tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16347696176874395182023-11-16T01:13:18.903-05:00You ain't heard nothing yet!takes on media, gender, sexuality, and their intersections.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.comBlogger187125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-2000993089689959472010-09-22T19:07:00.009-04:002010-09-23T02:11:13.521-04:00Why Alternative Transportation Can Be a Form of Activism<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf2COrS3le80g0sIGjFFFFbwZJIyY46SQb3nLAkpwJ_VBLTkgOLWo2D7D1JnRLmRo8KwD9L9qCg6rVCh2Dilgs-5W0Y7GTV0OExzDXxzsHeuJlmEXwBvlY_jNEauuPCpT4LHJO8vJjGqg/s1600/bikeDrawing.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 273px; height: 328px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf2COrS3le80g0sIGjFFFFbwZJIyY46SQb3nLAkpwJ_VBLTkgOLWo2D7D1JnRLmRo8KwD9L9qCg6rVCh2Dilgs-5W0Y7GTV0OExzDXxzsHeuJlmEXwBvlY_jNEauuPCpT4LHJO8vJjGqg/s400/bikeDrawing.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519879033817047922" border="0" /></a>Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the intersection of the two seemingly disparate ideas of transportation and gender. Most likely, my recent interest in the two topics in conjunction with one another comes from my new-found love of cycling, but my ruminations on gender and transport don't stop with the frame of my bicycle. I began thinking about the implications of taking the subway, the bus and the train for the two years that I lived in New York City. Obviously, every person packed into a subway car or sitting on a humming crosstown bus means one less vehicle on the crowded streets of Manhattan, taking down the air and noise pollution significantly and most likely decreasing the number of collision-related injuries and deaths. But less obviously, participating in alternate forms of transportation puts one in a more vulnerable position, taking them out of the safety of their personal vehicle and placing them in contact with strangers, darkened street corners, and abandoned late-night subway stations.<br /><br />It takes awareness, wherewithal and a little dose of courage for ANYONE to take the subway back to one's apartment alone at 3am, although it took me a while to admit to myself that I was vulnerable to any negative consequences by waiting alone on an almost empty subway platform. This vulnerability was palpable not just because I am a woman, but also because the reactions of my friends and family would lead one to think that my womanness somehow made me more of a target. I refuse to believe that I was any more susceptible to assault or attack because I was a woman alone on a subway platform because I believe this to be a subscription to victimhood. I understand that pleading with me to "be careful" or to "just take a cab home" were their efforts to protect me from the comfort of their own apartments and from across the country, but their attempts at protection made me feel less like a woman and more like a child that needed to be told how to function in the world. Which made me doubt my own confidence in my safety. Which, in turn, made me start taking cabs home when I had maybe had a few too many or was a little more tired than usual.<br /><br />Now that I have started cycling, I'm starting to feel this same undue protectiveness coming from all directions. When my brother, a road cyclist of over 5 years, decided to bike 100 miles from Los Angeles up to Santa Barbara, almost everyone was impressed instead of worried. This could be due to his experience with road riding, but I don't think his years of riding were what made my family and his friends okay with his excursion. When my brother and my boyfriend ride their bikes to work or to do errands, friends shrug their shoulders or shake their heads in a disbelieving - albeit impressed - manner. When I decide to ride 2.5 miles to Target to run an errand, I am met with worry and hushed voices regarding my safety. I understand that my family and friends want me to be safe and want me to be aware of myself when I'm on the road, and I appreciate their concern; I do not, however, appreciate their overwrought concern that is directed only at me and not at my male friends and family who decide to employ cycling as their primary mode of transportation.<br /><br />As of right now, I live in the hills. Due to my level of experience, the quality <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRvb0QpbgcgKUgeDz9umuRlMNa4tPJCaWO1LH1YjnjoATji7rWiDukv6_nUGxTsigj1H_JQiK26Kt000Ahhq0FhzVq2M4cX6obF9LmE1br6YjPTP-7gRiJLNgfkxGWOY0b3cZRQTjfQYs/s1600/II-Woman-And-The-Bicycle-95.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 136px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRvb0QpbgcgKUgeDz9umuRlMNa4tPJCaWO1LH1YjnjoATji7rWiDukv6_nUGxTsigj1H_JQiK26Kt000Ahhq0FhzVq2M4cX6obF9LmE1br6YjPTP-7gRiJLNgfkxGWOY0b3cZRQTjfQYs/s400/II-Woman-And-The-Bicycle-95.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519879955503136210" border="0" /></a>of my bicycle, and the grade of the nearby hills, cycling everywhere is totally out of the question. I'm forced to drive in order to cycle, and for now I'm okay with that. I've only had my bike for three months, and I have no desire to completely abandon my four-wheeled vehicle in favor of my two-wheeled one. I didn't begin cycling to make some grand statement about the reduction of my carbon footprint. I didn't start riding my bike to prove anything to anyone, least of all to myself. But slowly I've been realizing that cycling - and all other alternative forms of transportation, for that matter - actively takes a stand against the pervasive car culture of my hometown of Southern California, a culture that is dangerous to others, to animals, to the environment, and to the landscape and unique geography of the area. Cycling is only dangerous to me if I decide to ride in a dangerous manner, and I've been taught by experienced bikers how to obey the rules of the road. That being said, I understand that I have no control over the actions of vehicles larger than my vintage road bike, and that the unprotected state of my cycling body potentially puts me at risk for injury.<br /><br />But I am beginning to realize more and more that by participating in this activity, I am also actively changing and challenging the perceptions of females and their safety when engaging in cycling and other solo, alternative transit options. This activism also comes in the form of my good female friend who chooses to take the Metro to and from work in Downtown Los Angeles alone instead of buying a car, or my closest gal pal who prefers walking to dinner in her neighborhood despite the setting sun. We may not be speaking out at rallies, but our activism in the form of alternative transportation makes me feel like I am a part of what Susan B Anthony called "free, untrammeled womanhood.” The bicycle helped to liberate women from their domestic setting and attire. That liberation became taken for granted when women preferred less strenuous activity for the sake of aesthetics. I say to hell aesthetics, and to the roads with our bodies. Transportation need not be gendered, and our gender should be no indication of our ability to travel.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-81439257682160689462010-09-17T02:14:00.015-04:002010-09-20T18:20:17.167-04:00To Be Young, Skinny and White - A Comment on Modern Standards of BeautyOne of my favorite popular-culture-meets-gossip-meets-strong-female-voice blogs <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://jezebel.com/">Jezebel</a> has an on-going, fantastic series they call "Photoshop of Horrors." These pieces - always accompanied by the images being critiqued for going under the Photoshop knife - tend to focus attention to the wildly disproportionate waist-to-hip ratios, wrinkle-free faces, and oddly disembodied legs and arms that grace the pages and covers of fashion magazines and other pop culture images. From brand advertisements to movie posters to fashion features all the way to the front cover of <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle </span>magazine, <span style="font-style: italic;">Jezebel</span> stops at nothing to point out every noticeable (and even not-so-noticeable) instances of airbrushing, cropping, editing, and chest-enlarging that it can scour from the pages of popular culture. Heck, the subtitle of the website is "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing," two sentences that, if a few words were altered, could read as a scathing manifesto about the topic that most commonly graces the pages of their wonderful blog.<br /><br />When I say that this topic is a prominent feature on the website, I'm not exaggerating - a quick search for the hash tag #photoshopofhorrors yields 214 results ranging from <a href="http://jezebel.com/5638987/the-mysterious-case-of-scarlett-johanssons-frozen-face/gallery/">the removal of emotion</a> from Scarlett Johansson's face to Ralph Lauren repeatedly <a href="http://jezebel.com/5383220/now-vp-wants-ralph-lauren-to-apologize-to-model-everyone-else">giving the Photoshop stick-figure treatment</a> to their models. Why I love what <span style="font-style: italic;">Jezebel</span> is doing is that - much like the fantastic <a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/">Sociological Images</a> blog - half of the time the images in the posts are left to speak for themselves. The occasional addition of arrows, brief text, and side-by-side comparisons allow these (at times really disturbing and un-human) figures and faces to be removed from the noisy, cluttered context of a fashion magazine to a space where they can be singled out, scrutinized and studied, calling attention to the little things that we as a society are beginning to take for granted as beautiful, "healthy," and normative body types. But at other times, when the "cease and desist" emails start pouring in from magazine editors, photographers, and talent agents, <span style="font-style: italic;">Jezebel</span> will do more than just show some cringe-worthy images - they'll <a href="http://jezebel.com/5619903/why-you-must-see-unretouched-images-and-why-you-must-see-them-repeatedly">fight back</a>.<br /><br />When there's a watchdog like <span style="font-style: italic;">Jezebel </span>out in the neighborhood patrolling for these sorts of transgressions, you would think that magazine editors and talent managers would be a bit more careful when deciding what type of images to print. But it seems that these unfortunate, blatant and sometimes just negligent Photoshop mishaps have been popping up everywhere lately - however, this perceived pervasiveness could just be my recently attuned interest in the topic. The most recent instance of blatant alteration comes in the form of <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1312928/Did-Elle-magazine-lighten-skin-Precious-star-Gabourey-Sidibe-cover-photoshoot.html?ito=feeds-newsxml">the obvious skin-lightening of actress Gabourey Sidibe</a>, the Oscar-nominated star of <span style="font-style: italic;">Precious</span> who now has a recurring role on Showtime's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Big C</span><span> alongside Laura Linney</span>. This piece was brought to my attention yesterday by my step-brother who, anecdotally, asked me tonight if I "look for sexism in everything." (A comment to which I responded "I don't look for it in everything, I just <span style="font-style: italic;">see</span> it in everything!") I really couldn't go much further without giving full credit to the guy for pointing me in the direction of <a href="http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/was-gabourey-sidibes-skin-lightened-for-the-cover-of-elle-2391180/">a Yahoo! piece</a> that positioned the photo of Gabby from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle</span> cover next to a red carpet photo to display the drastic difference in her skin tone.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCIghqTCk3kkZ598h0r2RBfj_6tPmihTO8DkOc_9Bd3sYt3jcl4DdsE0TPDk4Pp4ghjS8zqSyXjh9pPuTZydJfHqAp_EyS9eyYxawGA1N0OTHu9U2YnasHsY9Br_GNctNG-0OkajrIcxs/s1600/gabby.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 264px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCIghqTCk3kkZ598h0r2RBfj_6tPmihTO8DkOc_9Bd3sYt3jcl4DdsE0TPDk4Pp4ghjS8zqSyXjh9pPuTZydJfHqAp_EyS9eyYxawGA1N0OTHu9U2YnasHsY9Br_GNctNG-0OkajrIcxs/s400/gabby.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517781219010937874" border="0" /></a>[Credit: Getty Images] There is no doubt in my mind that this photo has been retouched. Even <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle</span> admits that Gabby's photo "was not retouched any more or less than the others." It's no secret that real life skin lightening is a dangerous trend that's received uneven attention in the media, and that aside from all of the lightening cosmetic creams available at the drug store there are Facebook apps that <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20010405-501465.html">promise to lighten</a> the shade of one's skin in their profile picture. These products and applications are targeted at any community whose skin tone is darker than the average Western European's skin color, hinting that the lighter one's skin, the more beautiful they will look and feel. The reason for the retouching of Sidibe's skin tone on the cover of <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle </span>becomes abundantly clear when you view the other three <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle</span> covers coming out for this 25th anniversary special edition of the magazine (see below):<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Qu5omWJJZR1U2IpiNitaZLC8EPVb7BjCO46j7H8dLSrFW_W5FW5Sth_jIWuuPpTtf-9tkbGLTyg-AlWOotF4MRRGLb5XEd3AoLLtOOwB80Tcw9GbGk39gzMailI1dGVYajPHzEewNks/s1600/fox.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 196px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Qu5omWJJZR1U2IpiNitaZLC8EPVb7BjCO46j7H8dLSrFW_W5FW5Sth_jIWuuPpTtf-9tkbGLTyg-AlWOotF4MRRGLb5XEd3AoLLtOOwB80Tcw9GbGk39gzMailI1dGVYajPHzEewNks/s400/fox.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519105446339577202" border="0" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZAYLqMu3kt_GlwlOQfUjyvXLZtyZF3JLp2Rnn0bxk_1tqsBUvyzmT1OOB9LD65N8JwttDA4T8bBTIdi6DB5rSjhc3cTAU80Q1ZmOm7BAgyfdjmXWsknw6gpEKIuU0RghXsBBwi6df6yE/s1600/seyfried.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 196px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZAYLqMu3kt_GlwlOQfUjyvXLZtyZF3JLp2Rnn0bxk_1tqsBUvyzmT1OOB9LD65N8JwttDA4T8bBTIdi6DB5rSjhc3cTAU80Q1ZmOm7BAgyfdjmXWsknw6gpEKIuU0RghXsBBwi6df6yE/s400/seyfried.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519105764295281010" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDr6jbBwOaSA13vjKKn0RDQ8YRI0xwch8FNPWeDPents_r1XLEBAo5YhPUs5ooujwkt7LFhcThEC2VraA0rhvzBZkmSR1ZgAamz3s_EH1Z1SjCmRoOrqe4XW3I0ohYlSy5FIoAgUBCVaQ/s1600/conrad.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 196px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDr6jbBwOaSA13vjKKn0RDQ8YRI0xwch8FNPWeDPents_r1XLEBAo5YhPUs5ooujwkt7LFhcThEC2VraA0rhvzBZkmSR1ZgAamz3s_EH1Z1SjCmRoOrqe4XW3I0ohYlSy5FIoAgUBCVaQ/s400/conrad.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519106106593380770" border="0" /></a>[Credit: <span style="font-style: italic;">The Daily Mail</span>] Of the four girls that <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle </span>chose to represent the face of young, modern America, three of them are white, thin, and conventionally beautiful. Sidibe is the only woman of color represented, and the only woman who is shot in extreme close-up - presumably in order to hide the truth of her weight and size. As <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle </span>makes an attempt to be inclusive and representative, it ultimately fails by instead making Sidibe's cover so dramatically different than the other three so as to single her out and almost specifically call attention to her differences from the other three actresses gracing the special anniversary cover. In an attempt to represent "what 25 looks like" in America, <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle </span>has fallen back to the reoccurring white and thin beauty standards of yesteryear - and, not to mention, has completely alienated Asian-American, Latino-American, Muslim-American and myriad other ethnic communities in the process.<br /><br />It's also no secret that black Americans are highly underrepresented in fashion, in film, and on television. The same, interestingly enough, seems to go for full-figured women. Plus-size models generally measure in with waists that are still smaller than that of the average American woman, and, despite what brands like Dove want you to think, the perceived normative beauty standard still lies within the advertisements for high fashion brands. It's applauded when women appear in magazines touting their un-Photoshopped bodies or faces, something that I think should be less of a celebration and more of a common practice. With an attempt to move toward truth in advertising in American media, this is one of the first places we should start, especially when so many women suffer from eating disorders, depression and social anxieties about their weight and appearance, or, in some extreme cases, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD).<br /><br />While the causes of BDD are usually psychological or neurological, one of the triggers of BDD is said to be environmental, meaning that the influence of images in the media might cause an individual grappling with the disease to become even more sensitive or self-conscious about their appearance. A recent episode of MTV's <span style="font-style: italic;">True Life</span> titled "I Hate My Face" featured Pamela, a young woman about the same age as the four actresses on the covers of <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle </span>who was suffering greatly from the disease. Pamela is unable to hold down a job or finish dinner with her boyfriend at a restaurant because of her insecurities about her self-perceived "ugliness." In one scene, she compares herself to the blond women she sees out in public and expresses her insecurities that she is not as beautiful as this one woman. In another, Pamela fights with her boyfriend about her disease:<br /><br /><embed src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtv.com:503302" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="configParams=id%3D1635943%26vid%3D503302%26uri%3Dmgid%3Auma%3Avideo%3Amtv.com%3A503302" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" base="." height="319" width="512"></embed><div style="margin: 0px; padding: 4px; width: 500px; text-align: center; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://www.mtv.com/shows/truelife/series.jhtml" style="color: rgb(67, 156, 216);" target="_blank">True Life</a> - <a href="http://www.mtv.com/ontv/" style="color: rgb(67, 156, 216);" target="_blank">MTV Shows</a></div><br /><br />While Pamela may not be Western European-looking or blond, she ultimately upholds these physical features as the ultimate in beauty standards. Where she gets the idea that her Filipino looks and, more specifically, her nose and her chest size, could not possibly be perceived as beautiful is anyone's guess, but I can venture to lay blame on one culprit in particular. I'm not saying that the media or American society instilled in her these negative feelings toward her appearance, but based on what she believes to be "beautiful," the blame also cannot be completely exonerated. While I want to applaud <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle </span>for depicting some semblance of diversity on their anniversary covers, it's difficult for me not to wonder how those who recognize Sidibe's change in skin tone will feel about the alteration. It's possible that women with darker toned skin could be offended that Sidibe is being misrepresented. It's possible that women who have been otherwise marginalized for their weight or body shape could view the cropping of the photo as an attempt to censor the truth of Sidibe's size. It's also possible for anyone to be just downright offended on a purely aesthetic level by the <span style="font-weight: bold;">horrible</span> wig that the fashion editor provided for Gabourey to wear.<br /><br />Of course the wonderful <span style="font-style: italic;">Jezebel </span>has <a href="http://jezebel.com/5640135/elle-also-seems-to-have-also-lightened-gabourey-sidibes-skin">covered this topic</a>, but it seems not to have made as many waves as, say, the afore-linked <span style="font-style: italic;">extreeeeme</span> retouching of Jennifer Aniston's tan and wrinkles. Granted, this year did see the <a href="http://jezebel.com/5641047/images-from-the-only-plus+size-show-at-fashion-week/gallery/">first ever plus-size fashion show</a> at New York Fashion Week, but based on this whole <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle </span>magazine fiasco I'm not about to jump and say that this singular incident represents a change in the tide. In theory, it's totally great a woman of color and of size like Gabourey is being represented on the cover of <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle</span>. In reality, <span style="font-style: italic;">Elle </span>seems to believe that dark skin and anything but a size 6 isn't worth representing - at least, not fully and completely.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-24902538318990360782010-08-16T02:09:00.018-04:002010-08-16T21:54:01.252-04:00Thoughts on same-sex parents - from flirting with disaster to the kids being all right.After Judge Vaugh Walker handed down his decision that Proposition 8 - the legislation that banned gay marriage in California - was unconstitutional on August 4th, proponents of the legislation promised an immediate appeal. The majority of the arguments being shouted back-and-forth for appeal of the unconstitutionality ruling are primarily based on the grounds of the potential "harm" inflicted from lifting the ban: the harm that would come to the institution of marriage, the harm to tradition and personal morals, and, seemingly, the harm that will be inflicted on the children raised by same-sex couples. Listening to NPR the day that the decision was handed down, I heard callers basing their argument that children would be "harmed" if they were raised by same-sex couples on historical evidence: children have traditionally been raised by one mother and one father, so now why would we want to go around messing with this already functional system?<br /><br />If tradition dictates that children should be raised by a man <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> a woman, then <a href="http://www.census.gov/apsd/techdoc/cps/cpsmar06.pdf">over 12 million families</a> in the US are guilty of breaking tradition by functioning as single parent households. If the definition of an "adequate parent" is based on the presence of a man and a woman to raise a child, then women whose spouses have left them, or men whose partners have passed away, or ambitious single women who choose to adopt a child without the financial or emotional support of a life partner do not qualify as "adequate parents." What about families that have several generations living under one roof, families in which aunts and grandparents and siblings share in the parenting responsibilities? Or families in which one of the parents falls ill and can no longer share in the child-rearing responsibilities? Attempting to define the basis for what makes an adequate parent is such an incredibly personal and unique assessment to make. It is so frustrating that more people aren't offended by all of this "tradition" rhetoric that organizations like the National Organization for Marriage are throwing around, especially given the profound ignorance of the feelings of the children involved in this whole discussion.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAe-Bv-I6eZGoj_0uj5NVSJVQgbPNQmVGQUCmtNKlXrr7r9gIJIZu1F6RFxsCwtaIg_xyzNQqMWoLPns_dgsNVrudozLV3PiZhE9DyvopDjvaIvR8xoI1xBgkVQsbqJkDTN3nzQOIvIIU/s1600/kids.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 516px; height: 304px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAe-Bv-I6eZGoj_0uj5NVSJVQgbPNQmVGQUCmtNKlXrr7r9gIJIZu1F6RFxsCwtaIg_xyzNQqMWoLPns_dgsNVrudozLV3PiZhE9DyvopDjvaIvR8xoI1xBgkVQsbqJkDTN3nzQOIvIIU/s400/kids.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505925703518236178" border="0" /></a><br />Seemingly released apropos <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/07/lesbian.children.adjustment/index.html">recent research</a> that supports this notion that children of same-sex couples "are well-adjusted," Lisa Cholodenko's newest dramedy <span style="font-style: italic;">The Kids Are All Right</span> attempts to depict what <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/movies/29sundance.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The New York Times </span>dubbed</a> "a generous, nearly note-perfect portrait of a modern family." If one knows the premise of the film, the title effectively conveys the outcome of the storyline in a fairly clear manner - that children of gay parents, despite popular<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>belief, might just turn out to be pretty okay. Is it possible, in the face of the beliefs of Proposition 8 supporters, that non-traditional family models can actually produce children that can function in a dominantly heteronormative society? Is this film trying to tell us that despite the "abnormal" behavior of their parents, the children of same-sex partners might just be able to function as the normal, well-adjusted human beings that we want to have in society? That, in fact, the kids of lesbian parents might just be totally all right?<br /><br />Interestingly enough, some affirmation of this notion came in a recent lonely late night with my Netflix Watch Instantly queue, which lead me to revisit the fairly forgotten mid-90s film <span style="font-style: italic;">Flirting with Disaster</span>, a movie that unexpectedly touches - albeit somewhat ironically - on the parenting questions being raised by Prop 8 supporters. This frenetic David O. Russell comedy stars Ben Stiller before he was a male model conducting walk-offs refereed by David Bowie and threatening that "nobody makes me bleed my own blood," and - brief sidebar - reminds the viewer why some audiences fell in love with him in the first place.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu9s6fC-6-UlK8tetGJyOfHY3DByrGt3ySTy0aByYDEUpsiUmimTynvdpWg9KaCbR1D1mFNYo6qG69SCILBhf8-ClJmxFqC_bqTNt0u1BWq4meDtz0Aw2cSMwPxCSW_KW6xFAF-gOM-Ls/s1600/images.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 523px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu9s6fC-6-UlK8tetGJyOfHY3DByrGt3ySTy0aByYDEUpsiUmimTynvdpWg9KaCbR1D1mFNYo6qG69SCILBhf8-ClJmxFqC_bqTNt0u1BWq4meDtz0Aw2cSMwPxCSW_KW6xFAF-gOM-Ls/s400/images.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505926465749214466" border="0" /></a>The film focuses on the journey of neurotic Mel Coplin (played by Stiller) and his wife Nancy (Patricia Arquette) as they travel the country with their newborn son attempting to find his birth parents with the incompetent-but-flirtatious adoption agency employee Tina (Téa Leoni). Mel's adoptive parents Ed and Pearl Coplin (played to bickering perfection by George Segal and Mary Tyler Moore) are deeply hurt and defensive of his decision, thinking Mel's search for his birth parents is a slight on their skills as parents. The first few scenes of the film set up the audience for the true reasons behind Mel's myriad neuroses and his quest to find out the reasons behind them - his adoptive father Ed is perplexingly afraid of the wheel of cheese sitting on the living room table (Pearl later calls him "food-phobic), and his mother won't let her son finish a sentence without a loud and dramatic interruption.<br /><br />As the film goes on, Tina brings the young couple to two different people who turn out <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> to be his parents - the last of whom subsequently enables Mel to back a semi truck into a post office. At the police station, the three run into Nancy's old high school classmate Tony (Josh Brolin) who works in the alcohol, tobacco and firearms division with his partner, Paul (Richard Jenkins). The five of them all go out to an Italian restaurant, where it is slowly and subtly revealed that Paul and Tony are not just partners in the ATF division of the station - they are also romantic partners who are potentially considering adopting a child.<br /><br />Tony and Paul serve as comic relief for the remainder of the film, if not just for their sexual orientation: Tony (who admits he's bisexual) attempts to seduce Nancy by licking her armpit, and Paul ends up running half naked through the desert after taking two hits of acid that Mel's vindictive and bitter younger brother meant for him. But, to my surprise for its serendipity, the last few lines of the film turn the joke away from the same-sex relationship and over onto the potential reality of <span style="font-weight: bold;">any</span> family situation - that even a child who is raised by a man and a woman in a typically "traditional" household has every chance of being messed up and poorly adjusted.<br /><br />In the last scene of the film, the whole group gathers outside the jail from which Ed and Pearl Coplin have been bailed out after being caught with hundreds of tabs of acid in their trunk (I'm telling you, just see the movie - this matter of the plot is far too tangential to my main point). Outside the jail, Pearl turns to Ed and, motioning toward Tony and Paul, says "I think those two men are homosexuals." Ed responds that the two are thinking about adopting a child, and expresses how "sick" someone would have to be to do that. Pearl agrees with Ed, adding "can you imagine the neurosis that child will have to deal with?" After an entire movie about a man who can't name his child until he's met his birth parents, who (it's mentioned) has problems performing during oral sex, whose mother exposes her breasts to his wife, and who has awkward and illicit sexual interactions with someone who's effectively his psychiatrist, devoting the last three lines of a film to this ironic comment on the nature of familial relationships struck me as oddly timely to all the yelling and hand-wringing being done by outspoken Prop 8 supporters about the effects on the psyches of the children of gay and lesbian couples.<br /><br />I cannot describe the surge of feelings brought forth in me that the last minute of a film made 15 years ago managed to pinpoint the exact fear expressed by supporters of traditional marriage values today in 2010. I smiled, feeling like I was a part of some in-joke, when the fear of potential mental harm to the child of a same-sex couple is spoken by a dysfunctional, heterosexual couple that produced an entirely neurotic and idiosyncratic offspring. Sure, one could argue the mere fact that Mel was adopted in some ways makes his family a non-traditional one, but keep in mind that I am going off of the assumption that a traditionally defined family (according to <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-poll-same-sex-marriage-20100816,0,5794835.story">certain supporters</a> of the ban on same-sex marriage) is one that is lead by a man and a woman. One could also argue that, seeing as he is married and has a child and job, Mel is an ipso facto well-adjusted member of society, but I would beg to differ that his issues far outweigh his surface normalcy.<br /><br />I find that the testimony of the adopted children of same-sex couples is hardly given any credence in this whole discussion, even though they are seemingly the ones who are so negatively effected by their family situation - and who, not surprisingly, <a href="http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/12/gay-marriages-biggest-supporters-children-of-gay-parents/">tend to express positive feelings</a> about their home life. This issue is so extremely personal, and anyone who attempts to try and dictate what is best for any one child or any one family needs to step back and take a good look at what they are implicating about other non-traditional families in various alternative circumstances. Is it appropriate to turn to a strange family in a crowded restaurant and attempt to scold their child for being messy or consuming their food too loudly? Is it anyone's responsibility but the parent of a child - be it birth or adoptive - to decide what is best for their children? If anything, the laws against gay marriage are what most effect the psyche of a child of a same-sex couple - it can't be anything but devastating to grow up watching your parents be discriminated against for simply loving each other and making some attempt at normalcy.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-73447542677010075732010-07-21T20:26:00.006-04:002010-07-22T00:21:51.193-04:00Abstract for Global Fusion 2010 conference at Texas A&MI just heard today that my paper was accepted for presentation at <a href="http://comm.tamu.edu/globalfusionindex.html">Global Fusion 2010: Sustenance and Globalization</a>, an academic conference at Texas A&M University. Here is the version of the abstract that I submitted to the selection committee, which includes some basic information on the issues that my paper will cover.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Net neutrality and reproductive health: How new media platforms navigate controversial issues.</span><br /><br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;">In this uncertain time for the future of access and openness on the Internet, it is not surprising that controversial issues are often not permitted the same amount of openness as neutral ones. A contentious issue around the world, especially in relation to the United States’ recent attempt to pass health care reform, has been and continues to be the issue of abortion, including not only access to the service itself but also access to information regarding the service. This project is interested in exploring how companies and institutions that own rights to new media services - such as search engines and text messaging services - censor messages or information regarding controversial issues such as abortion. What does this censorship imply for the future of public health when certain reproductive health NGOs and information sharing societies both within the US and in Latin America are the target of this silencing?<br /><br />In this paper, I would like to begin with an introduction stating the current temperature of the net neutrality debate; provide a brief background on the issue of abortion at home and abroad; introduce and analyze some of the literature on net neutrality, Internet filtering, and access to information on reproductive health; outline the inspiration for the methodological approach to this research; and present two instances of censorship: Verizon Wireless's refusal to participate in NARAL Pro-Choice's text messaging campaign, and Google AdWords' exclusion of ads offering abortion information in over a dozen countries internationally.</blockquote>I am SUPER excited for this opportunity, especially since this is the first academic conference to which I have ever submitted an abstract. Certainly encouraging and commending considering the flood of rejections I've received for job opportunities lately. Let me know what you think, and fill me in on some ideas for presentation methods - already thinking about <a href="http://prezi.com/">Prezi</a> or something similar.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-57861785318618240842010-07-19T12:59:00.009-04:002010-07-26T15:49:26.213-04:00Lady Gaga's 'Telephone': Exploitation cinemas, homosexual attraction, and the blending of public and private.The following is an excerpt from a full-length paper entitled "“We’re C-Coming Out”: Lady Gaga’s Postmodern Videographic and Public Bisexual Persona" that was completed in May 2010. For an analysis of the Gaga's depiction of her heterosexual tendencies in her music videos, see <a href="http://aintheardnothingyet.blogspot.com/2010/05/lady-gagas-video-for-paparazzi-irony.html">my post</a> on irony, innocence, and the death of the heterosexual binary.<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GQ95z6ywcBY&hl=en_US&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GQ95z6ywcBY&hl=en_US&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />In order to experience a bisexual camp reading of the video for <span style="font-style: italic;">Telephone</span> as a comment on one aspect of Lady Gaga’s sexual identity, one cannot expect the song’s lyrics to provide deeper meaning. The actual song does not begin until 2 minutes and 50 seconds into the video, with multiple starts and stops of the track throughout that make clear the point of the video is the visual and not the lyrical content. Although the video is ironically edited to the contents of the song in part – namely when Lady Gaga answers a payphone in prison to begin the song, singing “<span style="font-style: italic;">Hello, hello, baby, you called? / I can’t hear a thing / I have got no service in the club</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">/ You see, you see</span>” – the overall context of the video rarely reflects the events taking place in the lyrics except through occasional irony. The video begins set in a prison and then moves to the road and into a diner – and never, ever finds Lady Gaga or her co-star, Beyoncé, in a traditional club setting. Through a reading of the visual elements of key instances from Lady Gaga’s video for <span style="font-style: italic;">Telephone</span>, I will attempt to further the idea that Gaga’s public and private life are indeed blended together in a remark on postmodern authenticity while also calling attention to the presentation of her sexuality in a single video as never bisexual and always only hetero or homosexual.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Telephone</span> opens with blue-tinted shots of the exterior of a prison including images of barbed wire, guards positioned up high on a wall, and the surrounding cityscape all beneath fluorescent graphics and text that announce the stars (Beyoncé and Gaga) and director Jonas Åkerlund). This text and visual style set the stage indisputably for the campy visual style of a cult grindhouse film alá the blaxploitation classic <span style="font-style: italic;">Super Fly</span> (dir. Gordon Parks, Jr., 1972) or<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I Spit on Your Grave</span>, Meir Zarchi’s 1978 rape-revenge film. Seemingly being imprisoned for poisoning and killing her boyfriend in her previous video for <span style="font-style: italic;">Paparazzi</span>, Lady Gaga appears dressed in an exaggerated take on the black and white striped jailhouse uniform complete with her (or Grace Jones’s?) signature pointed shoulder pads which both function as a type of androgynous costume play as well as a nod to queer camp aesthetics of exaggeration discussed by Dyer [1] and Bryant [2]. A title appears explaining she has arrived at the “Prison for Bitches” as she is guided along a long line of hard-yet-chic feminine women within their respective jail cells who cat-call, blow kisses, and lick the metal bars, pronouncing their sexually aggressive – and therefore prison-societal – superiority over the new inmate. Each dressed in their own unique and completely more subdued variations of Gaga’s uniform, the women behind the bars look more like femme sex workers than regular prison inmates (and in fact, none of the women in this segment of the video come close to appearing butch), perhaps Åkerlund’s and/ or Lady Gaga’s comment on the type of women who are depicted as deviant jailbirds who might inspire empathy in the women-in-prison films (yet another sub-genre of exploitation cinema showcased in this video) like <span style="font-style: italic;">Cha</span><span style="font-style: italic;">ined Heat</span> (dir. Paul Nicholas, 1983) or the original contribution to the genre, <span style="font-style: italic;">Caged</span> (dir. John Cromwell, 1950).<br /><br />Gaga is shoved into her jail cell and disrobed of all but her fishnet stockings by the transgender guards, who throw her down onto her cot. As she scrambles in an attempt to escape she mounts the bars of the door to her cell, exposing her pixilated crotch just long enough for the world to see the truth of her gender identity. In a direct comment to this revelation, one of the guards becomes the authority to announce this now-proven genital knowledge to the skeptical general public when she proclaims “I told you she didn’t have a dick.” Including proof in the pixilated version of a Lady Gaga’s vulva is perhaps an attempt to dispel this rumor once and for all that she is not “a very well-endowed young man” and is indeed cisgendered.<br /><br />Lyrics from her previous single “Poker Face,” which Lady Gaga has claimed is about “poker facing with your sexuality,” lead in some ways to the development of this rumor: “<span style="font-style: italic;">I won’t tell</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">you that I love you / Kiss or hug you / Cause I’m bluffin’ with my muffin / I’m not lying I’m just</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">stunnin’ with my love-glue-gunning</span>.” About seven months after her 17 April 2009 appearance on <span style="font-style: italic;">Friday Night with Jonathan Ross </span>– the show on which Gaga was rudely confronted by the host with the rumor about her assigned gender – Gaga reinforced in an interview with Barbara Walters that the lyric “bluffin’ with my muffin” is not a reference to her assigned gender, but indeed to her sexuality as a woman who is attracted to both men and women, albeit to each in different ways. The few seconds of screen time that Gaga’s vulva receives in 2010's <span style="font-style: italic;">Telephone</span> seek to do away with this persistent rumor – a case in which gender has been conflated with sexuality [3] – once and for all.<br /><br />The scene in the exercise yard in which Gaga is adorned in an outfit complete with heavy metal chains and sunglasses covered in lit, smoking cigarettes (visible in Figure 4) positions her as “the phallic femme” discussed by Chris Straayer. She moves across the yard as two of her previous hits, “Paper Gangsta” and “I Like It Rough,” play through the speakers of a boom box, perhaps a comment on Gaga’s consistent radio presence and media saturation no matter where one might find themselves. As soon as she sits down at a table outside, a “she-butch” female [5] in leather with short hair sits down beside Gaga and begins to kiss her (see below). Gaga kisses her back and even grab<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyb9kAJjBut89poKL5rgMWhYZHh9YYmbp687D4XZxV8Rbg0D31W22gshC1s6uzX1rruulwKRoI1c24ryA1RtLxf1QWHoqiRkET5u79YYNi4RnSaQ-ZH7WgW-saIxsqhI0YPmdPhTEAmBI/s1600/lady-gaga-lesbian-kiss.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 325px; height: 228px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyb9kAJjBut89poKL5rgMWhYZHh9YYmbp687D4XZxV8Rbg0D31W22gshC1s6uzX1rruulwKRoI1c24ryA1RtLxf1QWHoqiRkET5u79YYNi4RnSaQ-ZH7WgW-saIxsqhI0YPmdPhTEAmBI/s400/lady-gaga-lesbian-kiss.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5495668542121847618" border="0" /></a>s the other woman between her legs, heightening the sexual tension of the moment. Feministe blogger Sady Doyle pointed to this instance in the video as one that plays with transgression from the normative pop culture representations of girl-on-girl sexual expression, especially since “special makeout times Between the Ladies [sic] almost always happen, in pop culture, between two very femme-looking individuals” [6]. Look no further than Katy Perry’s video for <span style="font-style: italic;">I Kissed a Girl</span> to see instances of feminine women implicated as potential sexual partners for other feminine women, or 1998’s feature length film <span style="font-style: italic;">Wild Things</span> in which Neve Campbell and Denise Richards, two traditionally femme females, share an intimate moment together in a pool. For the remainder of the video we only see Gaga implicated in relationships with other women whether as a domestic or sexual partner, clearly aligning the Lady with her attraction for women, or the homosexual side of her bisexuality.<br /><br />Soon after this femme-butch kiss in the exercise yard a girl-on-girl kung fu-style fight reminiscent of the gloriously camp and stylized <span style="font-style: italic;">Faster, Pussy Cat! Kill! Kill!</span> (dir. Russ Meyer, 1965) breaks out in the prison and an impromptu dance number begins that combines acrobatics, aerobics, and aggressive boxing moves. Soon after the brawl and the dancing Beyoncé comes to Lady Gaga’s rescue in the Pussy Wagon, loaned to Lady Gaga by Quentin Tarantino specifically for the video, who obviously recognized the parallels between Gaga’s character in this video and the non-normative femme female action star of <span style="font-style: italic;">Kill Bill Volume I</span> (2003) and <span style="font-style: italic;">II </span>(2004). Gaga is dressed in yet another new outfit, this time a slightly more exaggerated and androgynous nod to camp queen Jane Mansfield’s outfit from her famous scene in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Girl Can’t Help It</span> (dir. Frank Tashlin, 1956).<br /><br />After making a sandwich into a phallic object via a nod to oral fetishism and allowing Beyoncé to sing a little bit, the two ladies tear down a dirt road in the neon yellow truck on their way to a diner where they will eventually poison everyone, starting with Beyoncé’s abusive, hyper-masculine boyfriend. After her boyfriend keels over dead onto the table, Beyoncé makes an innocent yet knowing hand-to-mouth, wide-eyed gesture similar to Lady Gaga’s from <span style="font-style: italic;">Paparazzi</span> after she too has poisoned her boyfriend. This positions Beyoncé as a referential figure by drawing a parallel to the previous video performance to create a space for Beyoncé that is indeed strictly performative and is not meant to make reference to her celebrity persona in the same way that Gaga’s gesture in <span style="font-style: italic;">Paparazzi</span> is meant to be viewed. Another aspect of the video that positions Beyoncé in a different light than Gaga is that Beyoncé is allowed to be presented as bisexual in the contexts of this video even though her public and private personae are consistently positioned as heterosexual. The video does, however go to great lengths to situate Beyoncé’s true performance as non-normative and a stark contrast to her typical presentation in the media by her outlandish dress and her robotic movements that mirror the sound of the skipping audio track. Gaga’s videos consistently employ this aesthetic, as do her songs; Beyoncé’s videos and music, on the other hand, do not subscribe to the same “fake authenticity” that are present in the pantheon of Gaga representations. The video ends in a similarly consistently referential manner with a nod to the film<span style="font-style: italic;"> Thelma and Louis</span> as Gaga and Beyoncé grasp hands as they drive off together into the horizon. A heart-shaped graphic appears, situating the two as not just friends but romantic lovers, who interestingly enough do not share an on-screen kiss in the video.<br /><br />[1] Richard Dyer. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2004.<br /><br />[2] Wayne M. Byrant. Bisexual Characters in Film: From Anais to Zee. New York: The Haworth<br />Press, 1997.<br /><br />[3] Judith Butler. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge (1990, 1999), 9.<br /><br />[4] Chris Straayer. Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Re-Orientations in Film and Video. New York: Columbia University Press (1996), 83-84.<br /><br />[5] Ibid, 94-101.<br /><br />[6] Sady Doyle. “<a href="http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/03/13/weekend-arts-section-nothing-that-happened-this-week-was-ever-going-to-be-as-important-as-the-telephone-video/">Nothing That Happened This Week Was Ever Going To Be As Important As The ‘Telephone’ Video.</a>” Feministe. 13 March 2010.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-43257407261121929142010-07-16T17:26:00.008-04:002010-07-16T18:15:17.375-04:00"The Internet is boring today" - A Brief Look at How This is Even Possible<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQAGN5JW3FSe7w584LuN-2lgDXK9xHNYtoWdQCiksj2c6XSBxFt8UcwrAa1Rr3Yey6EpTa7i0jPQMSLTxxKNgvXs-Q9XIOgqG5jfT93TXS-0IsOWXBkZNTwfxdF2wn8Am7NBCSe_BWfy0/s1600/Bored-Computer-User.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 277px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQAGN5JW3FSe7w584LuN-2lgDXK9xHNYtoWdQCiksj2c6XSBxFt8UcwrAa1Rr3Yey6EpTa7i0jPQMSLTxxKNgvXs-Q9XIOgqG5jfT93TXS-0IsOWXBkZNTwfxdF2wn8Am7NBCSe_BWfy0/s400/Bored-Computer-User.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494631153222788130" border="0" /></a><br />When I was checking my email last night before tucking myself into bed with John Irving, I noticed a Google Chat status update from a former classmate that read as follows:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">The Internet is boring today.</span></blockquote><br />I immediately asked myself: <span style="font-style: italic;">How is this even remotely possible?</span> There is just so much information available on the Internet - however, this is not to say that all of it is credible, interesting, or even entertaining. Most of the stuff one finds on a daily basis holds their interest for a matter of minutes, sometimes even seconds, which certainly does not make time fly if one is bored out of their minds. I don't think that it was necessarily the Internet that she was bored with - quite possibly, she had simply run out of motivation.<br /><br />I would argue - and maybe I'm starting in with the big guns of optimism a little too soon -that even someone with the most niche and the most obscure of interests can find something interesting, intriguing, or inspiring to read, interact with, create, or watch on the Internet on any given day. But - and here's the catch - one has to actually be in the mood to seek it out. Optimistic, starry-eyed scholars love to elevate the Internet to this amazing source of ultimate information, comparing it to a bridge that will connect all peoples in their quest for knowledge, truth, and cute kitties. But the echo chamber into which most bloggers are contributing (guilty, I'm sure) and through which most readers are hand-picking their content of choice does not lead us to these infinite options as much as we would like to believe. However, if one is smart enough about their pursuits of knowledge and is <span style="font-style: italic;">willing </span>to devote time to seeking out content and information, then the Internet can never be truly boring. This "boring" label should be more appropriately slapped on the user.<br /><br />Sure, the viral video selection might not be as exciting as it was on Monday, or maybe the details of the Financial Reform Bill just don't pique your fancy, or perhaps Twitter is down and you just don't know what to do with your info-hungry self. But as I'm considering all of these caveats for why one would state that "the Internet is boring," I can't help conjuring up the adage "if you are bored, you are boring." Was my media-obsessed (and I would think she would <span style="font-style: italic;">have</span> to be to pursue a Masters degree in the field) former cohort making the statement that the Internet was boring to <span style="font-style: italic;">her </span>at <span style="font-style: italic;">that moment</span>? That she was bored with the information or news she was finding? Or that she was simply bored with the Internet?<br /><br />Whether or not the day's local or national or international news is particularly appealing or exciting for one reason or another does not negate the wealth of yet-unread blog posts that one has been meaning to get to; does not immediately discredit the available fiction, non-fiction, opinion, and how-to articles on which one has been meaning to sit down and focus; and certainly does not mean that one has watched, listened to, clicked on, or looked at everything available on a given day. Most of us go to websites, blogs and videos to look for things that interest us - however, I can understand how one can become tired of staring at a screen for hours on end if, say, one's job requires them to do so, and how one can subsequently become bored of <span style="font-style: italic;">looking </span>for things to do on the web. This was probably her way of saying she was "bored," but was looking for someone/thing to blame for her boredom. And of course, who better to blame than an intangible, potentially info-rich source of information? It's like someone walking into a library with the explicit purpose of reading only to fall asleep on their pile of books and then report back to their friends that "the library was boring today." While this is entirely possible, one should blame their lack of sleep or disinterest in the subject matter before blaming the books - but then again, this blog entry is simply the nitpicking of a five-word status update, which could perhaps be used to prove that I, too, have nothing better to do online and that I, too, have also found that "the Internet is boring today."Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-82490790658391250672010-06-03T14:15:00.003-04:002010-06-03T14:24:50.750-04:00The Art of Becoming: An exploration of female artists living for (and in) their work, PART 1<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:center;line-height:150%"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"></span></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:center;line-height:150%"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">...it is no longer possible to regard the contemporary<br />work as a space to be walked through...It is henceforth<br />presented as a period of time to be lived through, like<br />an opening to unlimited discussion.</span></span><a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:center;line-height:150%"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Art is more about asking questions.</span><a href="#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /></span> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">How should we think of ourselves? How should we<br />articulate who we are and what we can become?</span></span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span></i><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><a href="#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title="">[3]</a></span></span></span></span></span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">As disparate as they may seem, for French philosopher Gilles Deleuze the arts, science, and philosophy are all arenas of potential creation. Deleuze asserts in most of his texts and interviews on philosophy that “we really have to see philosophy, art, and science as sorts of separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another”</span><a href="#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> and not as disconnected factions at war with or competing with one another for prominence. Not so much interested in discovering a preexisting notion, a quest that would imply that all realms of possibility are already in existence and are just waiting to be found, one of the main goals behind Deleuze’s philosophical pursuits was to create something new, believing that there exists “a hidden image of thought that, as it unfolds, branches out, and mutates, inspires a need to keep on creating new concepts.”</span><a href="#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[5]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Perhaps this is why Deleuze held such an affinity for the arts, focusing many of his 18 total works on visual modes of representation and literary forms of creativity,</span><a href="#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> for the arts are generally viewed as the ultimate realm of creativity in opposition to science, the ultimate realm of logic. But one cannot ignore that a good portion of Deleuze’s work, especially his monumental text </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">A Thousand Plateaus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> written with longtime collaborator Felix Guattari, focuses on specific scientific and mathematical arenas such as neuroscience, geometry, and chemistry in relation to his and Guattari’s theories on assemblage and process ontology, thus conflating these modes of potential experiment-based creativity with philosophic inquiry. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">To maintain and continue Deleuze’s investigation into the connectivity (and potential unique breaks) between the arts and science, it is my hope that a focus on these two fields will reflect the way that each sphere of creativity incorporates or disunites from Deleuze’s themes of being as becoming, duration, and smooth and striated spaces, and the exploration of immanence. Although Deleuze would assert that “there’s no order of priority among these disciplines. Each is creative,”</span><a href="#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[7]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> an exploration of the ways in which science and art look at the final outcome of an event – as well as an examination of the process of becoming during an event – will hopefully make an argument for art, especially duration-based performance art, as an ultimate potential for the representation of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">becoming. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This paper will primarily explore the ways in which contemporary female performance artists Linda Montano, Marina Abramovic and Andrea Zittel have experimented with</span><a href="#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[8]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> and (unintentionally) incorporated these Deleuzian concepts into their work. In a way, all of the following works of art answer Deleuze’s essential question of “how might one live?” giving the viewer of the work a glimpse into the lived life of an artist living for and in their work. Interested in the effects of these “lived” art experiences, Abramovic, Zittel, and Montano attempt to suggest one mode of lived experience through their pieces, all of them relating somehow to austerity, duration, isolation, and dealing. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">An essential starting point for understanding some key concepts in the work of Deleuze is certainly with his prioritizing of process ontology over substance ontology, favoring constant development and transition over absolute statehood. Process ontology allows for entities to be open to transformation and change, is an exploration of that which is coming into existence. Note the use of the term </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">exploration </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">here as opposed to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">definition</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, for “ontology does not offer answers but rather ways to approach the question of living.”</span><a href="#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[9]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Process ontology values being as becoming, being in a state of constant development towards an unforeseen and undetermined goal. For Deleuze, “to become is not to progress or regress along a series…becoming is not an evolution, at least not an evolution by descent and filiation;”</span><a href="#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[10]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> becoming is therefore not about improvement or degradation, betterment or deterioration. Becoming is about transition and change, never stopping for ultimate satisfaction but constantly exploring new possible situations for one’s own existence. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Not restricted to the theoretical realm of philosophic thought, process ontology very much informs architect and theorist Bernard Cache’s stance in his work on the creation of structures. An alignment with process ontology certainly inspires Cache’s concept that “in no case does the identity of a site preexist, for it is always the outcome of a construction”</span><a href="#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[11]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">; for Cache, no destination has a predetermined future or path along which it necessarily will or must follow, much like the Deleuzian concepts of individuals as in a constant state of becoming (Deleuze, never one for humanism, would argue that architectural sites are no different than animals, than humans, than flowers…). Architecture is an art form that plays a prominent role in the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">A-Z Living Spaces</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> – small, self-contained home modules in which an inhabitant has access to everything she or he needs – of Andrea Zittel and in Marina Abramovic’s durational performance pieces, and is another space to which one can apply Deleuzian concepts surrounding this ontology of becoming. Noticing that “</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Zittel’s aspiration to ‘new kinds of situations’ seems to parallel a broader trend[. T]he proposals she (Zittel) receives at Socrates—for “Interstate” as well as for other exhibitions—increasingly reflect ‘a notion of public art that is not monumental but rather changing and ephemeral’,”</span><a href="#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[12]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Zittel’s collaborator Alysan Baker reflects on the notion of the nomadic (or, in Deleuzian terms, “the smooth”) in contemporary art as offering potentials for becoming and transition.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">For the three female artists in question, process ontology offers a chance to recognize the outcome of each lived experience as uncertain and unpredictable, especially Montano’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Seven Years of Living Art, </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">in which the artist wore a different color every year and lived in a room of the same color for seven years; Abramovic’s experiments in duration and consciousness with </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The House with the Ocean View </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(2002-2003); and Zittel’s hope to create </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">“wonderful experiences that are completely unpredictable”</span><a href="#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[13]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> with her </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">A-Z Pocket Property</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> and her </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">A-Z Living Units. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In constructing the first of her home units, Andrea Zittel believed “that when I made that piece and I had everything perfected that [would] solve all of my problems" of living in the confined space of a storefront in Brooklyn. However, once she was done with the first unit she discovered that <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">when...it was perfect and there was nothing left to do to it, I felt<br />completely despondent, very listless and depressed. At that<br />point...I had this revelation that no one really wants perfection;<br />that we're obsessed with perfection, we're obsessed with<br />innovation and moving forwards, but what we really want is<br />the hope of some sort of new and improved or a better<br />tomorrow.</span></span><a href="#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[14]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">When Zittel set out to execute the performance of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">A-Z Pocket Property</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> in which she lived on a prefabricated, floating island in Denmark by herself for one month, she liked the idea of “not really knowing beforehand if it’s going to be a great experience or a horrible one”;</span><a href="#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[15]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> this spirit of conducting tests mirrors the ways that Abramovic “considered performance art a laboratory for experiments in consciousness.”</span><a href="#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[16]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Zittel’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Pocket Property </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">enterprise was a dance with isolation in its purest sense – except, of course, if we are to account for the friends who joined her to film the experience for a day.</span><a href="#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[17]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In mentioning this fact of video recording that performance artists tend to employ when documenting their work, one cannot ignore the discussion of live performance versus recorded performance – in fact, Phelan holds true to the notion that, at least in terms of Abramovic’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">House</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, “the potential for the event to be transformed in unscripted ways by those participating (both the artists and the viewers) makes it more exciting,”</span><a href="#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[18]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> something that arguably cannot occur when re-watching of the video of an event. A video of an artistic performance, most likely edited down for length, does not bear witness to the complete experience of becoming through which the artist is moving both in front of and with an audience. When deciding to document her seven days of performances for </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Seven Easy Pieces</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> (themselves re-performances of the works of other artists such as Vito Acconci, Valie Export, and Gina Pane), Abramovic asserted “that her purpose in hiring the famous documentary filmmaker (Babette Mangolte) to record every minute of the total forty-nine hours was to avoid “repeating the mistakes of the ’70s” in failing to attend to such details.”</span><a href="#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[19]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> But, as Phelan would argue, “performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">of </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">representations: Once it does so, it becomes something other than performance.”</span><a href="#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[20]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> In fact, one must question whether not recording those performances in the 1970s was actually a </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">failure</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> of these artists or in fact an acknowledgement of that which Phelan insists. Tending to agree (and I am certain that Deleuze would as well) with Phelan, moving away from a focus on the recorded representations of the work of these artists will offer a more true depiction of the duration-based experiences of becoming explored by Montano, Abramovic and Zittel. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">As mentioned above, all three of these women artists have conducted performances and pieces that deal with the concept of duration, although they were certainly not the first in the art world to explore these Deleuzian notions. Similar in the themes of duration, striated space and immanence, Taiwanese artist Tehching Hsieh’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">One Year Performance 1978-1979 (Cage Piece)</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> explored the notion of isolation, discipline and dedication as he positioned himself within a self-constructed jail cell. This piece consisted of Hsieh living in an 11</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">′</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">6</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">″</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> × 9</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">′</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> × 8</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">′</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">caged room with nothing but simple lights, a sink, a bed, and a pail. He also had some toiletries and a friend who would visit to feed him and rid the waste from his cell. He did not speak nor read nor listen to music for this entire year. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">His works have been called explorations not in suffering but in struggle and duration. </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The living of one’s life is certainly comparable to duration, for life is unquestionably the ultimate duration for all of us. </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">A precursor to the work of the three women to follow, Hsieh’s work is perhaps a comment on “prison, the model site of confinement”</span><a href="#_ftn21" name="_ftnref21" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[21]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> for Deleuze in his extrapolation on Foucault’s notions presented in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Discipline and Punish. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Indeed, the setting and title of Hsieh’s work do evoke a site of confinement as opposed to the </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">older notion of a society of discipline; thus, it is interesting the Hsieh explains his work as exploring this very notion of “discipline.” To a certain degree, Hsieh locked himself in a cage for an entire year in order to free himself from the weight of his life, similar in vain to his goals with </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">One Year Performance 1981-1982 (Outdoor Piece)</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> in which he did not allow himself to enter any buildings or confined spaces, moving about New York City with only the items he could carry with him. The ways that </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Outdoor Piece </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">more readily manifests this sense of freedom from control and imprisonment </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Cage Piece </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">achieves through irony. Far more ominous and incarcerating in nature than the female artists to follow him, Hsieh and his work still “[fit] squarely within performance art’s peculiar and extreme explorations of the human condition”</span><a href="#_ftn22" name="_ftnref22" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[22]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> although perhaps in a different, more politically enforced notion of what is to exist within and through humanity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <div style="mso-element:footnote-list"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span> <hr align="left" width="33%" style="font-size:78%;"> <div id="ftn1"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="FR" style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Nicolas Bourriaud, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Relational Aesthetics</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> (Paris: Les Presses du </span></span><span lang="FR" style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">réel</span></span><span lang="FR" style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, 2002), 15.</span></span></p></div><div id="ftn2"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Andrea Zittel qtd. in Jori Finkel, “ART; Making the Desert Bloom Out West. Way Out West,” </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">New York Times</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, 25 September 2005. </span></span></p></div><div id="ftn3"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Todd May, “How Might One Live?” in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 8.</span></span></p></div><div id="ftn4"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[4]</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Gilles Deleuze, “Mediators,” in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Negotiation 1972-1990</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 125.</span></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn5"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[5]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Deleuze, “On Philosophy,” in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Negotiation</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, 149.</span></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn6"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><a href="#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> See, for example, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Essays Critical and Clinical</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, trans. Daniel W. Smith and</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Michael A. Greco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> (with Felix Guattari), trans.</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, trans. Daniel W. Smith (London and New York: Continuum, 2003); </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Cinema 1: The Movement-Image </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Cinema 2: The Time-Image</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).</span></p></div><div id="ftn7"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[7]</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Deleuze, “Mediators,” in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Negotiation</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, 123.</span></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn8"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[8]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In maintaining a discussion aligned with Deleuze, this phrase should not be seen as an attempt to separate the body from the mind in the Descartean sense of transcendence. Deleuze would argue that there is only mind, consciousness, self, or I that exists within and not separate from life.</span></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn9"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[9]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> May, 25.</span></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn10"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><a href="#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[10]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">A Thousand Plateaus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis and London: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 238.</span></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn11"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[11]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Bernard Cache, </span></span><i><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Earth Moves: The Furnishing of Territories</span></span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, ed. Michael Speaks, trans. Anne Boyman (Cambridge, MA and London, UK: MIT Press, 1995) pp. 15.</span></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn12"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[12]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Alysan Baker qtd in Michael Ned Holte, “From California to the New York Island,” </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Art Forum</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, May 2006.</span></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn13"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[13]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Interview with Andrea Zittel, “Consumption,”</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">2001 episode of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Art: 21 – Art in the Twenty-First Century </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(PBS, 2001-present; Art21 Inc)</span></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn14"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[14]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Ibid.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span></p> </div> <div id="ftn15"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[15]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Ibid.</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[16]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Peggy Phelan, “Marina Abramovic: Witnessing Shadows,” </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Theatre Journal</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, Vol. 56, No. 4 (December 2004), 571.</span></span></p></div><div id="ftn16"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[17]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The outcome of her friends’ visit is the film </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Gollywobler</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, directed by Joachim Hamou (2000; Denmark).</span></span></p></div><div id="ftn17"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[18]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Phelan, 575.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span></p></div> <div id="ftn19"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[19]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Johanna Burton, “Repeat Performance,” </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Art Forum</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, January 2006. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[20]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Peggy Phelan, “The ontology of performance: representation without reproduction,” in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Performance: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, ed. Philip Auslander (New York: Routledge, 2003), 320.</span></span></p></div><div id="ftn20"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[21]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Deleuze, “Postscript on Control Societies,” in </span></span><i><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Negotiations</span></span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, 177.</span></span></p></div><div style="mso-element:footnote" id="ftn21"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="#_ftnref22" name="_ftn22" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">[22]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"> Roberta Smith, “A Year in a Cage: A Life Shrunk to Expand Art,” </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">New York Times</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">, 18 February, 2009.</span></span></p></div></div>Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-85790880787482532652010-05-10T19:10:00.004-04:002010-05-10T19:32:10.772-04:00True Blood title sequence: sexual consumption and intolerance of the Other<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vxINMuOgAu8&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vxINMuOgAu8&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />The beginning title sequence of True Blood effectively sets the location and space in which the narrative will unfold while alluding to racial tensions and overt themes of sex and consumption. In a recent interview, design house Digital Kitchen’s Shawn Fedorchuk, one of the main creatives behind the storyboarding of the <span style="font-style: italic;">True Blood</span> title sequence, alleged he wanted the credits to take on “a point of view of a supernatural, predatory creature observing human beings from the shadows, almost stalking them” [1]. The sequence begins underwater with the camera tilting up from a menacing, amphibious creature lurking in the depths, immediately cutting to the eye of a crocodile that stares unblinking at the camera. The following shots pan across deserted swamplands, simultaneously locating the action in the Southern state of Louisiana (well-known for its alluvial topography) while also insinuating that the actions to unfold will deal with “creatures” literally hidden beneath the surface of society, important both symbolically and literally as vampires sleep underground.<br /><br />As the camera takes the viewer away from the swamplands and along the streets of a town lined with picaresque houses and Mom and Pop liquor stores, we get our first clear glimpse of some of the people who inhabit this Louisiana town: black women in their Sunday best, singing and clapping their hands in a church choir. As the camera continues to move along the sleepy storefront of a liquor store, there is a cut to archival black and white footage of civil unrest between black and white folks with an intervention by police officers. The archival footage has most likely been taken from a Civil Rights protest in the 1960s, hinting to the viewer that similar struggles for civil rights will unfold during the course of the program’s narrative, in this case contextualized with the Vampire Rights Movement. The choice to show these black faces after images of the creatures that inhabit the literal underbelly of the swamplands might be an attempt to prepare the audience for the depiction of a Southern state that still positions minorities against the hegemonic norm of whiteness, a town in which white (in this case white human) authority is bureaucratically superior and minorities still maintain their traditional Southern role of persecution.<br /><br />The next several bodies that we see are white and evoke some reference – both indirect and directly – to either sexuality or violence: the black lingerie-clad body of a blond woman on a bed; the youthful, blank face of a tiny, hood-adorned Ku Klux Klan member; two young boys smearing a pulverized strawberry across their mouths and chins. After the shot of the half-naked white body, the audience is privy to the slow-motion shot of a snake preparing to strike an unseen victim that might just be the unassuming white woman. If we are to link the black, minority bodies to their introduction by gruesome yet inactive swamp creatures, then the same connection can be made for the relationship between the predatory snake and the violent and sexualized white bodies: in this narrative, white men are the main purveyors of violence who are able to comfortably and openly speak about killing the minority vampire figures.<br /><br />As the title sequence moves on, we see several female bodies juxtaposed with dead or dying animals: an image of a white, half-naked woman lying down just before a shot of a flattened, bloody possum; in another sequence, a woman sits on the edge of a pool table, wrapping her legs around a man’s waist, an image in contrast with a frog being consumed by a Venus Flytrap. By equating these sexual bodies with dead animals and creatures capable of consumption, the title sequence attempts to align sexuality with nonhuman creatures in a way that foreshadows the miscegenation between humans and the undead that is to occur in the program's narrative. The Venus Flytrap functions as a visual play on the vagina dentata, a male fear of the female sex organ as a possible castrator due to the female’s “lack” of a phallus [2] that can be said to serve as a comment on Jason Stackhouse's fear of having sex with both vampires and women who have copulated with vampires. The dead, bloody possum juxtaposed with the white, half-naked female body serves as a reference to “meat” available for consumption by whatever creature intends to feed on it. As the song “Bad Things” by Jace Everett plays to its end, the sequence culminates with convulsing black bodies in a Baptist church and two white men baptizing a white woman in a lake. The intense religious imagery, including a brief shot of a cross bursting into flames and two white women praying and crying, notifies the viewer of the religiously-informed position of most of the people in this small Southern town. If the brief shot in this title sequence of a church sign reading "God Hates Fangs" didn't do enough to convince the audience that this town is filled with intolerance of the Other - even an Other who looks so much like them as humans - the events that unfold on the show will convincingly depict this atmosphere of religiously- and socially-formed intolerance in due time.<br /><br />[1] Shawn Fedorchuk. Qtd in “Doing Baptisms, Bars and Bloodlust.” <i style="">Red Orbit</i>, 10 September 2008. <a href="http://www.redorbit.com/news/entertainment/1550089/doing_baptisms_bars_and_bloodlust/index.html">http://www.redorbit.com/news/entertainment/1550089/doing_baptisms_bars_and_bloodlust/index.html</a><br /><br />[2] Discussed in Barbara Creed. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis. </span>New York: Routldge, 1993. 105 - 121.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-33041099150994561002010-05-09T00:30:00.007-04:002010-05-09T20:13:27.050-04:00Lady Gaga's video for "Paparazzi": Irony, innocence, and the death of the heterosexual binaryThis is an excerpt from a paper entitled "'We're C-Coming Out': Lady Gaga's Postmodern Videographic and Public Bisexual Persona"<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/d2smz_1L2_0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/d2smz_1L2_0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Full disclosure: Åkerlund’s video for <i style="">Paparazzi </i>does not have the rich visual subtext found in his later <i style="">Telephone</i>, although the lyrical content is far more relevant to the presented visual themes than the words in the <i style="">Telephone </i>lyrics<i style="">. </i>The disjointed presentation that occurs between the narrative and the song-and-dance numbers could have something to do with this, or it could be because this video deals with a heterosexual relationship that does not overtly challenge the representations of relationships. Through a close reading of Lady Gaga’s interactions with her male lover in the video’s narrative and by reading into the irony present in the juxtaposition between the song’s lyrics and the narrative elements, one can understand Gaga’s need to be loved by men and her ultimate distrust of the male relationships she has had in her life. The ending of the video will also provide a clean segue into the beginning of the video for <i style="">Telephone</i> in which Gaga is punished for her actions toward her heterosexual lover.<br /><br />Lady Gaga is shown in bed intimately kissing her male lover, played by Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård of <i style="">True Blood </i>fame, until he asks her to come with him out to the balcony. In this moment we identify the gender of Gaga’s sexual attraction for this video as a cisman who likely functions as a stand-in for her real-life boyfriend before she became famous. He carries her outside, propping her body on the edge of the balcony ledge, and the viewer soon finds out his real motivations for carrying her outside were not to be romantic but to have their intimate moments captured by the paparazzi. Once the Lady realizes the motivations behind his intentions she hits him across the face, which enrages him enough to drop her small body over the edge of the balcony. Just after both parties have admitted to loving each other – and indeed, Gaga has admitted in interviews that she has “only been in love with men” although she has had sexual attractions to women [1] – the male half of this couple makes the decision to push the woman he “loves” to her death, questioning the ability for love to exist in a life so comingled with artistic performance.<br /><br />Interestingly enough, the play with gender that occurs between the lyrics of the song and the actions on screen allow for an ironic, nuanced reading of the video that further positions it within Dyer’s definition of the queer camp aesthetic[2]. The lyrics of the song describe a female fan totally “gaga” over an unidentified male celebrity. The fan swears to him that “I’m your biggest fan / I’ll follow you until you love me” and promises “I won’t stop / Until that boy is mine.” Taking on the role of the female fan instead of the celebrity who is typically the object of fandom, she presents a critical look at both herself as a celebrity persona and the obsessive, bloodthirsty fans who subscribe to the cult/ure of celebrity. If we take her male heterosexual lover in this video as an embodiment of a potential adoring (read: obsessive) fan who is actually thinking “I won’t stop / Until that <i style="">girl</i> is mine.” It is foreboding that these lyrics play over the image of Gaga pushed in a wheelchair and then attempting to walk with crutches; as her voice is heard in the song singing the lyrics above, she advances awkwardly on her crutches as the video is intercut with shots of Lady Gaga sitting on a couch simulating auto-asphyxiation, indicating that obsessive infatuation with both a celebrity <i style="">and </i>a lover can lead to suffocation. Using fandom as a metaphor for romantic and/or sexual love, Lady Gaga comments on the sacrifices she will go through as a lover, and the subsequent sacrifices that her lover will go through as a die-hard fan, in order to obtain the object of their desire.<br /><br />At the end of the Fosse-driven dance sequences that occur for the middle portion of the video we return to a now-recovered Lady Gaga and her lover who share afternoon tea together. Lady Gaga pours a flask of poison – the same poison we will later see utilized in <i style="">Telephone – </i>into his beverage, which kills him almost instantly. Gaga wears a bright yellow outfit decorated with a graphic print of Mouseketeers and black sunglasses quite similar to Mickey Mouse ears. Looking both like a cartoonish and a childish version of herself, Gaga places her hand to her lips in an innocent yet knowing fashion after her lover is officially dead. By poisoning her boyfriend who literally and figuratively robbed her of her mobility both physically and socially, Lady Gaga the character and the actual celebrity will now self-reflexively steal back her rightful place at the top of the fame food chain by the tabloid coverage that this homicide will afford her. By killing off her heterosexual partner Lady Gaga is effectively doing away with this strict sexual binary that society has attempted to assign to her, leaving open the possibility for new forms of sexual exploration. As she is lead into a police car through a sea of screaming fans, Lady Gaga’s regained fame spins out of newspaper headlines as she drives off into the next phase in her life and in her “career”: a short stint in prison.<br /><br />[1] In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-zo76is1_Y">an interview</a> with Barbara Walters, Gaga states “I’ve only been in love with men, I’ve never been in love with a woman but that’s really what the song was all about: why, when I was with my boyfriend, was I fantasizing about women?” Walters reacts with far more dignity than <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG_Jm3NhujY">Jonathan Ross</a>, who, when she makes a similar proclamation on his show, reacts with “Oh, good lord…blimey.”<br /><br />[2] Richard Dyer, <span style="font-style: italic;">Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. </span>London: Routledge, 2004.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-76526405855648162062010-05-09T00:27:00.001-04:002010-05-09T00:29:56.694-04:00The Whitney, Alone and TogetherCross-posted on <a href="http://immanentterrain.blogspot.com/2010/05/whitney-alone-and-together.html">Immanent Terrain</a><br /><br />Perhaps because I was so completely taken by the Marina Abramovic exhibit at MoMA last week - I'm <span style="font-style: italic;">still </span>thinking about it and <span style="font-style: italic;">still </span>bring it up in conversation with friends back in California - I found it difficult to process all of the information thrown at me at the Whitney Museum's Biennial show last Friday, April 30th. Only almost a week later have I been able to reflect on what I had seen and what struck me and remained imprinted on my memory.<br /><br />I showed up at the museum equipped with the knowledge of one, maybe two of the artists whose work was on display, completely unfamiliar with the rest of the pieces and the artists in the show and completely unassuming in what to expect. I'd heard a lot of hype, namely that this year's show was the best in ages, but digesting this hype felt similar to times when friends have told me that a film is "amazing" or "<span style="font-style: italic;">hilaaarious!" </span>- I knew that expecting too much could potentially disappoint. I suppose that since this show is supposed to be <span style="font-style: italic;">the </span>show that features the next big stars of the art world I should have done a bit more research - but honestly, wandering the labyrinth of temporary walls and installations with a map and a checklist wouldn't have done me any good at all. Instead, coming in blindly allowed me to stay longer when I wanted to stay and move on quickly when something didn't catch my attention or peak my interest.<br /><br />Having the collective experience of viewing the Bruce High Quality Foundation's piece <span style="font-style: italic;">I Like America and America Likes Me</span> was a unique moment in the visit, being the first and last time that all seven of us experienced a piece together through interaction and conversation. I don't know that everyone was equally intrigued by this piece, nor am I asserting that everyone will remember it - but from this point on, after viewing the BHQF's Hearse converted into an ambulance with the windshield functioning as a screen for a slightly distorted video piece, each of us will have a unique selective memory of those pieces of art that matter the most to us for one reason or another. For that first shared experience, we all were able to experience something together, although this is not to say that all of our experiences were the same nor that all of our memories of the shared experience will be the same.<br /><br />Fascinating, though, how each of us will come away from this and write something different about potentially disparate or potentially the same works. After we all parted ways and completely lost track of each other, each of us were able to take as much time as we needed looking at every piece of art that interested us, in a way being allowed to choose the most desired path for our own unique experiences. I had several passing moments with everyone, "dancing" with Susana a few times, sitting silently next to Caldwell during Kerry Tribe's video piece <span style="font-style: italic;">HM </span>(which I fully intend to write more about once I feel that I can effectively compare it to Bergson), but rarely speaking with any of them in the hopes of maintaining our own unique, uninterrupted experiences. I don't necessarily enjoy conversing at a museum anyway both for fear of being rude or disturbing other patrons and the desire to quietly contemplate and live in the moment. This is why I agree with <a href="http://immanentterrain.blogspot.com/2010/05/ari-marcopouloss-detroit-three-images.html">Sam's point</a> that museums and art in general are sometimes best experienced alone - I think that Brian trying to be friendly and speak to a completely engrossed and therefore barely responsive version of myself while I was watching Abramovic's <span style="font-style: italic;">Rest Energy </span>at MoMA is a testament to the point that art is sometimes best experienced in solitude - but, this is not to discourage the potential for an enlightened, collaborative conversation afterward.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-32688708625513727562010-04-28T18:26:00.004-04:002010-04-28T18:36:55.520-04:00The Artist is Present: Marina Abramovic and Relational Aesthetics(cross-posted on <a href="http://immanentterrain.blogspot.com/">Immanent Terrain</a>)<br /><br />It was nothing short of a profoundly unique experience to witness Marina Abramovic's retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art on Saturday, April 24th, 2010. I say this not just because of the profound impact that her work left on me for the days after witnessing the re-performances and re-presentations of her literal "body of work"; this experience was novel as it was the first time MoMA has curated a retrospective on the oeuvre of a performance artist.<br /><br />I had an inclining of what to expect after having lunch with my artist friend on the Wednesday prior to visiting the museum. She explained the piece that Abramovic herself was to be performing on the second floor of the museum, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Artist is Present</span>, as the artist's ultimate work. My artist friend's explanation served to be a far more modest, cursory description of the performance, as the experience is far more serene yet grand than she made it out to be. Upon entering the museum and ascending the stairs to the Marron Atrium that exists as a space traditionally in constant flux exhibiting temporary collections, large-scale pieces, and video installations, one encounters massive floodlights at each of the four corners of a large square marked off on the floor by tape, the square almost the size of the space itself. In the center of the square sits Abramovic on a chair at one end of a wooden table wearing a long, red gown that is simultaneously confining her body and yet somehow cascading around her legs and onto the floor, making herself at once separate from and one with the chair on which she is positioned. There is a chair positioned at the other end of the table facing the artist in which museum visitors are invited to sit and engage in an unspoken dialogue with the artist for an indeterminate amount of time. Her body appears in this same position every day for the length of museum hours until the retrospective closes on May 31, 2010.<br /><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ASS7xMOM1EE&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ASS7xMOM1EE&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br />Endurance is a large part of Marina Abramovic's presentation of her body/of work. Sitting or standing for hours at a time, subjecting her body to repeatedly to collisions with other objects, beatings, lashings or deprivation, Abramovic tests the limits of human comfort with acts of tedium, stress, and concentration. As she submits her body to these series of acts - examples can be drawn from her three parallel pieces from 1977 entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">Freeing the Memory, Freeing the Body</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Freeing the Voice </span>in which she speaks, dances and screams until she has pushed her body to the point of failure <span style="font-style: italic;">- </span>Abramovic seeks to push her body out of its comfort of stasis and stagnant, un-becoming being. In committing to performing these acts in front of a live audience (or at times the future audience implied in the act of filming the performance), the artist insists on creating a dialogue with herself and her audience, creating herself as both the subject and the object of her body/of work. Much like her piece <span style="font-style: italic;">The Artist is Present</span>, Abramovic questions the notions of object and subject and of artistic and audience.<br /><br />If, as Nicolas Bourriaud asserts in his text <span style="font-style: italic;">Relational Aesthetics</span>, "each particular artwork is a proposal to live in a shared world, and the work of every artist is a bundle of relations with the world,"(i) then Abramovic's aim of blurring the line between artist as subject and audience as object (and vice versa) lies in her confrontation of her body with the spectator. Consistently appearing nude without engaging in sexual acts and subjecting her body to the will of her audience like she did with <span style="font-style: italic;">Rhythm O</span> - asking the audience to use one of 70 or so different objects, some of them potentially lethal, on herself and taking full responsibility - the artist is confronting her audience's notions of the body and of the traditional work of art while at the same time dispelling concepts of sexuality and humanity.<br /><br /><blockquote>"...it is no longer possible to regard the contemporary work as a space to be walked through...It is henceforth presented as a period of time to be lived through, like an opening to unlimited discussion." (ii)<br /><div style="text-align: right;">- Nicolas Bourriaud</div></blockquote>None of Marina Abramovic's works exemplify this quote from Bourriaud more literally than her piece <span style="font-style: italic;">The House with the Ocean View </span>(2002), a space constructed for living out a minimalist existence in the hopes of purifying the artist's body and mind. Consisting of three rooms with nothing more than a shower, a toilet, 12 changes of clothes and gallons of purified water, Abramovic lived in this elevated space for 12 days with three ladders made of butcher knives offering her only chance for escape. While the artist was only present in the space via a filmed projection of one of her performances of this work, the stark space, beautiful in its modernist simplicity and austerity, the picture below offers one glimpse into her 12 day experience in the performance space.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJmimtYrAaGfglD6wgZpolJDHkFyDzJveuf_s-aWDOM-4jpTWwI6aGN0dwhPnHSiluIFxpCYBvQmrbGNX8iQbrBeb6CQjiHP-voc2f_w8q1Ko-jVgvTJ_xhpxMRTX9XJzlBmF6eOo5lc/s1600/rooms.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 261px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJmimtYrAaGfglD6wgZpolJDHkFyDzJveuf_s-aWDOM-4jpTWwI6aGN0dwhPnHSiluIFxpCYBvQmrbGNX8iQbrBeb6CQjiHP-voc2f_w8q1Ko-jVgvTJ_xhpxMRTX9XJzlBmF6eOo5lc/s400/rooms.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5465319335731519650" border="0" /></a><br />"I didn't have verbal communication. It was only with the eyes. I became so sensitive that—it sounds almost religious—I had this amazing opening of the heart that hurt me. This is why I believe time is so necessary: the public needs time to get the point. When I spend 12 days in a gallery, its energy is changed. Artists have to serve as oxygen to society, and that is what I do." - Marina Abramovic, from an interview for <a href="http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2801">ARTnews</a>.<br /><br /><br />(i) Nicolas Bourriaud. <span style="font-style: italic;">Relational Aesthetics</span>. France: Les presses du reel, 1998 (22).<br />(ii) Ibid, 15.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-6565744267016339132010-04-25T22:13:00.006-04:002010-05-03T23:12:52.273-04:00"We're C-Coming Out": Lady Gaga's Videographic and Public Bisexual PersonaBelow are some preliminary thoughts on a term paper for my Sexual Personae class.<br /><br />Musical artist, performer and stylistic savant Lady Gaga's gender and sexual identity have come into question ever since the release of her first album <em>The Fame</em> in 2008. Reactions to her on- and off-screen persona bring to light the public's discomfort with a contemporary performance artist whose display of her body is not overtly sexualized to the preferences of the male gaze. Clearly taking influence from artists like Madonna and turning the costumes and visual styles up to maximum volume, Lady Gaga's music is in no way what makes her unique - this young woman is clearly an artist in the age of the viral video, incorporating hyper-contemporary and shocking images into her repertoire of dance and filmed and live performance. Lady Gaga's outrageous costumes, videos, and stage presence are all part of that repertoire, and paired with her public appearances at LGBTQ Rights rallies make for just an off-kilter enough performance of gender and sexuality for the general public to begin to question her identification as a woman. Even after Gaga admitted to identifying as a bisexual woman, rumors surrounding her sex organs did not subside - a rumor that her recent video "Telephone" goes to almost graphic lengths to disprove.<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GQ95z6ywcBY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GQ95z6ywcBY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Lady Gaga's videos never shy away from sparking conversation and inciting controversy - especially in the fluidity of her sexual affections and attentions from one video to the next.<br /><br />In this paper I would like to address the representations of Lady Gaga's sexuality in both her music videos as well as her public life of advocacy. I would like to begin by analyzing the discourse surrounding Gaga's gender and sexual identity in the popular press and on gossip blogs and in magazines, as well as some of her appearances at LGBTQ rallies and publicized support of those who have experienced discrimination because of their sexuality. The paper will then move into a contextual analysis of the sexual content of both "Paparazzi" and "Telephone," two videos which depict the fluidity of her sexual affections for first a male ("Paparazzi") and then a female ("Telephone") sexual subject.<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/d2smz_1L2_0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/d2smz_1L2_0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />I will analyze the ways that these two videos break from while simultaneously reinstating certain gender roles, depictions of heterosexual and same-sex relationships, and ideas of the male gaze of the female subject.<br /><br />Preliminary Sources:<br /><br />Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge, 1990, 1999.<br /><br />Dyer, Richard, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Second Edition, London: Routledge, 2004.<br /><br />Straayer, Chris, Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Re-Orientations in Film and Video, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.<br /><br />Tyler, Parker, Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality and the Movies, New York: Holt, 1972.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-82717794430055184592010-04-24T12:43:00.003-04:002010-04-24T13:55:22.756-04:00The Degendering of Black Male PerformersTake a look at this video which showcases dance moves of the 1930s like the Charleston, the Lindy Hop and the Shim Sham as exemplified by black performers Al Minns and Leon James in both solo and partner dance.<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KJsBa2u9aMQ&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KJsBa2u9aMQ&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Interestingly enough, these men who start as individual male performers begin to perform as partners, a traditionally male-female relationship in the world of dance. Would this have been acceptable with a <span style="font-style: italic;">white </span>male-male partnership on 1960s national television? As this video is showcasing the "jazz" (read: black) dance moves that came out of "jazz" (again, read: black) clubs of the era, having two white performers enact these moves would have been inappropriate to some degree. But the interesting choice to have two black men perform a partner dance that includes close body contact and lifts (that should be massively accredited for their impressive athleticism) proves the point of many scholars that mediated representations of black men and women are usually "divested of their sexuality"(i) on television or are portraying "neutered or counterfeit sexuality"(ii) in films. Also, their attire is reminiscent of a bellhop's or a waiter's uniform, warranting another reading of the chosen costume for these black entertainers as congruous with other contemporary representations of black men as individuals in the service industry.<br /><br />Despite these observations, the video is pretty fantastically entertaining in its own right, is it not?<br /><br />(i) Donald Bogle, <span style="font-style: italic;">Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television</span>. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 37.<br /><br />(ii) Ed Guerrero, <span style="font-style: italic;">Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film</span>. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 72. <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span>Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-10411540689699219792010-04-15T12:45:00.012-04:002010-04-25T22:28:31.460-04:00A "Western" horror hallmark in Japanese cinemaThe <a href="http://bitchmagazine.org/issue/46">most recent issue of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Bitch</span> magazine</a> included an article (not available on the web, sorry!) entitled "Hell is Older People—Aging as the ultimate cinematic horror" about the way in which Western horror films repeatedly utilize a scary, decrepit, manipulative old women character to strike ultimate fear in the minds of the youthful audience, the usual demographic for the horror genre. What author Alana Prochuk argues is that unlike the sick, devastating blow of an axe to the neck, aging is something that we as mortals can never escape - besides, how many of the individuals sitting in the audience have actually been threatened by a chainsaw-wielding maniac? Both the characters in the filmic world and the audience members in the seats of the theater face the imminent threat of our own mortality and death, and what better way to depict this fear than by placing it in large scale on the screen in front of us: a close-up of Mrs. Ganush's cataract-clouded eye and decaying teeth in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUZTybLlWKI"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Drag Me to Hell</span></a>, the fossil-like state of Vera in the wonderfully graphic <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Dead Alive</span>.<br /><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ep1kTREdaqU&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ep1kTREdaqU&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br />Even the titles are blatantly indicative of what is to be feared most about these the films: the thin, delicate line between between life and death, and the struggle to emerge from death's imminent, dragging pull toward a hellish (both literal and figurative) afterlife.<br /><br />Prochuk goes on to cite other examples from Western cinema dating all the way back to 1974's <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Homebodies</span>, a tale of "a sweet-seeming band of dispossessed senior citizens" who go to lengths to regain ownership of the home from which they have been evicted. In deciding to dedicate this article to Western cinema, Prochuk unfortunately missed out other opportunities for exploration found in horror films from filmmakers outside of the US and Western Europe, and I don't blame her - the majority of the films in her article focus on mainstream, major theatrical releases from the last twenty years or so, probably films that an American woman could have easily accessed in her local theater or found on the shelves of Blockbuster or the search engines on Netflix.<br /><br />Japanese filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 film <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Hausu </span>(<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">House</span>), on the other hand, would not have been showing around the corner at the local theater, and is not even available on Region 1 DVD (after some initial research, I could find several Region 2 (UK) copies of the DVD on Ebay and Amazon, and although it is listed on Netflix one's only option is to "Save" the DVD for later) - the only way that I hear about the film was through <a href="http://tectonic-uplift.com/deepthiw/">a friend</a> inviting me to a late-night screening at <a href="http://www.ifccenter.com/">IFC Center</a> in the West Village. This is, arguably, just around the corner for a few people, but as <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">House</span> was only screening for a single night and there were about twenty other people in the theater besides the five in our group I doubt many people have heard of or even know of this beautifully strange, self-aware psychedelic horror film about a group of seven high school girls who go to visit one of their elderly auntie's on break from school.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH6SMpRq9gVaQpjxZiRu5PpIo7EkXiouNmI4jY1Pk2GZ7cnl74FsfGc7Cp0gAKfsn3r9kndSyoENMYXn8UHG60X6UU8vd041wxMm4prp2QQfQs3JlPI17WQJui0FDDaE16a5PbFpCIETI/s1600/Hausu-796343.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460434213670514242" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 255px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH6SMpRq9gVaQpjxZiRu5PpIo7EkXiouNmI4jY1Pk2GZ7cnl74FsfGc7Cp0gAKfsn3r9kndSyoENMYXn8UHG60X6UU8vd041wxMm4prp2QQfQs3JlPI17WQJui0FDDaE16a5PbFpCIETI/s320/Hausu-796343.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />The seven girls who appropriately embody their names - Prof wears glasses and reads books, Kung-Fu kicks ass (with minimal clothing!), Sweet likes to clean, Fantasy has an overactive imagination, Gorgeous is real purdy, Melody plays the guitar and piano, and Mac probably likes McDonald's a little too much - are killed off one by one by either the paraplegic (or is she?) auntie or by her house itself. Although Gorgeous's auntie does not embody the Western horror trope of the decaying elderly character, there is certainly something a little creepy, a little off, and a little ephemeral about her presence.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibupFmL9XXgCBx7Fpa4fI7iGI3lMllxLsquqNuVlgj3YIVx_ldZywsLlXlBnbaESXpe8JrrHRLuq7bsTPsmx2Jrd7TKFVn8I1TOJ5GyNFD_ZJGcPRyWGjoI_a2f3opzd349TSjdyannMU/s1600/1257966199-1249473842-hausu2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460421283845527842" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 215px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibupFmL9XXgCBx7Fpa4fI7iGI3lMllxLsquqNuVlgj3YIVx_ldZywsLlXlBnbaESXpe8JrrHRLuq7bsTPsmx2Jrd7TKFVn8I1TOJ5GyNFD_ZJGcPRyWGjoI_a2f3opzd349TSjdyannMU/s320/1257966199-1249473842-hausu2.jpg" border="0" /></a>While physically she is not unpleasant to look at, she still exists in the film as a reminder of what will happen to a girl who never gets married and rides out life through old age alone in her secluded, slightly dilapidated house. She is the ultimate "cat lady," with her cat Blanche doing her bidding and ceramic and painted representations of Auntie's faithful feline staring back at every turn. Auntie is positioned as a woman who wanted nothing more than to be married as a young girl, a figure in stark contrast to the seven youthful, cheerful and independent girls who come to visit her who each have their own unique (if stereotypically depicted) talent. Interestingly, the girls are all eventually killed by whatever thing it is they love the most: Melody is dismembered by the piano, Mac is decapitated while trying to fetch a watermelon from the well, and Sweet is crushed by falling linens and mattresses. Kung-Fu, physically the strongest of the group, is electrocuted by a ceiling lamp, a harnessed force that is impervious to human strength and could be the only thing to defeat a bodily force such as martial arts.<br /><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xOBCMoDGGZU&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xOBCMoDGGZU&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br />While the Western films mentioned in Prochuk's piece tend to physically portray the indications that old age is something to be feared through the withered faces of the elderly, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Hausu </span>does something slightly different by suggesting that resigning to the life of an old maid will drive one insane, distract them from youthful passions and desires, and trap one in a life of void of fulfillment. Prochuk suggests that "it's hardly surprising that many such films feature a female baddie" especially since the "problems" that come with aging - wrinkles, bad smells, loss of sexual drive and possibility for sexually attracting a mate - are treated in Western culture as much more dire for women than they are for men. I wonder if this trope only crops up subtly in Japanese film because, as filmmaker <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Tarkovsky">Andrei Tarkovsky</a> once wrote, "The Japanese[...]see a particular charm in the evidence of old age." While Tarkovsky was discussing the Japanese affinity for <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Saba</span> in their art, it can be said that almost any culture outside of the United States tends to hold much higher regard and respect for their elderly. This could be why the elderly woman found in Western horror films doesn't crop up quite the same way in Japanese horror; however, I still find Prochuk's argument applicable to the themes in <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Hausu</span>.<br /><br />All critical analysis aside, the screening of this film was one of the best experiences I've had at the cinema in quite some time. If the print travels to a theater near you, don't miss it.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-57689895046723683582010-03-27T16:51:00.005-04:002010-03-27T17:38:41.409-04:00Thoughts on Bernard Cache's EARTH MOVES<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjECZmbjamerpQzW-YFOSZikMGtdr3pLQFXYHn-CMpLtUeUAUPW6qNrtmi0xRSmgdpVCyEQ9B88DNudwMfMM8LbRBbsfuvBVvtTFJ4ZkP9z1lKonbzuKrAYM8yj5Bf7B03IZNY9LtRq6XE/s1600/earthmoves.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 217px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjECZmbjamerpQzW-YFOSZikMGtdr3pLQFXYHn-CMpLtUeUAUPW6qNrtmi0xRSmgdpVCyEQ9B88DNudwMfMM8LbRBbsfuvBVvtTFJ4ZkP9z1lKonbzuKrAYM8yj5Bf7B03IZNY9LtRq6XE/s320/earthmoves.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5453423020954308322" border="0" /></a><br />Beginning his text announcing that "architectural images seem to be a good starting point" (2) for distinguishing between and navigating around the myriad visual elements that are present in our daily lives, <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/author/default.asp?aid=4350">Bernard Cache</a> continues his text with an exploration of the philosophical and formal nature of architecture. But delegating the text to this definition - assigning <i>Earth Moves </i>the category of a "formal and philosophical study of architecture" - would be far too limiting, for he indeed discusses a great deal more than just forms and thought. Architecture is indeed inherently about forms and shapes, and is therefore also about geometry and mathematical interests. Cache discusses the city of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lausanne">Lausanne</a>, a Swiss city located near the shores of Lake Geneva. The topography of the city has been profiled by filmmakers like Godard, who in a short film about Lausanne describes the city to have a visual problem or inconsistency that is to him Cezannian in nature - broad, disconnected spaces that make navigating the terrain problematic.<br /><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AwYcE-5rVG4&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AwYcE-5rVG4&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object><br /><br />Cache chooses to profile the city of Lausanne due to its unique topography and geography that somehow dictated the construction of roads, buildings, works of art, and so on. However, Cache goes on to remind us that "in no case does the identity of a site preexist, for it is always the outcome of a construction" (15). For Cache, no destination has a predetermined future or path along which it necessarily will or must follow, an assertion that should strike a familiar chord with readers of Deleuze: one of the French philosopher's key concepts is a subscription to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy">process ontology</a>, which privileges being as becoming, as transformation, as constant change. Gilles Deleuze tends to prioritize difference over identity, a concept that is almost directly paraphrased in Cache's affirmation that once a being is defined or once a place has a definition, it is no longer capable of evolution. Remembering <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=JaS2bQp3J-sC&dq=Todd+May&printsec=frontcover&source=an&hl=en&ei=qHKuS4yhGIWclgfClryQAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false">Todd May's definition</a> of Deleuze's main question "how might one live?", Cache's own question regarding the development of architectural projects on a topographic space could possibly be summed up as "how might this space be altered?"<br /><br />After attending class and discussing, albeit briefly, Cache's text and its significance to the world of critical architectural theory and Cache's relationship to Deleuze (they were contemporaries, even though Cache's text was not published until almost 12 years after it was written and <span style="font-style: italic;">only</span> because Deleuze cross-referenced Cache's ideas in his own work, thus giving him notoriety), I found myself developing a new appreciation for Cache's approach to architecture and the interrelated realms of science, mathematics, and representational art. It was interesting to learn that not just Deleuze's ideas on the individual - or what he would call the becoming-human (so in this case, the becoming-site?) - are what influenced Cache, but also <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simondon">Simondon's</a> embrace of individuation and his subsequent rejection of preformism, a rejection that he came to after his studies of physical matter led him to dismiss this idea of substance. A rejection of preformism can also be said to be a rejection of the preexisting identity of a geological site, something that Cache adamantly repeats throughout his text and his argument. I must say that this idea is quite appealing to me, especially because it expresses the possibility of unlimited potential, a potential that one would not normally assign to an inanimate object. In some ways, a rejection of preformism and an embrace of individuation opens the door for so much creativity, even if the site is already altered to a certain specification or a temporary definition of what it is at that moment; once a concrete structure is formed on a specific site, this does not mean that the structure is permanent or the only way to define the site. Instead, defining a site as capable of endless possibilities allows for impermanence, creativity, and growth in the eternal becoming-site. <br /><br />You can also find this post on <a href="http://immanentterrain.blogspot.com/">Immanent Terrain</a>, the class blog for Art After Deleuze.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-42100229364625767602010-03-10T10:27:00.007-05:002010-03-10T22:53:22.802-05:00White guilt and White male paranoia<div>A response to Richard Dyer's "The Matter of Whiteness":</div><div><br /></div>Richard Dyer begins his paper “The Matter of Whiteness” (1999) by discussing the central nature that racial judgments and racial imagery encompass in the contemporary world. He points to the “enormous amount of analysis on racial imagery in the past decades,” especially when it comes to analyses in postcolonial texts of the racial Other – that is, those who are other than <span class="il">White</span>, for the majority of research and discourse about race centers on “any racial imagery other than that of <span class="il">white</span> people” (539). He mentions the assumption employed by the media and authors of other textual works that categorize “whiteness” as synonymous with “human,” a category which he admits to utilizing in his own discussion of drag queens: Dyer mentions that in his analysis of characters from <i>Car Wash </i>such as the “fashion queen” and the “black queen” he fails to identify the “fashion queen” as <span class="il">White</span>, falling into the trap of writing about “<span class="il">white</span> people [as] just people” whereas Black individuals necessitate the signifier of their color (540). He draws upon other examples of this in mentioning the short descriptions of programs on television, reminding his reader that these two examples are in no way exhaustive.<br /><br />Ultimately, Dyer’s piece can be read as a manifesto of how to attempt to discuss the issue of whiteness without repositioning it in the hegemonic, heteronormative space that it has encompassed for much (all?) of history. While attempting to iterate that <span class="il">White</span> folks are not colorless and should be recognized as a categorization deserving of <i>some</i> attention, Dyer simultaneously asserts that whiteness should not be a newly claimed area of study – he identifies his fear that “paying attention to whiteness” will somehow “reinstate it” as a point of “centrality and authority” (542). He discusses the concept of <span class="il">white</span> guilt, and how this guilt can “be a blocking emotion” that causes analyses of Whites to remain focused on how awful they have been in the past as opposed to “how exactly their image has been constructed,” (542) not suggesting that this history be ignored but should instead be only a part of the complicated reading of whiteness, and indeed of any racial category. A recent post to the online community <a href="http://www.yayhooray.com/thread/196194/has-there-been-a-thread-about-this-yet?page=2">Yay Hooray</a> (scroll down to Lord Thuggingsworth's post) displays an example of a personification of this <span class="il">white</span> guilt that does nothing to enhance the conversation.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; ">A point of interest in Dyer’s piece comes with his mention of the surge in “w<span class="il">hite</span> male paranoia” (542) that manifests itself in print advertisements, television spots, and magazine articles as a product of W<span class="il">hite</span> people feeling left out of the race discussion. This <span class="il">white</span> male paranoia, Dyer states, is a product of “all this (<i>all </i>this?) attention being given to non-<span class="il">white </span>subjects” (542) in the critical analyses of race in the media and in academia. <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/111282">A particular </a><i><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/111282">Newsweek </a></i><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/111282">article</a> of the same name as the hegemonic fear discussed above begins by focusing on the actions of Michael Douglas’s character in the film <i>Falling Down</i> – a project contemporaneous to the magazine piece – who acts out in violent rage against people of color, including “whining panhandlers, immigrant shopkeepers who don't trouble themselves to speak good English, [and] gun-toting gangbangers” (Gates, 1993) in retaliation to and reaction for the termination of his job. Other examples of this paranoia can be seen in <a href="http://contexts.org/socimages/files/2009/12/500x_pants.jpg">recent Docker’s print advertisements</a> that attempt to reclaim a time when “men wore pants” and in a television spot for Ketel One vodka (see embed below) in which the image of a table full of W<span class="il">hite</span>, upper-middle class males is accompanied by a voiceover maintaining “there was a time when men were Men” (presumably with a capital "M"), and that this manly, vodka-drinking experience is supposedly “inspired by 300 years of tradition.” Although one could easily read these examples from a feminist perspective, stating that these advertisements and filmic representations are a reclaiming of a masculinity taken from men by a recent shift of focus to the feminine, it is this “300 years of tradition” and the table full of w<span class="il">hite </span>men that leads me to believe otherwise – that this is indeed not just a gender but also a racial issue. <span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; "><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iFj3FJlBT8Q&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iFj3FJlBT8Q&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; ">A question that came to mind while reading Dyer’s piece has to do with the sustainability of his statement that the “media, politics, education are still in the hands of <span class="il">white</span> people, still speak for whites while claiming – and sometimes sincerely aiming – to speak for humanity” (541) during an era in which the United States is being run by an African American man. The inherent naivety of this question is apparent even as it is being composed, but this was a question that was raised from similar statements in Shome’s piece as well: now that a Black man is the president of America, does this mean that the presidency can still be considered “the ultimate site of <span class="il">white</span> masculinity” (Shome 2000; 369) so proclaimed by Shome? This is not to suggest that President Obama, being both Black <i>and </i><span class="il">White</span>, speaks for <i>all</i> Black Americans or <i>all</i> <span class="il">White</span> Americans – nor that these two classifications encompass the entirety of racial identities found within the United States – but is this not a potentially encouraging step toward representation of not just the <span class="il">white</span> race but the human race in the “politics” mentioned in Dyer, with Obama able to possibly function as a voice for a larger portion of humanity than is possible with the overwhelming majority of <span class="il">white</span> voices usually found in politics and the media? I am not sure that this question can be answered adequately; I only attempt to bring up the disparities and small developments between the current era of the early 21<sup>st</sup> century and the late 20<sup>th</sup> century.<span> </span><span> </span></p>Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-41693379513277637472010-02-18T01:00:00.007-05:002010-05-10T18:51:41.560-04:00Freud, the horror genre and "vagina dentata"Just look at this. I said to myself back at the beginning of February, <span style="font-style: italic;">it's a new semester! That means, Katharine, you best be writing on that blog of yours a lot more than you did in the Fall, because you're </span>only <span style="font-style: italic;">taking three seminars so you'll have <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">allllll</span> this time on your hands! No reason to not be writing every day on every topic you find interesting! You can DO IT! </span><br /><br />And now just look at me. An entire week and a half has passed since my last entry. So much for staying focused.<br /><br />Well, actually, I <span style="font-style: italic;">have </span>been quite focused. Like, 180 pages of reading a week focused. I've been focused on so many papers and articles and books that don't require me to enter The World Wide Web™ in order to read them that I haven't been taking what I've been reading and moving my thoughts and ideas into cyberspace. And since my boyfriend will be in New York this weekend (starting tomorrow night! *<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">doeslittledance</span>*), odds are I won't even be doing much thinking about class at all. So here's an attempt to rectify my extreme inactivity.<br /><br />The title for my Sexual Personae class this week is "Exploitation!" with the readings including an interview with subversive filmmaker Doris <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Wishman</span> and a brief history of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">sexploitation</span> films from the book <span style="font-style: italic;">Incredibly Strange Films</span>, as well as two chapters from the text <span style="font-style: italic;">The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis </span>by Barbara Creed. The latter two chapters on a feminist look at Freud and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Lacan</span> and how their psychoanalytic theories can be applied to the horror genre are certainly a refreshing piece of psychoanalytic feminist film theory for someone who is quite burnt out on Laura <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Mulvey's</span> defeatist attitude toward the helpless gaze inflicted upon women in cinema.<br /><br />Creed is able to turn Freud's ideas of the castrated female - a quite passive and pathetic figure that, in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Lacanian</span> terms, represents "lack" due to her absence of a phallus - into an object that inspires fear in the male not because she represents the possibility of castration, but because she represents an active, potential figure who can castrate. For Creed, the female is seen as the castrating, not the castrated, with this fear of the castrating female usually established through the idea of the toothed vagina, or <span style="font-style: italic;">vagina <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">dentata</span></span>. The depiction of <span style="font-style: italic;">vagina <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">dentata</span> </span>in many <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">filmic</span> forms - the mouth of a vampire, for instance, or the shark's mouth in <span style="font-style: italic;">Jaws</span>, or the blood flowing from a hallway (<span style="font-style: italic;">The Shining</span>), or Audrey II in <span style="font-style: italic;">Little Shop of Horrors - </span>represents this fear of the castrating female, for the victims in almost all cases are primarily male. Some of the characters she notes as castrating female characters - the mother in <span style="font-style: italic;">Psycho</span>, the story of Medusa and her head of snakes, Sharon Stone in <span style="font-style: italic;">Basic Instinct</span> - had never taken on this dimension for me before, and I found it completely fascinating.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCLllEhEZQhNJI9p7R2Ca8gkqtGELbEpSLs9_09PCUXEdB2zJJofajYbptKD6FbkVtAlQrBNCPiTcNHXwKGIKQL4MCOaIKGENtu4ZvO-wF8BlyvKP55akeHT0pPGgj7XpGTrGlqACpiUk/s1600-h/audrey2-3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCLllEhEZQhNJI9p7R2Ca8gkqtGELbEpSLs9_09PCUXEdB2zJJofajYbptKD6FbkVtAlQrBNCPiTcNHXwKGIKQL4MCOaIKGENtu4ZvO-wF8BlyvKP55akeHT0pPGgj7XpGTrGlqACpiUk/s400/audrey2-3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5439475741618437666" border="0" /></a><br />I thoroughly enjoyed her refusal to accept Freud overlooking the possibility of the female as castrating as opposed to castrated. Although, I do believe that her analysis does not do enough to challenge Freud's insistence on positioning the child figure as almost consistently male, never completely pursuing the idea of what a female child's process of identification might be upon the first sight of her father's genitals, and how this works into the concepts of viewing herself as either castrated or capable of castrating - or of being injured or lacking, or otherwise empowered.<br /><br />I remember reading an essay in one of my mother's old issues of <span style="font-style: italic;">Bitch </span>magazine that discussed a different aspect of women characters in the horror genre that has always stuck with me, but I am not quite sure where - or if - it fits in with Freudian concepts. This analysis I read positioned women in horror films not in the almost empowered(1) roles as a castrating figure, but as weak and easily possessed figures because of their <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">vaginas</span>, because of this orifice that allows possession by a foreign entity. In the case of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Exorcist</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Poltergeist</span> it is a demon or a spirit that possesses a female character, presumably because she is more susceptible due to her cavernous absence between her legs. With films such as <span style="font-style: italic;">The Evil Dead</span> the forest literally enters one of the women as tree branches snake along the ground, raping and thus possessing and turning evil the female character through their entrance into her vagina. There was also something in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Bitch</span> article about a menstruating woman, and how being a virgin in a horror film affects the outcome of the female character's ultimate conclusion, but I can't seem to remember the nuances. If anyone can point me in the right direction, or still has a copy of that magazine (*<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">coughcough</span>* <span style="font-style: italic;">Mom?</span>) please, let me know. As for now, let me just say I highly recommend reading Creed. Those of you who are far better versed in the horror genre will probably get a lot more out of it than I did.<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />(1) This is not to imply that I believe the violent act of castration is empowering, or any violent act for that matter. I'm simply saying that this idea of the woman not as castrated - as in Freud - or as "lacking" - as in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Lacan</span> - but instead as in possession of the possibility of castrating allows the female to assume a far more active role because it is a far more frightening one for the male, therefore giving the female the slight upper hand in a formerly oppressed relationship to the male figure. </span>Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-18139329025464867612010-02-06T12:14:00.006-05:002010-02-06T12:55:10.170-05:00The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHuP6Gz3r1LntpkWd0Ptlcb2Zo1cXyTzMnm1wuo52E-OCmDGlLC4YMeb4CrO8Z9mWfWmWDiKyZVpfidc5W6nSTQbFwP2QgQfnJ05KJnK0g-MGJ8od6NeKvL8d3PLm3HjRCj1g5II3v9-A/s1600-h/pink+elephant.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 241px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHuP6Gz3r1LntpkWd0Ptlcb2Zo1cXyTzMnm1wuo52E-OCmDGlLC4YMeb4CrO8Z9mWfWmWDiKyZVpfidc5W6nSTQbFwP2QgQfnJ05KJnK0g-MGJ8od6NeKvL8d3PLm3HjRCj1g5II3v9-A/s400/pink+elephant.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435183257537331474" border="0" /></a><br />On Thursday, February 4th, the <a href="http://www.mocada.org/">Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts</a> (MoCADA) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn opened their newest exhibit titled "The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks" to a mass of attendees. Complete with digital turntablism and free food (which I overheard was donated from local eateries and restaurants) and wine, the opening event was so crowded that it was almost difficult to see all of the 20 works of art inhabiting the walls, floor, and video screens in the museum's gallery space. I was there supporting my friend Josh Bricker, whose installation piece at the MoCADA titled "The Order of Things" can be viewed by either visiting the gallery itself (open Wed thru Sun 11 - 6) or by visiting the sculpture section of his portfolio on <a href="http://josh-bricker.com/portfolio.html">his website</a>.<br /><br />I mention this exhibit not just to plug my friend's piece, but also as a nod to my "Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the Media" course. (I know, it's pretty much the only course I've blogged about thus far. Trust me, posts having to do with "Sexual Personae" and "Art After Deleuze" are forthcoming.) There seemed to be a mix of anger, confusion, and critique present among the attendees and the works of art in the gallery as to what the gentrification of Brooklyn means in relation to class, to loss of a unique identity, and to the social structure of the inhabitants of the area that is in the process of gentrification. I highly recommend visiting the exhibit for yourself to witness pieces from artists from the five boroughs of New York City of diverse ethnic backgrounds (none of the artists currently reside in Brooklyn, however) whose pieces cover topics including relocation, homogenization, redefinition of the word "community," and what it means to be a neighbor.<br /><br />For more on the exhibit see an article from <a href="http://dailyserving.com/2010/02/the-gentrification-of-brooklyn-the-pink-elephant-speaks/">The Daily Serving</a> and <a href="http://www.ny1.com/9-staten-island-news-content/ny1_living/113269/brooklyn-art-exhibit-takes-on-gentrification">a video from NY1</a> in which you can see Josh's piece with the artist himself standing by, and my bewildered-looking roommate (hilarious).Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-26157496838426942152010-02-02T13:06:00.004-05:002010-02-02T13:47:15.010-05:00Punxsutawney Phil is on FacebookFirst of all: who else, when thinking of the lovely American tradition of Groundhog Day, has a certain Sonny and Cher song immediately pop in their head? All you Bill Murray fans out there better say, "I do! I do!" or I'll make you watch <span style="font-style: italic;">Broken Flowers </span>over and over again until you can't move due to your smothered state of depression. A good Murray film from the 80s or 90s is capable of being remembered for it's iconic moments and infinite string of quotable lines, and today just makes me wish I had <span style="font-style: italic;">Groundhog Day</span> on DVD. But, alas, I will have to resort to looking up key scenes on YouTube. <span style="font-style: italic;">Le sigh...</span><br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eZbtAFq7dP8&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eZbtAFq7dP8&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Anyway, the <span style="font-weight: bold;">real</span> reason for this post is to briefly comment on the fact that even HOLIDAYS have begun to appropriate social networking for their own purposes (via the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2010/0202/Groundhog-Day-five-facts-about-Punxsutawney-Phil">Christian Science Monitor</a>). And whatever a groundhog needs a <a href="http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=Punxsutawney+Phil&init=quick#/pages/Punxsutawney-Phil/103061141793?v=wall&ref=search">Facebook page</a> for is totally beyond me, save maybe to alert people that February 2nd is on the horizon and then <span style="font-weight: bold;">on</span> February 2nd using the page to announce whether Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow. But that's it. Every other day of the year, this page has no purpose. Although, Phil does have 7,572 fans, more than most Fan pages for famous humans tend to acquire. Oh, and Phil is also mobile-savvy: today, he sent out his prognostication via text message.<br /><br />I don't know how many more fans he will make after this year, seeing as the "over-sized rodent" saw his fat little shadow, forecasting another 6 weeks of winter. Double <span style="font-style: italic;">le sigh...</span>Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-13072140746809034212010-02-01T12:26:00.005-05:002010-02-01T13:57:13.270-05:00Congrats to Kathryn Bigelow!From <span style="font-style: italic;">The Guardian</span>:<br /><blockquote>in a low-key ceremony in Los Angeles, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/kathryn-bigelow" title="Guardian: Kathryn Bigelow">Kathryn Bigelow</a> became the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/feb/01/kathryn-bigelow-first-woman-dga-award" title="Guardian: Kathryn Bigelow is first woman to win DGA award">first-ever female winner</a> of the Directors' Guild of America (DGA) award for best direction in a feature film.<p>This is an important moment: in the DGA's 62-year-existence no female director has ever won this award. Congratulations to Bigelow aside, this win now points her firmly in the direction of an <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/oscars" title="Guardian: Oscars">Academy award</a>: almost every DGA win in this category results in the same achievement at the Oscars.</p><p><br /></p></blockquote><p></p>This could mean, since the Oscars usually follow suit with the results of the DGA awards, that Kathryn Bigelow might be the first female director to win an Academy Award for best picture in the 82 year history of the Oscars. I have no delusions here, and realize that <span style="font-style: italic;">Avatar</span> could easily win best picture based on Guild voting from the past. Although, since I've only seen the first tense twenty minutes of Bigelow's<span style="font-style: italic;"> The Hurt Locker</span>, I cannot accurately assess whether I believe this film is more worthy of the award than <span style="font-style: italic;">Avatar</span>. If the award was for technological innovation and spectacular achievement, I doubt the award for best picture could go anywhere else but to Cameron's film. But, this does not mean that the Academy will select the same film/director combo for the Best Picture/Best Director awards, as evidenced numerous times over the history of the ceremony.<br /><br />Aside from the fact that it would be wonderful to see Bigelow accept this award, I really don't want to hear Cameron's Navi version of "I'm the king of the world!" Actually, as opposed to being in the native language of the people of pandora, his acceptance speech would probably start with something along the lines of "I've obtained the unobtainium!" Gag.<br /><br />Another interesting dynamic at play here is that Bigelow is Cameron's ex-wife, making this also the first time that a husband/wife pair, albeit a former husband/wife pair, were nominated in the same category and up for the same award. The DGA Awards, in my opinion, is far more valid and reputable ceremony than the Oscars, but is not nearly as publicized or brandished as the Oscars. I just really want to see a woman win, but last year was the year for the underdog. I have my doubts as to whether the little guy (or, in this case, little lady) could possibly trump the big shot.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-45659740082054802392010-01-31T22:11:00.008-05:002010-01-31T23:27:47.285-05:00The Cinematic and Televisual Vampire as the Imaginary Racial and Sexual "Other"The title of this blog post is a topic I am brainstorming on as a potential avenue of exploration for the final paper in my Race, Ethnicity, and Class in the Media course that I am taking this semester with Racquel Gates. This concept is inspired by some of my burgeoning and preliminary thoughts on the blurry and fluctuating metaphor of the vampire as the racially- or sexually-marginalized "Other" on the HBO Original Series <span style="font-style: italic;">True Blood</span>.<br /><br />My hope is to investigate the use of the vampire as a representative figure for at once gay communities and minority populations both, utilizing discursive analysis of phrases employed on this program such as "coming out of the coffin" - which is easily identified as a signifier for queer culture and the process of "coming out of the closet" - or the term "Vampire Rights Movement," a battle for equality and rights being waged by the vampires of <span style="font-style: italic;">True Blood</span> that was fought by African Americans in this country in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement, a struggle for equal representation and opportunities that still continues within the LGBTQ community to this day. In most cases, the vampire takes the place of the discriminated or marginalized Other, especially in the small fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana featured in <span style="font-style: italic;">True Blood</span>; while we are not sure that there was extreme racism against the racial Other - and in Bon Temps, LA, this racial Other is by all accounts a member of the black community - before the vampires came out of the coffin a few years prior to the time period of the first season of the series (roughly present day), it can be certain that all hatred, stereotyping, fear and bigotry that was focused on and around the racial Other in Bon Temps is now directed at the vampires as the new Other. The vampire seems to be a convenient stand-in for a minority, since vampires are purely mythical beings, able to become a location for metaphor, for symbolism, for contextualized signification.<br /><br />There is a fascinating character on <span style="font-style: italic;">True Blood</span> on whom I would like to focus seeing as he shares almost the same role of the Other as the vampires but without the same of stigmatization: Lafayette Reynolds, a homosexual black short-order cook, public works employee, prostitute and drug dealer. Wearing multiple hats with his myriad professions he is one of the keenest and most strong-willed characters on the show, having connections with the mainstream public in his restaurant job, with the hidden sexual life of some of the high-ranking men in his town through his prostitution and webcam service on his website, as well as with the vampire community as a dealer of "V," or vampire blood, a substance that seems to have similar attributes to ecstasy - or, as an active party or rave subculture would refer to it, "E." He is also the physical personification of what the vampires signify as the Other as a black man and a homosexual man, for at times the vampire can represent both the racial <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> the sexual Other, never quite committing to one or the other.<br /><br />So far, I believe I will most likely be referencing the writing of bell hooks, Homi K. Bhabha, and Stuart Hall. As I delve deeper into the semester, I am sure I will find more and more that I can work into this paper. Any suggestions? Please leave them in the comments!<br /><br />I am also interested in investigating the rumblings I've heard surrounding queer identifications with and sociological analyses of <span style="font-style: italic;">Buffy the Vampire Slayer</span> (1997-2003) and other more classic representations of vampires in the cinema and on television. I am not yet sure where the <span style="font-style: italic;">Twilight</span> franchise will fit in to all of this, and I feel I would be remiss in skipping over this phenomenon entirely, but I really, <span style="font-style: italic;">really </span>don't want to read those books.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-31860119547012017502010-01-11T10:25:00.005-05:002010-01-21T20:44:19.730-05:00Gilles DeleuzeSo for this lovely, sunny Winter Break that I've been spending in Southern California, I've been spending a good deal of it reading. Granted, I've also been watching a hell of a lot of television on DVD, namely the first season of <em>House</em> and the first season of <em>True Blood</em>. There's been some "Jersey Shore" sprinkled in there (don't judge, you know you watch it, too) and a few films, both in the theaters (<em>Fantastic Mr. Fox</em> and <em>Avatar</em>) and on DVD (<em>Angels with Dirty Faces</em>, <em>Finding Woodstock</em>, <em>Triplets of Belleville</em>, probably a few more that I'm forgetting), but the time not spent watching has been spent reading. I'm still working on Hemingway's <em>The Sun Also Rises</em>, and two days ago I finished <em>Wesley the Owl</em> by Stacey O'Brien, a sort of <em>Marley and Me</em>-esque memoir but with a Caltech biologist who lives with and raises a rescued barn owl.<br /><br />But the main goal of this break was to get started on some texts by Gilles Deleuze, especially since I'm enrolled in a class in the Spring called "Art After Deleuze," and I figured I should probably begin to understand some of his concepts and his style before I try to understand that which came and was created after him.<br /><br />Thanks to a generous gift card to Amazon from my very literary aunt, I have purchased three texts by Deleuze: <em>What is Philosophy?</em>, which is co-authored by Guattari; <em>Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation</em>, a text which I've been reading in front of a computer in order to search for all of the paintings to which Deleuze is referring; and <em>Cinema 1: The Movement-Image</em>, quite possibly the most dense text of the three. I'm only through the various introductions and the first 5 pages, but I've already found a passage that grabbed me, which I would like to share here:<br /><br /><blockquote>...what <em>was</em> cinema's position at the outset? On the one hand, the view point [<em>prise de vue</em>] was fixed, the shot was therefore spatial and strictly immobile; on the other hand, the apparatus for shooting [<em>appareil de prise de vue</em>] was combined with the apparatus for projection, endowed with a uniform abstract time. The evolution of the cinema, the conquest of its own essence or novelty, was to take place through montage, the mobile camera and the emancipation of the view point, which became seperate from projection. </blockquote><br />I know some of you might be thinking that this is quite an obvious statement of the moment(s) when cinema began to evolve, and the means through which it did, and therefore must be wondering why I like this quote so much. It's quite simple, really: I'm a sucker for concise definitions.<br /><br />Hopefully this text gets a bit easier as it goes on, because right now I'm struggling a little. This could be because I'm trying to read the introductory concepts at 7 in the morning, which is what I'm hoping the case may be. I should probably continue reading when I've had a bit more caffeine...Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-30371002050628486912009-12-16T23:26:00.002-05:002009-12-16T23:29:17.408-05:00"R"Below is another poem from my Google search series. Enjoy.<br /><br /><strong>R</strong><br /><br />Ragtime, Ratatat LP3 tracks <br />RCN, The Red Bull Stop, Road bike<br />Ritalin <br />Record player, Records for sale, Records online<br />Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Venturi, Ramses<br />Roddy Macdowell, Rick Warren<br />Ritalin<br />Roy Teeluck, Rosie the Riveter <br />The Rumble Strips, Rhythms of modern art, Rutgers <br />RitalinKatharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-48761614320868812772009-12-14T10:26:00.008-05:002009-12-14T10:49:11.835-05:00Statement of Intent for "Imagining Language" project, plus one of the poems<blockquote style="font-style: italic;">Through the act of articulation and writing oneself into being, all participants are engaged in a performance intended to be interpreted and convey particular impressions. <br /><br />- danah boyd from “'None of This is Real': Identity and Participation in Friendster"</blockquote>This project is designed to act as a comment on the performative nature of the depictions of self that we as participants in online social networks create and compose for the online audience of our peers. By summing up our identities through a series of pre-determined categories (Activities, Interests, Favorite Music/TV shows/Movies/Books, etc.) we are actively creating our virtual selves to represent who we believe ourselves to be, taking deliberate control over the domain of first impressions and identity creation. This impression of ourselves that we are meticulously authoring is the self-approved version of our identity, the one meant for performance in the public space of the online social sphere.<br /><br />However, factors of our online presence that we do not consciously maintain or construct – or usually, for that matter, even remember – such as the keywords entered into search engines like Google still compose a unique online identity and cache of puzzle pieces that comprise a more complete picture of a user. This running set of inquiries – searches tracked by Google Analytics when a user is signed into their Google account and conducts a search – that was reserved for the mind and oral culture before the advent of the computerized search engine can be seen as the portion of our stream of consciousness that accounts for all those “I wonder what, or who, or where…” moments, and in some ways makes up for our stunted short term memories. These keywords should not be seen as just a point of inception of an inquiry; they in fact make up another aspect of our online identities, an aspect that we do not then share in the online sphere of the social. Because we do not actively enter keywords with the foresight of public presentation in mind, these keywords are almost more indicative of our identities than the information on our deliberately constructed online social network profiles<br /><br />Primarily informed by danah boyd’s notions of the personal performances that take place on the profile spaces of social networking sites such as Friendster, this project aims to make a comment on the constructed performance of identity that is so accepted within online social networks by publicly performing portions of the artist's Google search history and thus forcing the private into the public. These search results will be compiled into lists, poems, and possibly other forms that grow organically from the source material. The artist intends to perform these pieces in public spaces, exposing normally hidden aspects of her interests in the public sphere. In order to incorporate the online social sphere as well as the traditional public sphere, the artist will also post these pieces to her social network profiles, and will showcase the pieces on her personal website.<br /><br />The artist acknowledges that she has set certain parameters for this project, given the fact that the project can evolve over time as Google is the primary search engine employed by the artist in her daily online activities. The artist has made selections from her searches, choosing what to include in certain pieces and what to leave out. It is for these reasons, along with the burden of time constraints, that the artist has set certain parameters for the project, including the following::<br /><br /><ul><li>Some of the pieces were constructed with the intent to have a certain cognitive flow, and include only search inquiry keywords that rhyme or fit together stylistically.</li><li>Others will simply be presented alphabetically by the first letter of the search term, for example: all search inquiries that start with the letter “R”</li><li>The artist omitted any Google Maps search results for businesses, locations, or addresses and limited the included keywords to images, persons, and things.</li><li>The project, due to time constraints, was limited to the sample of keywords that begin with the letters M through Z for searches conducted between September, 2008 and February, 2009. This will be expanded over the course of the next several months to include Googled keywords through September, 2009 (allowing for the sample size = 1 year) and Googled words and phrases beginning with the letters A through L.<br /></li></ul><br />The inspiration for this project came after seeing a performance of Francesco Gagliardi’s poetry that was comprised of the outcomes of Human Intelligence Tasks (or HITs) on Amazon Mechanical Turk’s crowd sourcing marketplace. His performance took place at The Internet as Playground and Factory Conference on Digital Labor hosted by Eugene Lang College at The New School in New York City. This project is also somewhat inspired by the flarf poetry movement of the late 20th and early 21st century.<br /><br />The artist plans to perform pieces from this project at an open mic night that occurs every Tuesday evening in Los Angeles, California’s Echo Park neighborhood.<br /><br />Below you will find an example of one of the pieces intended for performance:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I Google</span><br /><br />I Google images of a skinny cat<br />I Google guides for the MLA format<br />I Google what it means to be a pack rat<br />I Google Ratatat LP3 tracks<br /><br />I Google media mass deception<br />I Google poodle illustration<br />I Google media extensions and medical questions<br />I Google the benefits of female masturbation<br /><br />I Google MIT<br />I Google Why We Fight<br />I Google Sci-fi original movies<br />I Google Summer’s here and the time is right<br /><br />I Google Paul Newman<br />I Google the intricacies of pumpkin carving<br />I Google Joe Shuster Superman<br />I Google a stick figure, crying<br /><br />I Google Sergei Eisenstein<br />I Google Sherrie Levine<br />I Google Skyline, Virgin airlines, and We Feel Fine<br /><br />I Google post-human<br />I Google Please please please<br />I Google Pakistan<br />I Google Mozzarella cheeseKatharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1634769617687439518.post-16161970947139082042009-12-09T12:17:00.000-05:002009-12-09T12:17:50.707-05:00Some history on Marconi, FDR, and Disruptive TechnologiesThroughout the history of mediated communication, beginning with the telegraph and Morse code technology, one finds the trend of disruptive communication technology becoming the eventual mainstay that wins out over the older, antiquated models, but usually not without a fight. Tracing the history of the medium of radio and the individuals involved in its restriction and ultimate essential freeing up of government restriction, one sees a pattern that is eventually initiated and successfully negotiated within the medium of television and the Internet.<br /><br />If it weren’t for Marconi’s invention of the antenna and the founding of Marconi of America in 1899, the precedent for radio and all subsequent technologies might still have occurred; however, this is difficult to say emphatically. Spontaneous simultaneous invention seems to be the way that this creative world operates as exemplified by photography, film, and other such technologies, so who is to say that without Marconi there would be no antenna? Nikolai Tesla, the credited inventor of the radio, certainly had a huge role in the development of the technology, as did inventers Reginald Fessenden and Lee DeForest, all of who can be recognized as the “fathers of radio”. However, for the purposes of this argument, Marconi will take at least partial imperative responsibility for causing radio to become a popular mainstay in American homes through his invention of the antenna.<br /><br />In the initial years, the possibility of obtaining a license to broadcast over the airways was not blocked by any substantial hurtles; nearly everyone interested in transmitting could obtain a permit to do so. With the help of other aforementioned innovators, along with many parallel advancements and inventions in India and Europe, the amateur radio transmission trend was sweeping the world. This presented problems for copyright issues: many private residences and infrastructures began to broadcast music recordings over the airwaves without first obtaining permission from the artists or from the recording companies. It was for this reason, and with the country being on the brink of WWI, that FDR deemed radio a disruptive technology and made the decision to coordinate and effectively control the radio airways.<br /><br />Under the banner of national security, the Navy set aside all patent claims to radio. All amateurs had to go off the air, and all antennas were taken over by the government. Essentially, the US government shut down all civilian transmissions in order to allow the US Navy full control over all transmissions and airwaves. This was a political move on the part of FDR, but this raised a question: Does the government have the right to turn off or take away technology? This was a direct violation of 1st Amendment rights in that it “abridge[d] the freedom of speech [and] of the press”, but in times of war the Navy and the President felt that it was their responsibility to monopolize the airwaves for the sake (and under the guise) of national safety.<br /><br />This military-mandated ownership of the medium of radio continued until the end of World War I in 1919, when the Navy announced they wanted to introduce the radio to everyone; however, they wanted to still maintain ultimate control over the medium. The government completely disagreed with this concept, and thus the home-grown monopoly of the RCA (Radio Corporation of America) was born (a natural monopoly because there were no other competitors, much like the successive situation with AT&T). This technology was initially seen as a threat to national security, but odds are this “disruptive” technology instilled notions of fear in the military, hence FDR’s move to suspend all civilian access. With the creation of the RCA, however, this once disruptive and seemingly threatening technology became a mainstay, including regulatory laws, the foundation of the first public radio stations, and the eventual domestication of the medium as a part of the fabric of everyday American life.Katharine Relthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05619049643131833073noreply@blogger.com0