The Pagan Experience prompt for this week: How do you define “humanity”?
What is your contribution to the collective space of humanity? How does your
spiritual path support this definition and contributions? - http://thepaganexperience.com/2015/02/feb-2-wk-1humanity/
[I should note that while goodreads.com says this quote is
from Neil Gaiman - and it very well may be - this book was written by both Neil
Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. So it could have been written collaboratively or by
Terry Pratchett. Or, perhaps goodreads has secret knowledge about who wrote
which parts, and therefore knows that Neil Gaiman wrote this particular bit. This seems unlikely to me.]
Humanity, literally, is all members of homo sapiens.
Metaphorically, humanity is whatever we want it to be.
Metaphors are tools, after all. Very malleable tools.
The idea that humanity - members of our species, that is -
has something that is uniquely ours in the animal kingdom, and that this thing
raises us above other animals morally, is so longstanding that it has shaped
our language since... well, how old is the English word 'humane'? How about the same meaning in other languages?
Humane means to treat kindly, respectfully, or with mercy.
Compassion is, supposedly, what makes us better than other apes. Except that
other animals show compassion too, and sometimes better than we do. Perhaps
altruism... no, that isn't it either. Altruistic behaviors have been observed
in many other species.
Hmmm. Well, what is unique about us? Perhaps
if we get away from concepts that categorize us as morally superior, we'll find
something.
We're not the only ones who use tools or language (other primates, and corvids, come to mind immediately).
We're not the only ones who have sex for fun or for companionship (lots of animals - no really, it's not just bonobos).
We're not even the only ones who engage in organized warfare
(chimps do that).
As far as I can tell, the only thing exclusive to our
species is the development of advanced technology (as opposed to simple tools).
So if we really wanted to be accurate (which we don't - humans aren't big on
accuracy), "humane" would mean something about figuring out tricky
sciency things, to include philosophical pursuits and, of
course, bureaucracies. (Obviously bureaucracies are symbolic of our innate
tendency toward cruelty. That, or our distrust of strangers. Take your pick.)
It's our higher executive functioning that makes us unique among animals.
There is no spiritual difference, that I can see. Our thoughts about spirituality are probably unique, but that falls under the higher executive function umbrella. When I say there's no spiritual difference, I mean that there's no innate difference in our spiritual qualities or value. We are part of the same unidentified spiritual energy that exists in all things. (Maybe some awesome quantum physicist will figure that out someday, but until then I'm calling it spiritual energy, because that's how it functions.)
Knowing that we - humans - are basically smart, distrusting animals who are connected to every thing and every one else in the world, makes me want to put as much compassion out there as possible. I think this is something most people do, with varying degrees of awareness, ambition, and success.
Basically, we're all just people, trying to get along.
I'm reading about Brazil this week in my history class. We're focused on the human rights violations during the military regime from 1964-1985. One of the books we've read from for this section is A Mother's Cry: A Memoir of Politics, Prison, and Torture under the Brazilian Military Dictatorship, by Lini Penna Sattamini, the mother of a man who was tortured by that dictatorship.And then I read this:
"U.S. policy to Brazil shifted significantly only when President Jimmy Carter (1977-1980) took office and prioritized human rights standards in foreign policy considerations. By then, human rights had become a household term in the United States, and Amnesty International had been recognized as a world leader in the campaign against the use of torture. Lina Penna Sattamini's call that we must never forget is not merely a convocation to remember the past. It is also an appeal to denounce the ongoing uses of those techniques of interrogation that almost took her son's life."
Ok, admittedly, there's a lot wrong with all that. Like, of course the US didn't want to distance themselves from Brazil because of human rights violations - we were sponsoring them! Duh. We could start there and talk for hours about how f*ed up that all is. But that's not what this post is about; I'll leave that discussion for the essay I have to write for class.
This post is about my personal beef with the above quote.
- Yeah, I'm that important (to myself).
I've mentioned this once or thrice in this blog before, but I don't talk about it a lot. There's not much to talk about, really, but if you aren't in on the secret, you might disagree. See, I used to be an interrogator for the US Army. It wasn't that long ago, and it wasn't for that long. I was in five years (and one month, twenty days, but who's counting?), and only did one deployment. I was a Sergeant when I got out, but I was just a Specialist when I was deployed. In civilian-ese, that means I was pretty low-ranking. That worked out in my favor, as I saw it. The way the Army works, the higher you get in rank, the more time you spend behind a desk instead of doing the fun stuff. During my one year in Iraq, I conducted over 300 interrogations. (Whoa! Sounds like a lot of yelling, eh? Not really.) So anyway... Whenever I hear interrogation being conflated with torture, I get a little testy.
I'm not going to address specific historical instances of the US' involvement in or use of torture, because I can only speak for my own experience. I know full well that, historically, we're not necessarily the good guys. I mean, see above for goodness' sake - we were teaching the Brazilians how to do it!
What I am going to address is this (repeat after me): Torture is not a technique of interrogation. Torture is torture.
And if we could just get that through our thick national skulls, it would settle a lot of these pesky "enhanced interrogation techniques" questions that we just can't seem to figure out.
Interrogation is a methodical questioning of a subject, to get information.
Even the dictionary agrees with me!
There is NOTHING about 'causing harm for the sake of getting them to say something' - because, you know, torture doesn't even work as a form of interrogation (occasionally and in very specific short-term situations, sure, but, just - no, for any number of reasons, it doesn't work). It works great as a scare tactic, because it's f*ing scary.
Wanna know what I've found works best in an interrogation? Talking to people as though they were actually people. Being honest with them. Being kind. If they come in there thinking you're an enemy, show them you're human, too. That works really well. In my book, the "enhanced interrogation techniques" involved me being kind and bringing the subject a fatty cake.*
*Fatty cakes, in civilian-ese, are any of the American delicacies which fall into the "Twinkies & crap" category.
It's about the Water War in Bolivia, which happened exploded in Bolivia in early 2000.
Yeah, I hadn't heard of it. With any luck, you're better educated than I am.
I just wrote a brief essay about this, for a class. Now I'm going to proselytize and tell everyone that they should watch it, because it was a) well done, in my opinion, and b) a serious eye-opener for me. I think it might open some other people's eyes, too.
The movie's available on Netflix (streaming), or you can buy it on amazon. There's a crappy version (which happens to not have English subtitles, if - like me - you need those) on youtube, too. Seriously, check it out.
Here's what I wrote about it, since I know you're curious:
There is a
recurring theme in the history of Bolivia since their colonization by
Europeans; it is a theme of racial superiority representative of the hegemonic
ideologies of the colonizers. This theme is artfully highlighted in the film Even the Rain (2011), which follows the
efforts of a fictional film crew attempting to create a dramatic documentary of
Christopher Colombus’ invasion and subjugation of the Taino people. To save on
the cost of production, the film crew is working in Bolivia,
where a casting decision leads them right into the middle of the Water War, a
very real internal political crisis that occurred in Bolivia in early 2000. Using this
backdrop, the viewers are led to see the connections between Columbus’ actions, and the actions of the
foreign film crew, and the Bolivian government.
The director of this
film crew has striven to use Columbus’
exact language (from his journals and letters), so that they might remain as
close to the reality of the Spaniards’ actions as possible. Early in the movie,
a scene begins (at 0:25:47) in which we see the film crew acting out a speech
given by Father Montesinos, who was, as the director says, “the first voice of
conscience against an empire (0:29:19).” Father Montesinos railed – against the
Spaniards’ treatment of the Native peoples, demanding that the violent and
dehumanizing practices (including not just slavery, but the particularly brutal
methods of enslavement and debasement for which Columbus’
occupation of the Bahamas
is now known. Sandwiching the scene with Father Montesinos’ speech, we see
what’s going on in Bolivia
at the time: the beginnings of the Water War, when communal wells were being
locked against the people who’d dug them, and the first of the public protests.
In that first
protest scene, we find the actor cast as the lead Native role, “Daniel,”
leading the protests. Cinegraphically, Daniel is set up as the ‘first voice of
conscience’ in the Bolivian Water War.
While Daniel is
clearly aligned on the ‘side’ of the Natives, and the Bolivian government –
which sought out and supported the privatization of their country’s water – is clearly
aligned with Columbus’
ideology, the film crew itself is torn. In their conversations with each other,
it’s clear they are sympathetic to Columbus’
victims, and to the impoverished Bolivians (despite the crew’s disagreement
over what their involvement should be, their sympathies are nonetheless made
clear over the course of the movie). However, the conflict over what their role
should actually be comes out early, and in such a way that they are forced to
consider how they might be involved on a grander scale, intentionally or not.
At 0:32:40, we see the executive producer, “Costa,” helping the actor cast as Columbus to rehearse his
lines. The actor’s lines roughly quote a letter from Columbus,
written in 1493 from the Bahamas
(the difference in the lines and the letter is so slight, that it is likely to
be only a difference of translation). He is speaking of the Taino people. “They
are so naive and generous with what they have,” say the lines, “that they never
refuse anything. Whatever they have, if you ask them for it, they will give it
to you, inviting the person to share it with them... With just fifty men, you
could subdue them, and make them do whatever you want.” Then, in the very next scene (beginning at
0:35:05), Costa condescendingly tries to convince Daniel to stay out of the
protests, then discusses the low cost of production while on a phone call,
saying, “two fucking dollars a day and they feel like kings.” Moments later, the
audience it reminded of what Costa has just said when Daniel reiterates Costa’s
words back to him: “two fucking dollars, no? And they’re content.” Daniel
forces Costa to see his own condescension, by repeating Costa’s words back in
English – which Costa had clearly assumed Daniel would not understand. These
scenes, and these words, all illuminate the disregard the ruling classes may have
for the ruled classes, whether it be Spaniards versus Natives, rich versus
poor, or employer versus employee.
The disregard
humans hold for ‘others’ is probably more universal than what ‘haves’ hold for
the ‘have nots,’ but it is in relations of power that these prejudices are most
evident. In Even the Rain, it is the
conversation between the film crew and a governing official, who appears to be
the Mayor of the city, that the extent and nature of the government’s disregard
for its citizens is fully elucidated. The scene begins at 0:51:58 and opens
with the chants of protestors echoing in the background. “A little domestic
row,” the presumed Mayor says, “Nothing for you to worry about.” One of the
actors responds by comparing the scenario to the infamous “let them eat cake” of
Marie Antoinette; of course this is an escalation, prompting the Mayor to
defend his administration’s actions. His defense, though spoken in various
terms, ultimately rests on the supposed racial inferiorities of the “Indians”
he blames for causing the unrest – even as he references the “long history of
exploitation” of Bolivian Native peoples – and his listeners are intended to
share his implied racial superiority. He characterizes them as primitive,
stone-throwers in the global economy. “It’s the cult of victim versus
modernity,” he says. That statement calls to mind the goals of Columbus and
other explorers, who sought to ‘bring civilization to the barbarians’ they
encountered. It was thought though, that any Native peoples found were too
barbarous, too cognitively ill-equipped, to truly reach ‘civilization’ at the
level of the Europeans. The Mayor says as much, saying that if they were
allowed, “these Indians [would] drag us back to the Stone Age.”
Even the Rain shows how the behavioral
patterns created by the actions of the dominant governing bodies in Bolivia are
representative of the same hegemonic ideologies under which European colonizers
operated in their ‘discovery’ of the Americas. The overlapping stories keenly
illustrated the racial themes which have survived hundreds of years in the
histories of Bolivia and
much of the Americas.
The viewer is forced to ask – what happens next? The dust settled and the
government of Bolivia
was forced to reconsider privatizing their water, but is this progress? It
seems that, given the country’s history (then and since), no real lesson has
been learned. The heart of the problems, illustrated so well in Even the Rain, have not yet been
acknowledged, and thus will continue to plague Bolivia.
In this course, we have been carefully
considering the concept of gender, how it is culturally situated, and how it is
created through public acts of performing selves, themselves informed by
cultural ideologies of gender. Now, for your final post, reflect on what you
have learned about the relationship of gender and language—what knowledge have
you gained thus far?
After your reflection, consider the
relationship of the body to gender by reflecting on Laqueur’s idea that
sex and gender are both “staged” according to cultural understandings of them:
How
does a discussion of the body complicate or enhance a discussion of
gender?
How
does the film Is it a Boy or a
Girl enhance our understanding of this relationship? Be
sure and bring in examples.
Where
would you put the body in a theoretical understanding of gender and
language?
The inclusion of biology in the discussion of gender
necessarily complicates and enhances
the context. Research efforts such as those we see in “Is it a boy or a girl”
and Laqueur’s works illustrate, increasingly, the nature of sex, gender and
sexuality as interconnected spectrums rather than dualities. So few things in
nature are dualistic; it should be no surprise that there is little about
humans that is dualistic. If forced to guess, I would hypothesize that the body
is the platform for these three things. In one sense the body might be the
necessary and hugely influential structural framework for gender and sexuality.
Simultaneously, the body might be just
the platform, from which any picture might emerge, depending on the other
components.
With as much time as I have spent in the genderqueer,
transgender, and intersex communities – either because of my identity or
through my work – it seems that the body must be an active component of gender
and sex (and sexuality). However, it’s equally apparent that the body does not
play the role it is assumed to play by our dominant cultural gender ideologies.
The role of the body is not cut-and-dry, nor is it dualistic in any sense. Even
intersex might not be best described
as ‘part boy, part girl,’ as sometimes happens in conversations. Rather, it
could possibly be said that we are nearly all
intersex to some degree, because nearly all of us fall short of the hegemonic
gender ideals – there are no real Barbies and Kens, in other words.
Is it a boy or a girl
highlighted the very interesting position that doctors are placed in when a
child is born which is visually intersex (not all intersex individuals have
external indications of being so – some are not discovered until the autopsy).
At 3:52 of part 3 (as viewed on youtube – links below), the narrator begins a
discussion of two people’s effort to instigate legislation against
sex-assignment surgeries done during infancy. At 4:12, the narrator begins a somewhat-paraphrased
quote of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ official position on the practice:
in full, that quote is, “research on children with ambiguous genitalia has
shown that a person’s sexual body image is largely a function of socialization,
and children whose genetic sexes are not clearly reflected in external
genitalia can be raised successfully as members of either sexes if the process
begins before 2 1/2 years.” The sentiment behind that quote seemed somewhat
dated (after all, “Doctor” Money’s work has long been known to be a travesty of
false pretenses at best). Some snooping around on the AAP website revealed that
they have actually updated their official position on the evaluation and
management of intersex ‘disorders.’ Their new policy does reflect the more
recent findings concerning the biological basis of gender, and subsequently
they no longer support the erroneous claim that “a person’s sexual body image
is largely a function of socialization.” (Links to the articles relevant to my
findings are listed below.) I was mollified by their updated policy statements;
it seems they are moving more toward an evidenced-based approach and away from
the previous hegemonic ideology-based approach.
-“Research on children with ambiguous genitalia has
shown that a person’s sexual body image is largely a function of socialization,
and children whose genetic sexes are not clearly reflected in external
genitalia can be raised successfully as members of either sexes if the process
begins before 2 1/2 years.”
-At this time, the AAP made the potential fertility of
the infant their primary decisive factor in determining the gender of the
infant; surgery was performed to “correct” any aspect of the infant’s sex which
might cause them to appear other than the sex which was most likely, in that
individual, to prove fertile.
-Still based on potential fertility; removes direct
language concerning malleability of gender to social constructs, but indirect
language remains and no counter statements are offered (this revision seems
more political than functional).
The conversation transcribed below is scripted, and is from a
TV show called Six Feet Under. The
clip (which is available for your viewing pleasure at the bottom of this post - you're welcome) is from the first season, which aired in 2001. The section which has been
transcribed is a conversation between a father and son who run, with their
family, a mortuary and funeral home. It so happens that the father in this
scene has passed away, and is speaking to the son as a sort of ghost. Later in
the clip, it is implied cinematically that the conversation happened as part of
a dream. Despite the unlikely circumstances of the conversation, and despite
the fact that the conversation is scripted rather than natural, it is
well-scripted, in that it could very plausibly be a conversation between any
father and son who have been unexpectedly reunited. The two men sit across from
each other, and share a cigarette as they talk.
1 D: So I’m walkin
a/long one day
2 and this
asshole `stops me
3 and /asks me
if I’m `alright?
4 He says I
got a /look.
5 He’d seen a
/man.
6 with that /same
look once.
7 a:nd had
ignored it.
8 And that man
had `jumped out a nine story window.
9 ((high-pitched
laugh))
10 .hhhh
11 Do you know
the reconstruction `involved
12 in a death
like that?
13 hhh-
14 This business
gets under your skin.
15 It’s like a
fuckin virus.
16 You can even /see
it on your /face.
17 `Smell it on
you.
18 S: What the /hell
is this place – this music?
19 Since when do
you listen to (.) the classics four?
20 What the `hell
did you /do here?
21 Who the `hell
/are you?
22 D: So many
questions –
23 why didn’t ya
ask them when I was still aLIVE?
24 (.2) It’s ok,
I couldn’t’ve answered most of them anyway.
25 Unlike now, /now
I’m a /fucking prophet.
26 S: Right.
27 D: You think I’m
kidding buddy-boy?
28 ((Leans
back))
29 That’s one of
the `perks of being /dead.
30 you know what
`happens after you /die?
31 `and (.) you
know the meaning of life.
32 ((smiles,
quiet laugh))
33 S: /That seems
fairly /useless.
34 D: Yeah I know.
35 Life is `wasted
on the /living.
36 ((puffs
cigarette))
37 S: Ya `coulda
told me you were /proud of me.
38 D: You were never /around
for /me to tell.
39 Which was `exactly
what I was `proud of you /for.
40 ((short
laugh)) therein lies your catch-22 ((laughs more))
TRANSCRIPTION KEY:
D: Dad as speaker
S: Son as speaker
` heavy accent
/ light accent
? rising intonation
. falling intonation
(.) brief pause
(.n) measurable pause
CAPS increased volume
*Transcription begins at 3:26 in the clip, which is from Six Feet Under, season 1.
Of the three characteristics of
hegemonic masculinity described by Bird – emotional detachment,
competitiveness, and objectification of women – two are evidenced in this
scene: emotional detachment and competitiveness (1996, pg. 121). Although Bird
first defines emotional detachment as the detachment of a young man from his
mother in his process of masculinization (pg 121), there seems to be a certain
degree of emotional detachment from other men which is integral in the
hegemonic identification of masculinity. Indeed, Bird discusses this aspect of
emotional detachment as an identifier of masculinity on the very next page, and
we see evidence of this behavior in the conversation transcribed above. Bird
describes this emotional detachment as “withholding expressions of intimacy”
(pg 122). We can gather from the conversation that the son in particular is
aware of an emotional distance between him and his father. In lines 18 through
21, the son expresses his frustration with this distance. His frustration is
made more evident by the suddenness of his statements, which are contextually
unconnected to the last statement made by his father. This emotional
disconnection is verified by the father’s reply, in lines 22 and 23: “So many
questions – why didn't you ask them when I was still alive?” From this, we know
that these two men didn’t discuss such emotional matters under normal
circumstances. Further, in line 37, the son expresses frustration that his
father hadn’t expressed any pride in the son. This is another indication of the
two men having been emotionally at arm’s length from each other.
The father’s response, on lines 38
and 39, brings us to another point; Bird discussed this in terms of
competitiveness, and Willott and Griffin
discussed it in terms of successful masculinities: the son wasn't home enough
for the father to have a chance to express his pride in his son, which was the
source of the father’s pride. Not hanging around at home could be an indication
of the son’s independence, which is also an indicator of emotional detachment
as a characteristic of masculinity (Bird, pg.125), but it’s just as true that
the son’s absence from the family home provides a valuable measure of
masculinity in and of itself. As Willott and Griffin found, the ability of a man to spend
time away from home is, in some ways, and indicator of his success as a man.
Even without the pub as a destination – since this TV show is set in USA, not
England, and rounds at the pub are less dominant in American culture than in
British – a man still must leave the home (in terms of the hegemonic masculine
ideology) in order to be a successful provider. Thus, being away from home is a
symbol of success as a man, because being a good provider is a tenet of
masculinity in the hegemonic ideal (Willott and Griffin, pg. 117). The son’s success might
also be considered a measure of the father’s success; the father is proud of
his son because his son has succeeded in displaying himself as a capable
provider (by not being home), and the success of one’s progeny can be
considered a reflection of the parent’s success in their role. Therefore, the
competitive aspects of the father’s statement of pride (lines 38 and 39) are
relevant to and evidence of the masculine successes of both father and son.
This conversation as a whole might be
viewed as edging over the boundaries established by the same emotional
detachment it gives evidence of, but the two men maintain a certain distance
even as the content of their speech becomes intimate. Their retained distance
is visible in their physical distance – they remain on opposite sides of a
sitting area, across a small table from each other – and their emotional
controls do not escape them beyond a slight raise in volume by the father (line
23), which is quickly contained. Furthermore, the potentially engaging emotions
are laughed at – exactly as Bird found in her studies (pg. 126), when
participants told her that “feelings are ‘something for us all to joke about.’”
The fact that the single moment of raised volume is acted out by the father, as
opposed to the son, is also notable. Bird describes how a man’s relationship to
the hegemonic masculinity ideals might change over his lifetime, and
specifically mentions that one man, at least, cared less about fitting into
that ideal as he grew older.
Overall, this conversation gives us
an inverse sense of the ‘Father knows best’ ideology discussed by Ochs and
Taylor (1996), in that we’re made to understand that the son knows very little
of the father’s life. So, despite the role of the father as the protagonist (in
that he is the subject of the story he narrates in lines 1 through 17, and in
that the son’s contributions to the conversation are almost entirely questions
concerning the father’s past behavior) in this particular conversation, the
viewers understand that this has not normally been the case. The son is
frustrated by how little he knows about his father, and it seems that perhaps
he has never even realized, before, how shallow his understanding of his father
is. Thus it’s clear that, while we don’t know whether or not the father was a
recipient in previous family conversations, he certainly wasn't the
protagonist. This finding is consistent with what Ochs and Taylor discovered about fathers, which is
that fathers are typically not protagonists (pg. 102). Even within their
families, fathers – as the primary masculine identity in a typical nuclear
family – maintain the emotional detachment evidenced in Bird’s research.
References
Bird,
S. R. (1996). Welcome to the men's club: Homosociality and the maintenance of
hegemonic masculinity. Gender & Society, 10(2), 120-132.
Ochs,
E. & Taylor, C. (1996). ‘The father knows best' dynamic in family dinner
narratives. Gender articulated: Language
and the socially constructed self. ed. by K. Hall. Routledge. pp.97-121.
For this post, consider dominant images of
masculinities in the media. For an example, watch the following clip of
masculinity in Disney films:Masculinity in Disney.
Do
these media portrayals follow Willott and Griffin’s discussion of hegemonic
masculinity? How so?
How
do you think dominant ideologies of masculinity will shape everyday
performances of masculinity? In your answer, be sure and draw on Willott
and Griffin’s
and Bird’s descriptions of how men orient to these ideologies in their
daily lives.
Next, discuss how you use the discourse marker
“dude." Draw on Kiesling to explain how this is an example of everyday
performances of masculinity.
Finally, consider whether or not we are seeing
a new type of masculinity in the “bromance” genre. For an example, watch the
following trailer for the film “I Love you Man”: I Love you Man. Is this a new type of
masculine relationship or does it fit hegemonic masculine ideals?
Willott,
S., & Griffin,
C. (n.d.). `Wham Bam, am I a Man?': Unemployed Men Talk about Masculinities. Feminism
& Psychology. Retrieved July 2, 2013, from
http://fap.sagepub.com/content/7/1/107.short
MY RESPONSE:
Disney’s portrayals of males certainly follow Willott and Griffin’s discussion of
hegemonic masculinity. If anything, Disney’s male characters provide frighteningly
accurate caricatures of hegemonic masculinity in America (and probably, I think, in
western society as a whole). In Beauty
and the Beast, Gustav’s masculinity is celebrated at the pub – a social location
much discussed in Willott and Griffin’s
work – and is emphasized by his ability to buy rounds of drinks and the display
of his hunting trophies. Both of these are indicators of a man’s ability as a
provider, which is an integral aspect of hegemonic masculinity as described by
Willott and Griffin.
I know from watching my own son and his friends grow up (and
from the work of developmental psychologists such as Erickson, Piaget, and
Kohlberg) that children tend to look to those most like themselves when trying
to figure out how to behave socially. It’s no surprise, then, that the
strongest enforcement of hegemonic gender ideologies come from within
homosocial interactions, as Bird’s research suggests. We see this in the way
that the men in Willott and Griffin’s
study describe the pub as a place where their masculinity can be proven. Their
relative masculinity demonstrations concerning their home lives have more to do
with what they provide which can be proven to the guys later than how their
wives and children perceive them.
Dude: I use “dude” a lot. Too much, according to certain
friends of mine. I am more female than not, and I use “dude” to address every
single one of my friends at one point or another, regardless of their gender.
Perhaps this is an expression of my masculinity, or an indication that I was
raised primarily by my older brother in the 80s, which was when “dude” became a
mainstream word. It seems equally plausible, though, that my use of “dude” is
more an indication of the relative gender-neutrality of the word, in comparison
to its gendered history.
I do think that our hegemonic ideals are changing. For
example, hunting is still more of a man’s game, but it isn’t a necessary skill
for men, as it was earlier in our history. “Metrosexual” was a big thing not so
long ago, and it indicated a slightly less “masculine” guy, but the look we
once described as “metrosexual” is now the mainstream fashion. I don’t know the
‘bromances’ are new, but I do think the way we talk about them – and name them –
is new. There have always been male friendships and ‘brotherhoods’ – fraternal
organizations are a huge part of American history – but we have new words to
describe them which are indicative of the softening of the lines of masculinity
evidenced by, among other things, the metrosexual fashion developments.
If the art of a
culture is a reflection of its values, advertisements should be considered no
differently than a sculpture or a painting. Advertisements, too, reflect what we
value. In terms of gender ideologies, our advertisements show us to be a
culture rooted still in the Madonna/whore dichotomy of womanhood and the
accompanying ideas of how men should react to feminine gender performances. In
this paper I will focus on how this plays out in one particular
commercial.
For my analysis,
I’ve chosen a commercial from the car company BMW, promoting a line of
convertibles (BMW commercial – youtube). In this commercial, we see a rakish
man driving, presumably, away from a liaison with an attractive woman who
tosses her scarf down as he drives away. The setting appears Italianesque and
affluent. As he drives, he neatly avoids the steady stream of increasingly
intimate apparel being tossed down to him by attractive women on balconies.
Finally, he gets to his destination, which seems to be his own wedding. His
bride waits on the steps of a cathedral, waiting for the groom and surrounded
by the men of her family. The groom hands the bride handkerchief so that she
can dab the pending tears from her eyes. This move gains the groom the renewed
approval of the bride’s family members. The scene cuts away to show text: “The
new 3 Series Convertible/It could just save your life”. We come back to the
cathedral scene and all seems well, until the bride unfolds the handkerchief
and discovers that it’s actually a pair of lacy white women’s panties.
Certain things
should be noted about the scene which plays out in this advertisement. First,
there are two opposing feminine ideologies portrayed: the seductresses,
throwing their underwear at the groom (who seems to be late to his wedding
after a dalliance with one of them), and the bride who is virtuously waiting
for her roguish fiancé. This dichotomy of feminine ideologies is representative
of the commonly referred to “Madonna/whore” ideology (Tishkoff 2005), in which
women fit into one of two roles – the virtuous Madonna, or the disreputable
whore. Second, all of the women in this commercial seem to be in places of
power by their positioning, specifically by their relative elevations to the
men in the commercial. These two things – the dichotomous female roles and the
placement of the women – work together with the many details of the scene to
create tacit approval and even encouragement of certain Western gender
ideologies.
Let’s begin by
examining the representation of the two feminine ideologies in this commercial.
The women throwing their lingerie at the groom from their balconies are the
“whores” in the Madonna/whore dichotomy. They are presented as alluring,
seductive, and quite likely to get the man into trouble. There’s a ‘naughty’
element to their behavior which creates the idea that the groom is making his
way through a gauntlet of temptation in order to make it to his bride’s side.
However, he is pleased by the attention, as evidenced by his smiling demeanor,
and he takes on the masculine role of a playboy. In that role, he is
characterized as suave, debonair, and because of that, prestigious. The
luxurious setting and expensive-looking car add to the aura of prestige
surrounding the groom. That the groom’s prestige is wrapped up with his
intimate connection to several women, indicated by them tossing their lingerie
at him, reinforces our cultural ideology that connects male virility with male
prestige. Female virility, however, is not so celebrated. The groom dodges the
intimate clothing being offered, showing clear preference for the virtuous
bride waiting at the cathedral. The bride’s virtuousness – her prestige – is
reinforced by the groom’s avoidance of the balcony women in his efforts to get
to her. Holland
and Eisenhart discuss this application of prestige in romance to great length
in chapter seven of their book, Educated
in romance (1990). There are subtle indications, though, that while the
prestigious groom prefers the faithfully waiting bride, it’s merely humorous is
the groom is caught being, or appears to be, less than faithful. The end of the
scene, in which the bride unfolds the scrap of cloth to discover that her groom
has handed her another woman’s panties, is intended to be funny. It’s a lighter
note to end the commercial on, leaving the audience laughing. On the other
hand, the audience is also subtly encouraged to contrast the freedom enjoyed by
the women in the balconies with the danger of walking into a marriage because
the bride will expect her faithfulness to be returned, and there will be dire
consequences if it is not.
At first glance,
the relative elevations and sizes of the men and women in this commercial would
seem to – literally – raise women up in status. All of the women stand above
the groom; even the bride is higher up on the stairs than he is. When the groom
offers the bride his ‘handkerchief,’ he has to reach up to hand it to her.
Additionally, in frames which show only one face, the women’s faces are shown
higher in the frame than all the men’s faces are, and larger than the groom’s
face is. The women are indeed portrayed as the protagonists in this commercial.
The groom must evade the women on the balconies, not confront them. Then he
must face his bride from a lower position, and use a peace offering to appease
her when she is upset. The bride’s family members are not placed at a lower
elevation than the bride, but they are still in a subordinate position, reacting
as they do to the bride’s temper (which is another indication of the pitfalls
awaiting the groom, should he proceed with the wedding).
The ramifications
of commercials such as this one become painfully clear when viewed alongside Holland and Eisenhart’s
work (1990) concerning the priorities of young women. If the virtuous woman is
the one who waits faithfully at the cathedral rather than the one who
independently pursues the man while eschewing committed relationships, then
it’s no wonder so many young women reprioritize their romantic lives upon
entering adulthood. Who wants to be called a whore? However, I do not think it
fair to say that this advertisement and ones like it have the potential to
change a person’s gender performance. Instead, I would hypothesize that these
commercials merely encourage an already-indoctrinated gender ideology to
continue. Thus, while not harmless, the role played by this commercial and its
like is that of a mirror – they only reflect what is already there, providing validation
for those people who already are invested in the gender ideologies these
commercials show.
Advertisements
are, in general, reflective of the cultures which produce them. The
advertisement I’ve analyzed is no different, and what it says about us isn’t
pretty. The difficulty in finding an advertisement that uses gender ideologies
to sell its product isn’t in searching out a suitable subject, but in narrowing
down the field. We are inundated with stereotypes that paint men and women into
oppositional corners, because in our culture, men and women are oppositional. The commercial
described above merely illustrates that.
Goffman,
E. (1976). Gender commercials. Gender advertisements (pp. 24-45). Washington: Society for
the Anthropology of Visual Communication.
Holland, D. C., &
Eisenhart, M. A. (1990). Why study women's responses to schooling?. Educated
in romance: women, achievement, and college culture (pp. 3-9). Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Holland, D. C., &
Eisenhart, M. A. (1990). Gender relations culturally construed: Romance and
attractiveness. Educated in romance: women, achievement, and college culture
(pp. 93-107). Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Tishkoff,
D. (2006). Madonna/whore: the myth of the two Marys. Bloomington, Ind.:
AuthorHouse.
I read most of Dust Tracks on a Road, an autobiography by Zora Neale Hurston, pretty quickly, but I had to force myself to finish it. The book is informative, about Hurston certainly, and less obviously about the times she grew up in, but the reader never feels engaged. I never felt as though the 'main character' were truly a sympathetic one. The book could just as easily been written in the third person, and might even have felt more real if it had been.
There's much discussion in the literary and civil rights circles about Hurston's apparent apathy toward the massive problems facing blacks in the US at that time (the turn-of and early years of the twentieth century). Maya Angelo talks about this controversy in her forward to Hurston's Dust Tracks, and she offers some perceptive analysis of Hurston's personal distance throughout the book.
Hurston does keep her readers at arm's length, and through her narration we can see that she participates in the world in a detached sort of way. Reading her story, I came to believe that Hurston doesn't intentionally keep people at a distance. She's smart and a capable anthropologist, but as we so often are unaware of ourselves, she is unaware of her detachment from the world of social constructs.
It should be no surprise that Hurston views the racial conflicts of the times through a distant lens which only affects her sparsely, and seems of little consequence to her. Nothing affects her strongly that isn't related to her father, mother, or step-mother. In fact, even her siblings are mentioned only in how they affected her directly, never for their own sake She's not an overtly or intentionally selfish person; rather, she's barely aware of the outer world, blinded by an almost benevolent hubris. She can't see what the big deal is.
By her recollection, Hurston's childhood seems almost idyllic, in terms of racial relations. Perhaps it's the setting - an incorporated black town in Florida - or perhaps it's that Hurston doesn't process events the way other people might; there could be a psychological component to her lack of awareness. Later, Hurston comments on how it was more important to make one's own way in the world than it was to try to make the world better for others. A black man came into the barber shop where she worked, which catered to white men only, and the employees - all black - threw him out, refusing to serve him. She described her perspective of the experience this way:
"An incident happened that made me realize how theories go by the board when a person's livelihood is threatened... that night in bed I analyzed the whole thing and realized that I was giving sanction to Jim Crow, which theoretically, I was supposed to resist. But here [we were] all stirred up at the threat of our living through loss of patronage... Perhaps it would have been a beautiful thing if Banks [the manager] had turned to the shop crowd with customers and announced that this man was going to be served... Then we could all have gone home to our unpaid rents and bills and things like that... There is always something fiendish and loathsome about a person who threatens to deprive you of your way of making a living. That is just human-like, I reckon." (Dust Tracks, 134-136)
When I first read that, it felt significant, but honestly I was just trying to get through the book. I noted it for later consideration, understanding that Hurston preferred her life of relative ease (compared to the lives of other blacks, especially at that time). I struggled, as I've said, to finish the book. It was enlightening, but not engaging. When I finished it, I put it down in relief, grateful to be done with it and more than somewhat resentful of the essay I still had to write about it for my class (which I still haven't written - I skipped it, taking the hit on my grade rather than brutalizing my sensibilities trying to answer the asinine questions being asked).
That passage of Hurston's was illuminated in perfect clarity when I read the next book on the class list: Assata Shakur: an autobiography. Where Hurston noted troubles and ascribed them to immutable human nature, Assata notes troubles and determines to change them, by her own force if necessary. Maybe it's only that Assata lives more fully in the world of people than Hurston does; I think it's that Assata is involved in life and is driven by compassion, or empathy, or a wiser sense of the human experience. Perhaps those characteristics can't really be separated. Regardless, Hurston is one to work around problems rather than trying to solve them, and she doesn't pay much attention to those which aren't obstinately in her way.
And regardless of my own issues with reading through this book, I do recommend it to readers interested in this section of US history. Viewed through an awareness of the lens of Hurston's detachment, her story is useful in that it provides the view of those blacks who chose not to support civil rights. Perhaps some understanding is to be had here for that cause, though understanding of course should not be confused with endorsement.
~
Version cited:
Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust tracks on a road: an
autobiography. Harper Perennial Modern Classics ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006. Print.
