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. Perhaps the male lead character and Verhoeven himself try to regain power over the godless female lead character, by fucking God into her? All in all, 'Elle' is a dark satire about sadomasochism and sexual perversion which invites for more discussions.

Once again, a commercial (and what's wrong with it)

I know there’ve been a lot of attention to commercials and – surprise – I would like to do that as well. More specifically I would like to look at a commercial that always irritates me when it’s on television. With this I also would like to hint at a different discussion, namely about the eating of meat and masculinity. For this discussion you could also look at another commercial, one from last week presentation, for the Cheesy Bacon XXL from the Burger King.

The commercial that I’m interested in is the commercial for the Remia Real American Marinade, for which the commercial is called the 'Bunny' Commercial. This is a relatively new commercial, which aired since approximately June 2016. It starts with a man lying on the side of the road who is obviously part of a joke from his own bachelor party. He is rescued by some tough men on motorcycles. They take the ‘bunny’ (this is how I will refer to him) back to their place, where they were preparing a barbeque – of course with the Remia Real American Marinade. The bunny stays for dinner and all ends well… 

There are, however, some problems with this commercial. First of all the depiction of the ‘bunny, soon to be married man’. He is portrayed as a kind of ‘loser’ and is in sharp contrast with the masculine man on their motorcycles. They look tough, in their manners, are bigger, wear rough clothing and they have a lot of hair. The loser image of the bunny also in a way comes from the fact that he apparently is about to get married. This reminded me of what was said in class with regard to Mulvey’s article. That women in movies are often ‘tamed’, in that they become part of the patriarchal order, for example through marriage. In this way there wouldn’t be any castration anxiety. This is what Mulvey says about this:

‘Ultimately, the meaning of woman is sexual difference, the absence of the penis as visually ascertainable, the material evidence on which is based the castration complex essential for the organization of entrance to the symbolic order and the law of the father. (…) The male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, demystifying her mystery), counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment or saving of the guilty object (…). (…) The first avenue, voyeurism, on the contrary, has associations with sadism pleasure lies in ascertaining guild (immediately associated with castration), asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness. (…) Sadism demands a story, (…) forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength, victory/defeat (…).’ (Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, 840.)

This was applied to Hollywood cinema, but I think you can also apply it here. Even though the main character, the bunny, is male, he is to a certain extent feminized. This in contrast with the biker guys who are depicted very manly. Like I said he is rescued by the men on the motorcycles. Maybe you could even argue that he is freed from the boredom of marriage? The boredom of his soon to be wife? Of women in general? You see in the commercial that he feels free, in the way that he sticks his arms out like he is flying (sitting behind on the motorcycle). He feels victorious.

A second problem with this commercial is the depiction of the only female. She is waiting for the guys to come home and is working in the kitchen. However, she’s not the one barbequing, this is of course often seen as a ‘typical male activity’ (I guess something with fire, being outside and primal instinct…).

The third problem is a little bit related to the first problem. The bunny is already supposed to look more manly by wearing the jacket from the biker. This ‘process’ started when he sat on the bike (I referred to this before). You could see this ‘process’ as complete when he is offered a plate of barbeque meat by man with the enormous beard who says the wise words: ‘If you wanna act like a man, eat like a man.’ So apparently you’re a man when you eat meat, this idea was also mentioned (in a song) in the earlier mentioned Burger King commercial. This means different things. You could say that this would mean that if a women eats meat (or this specific type of meat) she is manly or not a real women? But it could also mean that a man is supposed to eat meat and therefore can’t be a vegetarian of a vegan? There are still a lot prejudices against male vegetarians. This is however a completely different topic of discussion and too big of a subject elaborate on it here.

Keeping it 'fresh'

I have been really irked by a ‘visual outing’ on my social media newsfeed for the past few days –even more irked from the fact that I do not understand how this ended up being recommended to me (perhaps because I am a woman?) – which is a new (November 22^nd 2016) Dutch commercial of the brand Lactacyd. For those that do not know this brand, it makes ‘soap’ in order to ‘cleanse’ the vagina and make it smell ‘nice’.

Unfortunately it is all in Dutch, but basically the commercial is four guys sitting at a table, discussing what names they give to the vagina, which results into some profane words and laughter. Then Lactacyd asks: “Do you have a preference for pubic hairstyle?” to which our gentlemen answer either: “It has to be neat/to be tended to.” or “It has to be freshly shaved.” And then the commercial continues with a ‘men’s tip’ for when you (ladies) feel a ‘little less fresh’, to which one of them says: “If you sweated or when it’s a particularly hot day and you smell a little less ‘fresh’, then I think these products could help (in keeping it ‘fresh’ for a longer period of time).” The commercial can be found here (unfortunately I can't find it on youtube): 

https://www.facebook.com/LactacydNL/videos/1303448186379890/

Now aside from the fact that I think these products are ridiculous, since it enforces the concept of women having to be completely hairless and having to smell like flowers all day (which we don’t), it shames them and plays in on their insecurities if they don’t. But I think it’s even worse that they chose men for this commercial. Them sitting at a table and facing the spectator, it almost seems as if the spectator is the subject of the (male) gaze (due to the absence of a woman in the commercial). And by voicing their opinions of how a woman should ‘be’ (smell/feel/look) like, they reduce the female spectator to an object that should obey to their wishes. It reminded me of the first pages of the Berger text in which he talks about presences of men and women: “To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men.” (pp. 46). Women have continuously ‘survey’ as Berger calls it, what they are, what they do and how they appear to others, especially to men. This commercial thus showcases how woman ought to reevaluate their intimate hygiene and do something about – because four gentlemen told them to.

Lastly, the comment section underneath the video is a pleasure to read as a lot of women (and a few men) seem to agree that this is a ‘marketing fail’ as one user calls it, by casting men to tell women what they ought to do with their intimate zone. 

Girls don't poop (apparently)

For my blogpost, I would like to use this commercial I recently found on YouTube. It’s about a spray you should use before you go number two on the toilet – you spray it before you sit down, and it’s supposed to hide the smell. The commercial features a woman advertising the product – telling other women they should use this spray as well if they want to avoid embarrassing situations at, for example, work, a party or when they stay at their boyfriends’ house.

This commercial reminded me of the following quote from Berger’s article:

“She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.” (Berger, 46)

The title of the commercial clearly states ‘Girls don’t poop’ – indicating that girls should hide it because it’s not exactly considered feminine to do. She needs to be constantly aware of her surroundings and how she appears as to other people – and as Berger says, especially to men. The commercial also condones this by mentioning ladies can use it when staying over at their boyfriends’ house – instead of being able to do what every human has to, they have to cover it up to make sure they don’t appear bad in the eyes of their significant other. 

SEVDALIZA

Born in Iran and raised in the Netherlands, singer Sevdaliza incorporates a lot of aspects of voyeurism in her lyrics and music videos, as well as unconscious drives and desires.
It all started when she read the sociology books her mother had stored, which included Freud.  

Her music video 'HUMAN', directed by Emmanuel Adjei, is a good example of voyeurism.
The music video is accompanied by the next text on Youtube:

"The basic human need to be watched was once satisfied by God. Now the same functionality can be replicated by man. This is the tale of a voyeuristic consumerism nightmare."

It shows Sevdaliza herself in a horse arena, dancing in the centre and being watched by different men, who have similar looks on their faces. Think of how the article of Otto Fenichel begins: "...When someones gazes intently at an object, we say that he 'devours it with his eyes'."
Part of the lyrics of the song is simple, it goes something like this: "...I am flesh, bones, I am skin, soul. I am human, nothing more than human."
I think her having animal legs, symbolizes her as an object made of flesh. Which explain the devouring gazes of different men who objectify her. It's also a statement of humans not being different from animals, because we are made from the same materials: flesh, bones, skin, soul.

Her costume and her dance are inspired on the dance Debra Paget performs in 'The Indian Tomb' shown below. In this snake dance, there are other forms of voyeurism. Fenichel states in his article that the snake fascinates its victim in order to devour it. Ofcourse, according to Freud the snake eyes symbolize the penis.
Paget in this video has to perform a snake dance to try and fascinate the snake itself (starting from 1:10).



This being said, it looks as if Sevdaliza is the snake herself, and fascinates her victims, the men, in order to devour them. Concluding, the music video has different layers of meaning and makes total sense in a Freudian way of performing art, where Sevdaliza is not the objectified victim, but it's the other way around.

Women rights

When I saw these adverts of Bic and MediaMarkt, I thought, wow, these adverts are straight out of the 1950s.
When I read that the Bic advert was made for International Women’s day and the advert of Mediamarkt was made for Secretary day in the Netherlands, I was appaled by it.
I immediately thought of Sigmund Freud when I saw these adverts. Freud said that women were lesser than men. These adverts are emphasizing that women still are seen as lesser then men, and should listen more to men and have to aspire to be like men.

The advert of MediaMarkt says that you shouldn’t give women (most secretaries are woman) too much space to talk. The image implies that the boss should give them a razor, so the secretary can shave herself. Thesedays, women who don’t shave their armpits or legs are seen as unsexy and ugly. You could say that when a boss gives a gift like this to his or her secretary, he wants her to make herself (more) beautiful for him or her.

The Bic advert says that women should look like a girl, which is young, slim and beautiful, they should act like a lady and know etiquette. At the same time, the advert says that they should think like a man and work like a boss.
Women can think as good as men. They have the same capabilities. Bosses also can be women. This advert makes it looks like women aren’t capable to do any kind of job outside the household.

Together, the adverts give you the idea that women aren’t capable to work, therefor the boss is always a man, and the secretary a woman.
We need to change this image, because on days invented for women, to emphasize women rights, adverts like this shouldn’t be possible.

Castration Anxiety in Depicting Transgender Women in Comedy

In class, we’ve broadly discussed the male castration fear when confronted with a woman.
“But in psychoanalytic terms, the female figure poses a deeper problem. She also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure. Ultimately, the meaning of woman is sexual difference, the absence of the penis as visually ascertainable, the material evidence on which is based the castration complex essential for the organisation of entrance to the symbolic order and the law of the father. Thus the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified.” - Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema” 840.

Another aspect of castration fear has not been explored by the articles we have read. This aspect we see often in modern comedy, and I should like to take How I Met Your Mother as an example. This is the fear that the gorgeous woman who has tricked the male protagonist into dating her, but actually has a deep dark secret: the absolute deal breaker, the ‘fatal ‘O’-moment’. This is the point where the male protagonist finds out that the women he’s dating is transgender, and either has male genitalia or used to have male genitalia. I’ve added three video examples.

Video 1: from 2.00-2.58

The first video is a fragment from season 2, episode 9, titled ‘Slap Bet.’ In this video Robin hides a secret from her friends and boyfriend, Ted Mosby, about why she doesn’t like to go to malls. Ted worries about this, wondering why she won’t tell him. Barney tells him he ought to be happy about the fact he doesn’t know everything about Robin, so there’s lesser chance he might experience the ‘fatal ‘O’-moment. Het explains that this is the moment that you find out that one detail about a person that is going to be a deal breaker. Barney’s deal breakers are women that do not want sex, women with eating disorders and women over thirty. Like we’ve seen in the presentation in the third class, the age of thirty seems to be a deal breaker for a lot of men in television and movies, and for the spectators as well. Ted disagrees with Barney, and thinks that the ‘O’-moment should be sooner rather than later, because the alternative is finding out on your wedding day that you cannot marry the person you’re in love with because of their damning previously hidden characteristics. In Ted’s worst scenario case, this means that the person he’s marrying suddenly declares that she used to be a man. Used to be, and since Ted is not a ‘waiting until marriage’ guy, supposedly he and his girlfriend would have had sex already, so his girlfriend will have transitioned completely. Moreover, he is in love with her and is going to marry her. But finding out she’s trans and used to have a penis is a deal breaker.  This deeply transphobic joke points to another kind of castration fear. When men look at women they note her absence of the penis and fear that they might undergo the same fate. When men in comedy look at transgender women, they see a woman that used to have a penis but actually had it removed, or they see a mutilated man, since often a transgender woman is because of how her body used to be in the past denied her own gender identity. This is the castration fear made real and tangible, and arouses such fear in a man that he could not continue to be associated with her anymore.

Video 2: from 6.00 - 6.13

Since How I Met Your Mother often shamelessly recycles its jokes, we see the same joke in the second video, a fragment from season 3, episode 8, titled ‘Spoiler Alert.’ Ted’s friends have noticed something about his new girlfriend, but they won’t tell him what, since it will be the ‘glass-shattering moment’ (new name, same thing) that will make Ted want to break up with her. His mind goes into overdrive again, and wonders again if she told his friends that she used to have a penis. In response Barney spits out his drink; he is the only one we see reacting. Had this scenario been real, it would certainly have meant an end of their relationship, even if his girlfriend completed her transition. Ted cannot overcome his castration anxiety.

Video 3: 14.30 - 15.00

However, a woman not having fully transitioned or a transvestite is not accepted either. The third video is a fragment of season 7, episode 6, titled ‘Mystery vs History.’ The joke is essentially the same. Ted has decided not to look up his date online beforehand, since it takes the fun out of dating. However, Barney and Robin have found out something about Jenny, his date, and urge him to look at it. In his mind, Ted is freaking out over what might be Jenny’s ‘deep, dark secret.’ The first option is that Jenny is actually a prostitute and was only interested in Ted’s money. The second option horrifies Ted even more, which is that Jenny has a penis and is either a not fully transitioned transgender woman or a transvestite man. This is not castration anxiety, because Jenny still has her penis. Ted probably immediately makes a sexual connection and since his preference for female genitalia makes him unable to have sex with this woman, he recoils in shock. His ‘O’-moment might be the same as Barney’s, namely ‘no sex’, or it could be his fear of the breaking of a gender binary he experiences as fixed.

According to Mulvey, the male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: “preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, demystifying her mystery), counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment or saving of the guilty object, or else complete disavowal of castration by the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous.” (Mulvey, 840).

Neither of these avenues are depicted with the castration anxiety invoked by transgender women; in modern comedy the possibility that she is transgender is followed by the implication that if she was, she would be completely removed from the story. But ‘luckily’, she never turns out to be transgender. The fear is used as punchline, for a cheap laugh, and that’s the end of it. Is this because the fear invoked by this castration anxiety is not manageable and there are no avenues of escape? 

Sexist Fast Food

Fast food, a guilty pleasure for many, as today’s society only seems to grants an identity of success and happiness to people that follow a rigid healthy lifestyle, where vegan super foods, crazy fruit-vegetable smoothies and inflexible non-gluten diets are the norm for daily life. We are all pushed to have the perfect healthy well-trained bodies, as this would supposedly create the best life you can live. But fast food joints still need to sell their full on calorie packed, grease dripping, diabetes-generating fatty products, that symbolize everything that is unhealthy. So they had to come up with a strategy to keep the sales coming in. And what will always sell? That’s right, Sex. 

I would argue that fast food brand are increasingly more often creating advertisements in which they sexualise their product, often linking it to the female sex in particular. Women are used to sell this kind of ‘forbidden’ food, sensualising the unhealthy product. The burger packed with calories, generates and obsession with what people secretly want to possess and devour. This lust for the unhealthy product is linked to sexual lust, desire and the craving to satisfy your needs.

Sex is this way becomes actual consumption of the food that is portrayed in a sexual setting. The women is very often portrayed in a very sexy, passionate way, almost as if she is partaking in a sexual act with the food she is eating. The taboo of looking at her, as she is performing a forbidden intimate practice, is linked to the notion that it is a forbidden practice as well to eat the unhealthy thing she is eating. Letting the woman eat a burger and fast food is then regarded as sexy, she is doing something she isn’t actually allowed to do, unholy, forbidden food, because she has to be skinny. The consumption of sex is thus equal to the consumption of the product.

I would also like to claim by making women’s bodies synonymous with the actual product, as if women are items to be bought, to have control over, to own for your own pleasure, and are equally disposable, fast food companies create a structural degradation of how women are seen in our society. Women become a commodity, the become the product and are thus objectified, as the comparison of lust for a woman and lust for a product is one of the most popular ways to gain revenue and increase sales. Sexualizing advertisements is a simple, effective technique to attract attention to the brand, either by envy of the woman’s sexuality or by commercializing her. 

Also see:

6 Fast-Food Commercials That Are So Sexist You’ll Lose Your Burger Craving

Monstress #1 cover. Image source

(Note: since the text was in Dutch, this short quote is my own translation attempt. It probably does not correspond with the official English translation of "The Second Sex")

“In contemporary stories, much classical like myths and legends, men are the privileged heroes (…)

In adventure novels, boys are the ones who travel around the world (…) Everything of importance happens because of men.”

(Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex).

 

“Listen, we have millions and millions of stories about men and power and masculinity and power. But we don’t have that many stories for women. Every day, girls are forced to fight — forced to fight to be heard, to be seen, to make space for themselves and society is always trying to deny girls these things.”

 

 

“Liu says she's also tired of seeing television shows that focus on men, or have larger ratios of men to women. Monstress, she says, is a direct response to that, with a world primarily populated with women. "No, men have not been destroyed, there are still men in the world," she says, "but they're background in the same way that women are so often background in stories that are told about men"’’.

(Marjorie Liu on Monstress, sources: http://www.cbr.com/image-expo-marjorie-liu-creates-a-monstress-new-series/ and http://www.npr.org/2016/07/22/487078939/graphic-novelist-marjorie-lui-on-how-rejection-shaped-her-writing ) 

 

In the part of The Second Sex we read, Simone de Beauvoir shortly refers to the influence of fiction. The quote immediately put me in mind of more current discussions on representation and diversity in, among others, film, literature and TV. Because Liu was partially motivated by the similar concerns (as quoted), I’d like to use Monstress and the above quotes as a starting point to reflect on these issues (I should mention here that, even though the De Beauvoir quote comes from her chapter on childhood and upbringing, Monstress is a dark, violent story that is not aimed at or appropriate for young children. Don't let the talking cats and cutesy animal-children fool you).

  

Monstress is an ongoing comic series written by Liu, with art by Sana Takeda. It is published by Image comics and the first volume (collecting issues 1-6) came out this year. The story takes place in a land torn apart by war and oppression. It follows a young woman named Maika, who has a (very literal and very hungry) monster trapped inside her, which makes her both incredibly powerful and very dangerous to herself and those around her. What is relevant here, is that the hero (or anti-hero) is female, and so are a lot of the characters who help or threaten her. Unlike in the stories De Beauvoir discusses, the narrative is moved forward by, for the most part, women. As illustrated by the quotes, this was all intentional. Even in this day and age, it still felt a bit odd. Fantasy especially tends towards male-dominated casts, but so do many other genres. Most of the (relatively few) exceptions I can think of are either very heavily targeted towards women (and even those tend towards 50/50-ish) or have a plot that motivates or explains the amount of women. 

Source

Of course, one could argue that it is only the half/half ratio we should go for, since it’s equality, not superiority we want. The last part is true, yes, but nonetheless the suggestion seems extremely limited. Most of the important shows, books and movies that I can think of that are considered classics, are populated by largely male casts. The same goes for a lot of the things I’ve read/watched and loved. The only reason that this changed in the past few years is that I started making a genuine effort to diversify my reading and viewing habits both in terms of characters and stories as well as creators. And even then a story like this feels odd sometimes, in a way that those “normalized” stories with male-dominated casts of characters do not. I find it troubling that even I still have a knee-jerk skeptical reaction to such a reversal, even though I think it is important to try and balance the scales a bit. Those “classic” stories shouldn’t be erased or forgotten (which is more what superiority would look like in my opinion. Just look at all the female authors who weren't discovered until feminist theory started researching female writers? Or the struggle many writers/artists of color face... oh, and the publishers and studios that reject stories with LGBT+ content... are you starting to see my point?) - but they should be supplemented and criticized by different narratives and diverse voices.

 

   

One of the most important male(ish) characters. Think of that what you will.

 

  Last but not least, I want to pay more attention to the fact that Monstress is a comic, and therefore relies an visual storytelling as much as on writing. An important difference between a visual medium and literature, is that the reader has much less room to interpret (or misinterpret) what the characters look like. The fact that a majority of important side characters are female is inescapable, as is the fact that Maika (and almost every other character) is a person of color. This goes for the multicultural world (both the art and the world-building have their roots in a variety of - mostly Asian - cultures, histories and traditions, which Liu discusses in the interviews linked above) as well. The reader in this case is also very much a “viewer”. 

We have mostly discussed the gaze of the movie-going audience, but I think a case could be made here at least for the look of identification. I tend to think about the relationship between audiences and main characters in terms of empathy or sympathy rather than narcissistic identification (where one would like to be more like the lead character). However, I believe that that is one the things that make diversity within stories (both in terms of character as what kind of people – men, women, minorities – get offered what type of story or arc) is very important. In this case, Maika might be an anti-heroine, but most readers will still feel for her, urged on by both the writing and the art to understand her. Literature has it’s own strong points, like the ease with which you can “look into someone else’s mind” for quite a long time. However, I think that one of the traits much more exclusive to comics, film and other visual media is that you can normalize certain people in certain roles, by literally showing them as capable of fulfilling them. It possesses, as I mentioned, a certain “inescapibality”. 

Source

 

One could of course also argue against or in favor of this particular comic with regards to voyeuristic elements by looking critically at the way it portrays violence, torture, slavery, nudity, and whether there is enough body type diversity or not. Obviously I do not have time to go into this now. I hope my blogpost provided some food for thought (and even if it didn’t, I still had a chance to recommend one of my favorite reads of the year :) ).

 

Who is afraid of Dorothy?

When the child, according to Freud, is confronted with the fact that a woman has no penis, the libido that used to be focused on the female genitals becomes free. And if libido is not attached to an object, one becomes anxious. The male child becomes afraid that he might lose his penis. 

             You might want to ask: why should we, as movie lovers, care? Well, according to Mulvey, the female character in a movie threatens to arouse the male spectator’s castration-fear.  

            That is: assume you are a man watching a movie (on the couch, with your popcorn, in the dark). While watching, you see a woman on the screen and you think she is beautiful and you like her and you like the plot in which she plays. All seems well...  

            But then (as always) something happens: the woman on the screen reminds you of something, something that you fear. And even though you don’t know what she represents, you do know that, whatever it is, it feels heavy on your soul. You start to feel sick. Even the popcorn begins to taste a little strange. 

            What should you do? Well, as a good old Freudian, I advise you to walk calmly to the television and turn that thing off (right now!). Why? Well, if you don’t turn off the movie, the origin of your fear might become conscious and we don’t want you to become conscious of a fear you don’t want to be conscious of (or do we?).

            In other words, we don’t want you to know that the female character on your television-screen aroused your fear that your father might want to castrate you (if this sounds a little strange, don’t worry: it's just your repression-system).

            However, Mulvey shows (luckily for Hollywood) that there are two methods for escaping our fear for daddy and his knifes:

(1)           One can try to demystify the original trauma

(2)           One can substitute a fetish object

Long story short: in order to make a movie that is nice and quiet for the male spectator, the female character must either be demystified; or the libido of the male spectator must be channelled.

 In the film BLUE VELVET, Dorothy is a female character and she is subjected to the will of mastery of the male gaze. Within the symbolic order, Dorothy merely possesses meaning and fails to create any meaning herself.

             In the plot of the movie, two male characters play key roles. On the one hand, there is Jeffrey (the kind of guy that appears to be your ideal son-of-law) and on the other hand there is Frank (an evil Sadistic non-Catholic pervert). Both Jeffrey and Frank are, within the plot, confronted with the fact that Dorothy has no penis (at least, if you go along with a Freudian reading of the movie). However, they deal with their castration-fears in different ways:

(1)           Jeffrey tries to demystify the mystery of Dorothy. Jeffrey wants to play the detective.

(2)           Frank simply denies the fact that Dorothy has no penis. Frank finds a substitute (for the penis) in blue velvet (there you have it: the title explanation).

Frank tells Jeffrey that Jeffrey is just like him (not what you want to hear from a crazy old psychopath). How come? Jeffrey and Frank both reduce Dorothy to a symbolic sign, and as a sign Dorothy is subjected to their male-driven-desire-economy. Thus, Jeffrey and Frank, while dealing with their castration-fears, both fail to recognize Dorothy’s dignity.  

1) Frank's blue velvet fetish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=senNDipdmPo

2) Jeffrey is a pervert/detective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iWKnf3C8ZY

3) Frank tells Jeffry they are alike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5VU8GJcg24

       

''Skyler is such a Bitch:'' The Demonization of the Non-Cooperative Female in Breaking Bad

''As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the eroctic look.'' - Laura Mulvey

In her text Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey touches upon the way the spectator of film identifies and looks at the characters in it. She argues that, in classical Hollywood cinema, the spectator is encouraged and led to always indentify with the male protagonist and derive voyeuristic pleasure out of looking at the female character. I think this occurance still exists in recent film, for example in the very popular TV-series Breaking Bad (2008). In Breaking Bad we follow the story of a high school teacher (Walter White) who gets cancer, and, in order to make money to pay for his medical bills at first, and later to provide for his family (but in reality mostly because he gets a kick out of it), becomes a meth-cook. What is interesting about this series is that the spectator of the show slowly gets ''sucked in'' to identifying with Walter White, eventhough he really is not a likeable person when we take a closer look. However he is the main male protagonist, he is a bit of a loser, and he decides to ''take matters into his own hands.'' These things make Walter someone the audience, surely the male audience, sympathize and indentify with him, even when he turns darker and darker as the show progresses.
Walter White turns into quite a viscious murderer, who will do anything in order to survive (and for his meth-business to survive), with little regard of the effects this has on others, such as his family. Walter's wife Skyler starts to form legitimate concerns about the changing behaviour of her husband, and she confronts him with these regularly. They have a family together, in the beginning of the series Skylar is pregnant of their second child, and her husband who has been diagnosed with cancer suddenly doesn't come home when he says he will and starts acting very strange. It is only logical that she is concerned, however throughout the series Skyler is painted to be this ''nagging, bitchy wife,'' who stands in the way of Walter's drug-related success. Even when Walter becomes very viscious near the end of the show, he is still viewed as the ''troubled hero,'' by the audience, and Skylar as an annoyance who stands in the way of the story line. In this following clip we see this manifested as Walter tells Skyler to stop nagging him about his whereabouts and changed behaviour (or as he puts it, ''to climb down out of his ass.''). This is a highly disrespectful moment towards Skyler of course, yet amongs many fans of the show it was celebrated.



If you scroll down to the comments of this video you see how far this identification with Walter and demonization of Skylar goes, with comments such as:

 ''what an age we're living in, when the most badass thing a man can do is stand up against his wife.'' 

 ''Very satisfying. He doesn't really do this again until the end of the show, haha. Had the patience of a saint with Skyler. I like Skyler but knowing Walt, I would think he'd do this more over the series.''

'''FUCKING CUNT BITCH I FUCKINF HATE HER I WISH HER TO DIE''

''Skylar is such a cunt''

Finally, to illustrate the existence of the female character to satisfy a voyeuristic pleasure, we see comments such as:

''she was way hotter way she was preganant''

''I wish I got her Pregnant''

I think I have made my point.