FEMINISM
There are many
different kinds of feminism and many different waves. They don’t necessarily
agree. But there are some commonalities to start with. First, it is generally assumed
that there is a patriarchal structure to society that oppresses women. Second,
it is generally assumed that a degree of sexism or misogyny exists throughout
society and especially in popular culture. Third, sex and gender are different
things, and recognizing this helps to pull apart some of the mystification of
sexism that comes from biological arguments. These ideas will be discussed in
turn.
Patriarchy
Patriarchy means "rule by the father," but it has been expanded
beyond the context of the family where the term originated. The argument is
that the entire society is patriarchal, that it is run by and for males. Note
that there are two parts to patriarchy's workings, either of which can be seen
as enough to continue the system. Even if the men in charge are all good, there
is still a problem of who has access to positions of power. And then, if women
are in charge of a society that remains ideologically patriarchal, if they
support and validate patriarchal ideology (as has been argued of Britain's conservative
former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher), there is still a patriarchy. Andrea Dworkin (1983) is amazed at how many women hate feminism.
They are not just not feminists, but in 1983 there were women actively working
against the Equal Rights Amendment, increasing punishments for domestic
violence perpetrators, etc. It is a good example of hegemony at work.
So many things
testify to the ways American society is patriarchal. Women are expected to
change their names when they marry, not the men. Many prayerbooks
still marry couples with the phrase "man and wife." Indeed, marriage
itself is considered an institution which is thoroughly patriarchal. The idea
is that marriage begins as a way for a male to be certain the children his wife
bore were his. Marriage supposedly ensured that when she finally gave him a son
(because you couldn't pass property to women), the man could be sure that it
was his own flesh and blood. The idea of the dowry, where daughters are
basically sold to the men who marry them, still exists in the tradition that
the parents of the bride pay for the wedding.
The
implications for popular culture in a patriarchal society are complex. We'd
expect that more men than women hold and maintain positions of power in media.
This is generally true. Name a female music producer. The only woman ever to
win the Best Director Oscar did so for The
Hurt Locker, a film with barely a woman in it. Only a handful of women have
ever had television production deals, although this is steadily increasing in
the last 5 years. So a patriarchal media is made by men, but it is also for
men.
Etherington (2009) notes the seeming surprise everyone had that there was a
female audience who would buy tickets if you made movies for them. The media
always underestimates the appeal of a film like Mamma Mia! or Twilight.
But there are
more complex ways that films are made for men.
Mulvey (1989) argues that movies are made for male gaze. The entire viewpoint of
the camera is typically structured as male. This is most true in older movies,
but it is still true today. The basic idea is that when you watch a movie and
the male hero looks at something, the shot immediately changes and we see what
he is looking at. The camera becomes that male character. Almost never do we
take on the gaze of a female character. Even in something like Silence of the Lambs, with a
strong female protagonist, in the final scene we see through her stalker's
eyes.
Here is a good example. This is from 1946's The Postman Always Rings Twice. See how the viewer becomes the camera consuming the woman?
Men do the looking and women are only to be looked at. In plot and in ideology,
this means that only men are intelligent and active agents. Women are passive
and there only for the uses of the men. This is especially true when the
camera/hero is looking at a woman. We often share the gaze of the camera as it
ogles a women's body, pausing at their breasts or buttocks, perhaps, often
staring at the floor and traveling up her legs. This is traditionally never
done for a man. Even when we see Kevin Costner's butt, it is a quick shot
through a waterfall, not a lingering consumption of his body. So when Marion sees him in Robin
Hood, we share her glance for a second, but it is quick and surprised and
she is embarrassed. She knows it is not her place to do the looking.
There are
exceptions, but they prove the rule. In what other movies besides Thelma and Louise and Sex
and the City do we follow a
woman's lingering gaze at a sexy man? Such films increase as times go on, but
slowly. Generally females who gaze themselves or who look back at the men doing
the gazing are sluts and/or evil. They are femme fatales. A return look is
often enough in most films to suggest that she wants sex (that she's asking for
it). Good girls always lower their eyes or look demurely away, averting their
eyes to allow themselves to be appropriately consumed as objects of desire. In Playboy the women look back at the reader, but
they are supposed to be bad girls anyway and they are never anything but images
for consumption in the first place.
This argument
is not that a look of sexual desire is necessarily bad. The problem is that
desire has been coded exclusively male, as has agency. Women viewers of film
must learn either to desire the images of women (view as lesbians) or they must
learn to identify with and take pleasure in being looked at (become an object).
This is one reason why the cover photo of Cosmo is often indistinguishable from the
cover of Playboy.
Symbolic Annihilation
In much
feminist thought, sexism, or the belief that women are inferior, usually ends
up in misogyny, or the
hatred of women. If women are supposed to be objects that should be possessed, they
will eventually frustrate that desire by asserting a pesky bit of their own
power and agency.
Thus, Tuchman
(1978) first defines sexism in the media as symbolic
annihilation. Women are erased. She gives three mechanisms for this.
First, omission. Women are simply left out
of the picture, even in places where they should be. Hartman (2001), noting
that histories are usually written by men who leave out women's roles and
voices, still notes evidence for the presence of women as merchants or guild
members in the Middle Ages. Yet we don't generally see that in movies or
television shows about the Middle Ages. There is some
evidence that there were women in strong positions of leadership in the early
Christian church, and perhaps even female apostles, although they have been
renamed or erased over the years (see Epp, 2005;
King, 1998; Pederson, 2008). They certainly don't show up in New Testament
based films.
Second, trivialization. Women are assigned to
stereotypical roles or given stereotypical concerns. They are often emotional
and/or victims. There does seem to be less and less of this in media overall,
with more female protagonists and women who might use science or violence to
solve traditionally masculine problems (see Magoulick,
2006), but there is argument that these women often become almost like wannabe
male puppet figures who are still judged as ultimately inadequate to the task
(like Linda Hamilton's character in Terminator
2).
Third, condemnation. Working women were
routinely condemned in popular culture for decades. Faludi
(1991) points to how Fatal Attraction worked hard to demonize the single woman
who works. She quotes the director, Adrian Lyne, and
the star, Michael Douglas, about how much they hate feminism and working women.
They see them as sad and pathetic and whiny and violent. In the original script
for the film, the male character suffers and is blamed by the end for his
affair. In the revision that we see in the finished film, the woman he has sex
with becomes the evil monster who must die. She is condemned more for the same
act.
Making the
connection with Mulvey's ideas and with Tuchman's own
notion that there is a connection between trivialization and victimization, we
might add another, visual element to symbolic annihilation. So
fourth, violation.
Women are violates by showing them as a) inanimate objects, b) beings with only
a sexual function, c) in pieces, and d) objects of violence.
The following examples from advertising will illustrate.
a)
inanimate objects:
(http://www.realbeer.com/blog/images/20060314-stpauli.jpg)
(http://www.designyourway.net/diverse/guinness/guiness-print-advertising-legs1.jpg)
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YACzZay4RD0/SSXUHlui4KI/AAAAAAAAA88/7OofVf_JQRI/s320/heineken_girl.jpg)
(http://emmalouisefischer.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/bmw_advertisment_1.jpg)
(http://www.ukgraphicsdesigners.com/wp-content/uploads/subaru-coupe-advert.jpg)
(http://knolaust.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/fmjauv0jinh9hyrsz1fusblso1_1280.jpg)
(http://blog.magazines.com/images/2010/12/ad_thomasville_soyou.jpg)
You
can see the difference between how naturally a woman is shown as an object and
how laughable it is for a man:
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7cT-N57JZYY/R1KBAZ4Yx0I/AAAAAAAAGkk/6gw4JHOwPGA/s1600-R/hayden-dooney.jpg)
(http://adsoftheworld.com/sites/default/files/styles/media/public/ad%203_0.jpg)
(http://www.ibelieveinadv.com/commons/calzino_def.jpg)
b)
beings with only a sexual function:
(http://cache.thisorth.at/00000/01034/050.460x325.jpg)
(http://adoholik.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/axe_anywhere.jpg)
(http://www.kerrydean.com/pictures/burger-king-bk-super-seven-incher-advertisement-picture.jpg)
(http://www.stefanstroe.ro/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/axe_bathtub.JPG)
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LlHpHWKSXlc/SuILCv-9F1I/AAAAAAAAAok/KLV3ixen9J8/s320/effetto+axe+great+ads.jpg)
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_iqdGBrxKTMI/S9D8ZfMc2WI/AAAAAAAAAFs/i0q4YXJQtXA/s320/madisonave.jpg)
(http://img.youtube.com/vi/0vUXwvy6BE0/hqdefault.jpg)
(http://www.iheartberlin.de/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/blush-1.jpg)
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_g476rU5vrAk/SN1LjeHWBRI/AAAAAAAACjU/jf5f5iyAzKo/s400/che_magazine_01.jpg)
(http://www.ibelieveinadv.com/commons/che_couponskirt_297x210_uk.jpg)
(http://thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/m-ecx0N6cljUEojYW-n9jrg.jpg)
See how awkward it
is for the same thing to be done to a man:
(http://www.spot.ph/files/2009/06/bk_flame.jpg)
(http://thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/ml-akMl5aDAPSDbdMPGRQDQ.jpg)
This
sort of thing does happen in ad campaigns like for Calvin Klein, but it is far
less common.
Here
are some examples from comic books, where strong female heroes are constantly
reduced to object-status:
In
this case, a woman is objectified even as she is brutally killed:
Although
young boys may feel like they’ve failed the muscular ideal of comics, those
male bodies are never displayed as primarily sexual:
c)
in pieces:
(http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/0/6/7/5/1/2/webimg/547189340_o.jpg)
(http://www.delivereddrinks.com/images/D/cabana_2-1.jpg)
(personal collection)
(http://blog.lib.umn.edu/raim0007/gwss1001/karik-1.jpg)
(http://www.adverbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/mercedes-class-s-8-airbags.jpg)
(http://cdn.smosh.com/sites/default/files/bloguploads/noticed-big-mouth.jpg)
(http://dlisted.com/files/marcjacobs_poshspice.jpg)
Of
course, when men are in pieces, they are still active and the viewer can
identify with them.
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3344/3204932153_91661f6eff_o.jpg)
(personal collection) (http://www.aef.com/images/book_covers/jovan2.jpg)
d)
objects of violence
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2TE79xyLPMY/UFMxr0R-FPI/AAAAAAAAA60/v5DTyll1q_w/s1600/CHOO.jpg)
(http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/images/article-images/tankard-reist_200803_loula.jpg)
(http://bedazzled.blogs.com/bedazzled/images/2008/01/09/postagedm2711_468x705.jpg)
(http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1049993.1332625390!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/gallery_635/leggs-ad.jpg)
(http://cdn.trendhunterstatic.com/thumbs/duncan-quinn-suit-ad-depicting-strangled-woman.jpeg)
Think also of the many fetishized moments in horror films where
women die in slow and almost sexualized ways. Men die too in those films, but
often as an afterthought.
In Friday the 13th,
Part II, Jason kills a couple while having sex. Clearly the object is
Sandra. Jeff just happens to be in the way:
(http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120312101709/fridaythe13th/images/e/ea/Death_Sandra.jpg)
(http://images4.fanpop.com/image/quiz/639000/639581_1309989864160_400_259.jpg)
Here’s a sample of violations a) through d) in a set of horror
film deaths:
Although most of those examples are from advertising, you can see
the echoes in larger culture. Most of those ads were supposed to be funny. If
our society wasn’t sexist, would they be?
When a woman's body is consumed in pieces by a traveling camera,
she is not only a passive object, but she is really just a collection of
objects. She is a conglomeration of sexy parts. There is not only sexism
inherent in this, but there is implicit violence as well. Magazine
advertisements do this more than anywhere else. We see lips, legs, torsos . . .
name a part. Sometimes we see just hands or faces or feet (the places of action
and personality for active men in the world), but the most common image when
only parts of a woman's body is shown are of erogenous zones. That the fiction
and reality of serial killers reveals that certain men find the idea of a
severed women's breast attractive shows the potential connection between this
kind of fragmented desire and violence.
Violence is
often symbolically remote, but it is there in many forms. That there are so
many words like "bitch" in out vocabulary testifies to the level at which even our language is
misogynistic. On TV shows which curse, "bastard" often seems to be
suggested as the opposing masculine swear. But bastard is merely about the
questionability of your lineage, the extent to which you as a man are an
unworthy member of the property lineage of the patriarchy because of the sexual
misdeeds of your mother. A bitch refers to animalistic sexuality. Males are
hated for their idiosyncratic inabilities. Women are hated because they are
women. This is what we see in horror films, as well. Men are usually only
killed because they got in the way. The women characters (except for one) might
as well have the words "Stab Me" on their foreheads. But they need no
such tattoos in horror films. In such films breasts serve the same function.
Misogyny is
socially enacted in what Susan Faludi (1991) has
called backlash. This
social war against women and feminists is easily spotted in the 1980s. Faludi looks at movies, television, the media, politics,
etc. and points to the ways that hatred of women is not only common but is
often celebrated. The idea with misogyny and backlash is that sexist ideology
is not just this thing that slightly oppresses you. It is active and acidic. This, as with all oppressive ideologies, our participations in them
are never innocent and never without effect. Modleski
(1991) further argues that all talk that feminism is over or no longer needed,
which she sees proliferating through culture 20 years ago, is a key hegemonic
move of that backlash.
Hegemonic Masculinity
A further
element of the ideological backlash against feminism is the proliferation of
portrayals of hegemonic
masculinity (Hanke, 1988). Hegemony,
remember, is ideological struggle in which the powerful ideologies make
concessions to weaker ones to convince people that it is just common sense or
that things are getting better. Hegemonic masculinity is the portrayal of
"softer," more feminine men as in thirtysomething and Mad About
You. It is also the critique of sexist blowhards in shows like Home Improvement, Everybody Loves
Raymond and Coach. On the surface these male characters
seem positive. They look like critiques of traditional sexism. But when you
look at the narratives in which these men are placed, these men most often
still assert control. The idea is that it is no so bad that we live in a
patriarchy--see how kind and generous men can be. No need to challenge the
system. It can protect the womenfolk. Sometimes this goes so far as to replace
women, and especially mothers, altogether. Although we might like Junior and Three
Men and a Baby for their
valuation of fatherhood, those movies really seem to tell us that men are
enough. We don't need women, even for the making of babies. Hegemonic
masculinity is the perfect example of Cloud's idea of ambivalence.
The general history is that in the first half of the 20th
century, men were portrayed as a particular kind of superior man, with no
emotions, tough, and able to use weapons and honor to solve problems. Like John
Wayne and Gary Cooper:
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bpdWsOrotV0/Sw1W1ffbnjI/AAAAAAAABQs/_EK64FiGKn4/s1600/john+wayne+rio+bravo+2.jpg)
(http://the100.ru/images/actors/id316/828-039_60362.jpg)
But by the 1970s, the “new
man,” a more sensitive soul who felt and expressed emotions, cried, and could
be mocked showed up. The hero of Invasion of the
Body Snatchers in 1956 was a one of these tough guys, but a doctor who
could do some science:
He’s got the less manly, sweater-wearing suburban man and the
women there helping him, but he’s in charge. The 1976 version of the film,
though, has a more sensitive and less effective presence, as disordered as his
hair:
(http://flickminute.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Invasion-Body-Snatchers_-1978-Horror-Classic.png)
The 70s showed us lots of
examples of the crying new man’s superiority to the “old” stereotype. Richard Dreyfuss survives Jaws,
while Robert Shaw does not:
(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb26y5VJLz1qcye95o1_400.jpg)
(http://www.horrorphile.net/images/jaws-robert-shaw1.jpg)
In Love Story, the emotional son is clearly superior to his dad, the
unfeeling patriarch:
(http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/1b/50a2b0558b11e19869123138165f92/file/oliverstory4.jpg)
But this new man’s
hegemonic function comes when his sensitivity is used as a critical
counterpoint to feminism, especially in 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer, when we are supposed to side with the father
against the mother and her desire for a career.
(http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/dvdreviews47/kramer_vs_kramer_blu-ray/large/large_kramer_vs_kramer_blu-ray12.jpg)
(http://images4.static-bluray.com/reviews/1026_3.jpg)
In the 1980s, when Faludi’s anti-feminist
backlash begins, a man who cries at the end of First Blood (1982) becomes a musclebound yelling and killing machine in the sequels:
(http://obscureinternet.com/wp-content/uploads/rambo-first-blood.jpg)
(http://billsmovieemporium.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/vlcsnap-2010-08-19-14h47m50s48.jpg)
The heroes in the 80s get armored with actual armor, with muscles,
and with sarcasm, rejecting the sensitive man and the feminist woman:
(http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02282/robocop_2282286b.jpg)
(http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/conan-the-destroyer-movie-image-arnold-schwarzenegger-2.jpg)
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R0m7kz063B0/UPreR8zgxtI/AAAAAAAAGBg/L_xy0yJUFLk/s1600/hard1.jpg)
But, as the culture shifted, this rejection and reassertion of
Reagan-era masculine power became ridiculous. Instead of the sensitive man,
though, the big doofus came along as the mock-macho
sitcom came to the fore. Why bother trying to destroy the patriarchy if this
loser is in charge, right? Coach, Home
Improvement, King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond built a formula
that still exists in many shows. The wife character is always right, but we
hate her for it:<
This mock-macho guy seems to have evolved into the man-child who
must find a way to impress his preteen son as well as the women in his life. Again, not much of a threat. Think of Liar, Liar (1997), Big Daddy
(1999), Night at the Museum (2006),
and Dan in Real Life (2007):
(http://media.screened.com/uploads/0/5749/419275-liar_liar_1997_570x364_354661.jpg)
(www.fanpix.net) (http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/blog/image-2.jpg)
(http://mythrandir.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/dan-in-real-life.jpg)
So the question is always the one about
whether or not things are really getting better or not.
Gender
Sex is
biological: it is the parts (or chromosomes) you are born with. Gender is the social and cultural
attributions given to biological sex. Generally these are sedimented
into particular kinds of ideas about what it means to be a woman or a man.
These ideas can be internalized behavior patterns we use to define who we are
as a male or female. For example, a male might consider being handy with tools
an aspect of his masculinity. Femininity, likewise, has certain socially
mediated attributes. These things basically are stereotype. A stereotype is, at
base, a generalized judgment from insufficient information. The assumption that
all men or women are one thing or another is a stereotype. Stereotypes become
particularly problematic when they are used to devalue people. So in our
culture femininity is devalued and masculinity is praised. Masculine
characteristics become inflated and stereotypically feminine characteristics,
like emotionality, become devalued.
Because gender
roles are social and not biological, there are feminine males and masculine
females. Both of these things are generally punished by society for violating
relevant gender roles, but it has been argued that both "violations"
are often more highly valued than a feminine female. If a woman's masculinity
is perceived as part of her threat to male power, then it is punished, but if
she's "just one of the guys,' then it is often rewarded by the men in
power. It all depends on what ultimate effect such changes in gender roles have
on the power structure.
It is important
for feminist analyses of popular culture to be aware that gender is a kind of
performance, because a key element of patriarchal mystification is the notion
that gender differences are innate or biological. If there are intelligence
differences or if girls are just born liking pink and Barbies
and cooking and cleaning, then perhaps it is not so bad that women are
encouraged to like only these things. But if we admit that we try to
masculinize male babies (“Look at your strong little arms!” or the way Zach Galifianakis does in The
Hangover) and feminize cute, precious and sweet little girls, if we admit
we give kids trucks and dolls but don't realize the way we differentially
reward them for making the “right” choice, if we admit that girls are more
often giving housework responsibilities and boys are more often given
computers, and if we admit that many grandmothers still call women at college
not to ask about studies but if their granddaughter had met any promising boys,
we might ask whether these things can and should be changed. As computers
pervade society, more students in this class tell me that computers are no
longer segregated into the son's room. This has a profound effect on how we see
computers and how they are used.
Conclusion
When we put it
all together, most people imagine that things are better than they were. Perhaps. But how many of the improvements are hegemonically self-limiting? And how could we tell?
By Steve
Vrooman, March, 2013
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Epp, E. (2005). Junia: The first woman
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Faludi, S. (1998). Backlash: The undecalred war against
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Hanke, R. (1998). The `mock-macho' situation comedy: Hegemonic
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Hartman, R.
(2001). Nun, widow, wife, and more!: Career options
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Modleski, T. (1991). Feminism without women. New York: Routledge.
Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual and other pleasures. Indiana
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Pederson, R.
(2008). Paul praises a female apostle.
http://www.cbeinternational.org/files/u1/resources/14-pederson-pdf.pdf
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(1978). Hearth and Home:
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