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

http://thesuperficial.com/2007/11/britney_spears_uses_a_body_double_in_new_video.php

My coworker introduced me to this site this afternoon and it fit too well with what we were discussing in beauty parlor today. Oh the cultural anxiety! 

Attached is the outline of the Obama Girl presentation, from Friday November 16, 2007.

Here's a separate blog entry I found about Obama Girl that sums up her internet popularity. http://www.liquidgeneration.com/BlogPost/Suck_My_Blog/Obama_Girl_for_President/

In my relative hiatus from MTV pretty much since high school, I was browsing channels a few weeks ago and stumbled upon this video. I thought, hm, 50 Cent, haven't heard from him in a while, but I do know that Justin Timberlake is played almost constantly on the radio. Them together?? So I watched. The chorus is,

Baby it's a new age, you're like my new craze
Let's get together maybe we can start a new phase
The smokes got the club all hazy, spotlights don't do you justice baby
Why don't you come over here, you got me saying

Aayoo

I'm tired of using technology, why don't you sit down on top of me?
Aayoo
I'm tired of using technology, I need you right in front of me

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Na4x2Uwflmg

And it just fits so nicely for what we've been talking about the past two weeks. Besides the fact that I don't understand what 'technology' has to do with a pole dancer, the video does play with virtual reality coming in between bodies... could it be this song is a refusal to accept internet pornography as satisfactory? I'm half-joking, half-serious in that question. And thinking about song lyrics made into a visual narrative, the lyrics just seem made for a music video.

Lyrics are as follows:

Something special,
Unforgetable,
50 Cent (cent),
Justin (tin),
Timbaland (land), god damn (damn)

She she, she want it, I want to give it to her
She know that, it's right here for her
I want to, see her break it down
I'm ballin', throw'n money around

Verse 1 (50 Cent & Justin Timberlake):

She work it girl, she work the pole
She break it down, she take it low
She fine as hell, she about the dough
She doing her thing out on the floor
Her money money, she makin' makin'
Look at the way she shakin' shakin'
Make you want to touch it, make you want to taste it
Have you lustin' for her, go crazy face it
Now don't stop, get it, get it
The way she shakin' make you want to hit it
Think she double jointed from the way she splitted
Got you're head f**ked up from the way she did it
She's so much more than you're used to
She know's just how to move to seduce you
She gone do the right thing and touch the right spot
Dance in you're lap till you're ready to pop

She always ready, when you want it she want it
Like a nympho, the info, I show you where to meet her
On the late night, till daylight the club jumpin'
If you want a good time, she gone give you what you want


Chorus (Justin Timberlake):

Let me talk to ya

Baby it's a new age, you're like my new craze
Let's get together maybe we can start a new phase
The smokes got the club all hazy, spotlights don't do you justice baby
Why don't you come over here, you got me saying

Aayoo
I'm tired of using technology, why don't you sit down on top of me?

Aayoo
I'm tired of using technology, I need you right in front of me
Ooh, she wants it, uh uh, she wants it
Ooh, she wants it (soo), I got to give it to her
Ooh, she wants it, uh uh, she wants it


Ooh, she wants it (soo), I got to give it to her

(Timbaland)
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you

Verse 2 (50 Cent & Justin Timberlake):

Got a thing for that thing she got
The way she make it tick, the way she make it pop
Make it rain for us so she don't stop
I ain't got to move, I can sit and watch
In her fantasy, there's plain to see
Just how it be, on me, backstrokin', sweat soaking
All into my set sheets
When she ready to ride, I'm ready to roll
I'll be in this bitch till the club close
What should I do, one thing on all fours
Now that that shit should be against the law
From side to side, let the ride, break it down (down down)
You know I like, when you hike and you throw it all around
Different style, different move, damn I like the way you move
Girl you got me thinking about, all the things I do to you
Let's get it poppin' shorty we can switch positions
From the couch to the counters in my kitchen

Chorus (Justin Timberlake):

Let me talk to ya

Baby it's a new age, you're like my new craze
Let's get together maybe we can start a new phase
The smokes got the club all hazy, spotlights don't do you justice baby
Why don't you come over here, you got me saying

Aayoo
I'm tired of using technology, why don't you sit down on top of me?
Aayoo
I'm tired of using technology, I need you right in front of me

Ooh, she wants it, uh uh, she wants it
Ooh, she wants it (soo), I got to give it to her
Ooh, she wants it, uh uh, she wants it
Ooh, she wants it (soo), I got to give it to her

(Timbaland)
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you
Your hips, your thighs, they got me hypnotized, let me tell you

The East is Red, the West is Bending –Martha Rosler.

Someone in the class asked, why is a piece about race considered feminist art? My initial reaction was that feminism goes beyond ‘women’s issues’ into analyzing further ideologies regarding race, class, imperialism, consumerism (sometimes), and mass culture—especially advertisement. Rosler’s piece is still relevant as a women’s issue, with the multiple other –isms embedded in the marking of Orientalism to women.

            The wok in question is aimed for its target audience of women cooking. Even if the brochure Rosler read out loud did not necessarily say “for women,” the traditional use of kitchens, cooking, and food is women’s arena. The categorically female body has been relegated to the kitchen; a woman’s place is in the kitchen is a typical aphrorism that might be extended to the woman’s body’s place is in the kitchen. Although it may be questionable as to whether or not Rosler was actually inside of a kitchen, her props and set-up resembled one. As such, kitchenware marketing can be seen as a direct address to women.

            So what do global politics have to do with the kitchen? The marketing of the wok represented an essentialist, orientalist representation of “the Orient.” Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian cultures have been lumped together into one “type” of “Oriental.” The wok comes from China, but the language used in the brochure and the additional props surrounding the wok reflect Japanese culture and customs (geisha girl postcard, sake, dried seaweed, etc) without bothering to differentiate between the two cultures. This dismissive attitude of Asian cultures is indicative of a larger ruling ideology, one that has normalized white America and exotified other countries in relation to the norm. As a white American woman, Rosler’s performance of the wok brochure shows how the electric wok company ridiculously appropriates, dilutes, and mass-produces a cooking tool into a commodity that reflects a prejudiced mentality.

I am a walkie-talkie.

First of all: hearing and saying are one and the same. My ears are my mouth, my mouth can hear. You with your ears on the sides of your head away from your mouth--that is just so self-centered. Like what you have to say is different from everyone else's voice. My voice is your voice is my voice is our voice.

Second: "Push To Talk" means my voice is your voice. You are external to me, you speak my words through me, so someone else can hear. (Like they haven't already heard it or said it before.)

Third: Your words are not yours. You did not make them up, so don't start getting all high and mighty believing you an individual, a unique being with cute little original thoughts. You were taught to speak, to say, in the ABC's. You think morse code is artificial? No, it's symbolic of public language. What you say is not yours, not some pure private language you made up on the spot.

Fourth: You are not alone. I am not alone. I am here, having a) started with a partner b) made for you c)made for you AND someone else whose ears are not his or her mouth. I, alone, sit quietly, this is my true voice. I need not speak for I have heard it all before; I need not speak for you have heard it all before. You can turn me on, clip me to your belt, and wait to get off on the voice of another trying to communicate with you, but really. You are already in a social world. 

Fifth: You, like me, have a series of numbers and serial codes, legal advice, and a "Made In ..." sticker on your back. You think mine is so contrived and mysterious--but you, you wear yours everyday. Your place of birth your nationality your age your surname your image IS your identity.

----

Prosthesis: the romance and the terror, a process and an action, and maybe a lack of action.

The first prosthesis that came to mind was horseback riding. As a pre-adolescent, I fell in love with the movement of horseback riding. I learned English Dressage, an exacting practice that requires constant awareness of the horse's body in relation to yours. The horse's body is trained to recognize very specific, subtle movements on the rider's behalf. A slight pressure with my thighs and a push with my hips means canter. Two backwards twitches with my hands on the reins reaching the metal bit in the horse's gums means slow down and curve your neck (three times in a row, aided with pressing downwards with my hips means slow, down, and, ho/halt.) I knew these horses so well, and they knew me and knew the steps, knew how to do these complicated movements with these tiny presses from my legs and hands. By the end of my training, I was learning to walk the horse sideways, criss-crossing steps, with directions from my body. 

BMW.BMW. BMW is the babe of cars. Cars are machines. Machines are feminized. Sexy car parts. Gears, wheels, electricity, hands of a clock--what pale soft hands she had--

umbrella. parasol--stop the sun from damaging that pale soft skin on her thighs. Reveal skin (to burn skin) and hide skin fromthe sun with that useless tool, parasol.

An absurdly large eye--childlike, feminized--watches. Is it human? It's a photographic collage of a human, how can it be human? There's this gear, a lever to wind with intricate parts. What happens when it turns? Do all the BMW icons spin?

My face and head--that which identifies me--is a lightbulb. The ideal of Good Hair, Nice Hair, Soft Manicured Human Hair lurks behind me, faceless. I cannot have this hair but artificially. 

The soft pale hand elegant dangles a pocket watch. Is it time yet? This is a man's tool, the pocket watch. The pocket watch has become part of Man of men of Men who live by those soft pale hands that carefully, gracefully move all day.

Whose hands made the pocket watch? Can a pocket watch become an additional body part of the man who wears it like a second skin, like a scar on his left side where those soft pale hands keep moving?

Here the pocket watch has been taken from his side. The pocket watch is placed in a new context, in a feminized space, in a space where the ideal of femininity explodes into the artifice it is--where yes women cannot attain this ideal but by artificial means so here the artificial means is the new ideal. Ideal curvy figure, Woman with a lightbulb for a head; pretty hair with no face or brain; soft pale hand with no body holds ticktocking soft pale hands--

The tire? The fire? Aren't cars and (re)inventing the wheel Man's work? Don't Men make sexy cars, make ideal cars, make this machine really perfect, good, nice, pretty? Don't men make the icon the idol? 

Don't men make the icon the idol?

Here the icons I've said before:

Emily

Fashioning the Body

November 6, 2007

Galton’s Little Black Book: The Visual Deployment of Bourgeois Sexuality

Science extends itself as a neutral helping hand, as the voice of reason. Science, society tells us, is not affected by social, cultural, or political motivations. The numbers don’t lie, so we think. But what if the numbers are put on our bodies? What if science is measuring our noses, our foreheads, our ears, and our eye-width to determine what sort of person we are? What if science takes our picture and uses it to declare our degree of humanity, and furthermore declares our responsibility to not reproduce for the betterment of the species? Science is not neutral. The will to knowledge cannot wash its hands of cultural and social influences, nor of power relations implicit in those influences. Francis Galton’s scientific composite portraits during the latter half of the 19^th century serves as a telling technology of eugenics, specifically linked to the proliferation of the bourgeoisie in accordance to Michel Foucault’s analysis of the history of sexuality.

The science of phrenology and physiognomy, popular in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, was not neutral. Allan Sekula, in his essay entitled “The Body and the Archive” provides a detailed history of the two sciences, placing them in a critical survey. The data collected and presented about the body was not unbiased, although it certainly presented itself as objective truths. Phrenology and physiognomy stem from the belief that a person’s value could be determined from his or her face and head. Both sciences examined, measured, observed, and documented the human body in this light. In particular, the two sciences studied groups of peoples, dividing society up into races, genders, intelligence levels, morality, and class. Gathering information about groups of people based on social status, ethnicity, class, and or gender is not a practice free of power relationships. Yet this was a validated science of statistics. By the end of the 19^th century, cameras aided in the proliferation of phrenology and physiognomy as scientific studies (Sekula 347).

Scene: Mom and Dad tuck their little girl into bed.

Little girl: Where do boys come from?

Mom (2-sex): When you're inside mommy, you start out as either a boy or a girl. Even your twin brother lived in a totally separate sac than you!

Dad (1-sex): That's not exactly true. Actually, everyone starts out as female, with the penis inside the body as a fetus. Boys happen because they produce enough heat to push their genitalia outside their bodies. You, little girl, were just too cool and so you stayed female.

Little girl: So I have a penis too?

Mom (2-sex): No! You do not have a penis. You are a girl and you have ovaries which are inside of you, you are not like boys. Boys have testicles and they are external to the body.

Dad (1-sex): Yes you do! You have an inverted penis inside of you. If you had produced enough heat, it would have turned inside out and grown externally.

Little girl: Can I become a boy?

Mom: Well, it's not impossible for you to become a boy. It's not very likely, though. It's definitely impossible for a boy to become a girl, that I know.

Dad: Ehh... there are a few recorded cases of females turning into males, but the sources aren't credible.

Little girl: So can I do everything brother does?

Mom: No, because you are completely different. You are distinct from a man and you do different things. Men and women have different virtues and vices.

Dad: No, you can't really. Men and women live different lives and that's how society works.

Both: Goodnight.

I am interested in:

Feminist theory

Film theory

Feminist film theory!

Gender!

Philosophy of art

Photography

Black and white photography

Silkscreening.

I see myself watching films and making a visual, critical response. I want to study feminist theory more, and find a way to apply those ideas to a visual format. In particular, I imagine reading de Lauretis and her contemporaries, or those who came before her. So, read theory, make a visual response: rearticulate, educate, refute, respond. I'm considering making critically-informed movie posters as a visual response.

I want to work with people whose interests would inform mine. I am a pretty serious student who needs reliable, responsible, critically-engaged, excited people to work with. Let's talk and look at our work and read cool essays that make us view things differently! And watch films and look at photographs. Gender as a representation, gendered images, alternative performances of gender, all these great things need to be looked at through visual media and then some!