Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Here is a summary of our presentation on Obama girl last week, along with some additional comments.

We introduced obama girl by showing two youtube videos, the "Obama girl vs. Giuliani Girl" video, a popular video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekSxxlj6rGE) in which the Obama girls and off with the Giuliani girls and by showing another youtube video where she appears on "wallstrip" a (http://www.youtube.com/user/wallstrip) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmoBmaz4rUI) a user page on youtube which makes daily comedy videos about the stock market.

After presenting the videos and giving everyone a moment to recover we began to deconstruct Obama girl, beginning with the question of who the actress who played her was. We revealed that her real name was "Amber lee" showed her modeling website (http://www.amberleeonline.com), and also a page describing how she was Howard Stern's girl of the month (http://www.howard.tv/missHowardTV/June2007) in June 2007. From this information we could see that Amber lee was an actress hired for the part of Obama, in fact she was discovered because of being on Howard Stern. It was also briefly discussed that Amber lee (the person) didn't know who she would be voting for when she made the first video. This shows how constructed the whole thing was, and separates her body from her character.

That point was even further driven home in the next video we showed called, "Obama Girl vs. McCain Mama" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86HEv_Wtyj8) , in which the interveiwer literally asks her "so you are just the body?" to which she replies, "yes". The interveiw also showed clips from the "I've Got a Crush on Obama"video which initially made Obama Girl famous on youtube.

To find out more about who else was involved in the creation of Obama Girl we went to the website which procduced her videos, named "Barely Political" (www.barelypolitical.com). We talked a bit about their name, how it might have been a play on "Barely Legal" while simeltaneously addressing the fact that the site had more to do with entertainment than really informing about any political issue at hand. We didn't get to showing this but it's interesting to look at the lyrics of the "I've got a crush on Obama" and see how little they really have to do with anything political whatsoever. (http://www.anysonglyrics.com/lyrics/o/Obama-Girl/Crush-On-Obama-Lyrics.htm). We also looked at the tag line "Bare and Balanced" that they used for the site. We mused how it was interesting that in order to produce this phrase not only had they added the word "bare" but it was neccessary to take out the word "fair".

To get an introduction of the type of content on the site we also looked at a few of the blogs posted there. One about how a woman shouldn't be elected president (http://www.barelypolitical.com/post/3903/women-presidents), and one on "feminism" (http://www.barelypolitical.com/post/3389/whats-wrong-with-feminism).

Next we read a quote from Gonzalez which talked about how cyborgs were a conglomeration of different parts, and compared Obama girl and celebrity to a cyborg. We didn't talk about it, but in terms of Gonzalez it's interesting how in other ways Obama girl compares to descriptions of cyborgs from the same article. For example which boundries or thresholds are being crossed and also the blending of old and new. I think another quote which for me, really encapsulates a lot of my own personal discomfort with the concept of Obama girl is when Gonzales is talking about the concept of a hybrid on page 275, and she says "what makes the term (hybrid) controversial, of course, is that it appears to assume by definition the existence of a non-hybrid state- a pure state". I think the most discomforting thing about Obama girl is that one of the thresholds it proposes to cross is between that of a (pure?) idealized woman and politics. It's not just how Obama girl presents her interest which is "funny", but the fact that this girl (who may in pop culture represent an ideal form of woman) chooses Barak Obama as her subject matter that is also "funny". The contrast between the pretty girl (ideal) and intelligence is part of the joke. In this way instead of cutting edge, to me Obama girl seems like a throwback. Anyways, I'm digressing from the presentation. So we presented Obama girl as a mass of parts. Many things, and as we talked about next, people, made her up.

We went to the "about us" page on "Barely Political" and looked at the team that made her up. (http://www.barelypolitical.com/page/about-us.). We also took an extra minute to look at the creator Ben Relles. And looked at the "beliefs" listed on a website for a marketing company he is involved with (http://www.agency.com  ) and compared them to the values which went into creating Obama girl. It was also mentioned in an interveiw with the creators that they would not disclose who they were voting for and didn't wish to harm or endorse Obama's campaign. It was also mentioned that the merchadise section of the Barely Political website was huge. (http://www.cafepress.com/barelypolitical/3445802).