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

I got the sense, from my small group discussion after the film, that everyone was really rooting for Bev and didn’t like Rachel. In fact, we discussed whether or not she was vapid. A number of other people in the group felt that she was, but (as I said at the time) I really didn’t see it. Partly it could be that I really don’t feel that it’s appropriate for me to call a woman vapid. But also, I’m not sure why this woman was considered vapid.

Honestly, I want people to tell me why Rachel is vapid, or, more generally, unlikable. Is it because she paid so much attention to her appearance? Because, as a matter of fact, she’s performing in a competition entirely about her physical appearance. For example, people in the class (including me) laughed when she said, “I think half of it is just about your hair” as she was getting ready for the competition. But, at that point, she had won more female bodybuilding competitions than anyone else. I’d imagine that she knows as well as anyone, probably better, what it’s about. I feel that the editing of the film was aimed toward making her look shallow. For example, we only saw anything about her religion two times when she told people how religious she was. It comes across as a non sequitur, and not particularly genuine. But isn’t it possible that there was plenty of footage of her praying or having thoughtful conversations about her faith? Would such footage have fit the film’s storyline?

I want to be really clear that, in this post, I’m talking about the film, not the competition. I think it’s very important to separate the two. To me, Pumping Iron II is a sexist film. By this, I mean that it’s a film directed and written (yes, it’s a documentary, but it has a “written by” credit) a man about an event created by the same man for the sole purpose of this movie, and it objectifies women’s bodies (think about the scene in the shower). I also think that Bev was set up to be the hero of the film and Rachel was set up to be the villain. (Indeed, Wikipedia states that Rachel is the villain of the film, for whatever that’s worth.) To me, these two things mean that I need to look at who benefits from Bev being the hero and Rachel being the villain.

The other day, I watched a bunch of music videos on YouTube, and I've been thinking a lot about the video for No Scrubs by TLC since then. I really wanted to embed a bunch of Youtube videos in this post, but it doesn't seem to work, so I will just do links.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Av7m_Pgt1S8

I'm really interested in the futurism of the video, and the way that they're vaguely robotic at times in the video. I know we're going to learn more about cyborgs in weeks 7 and 8, but I wanted to comment on this now before I forgot about it. I'm going to post a number of videos that are interesting to me because of the way they play with technology and identity. I don't really have too many thoughts that I can put into words right now, and certainly no conclusions. Does anyone else have any thoughts on these videos?

Missy Elliott - Sock It 2 Me

http://www.youtube.com/v/ZH5OqrqCCes

Missy Elliott - The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)

http://www.youtube.com/v/ZCbvYY9PKRg

Lil' Kim - How Many Licks (WARNING: This is very ... explicit, I guess)

http://www.youtube.com/v/qPWmcWS5PvQ

There's a really interesting article I found on Ebscohost that talks about "The Rain" and "How Many Licks." It's "Supa Dupa Fly: Black Women as Cyborgs in Hip Hop Videos," by Steven Shaviro, and it's from a 2005 issue of Quarterly Review of Film and Video. (Ebscohost can be accessed from the Evergreen library web page under databases).

Kylie Minogue - Love at First Sight

http://www.youtube.com/v/oBi0p4gRcDY

I was in a group with the 1970 Census in gymnasium this morning. The first page instructs you how to fill in the circles, then says, “The electronic computer reads every circle you fill.” (For whatever reason, this was incredibly hilarious to all of us in the group. When we shared it with the other group we joined up with, they seemed generally unamused.) The second thing that strikes me about this quote (after the general Big Brother tone of the computer reading EVERY CIRCLE) is how redundant “electronic computer” feels to me. If there’s such a thing as an electronic computer, what is an analog computer?

Naturally, I turned to the OED. (Rest assured, I use the word “naturally” sarcastically on at least two levels.) Lo and behold, the first definition of computer is: “One who computes; a calculator, reckoner; spec. a person employed to make calculations in an observatory, in surveying, etc.” So it turns out that the analog computers were the people who processed all the census data before the all-reading electronic computer was brought into the process.

I realize that this definition of computer is quite limited – a person who computes. But I have some exciting (to me) thoughts about humans as computers. First of all, in a non-Foucauldian sense, an electronic computer is a type of technology. I would like to propose that every person is an analog computer. We’re all part of these complex technologies (this time, I mean it in a Foucauldian sense) and apparatuses of sexuality and gender Perhaps in a way, we are all computers, observing and surveying (unconsciously) the discourses around us and calculating and computing what techniques of the self to use to negotiate these discourses. After all, computers have gotten pretty good at playing chess . . .

Clearly, this idea is not very well fleshed out, but I wanted to get it down in my “ideabank” before it leaves my mind.

I think it’s really interesting that sex and race (and arguably class, through questions about salary and home value) are on the census, but not sexuality. What makes the former categories something the census needs to ask about and sexuality something it doesn’t? Does sexuality somehow exist less? Is it less important to the nation to know about? If census questions construct the range of possibilities for race and sex, does this mean there isn’t a range of possibility for sexuality at all? I think these are really important questions, but the one I’m interested for this writing is: What would a question about sexuality look like if the census included it? How would the census construct sexuality?

What is your sexual orientation?
<> heterosexual <> homosexual

or perhaps:

<> heterosexual <> homosexual
<> bisexual

Or might the census draw from that popular collection of letters, GLBTQ?

What is your sexual orientation?
<> straight <> bisexual
<> gay/lesbian <> transgender
<> questioning

(I want to be really clear that I don’t intend to say transgender is a sexual orientation. I’m just exploring possibilities of what the census form might say.)

What if they added an “other?”
<> straight <> bisexual
<> gay/lesbian <> other: _______________

Would they acknowledge “queer?” Would it be a separate category on the list above? Would it replace “other?” Or would it contain everything considered other?

<> straight <> queer

Would the 2000 census be even more intrusive?

Question 1: Are you straight?

I’ve been thinking a bit about assumptions since reading Melanie’s post (http://www2.evergreen.edu/fashioningthebody/e-corpus-3-assumptions). This isn’t a direct response, it’s simply my own thoughts about assumptions as they’ve been influenced by Foucault.

People have often told me that they didn’t want to assume that I’m gay. However, I want people to make this assumption about me. If you don’t assume that I’m gay, then I have to come out to you. I’ve been coming out to people since I was 14 and I’m tired of it. I’ve thought about it for a while as the difference between coming out and being out. Since reading the first half of The History of Sexuality, I’ve made the connection that coming out is a form of confession. Before coming out to someone, I would have to be conscious of the fact that person doesn’t know I’m gay, which alters my behavior and how I act. The discourse of coming out makes being gay a secret identity that you hold inside until you loudly proclaim it. When people don’t want to assume that someone is gay, they aren’t being respectful of the person’s secret identity. They’re asserting the normalness and preferedness of being straight (would it really be that bad to assume a straight person was gay?), and they’re also assigning being gay to a category of identities that need to be confessed.

I make assumptions about people every day based on their appearance and behavior. Maybe that makes me awful, but I think most people do. I don’t think there is a true, inner identity that is separate from appearance and behavior. Foucault critiques the whole idea of identity, revealing it as a normalizing construct. I think that what is “true” about a person, what constitutes their “identity,” is the way they construct their appearance, the behaviors they choose to display. If I were to studiously avoid assuming things about people based on appearance and behavior, I would be affirming the normalizing discourse of inner identity.

My paper is attached.  It is about "discourse."

I thought I would use my first corpus entry to expand on a couple of thoughts I had in clinic but didn’t have the chance to express.

During clinic, I talked a bit about this quote on page 61: “The confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject is also the subject of the statement; it is also a ritual that unfolds within a power relationship, for one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console, and reconcile…” I was talking about the interesting structure of the sentence which made the person requiring the confession almost passive in the process. I think I worked it out in my mind a bit better after we had already moved on.

I think this really links Foucault’s ideas to the concept of the triad of power. However, this is a complicated triad, because one person fills two of the roles. What helped me envision this was Freud’s idea of the joke that Elizabeth talked about yesterday, where one person tells the joke, another person is the subject of the joke, and a third person laughs at the joke. In the confession, the confessor, “the speaking subject [who] is also the subject of the statement,” is both the one who tells the joke and the one who is the subject of the joke. The person being confessed to is the one who laughs. This is another example of Foucault moving beyond the top-to-bottom structure of power. It’s not one person another to confess, but one person, who has internalized the normalizing discourse of the confession, forcing themselves to confess while the other person observes and records. The mention of the latter person possibly having a “virtual presence” drives home this idea. The person who requires the confession may not even be present, may not even be a specific person.

There were two types of bodies in the bookstore, one more restricted than the other. One type seemed restricted to intentional (though often slow) movements among the shelves with their eyes on the products. The store was divided into sections selling different types of products. Generally, this first type of person entered the store, went to a specific section, selected a product, and took it to the front counter. Alternately, they would leave without selecting a product. I observed one person in the clothing section move to another section, but not after selecting a product or two and carrying it to the new section.
The second type of body was identifiable as employees, as they had access to employee-only areas (behind the front counter and the help desks). They were less restricted. Instead of picking up products from the shelves, they would often approach a shelf with items in hand and leave them on the shelves. They weren’t restricted to keeping their eyes on the shelves. In fact, they generally watched the first type of person. They would move quickly from section to section. They also interacted frequently with their fellow employees and occasionally the other people in the store.
As an observer, I found that I felt awkward about my actions. I needed to look around the store and at the other people in it. I needed to wander aimlessly from section to section without ever picking up an object to purchase. In some ways, these were actions available to the employees, though I was clearly not one. I had no specific tasks to accomplish (like stocking shelves), and I did not have access to the spaces for employees. However, I was clearly not a customer either. I felt that my presence was intrusive and awkward, as none of the bodies in the bookstore (other than those of my fellow observers) were doing what my body was doing.