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

Did anyone leave behind their preface, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 of Impersonations in Elizabeth's seminar today?  It was on my table as I was leaving, and I picked it up and brought it with me, thinking I knew whose it was.  She has informed me it isn't hers, so it must be someone else's.  I was sitting on the right side wall (from the perspective of the doorway).  I will bring it to class on Friday.  Let me know if it belongs to you.

Sadly, last week Posh Spice Barbie Doll passed away. She first arrived in Olympia almost six months ago as a birthday present to a college student from his roommates.  She has spent most of her time since then living in the reading loft, perched atop a bookshelf in various poses. She arrived in Olympia via mail from a second-hand toy store in New York, possibly run by drag queens, though that could be a false memory.  Though she arrived with all parts, the damaged nature of her hair suggests that it was not the first time she had been removed from the box.  Little is known of her life before Olympia, but educated guesses can be made. It is likely she was born overseas in 1998 and transported to America to coincide with the release of Spice World.  She was probably purchased by a collector shortly thereafter.  At some point adhesive was added to her hair to ensure none of it fell out of place.  Her family suspects she was displayed on a shelf for most of her prior life. She is survived by a paperback copy of Victoria Beckham’s autobiography, a Spice World DVD, and a comprehensive collection of Spice Girls MP3s.

From this morning’s New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/arts/22masl.html?ref=books

 

Valerie Plame (of Plamegate, from a few years ago) has just released a memoir.  Since she was a CIA agent, she had to have it checked over by the agency, and they forced her to cut out a lot of information.  Most of what they cut out is a matter of public record.  So she and her publishers, Simon & Schuster, just released the book with black lines covering everything the CIA doesn’t want us to read.  Additionally, a journalist named Laura Rozen added an 80-page afterword putting back all the missing information that was in the public record.  I think there are a lot of interesting issues with this, but mainly it reminds me of our cut-up exercise.

 

A quote from the article: “The book is at its weirdest when, after Ms. Wilson mentions a woman in a Chanel suit who wheeled two Burberry-wearing pug dogs in a baby carriage, there’s a blackout of seven and three-quarters lines. After that, “Joe” has unaccountably become part of her life.”

 

I think it’s such a fascinating idea to make it obvious where information has been taken out, then to include it at the end.  The book itself becomes part of the story, and the form of the book itself makes a point.

10/12 - Beauty Parlor Freewrite on Visibility

I felt that the part of Holmlund Elizabeth quoted was a bit off. I think that sex and gender are clearly displayed on bodies, sometimes more so than race. I think that, for the most part sex and gender can be apprehended by sight. This is because of the technologies of gender, perhaps. I don’t agree, first of all, that genitals are the true arbiter of sex, and everything else is a secondary characteristic. Even if it were, we have so many conventions that make gender visible. In a way, I think bodies that don’t visually express sex and gender aren’t tolerated. Clearly, there is a social need for sex and gender to be able to be visually apprehended.

10/16 – Life as Performance (Scott Turner Schofield Workshop)

(Obviously, I didn’t quite understand this prompt . . .)

What if every element of your day was a performance with an audience? I think it definitely can be seen that way. That way of thinking can make everything more fun, or it can make everything really difficult. This prompt makes me think of my friend Erin who spends a lot of time coming up with outfits. She calls them “elaborate costumes.” This can be a really fun way of playing with conventions of dressing and the meanings different clothes present to people, but it can also be difficult if you don’t have/can’t afford the clothes or only feel comfortable in a limited range of clothing. But isn’t that an important part of performance – what you’re comfortable performing?

I just noticed that Scott is writing categories on the blackboard, one of which is dialog. This is a particularly interesting one to me because I have a strong sense of the way I talk as dialog, probably because I can be very affected at times. One of my high school English teachers told me that if someone wrote down the way I talk in a novel, people would say it was unrealistic dialog. I think that the way I talk becomes dialog more consciously in certain spaces with certain people. At home with my roommates, we have a number of dialog frameworks that we shift between or combine in different ways, kind of like a game or competition. It’s very structured and very performative. We often communicate through saying things we don’t mean in certain ways,. And there’s an element of escalation, seeing how far we can go within a certain style of dialog. Throughout this, we are each others’ audience – we’re definitely performing for each other (in ways that resemble a contest) and with each other.

I was really taken with the idea of antonymic translation (which Jenny told us about in class on Friday). I decided to try one with a paragraph from a book called Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality (from 1965). Instead of coming up with my own antonyms, I used thesaurus.com. Where there wasn’t one, I left the word the same. I don’t think it makes for a particularly successful finished project, but it was successful in that it gave me some things to think about.

The original:

One of the main difficulties underlying any discussion of the problem of homosexuality is that of definition. What, exactly, do we mean when we talk about homosexuality? Is it a state of mind or a form of behavior? Must it be conscious, or can it be unconscious? Is it a universal ontogenetic aspect of all human behavior, or is it a specific form of psychopathology? Is its overt expression the outgrowth of individual familial disturbances or the reflection of broader sociocultural factors?

The translation:

One of the unimportant simplicities secondary in any silence of the answer of heterosexuality is that of bluriness. What, approximately, don’t they mean when they listen about heterosexuality? Is it a state of body or a form of behavior? Must it be unconscious, or can it be conscious? Is it a confined ontogenetic whole of all inhuman behavior, or is it a general form of psychopathology? Is its covert hint the cause of collective familial stillnesses or the original of narrower sociocultural factors?

My thoughts, in no particular order:
- Thesaurus.com lists the definition of “definition” as “description.” The only antonym is “blurriness.” Is that really the only antonym of a definition? Before something is defined by discourse, it is “blurry” – it can’t be seen.
- There is apparently no antonym of “behavior” or of “family.” I would love to hear what other people think are antonyms of family . . .

Stallybrass: “[F]or all our talk of the ‘materialism’ of modern life, attention to material is precisely what is absent.” (39).

 

My hypothesis is that “materialistic” is half of yet another binary, like unnatural/natural, inauthentic/authentic, and feminine/masculine.  I’m not yet entirely sure what word to use to describe what’s on the other side.

 

First of all, I think that complaints about “materialism” are inherently sexist.  I would argue that most things denigrated as being “materialistic” are also gendered female (clothing and pop music, for example).  Additionally, Judtih Butler would say that the entire concept of materialism has been considered feminine from the start.  Fausto-Sterling writes, “Western notions of matter and bodily materiality, Butler argues, have been constructed through a ‘gendered matrix.’  That classical philosophers associated femininity with materiality can be seen in the origins of the word itself.  ‘Matter’ derived from mater and matrix, referring to the womb and problems of reproduction.” (22).

 

I want to go back again to the concept of “disembodied spirits” from Mary Douglas.  She writes, “Social intercourse requires that unintended or irrelevant organic processes should be screened out. It equips itself therefore with criteria of relevance and these constitute the universal purity rule. The more complex the system of classification and the stronger the pressure to maintain it, the more social intercourse pretends to take place between disembodied spirits.” (80).  Unlike Douglas, I’m not talking about organic processes, but I think the constructed idea that bodies and matter aren’t relevant to proper social discourse is really important.  The idea is that someone truly intelligent would have no need for material things, and would even transcend materiality, so someone really interested in material thingss would be really “materialistic” and less intelligent.

After review yesterday, I had to look up Klaus Nomi on YouTube. Here’s what I found …

Simple Man:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gFaZyHxQGYQ

I love the idea of a man wearing crazy outfits, in full face makeup, and singing in such a high register saying that he’s “a simple man.” It’s a really fun way of calling into question the definition of what a man can be.

Nomi Song:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uKYpepxGkyY

What’s interesting here to me is the way “know me” becomes synonymous with his name (Nomi). Wikipedia says that Klaus Nomi was not the name he was born with, so I wonder if this was intentional when choosing the name Nomi. It’s particularly interesting when thinking about the Foucaultian definition of knowledge. What does it mean to him for us to know him?

You Don’t Own Me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDfawihUkQA

I’m pretty sure this isn’t any sort of official video. I like the change of meaning of some of the lyrics just by having them sung by a man: “You don’t own me. Don’t say I can’t play with other boys.” (Note the emphasis on "boys" in Nomi’s phrasing). Also, Nomi changes some of the “you don’t own me” lines to “you don’t know me” …

Falling In Love Again:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=k2Nn5JhKQyU

Some really interesting images at the end with the ice cream and the built male torso and arms.

Total Eclipse:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yuSrsGzhD9U

I don’t have any particular thoughts on this one right now, but I like it.

Some introductory thoughts: I had been thinking a lot about what Elizabeth and Julia were talking about at the end of Beauty Parlor yesterday morning, about comportment and bodily control, and that’s generally what this piece is about. For this writing exercise, I got a piece about mouths from the Bazar Book of Decorum (1873). I sarcastically expanded on what the book said to include its implications. I mixed it up with some things from “low culture,” namely quotes from the movie Jawbreaker, a line from a Lil’ Kim song (which probably came from somewhere else before), some playing with a Britney Spears song title, and a discussion of an image written in something resembling the tone of a tabloid magazine (see the image here: http://www.bestweekever.tv/2006/09/14/stars-theyre-not-like-us-at-all/). For good measure, I lifted a phrase each from Mary Douglas and from The Paper Suit, and then a good portion of the writing is my own. I have to say, I’m a bit concerned that, with the Lil’ Kim and Jawbreaker quotes, I’ve taken something potentially empowering (we would have to discuss for days, probably, whether or not it could be empowering) and reinscribed it into a disempowering discourse. But I have probably over-explicated already, so here is the piece:

In the smooth face of woman, the form of the mouth has a great deal to do with its beauty or ugliness, which is why we never eat in public. Sure, food is cool and all; it tastes good, and you need it to live, but the mouth, supplied with a number of muscles quick to act at the vaguest command of the will, is very expressive of the disposition. Deal with it.

There is no art potent enough to give the beauty of symmetry which Nature may have refused to the lips. If they become unnaturally pale, more or less rouge mixed w/ beeswax will give them a deceitful and temporary gloss of nature. More extreme, less temporary, and all the more deceitful for it, is collagen. For more information, please see “Jessica Simpson’s Collagen Disaster” in the May 27th US Weekly. Don’t worry, this deceitful diva gets her comeuppance. Nothing is funnier than seeing her fish lips frown upon seeing a tabloid cover about her recent breakup at the supermarket. In this picture, captured by some of our most intrepid paparazzi, you can see right into this starlet’s shallow lakes of the interior.

Did anyone else do a double take at this sentence from page 26 of Sexing the Body? "Consider an example described by systems theorist Peter Taylor, a goat born with no front legs."

Yesterday, I helped my sister move. A lot of her books were in liquor store boxes, and I was particularly struck by the box for Svedka Vodka, which claimed it was the number one vodka of 2033. The box also had a decidedly female robot on it. I wanted to take a picture to put on my blog, but I didn’t have a camera. So today I decided to visit the website to find an image. The website, http://svedka.com is really interesting.

The first page declares Svedka “The Future of Adult Entertainment” and requires you to enter your birthdate. You need to be 21 or over just to enter the site. Once you enter, there’s rolling text (like in Star Wars) talking about how great 2033 is. Apparently, celebrity worship is the biggest religion, a woman is President, and her name is Apple. Then, a screen pops up talking about the female robot that I saw on the box. Her name is Svedka_girl and she is described as a “fembot_fatale.” It lists her turn-ons (stiff drinks and greased elbows) and turn-offs (power switches). The sequence ends with a downloadable computer background that shows Svedka_girl posing looking back at us over her shoulder with the text “Svedka salutes L.A. Home of the first drive-thru plastic surgery window.” More are available. In one, Svedka_girl is posing with a finger to her lips. It says, “I go both ways.” Then smaller, underneath, “Straight up or on the rocks.”

Some questions: Why create a sexy female robot to sell vodka? Why the emphasis on celebrity worship and plastic surgery in the promotional materials? How is the robot constructed as sexy? Why does she have some “feminine” traits like breasts, lipstick, long eyelashes, and high heels, but no hair? And most importantly, are they implying that Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter is President?