Blog Post 7: If He Says She’s a Girl, She’s a Girl

"How should one define gender? Is gender natural, or is it socially constructed, and if it is socially constructed, does that mean gender is anything someone wants it to be?"

Gender should be defined by its definition, graciously offered by google: “Gender: The state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).” Basically, gender is the social conceptualization of what it means to be either male or female, and while it is often assigned at birth, it isn’t tied to physical sex characteristics and can change and evolve with time. Gender should be, on a personal basis, defined by the individual. Having a vagina doesn’t make someone a girl, anymore than owning an oven makes them a five star chef, and gender, then, should be defined on an individual basis. 

Sex, on the other hand, is physical, it can be changed through surgical intervention, but for the most part it is static. Sex is used medically to sort patients into risk categories for things like prostate cancer or ovarian cysts, but for everything else, there is gender. Gender is a natural byproduct of labor division and socialization, so to say it is purely natural or purely construct is a bit misleading given it’s an intersection of both. That said, our strict American definitions of male and female are indeed constructs, as in, what defines a woman in our culture does not hold true universally, so really gender is less of a concept and more of a nebulous cloud of penises and vaginas roving the countryside.

Gender can, then, only really be determined by a society, though it can be selected on an individual basis, but here’s the thing, why can’t it just be anything someone wants it to be? I mean, academically sure there’s all sorts of posturing and theory, but in reality, you can be whatever you want and literally no one can stop you. Even if you can’t get your license changed, or use the bathroom you feel comfortable in, there’s no one in the world that can stop you from being a man or a woman or neither or both, and sterilizing gender into a semantic debate about socialization and biology doesn’t invalidate that you have a penis and are a girl. Does it really matter what the scholars say about gender to the individual identifying theirs? I mean, does our definition of gender really matter on a personal level and or stop someone from being whatever they choose to be? No, not at all, so of course gender is anything someone wants it to be, because people don’t tend to read dissertations when making choices about their personal lives. Gender can be anything to a person, maybe not to academia, but what’s a few stuffed shirts to feeling comfortable in your own skin. Be a girl, be a boy, be a dolphin, why not? Just be yourself, a definition can’t stop you.

Blog Post 6: Bras not Boobs

Miss Representation is not jarring because any of the information is new or surprising, on the contrary it’s impossible to do more than walk down the street without being bombarded by billboards of naked women eating hamburgers and, often embarrassing, displays of camouflage bedecked machismo. Miss Representation is jarring simply because of its sheer volume of information. Sure, most of us outside of places where it’s still acceptable to burn crosses know women are given the short end of the social justice stick, and most of us know, in theory, that there’s a lot of sexism in the media. However, to be confronted with all of it all at once sort of puts it into sharp relief and gives it a more tangible scope. There’s just so much.

I’ve always had an interest in social issues, and being a woman myself, feminism in particular has been very close to me and my experience of being a female in a male dominated society. I like to think of myself as a person who is aware of the inequality that permeates our world, someone privy to all the prejudice all around. While I know on some level that there’s a lot of nonsense that surrounds being a girl, it’s still sort of painful to be reminded of just how much nonsense I have to wade through to simply exist. Even ostensibly female spaces are tailored to males and after standing in Victoria’s Secret, surrounded by material selling boobs and not the bras those boobs are supposed to go into, I have to wonder, why are we marketing utilitarian beige bras to dudes? More importantly, why do I feel uncomfortable in a space supposedly tailored to me? 

Miss Representation was nothing new for me, but it was still a harsh reminder, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed under the weight of closing a gap so massive it’s literally older than the country we live in. I’m supposed to feel empowered, filled with righteous fury over the plethora of injustices heaped upon my gender, but mostly I’m just tired. I’m the dead horse being beaten with the narrow concept of femininity and advertisements telling me I’m ugly and should do something about it. It’s almost immobilizing, how much there is to be done, but I still have hope, and I’ll still keep fighting the good fight. Because if I don’t, I’ll never get that bra without the softcore porn, and I really, really, want that bra.

Psychoanalytical Theory: Way Less Phallic Than You’d Think

Psychoanalytical theory is a way to describe and explain human motivation within the context of a literary or media analysis. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not a prominent theory in psychology, in fact, it never really was! Freud gained traction largely as a public speaker for the public masses, and even within his lifetime his works and findings went unaccepted by the scientific community. This isn’t to say Freud wasn’t popular, only that his theories were never particularly scientific in nature, which is probably good, because otherwise we’d all have to deal with a subconscious desire to sleep with our parents, and that’s pretty gross. Instead, psychoanalytical theory is one of philosophy, a mechanism to explain or describe behavior using some of Freud’s less…incest flavored devices of human consciousness.

Freud is primarily concerned with the layers of the human cognitive experience which, in the early 20^th century, were understandably shrouded in mystery. Anatomists had begun cataloging portions of the brain by this time, and guessing as to their function, but with no physical proof of a mechanism of human consciousness, the science became necessarily speculative. Scientists could find no “soul lobe” in the brain, despite Montaigne’s high hopes for the pineal gland, so things got kind of…weird. Thus, with no empirical explanation for consciousness, Freud sought to frame the experience of “being” as an incidental to internal mental functioning. His theories then fall more in the realm of philosophy than psychology, and in philosophy there is no such thing as a bad idea.

The meat of Freud’s theory of the unconscious mind is just that, that there exists, beyond the scope of waking thought, a sea of feelings, wants, and desires whose tides shift and change our conscious will. It was revolutionary at the time, as well as terrifying, the idea that our mental self-efficacy was not particularly efficacious at all. Instead we are all boats, adrift on the sea of the ID, the dark, hungry, primal parts of ourselves that seek only self-pleasure and instant gratification. Then there’s the wind, the super ego, the idealist capable of empathy and high moral standard, pushing the boat toward calmer water. And then there’s the ego, the rudder, the calm arbiter of the two powerful forces of nature, ultimately deciding just where this ship ought to go.

For a ridiculous media comparison, in the TV show SpongeBob Squarepants, the character of Patrick Star would be the ID. He’s not particularly bright, and when he isn’t too busy being hungry and eating, he’s making impulsive and selfish decisions. On the other hand there’s the super ego in Sandy Cheeks, she’s intelligent, compassionate, and thoughtful, always trying to help others and make moral choices. And then there’s SpongeBob, the ego, caught between the two, generally doing the right thing and helping Sandy, but also occasionally going along with Patrick’s terrible life choices.

In this way, as motivation, psychoanalytical theory is everywhere. It is one of many ways in which we try to explain what it means to be a thinking, feeling being.

Is it true? Who knows, really, but one thing is certain.

Freud had some real mommy issues.

Blog Post 4: Marxism Ruins Everything.

Marxism is, primarily, a study in the dynamics of power structures, and those who operate in and around them. 

Of course, outside of the context of this class it’s a lot more philosophical, and a lot more communist in a way only Russia in the late 19^th century could be. But, within the scope of media analysis, “Marxism as a social theory” hits the nail on the head.

Marxism as we understand it through the lens of critical media consumption, has a lot more to do with the social roles that people naturally assume and how, as we grow and change and enter and exit different spheres, we assume different ideologies and behaviors. The economic component inherent in Marxism is largely absent within this framework, but to say it is nonexistent does a disservice to the power of money in guiding the undercurrents of human interaction. A good example is the in-class viewing of Friends in which Rachel’s mother, Sandra, expresses her displeasure with her marriage (one of convenience), and how she’s proud of her daughter’s desire to work and gain independence. Money is power, and if Marxism is a treatise on the ebbs and flows of power, then money is a given. But, since this isn’t late 19^th century Russia, it has less of a communist aftertaste.

To anyone not in this class looking to critique media through a Marxist lens I would say “why?” but also “be prepared for a rather depressing lesson on social hierarchy, and just where you fall within it.”

I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to consume media critically, but if it’s done with a Marxist flare, it’s going to be upsetting how many bourgeois values you’ll find there, and how constant the presentation of upper class ideology is. That sounds like a conspiracy theory, but the simple truth is rich white guys own the majority of media conglomerates within the United States, so of course their values and personal agendas are going to guide programming. There’s a reason that, historically and currently, most media protagonists are conventionally attractive straight white people living in beautiful apartments and hanging out with other conventionally attractive straight white people, and that reason isn’t because most of America is like the cast of Friends. The simple truth is, Marxism reveals just who is deemed a “winner” within our system, and because that definition is so narrow, chances are you are not one.

So my advice would be “Don’t do it, because you won’t like it, and you’re totally going to ruin Friends for yourself. Don’t ruin Friends for yourself.”

Blog Post 3: Competitive Salad Making

Media is everywhere, like it or not (usually not), it’s impossible not to be inundated with nearly every form and fashion of media there is. Sitting in the doctor’s office, there’s a soap opera playing in the corner. Waiting at the bank, there’s a rack of glossy magazines. Driving out into the desolate countryside to try to escape the ever present hand of the media…there goes a billboard for Billy Ted’s truck stop/funeral home.  Media. It’s everywhere. It’s all the time. It’s an inescapable side effect of living in an economy driven by consumption and at a technology level that includes not dying of the plague. And while it’s not by any means the worst thing that’s ever happened to humanity, it’s certainly one of the most annoying. That, and UTD parking.

Being a media consumer is just a fact of life, and really it’s always been a necessarily passive act. Until, of course, it’s framed within the context of a literary analysis. Now years and years of being trained to find simile and metaphor and symbolism has all come flooding back on a vengeful tide of English teachers and term papers. Every show on Netflix is now akin to Shakespeare, every advertisement a sonnet. Suddenly all that time spent underlining the work of Mark Twain has been translated into something far more ubiquitous and twice as hard to ignore. Like it or not, now I’m not just a consumer of media, I’m an active consumer of media, and it’s a real headache.

You wouldn’t think Chopped had any sort of deeper meaning but you would be wrong. The logo, the music, the lighting, the edits, all of it has a purpose and all of it makes what equates to four adult men and women trying really hard to make a salad into an action packed highly tense competition of the gods. It’s ludicrous, it’s absolutely ludicrous that Chopped, a competitive show that almost always ends in a grown man making ice-cream out of raw fish or boiled beats, can be made to seem on par with something Bruce Willis would star in. But that’s the power of timing, camera angles, and sleek steel graphics. And now Chopped is ruined for me. Ruined. How can I ever take bread pudding seriously again, knowing it’s all just a sham of color manipulation and sound effects and that in reality it’s just a very high energy episode of Martha Stewart? I can’t, that’s how. The nerve of this class.

I really liked Chopped.

Blog Post 2: A Study in Semiotics

Sherlock has a lot going for it. The casting is spot on, the writing is solid, and the jokes aren’t only well timed, but funny in the same way watching someone you don’t really like getting called out by a teacher is funny. Kind of awkward, but only if you’re at the wrong end of it.

That said, for all the things it has, there is one thing it lacks.

The show Sherlock is about as subtle as Benedict Cumberbatch’s cheekbones.

Which is to say, not at all.

So, fortunately for me, it wasn’t difficult spotting its many uses of semiotic convention, and much of the show fits very neatly into the little chart.

Signifier/Signified:

                The cane/Watson’s emotional baggage following honorable discharge

                The upturned collar/Sherlock’s social isolation from other human beings

                The lipstick/Molly’s romantic interest in Sherlock

                The umbrella/Mycroft’s very proper demeanor and prepared nature. Also he’s kind of a jerk.

Syntagmatic Analysis:

                Traditional cyclical crime drama time line. Open with a murder and work backwards from there. A bit ironic given that’s how deduction actually works, moving from the big picture to the smaller details, while Sherlock preforms induction, using small details to piece together a larger whole.

Paradigmatic Analysis:

                Almost every character is a mirror of every other character. Sherlock and the cabbie are both geniuses bored with the monotony of life, yet Sherlock chooses to channel it into something productive, while the cabbie uses it for something considerably less so, depending on who you ask. Two sides of the same, slightly sociopathic coin. Watson and Mycroft, both employed by the government for the same ends of making England stronger and safer, but one is doughy and concerned with political affairs, working from carefully detailed plans and preparations (a line of phone booths surely is not the most efficient way to contact someone), while the other acts on instinct, is battle hardened, a man of his hands and a man of action in a very physical way. Then of course there’s Watson and Holmes, the dream team, but there’s very little to say about them that hasn’t already been said for, literally, a hundred years.

Metaphor:

                Well, Hazel Grace, Sherlock is not short on metaphors. The nicotine patches are metaphors for Sherlock’s drug addiction, and less literal addiction to excitement and danger. Watson’s cane is a metaphor for his self-imposed handicaps, and his shaken confidence in himself following being shot in the line of duty. The woman in pink’s ill maintained wedding ring is a metaphor for her unhappy marriage. 221B Baker street’s state of disarray is a metaphor for Sherlock’s messy and chaotic mind. Lestrade’s grey hair is a metaphor for a very long career in a very stressful field. The list goes on.

Synecdoche:

                Lestrade stands for the authority and slight ineptitude of the police force. Mycroft is the power and polish of the government. Watson is the outsider who stands in for us, asking the questions we want answered to better understand how Sherlock, and his circle, operates.

Icons/Indexes/Symbols:

                The street signs during the taxi chase, the beeps of all the journalists’ phones receiving Sherlock’s texts, the find my mephone map, Sherlock’s mental map of London, the many signs tacked up throughout the lab, the pictures in the Cabbie’s car, the newspaper headlines.

Intertextuality:

                Barring the fact that A Study in Pink is a modern retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original story A Study in Scarlet, there are plenty of call outs to other genres and time periods. The frantic violin and harpsichord of the main sting is reminiscent of the Victorian era, and the Sherlock logo has the “roughed up” sort of look to be expected in crime shows. The structure of the story calls upon CSI and other popular “who dun it” murder dramas. The use of dramatic lighting, even at times when there should be bright, less sexy fluorescent lighting, is common for procedurals, most notably House where hospital rooms are lit more like daytime soap operas than operating theaters. The two leads acting as foils is a popular trope in film, and Watson’s “straight man” is right out of a sitcom.

Codes:

                Sherlock uses many codes of the crime and mystery drama, as well as the common “genius” personality traits demonstrated in the titular character. 

I could go on and on and on about every single minute detail, but really, I'd hate to be a hypocrite. 

Blog Post 1: Vague Zophilia

A Metaphor too Literal for Comfort

In all of advertising there are few products that can’t be effectively displayed and sold. Jewelry, food, cars, video games, music, all of it can be peddled through any number of mediums and still sell the consumer a complete picture of just what it is that they are missing and, subsequently, what they should be buying.

Except, that is, for perfume.

Perfume is an entirely olfactory experience, regardless of how pretty the bottle is or how relevant the celebrity branding, when it comes down to it perfume is a product that cannot truly be showcased in a television commercial or on the side of a city bus.

Yet despite this, we are bombarded with nonsensical beach scenes and wild horses running through fields and celebrities stripping naked at parties as if literally any of those things pertain at all to a little bottle of liquid that smells like cinnamon. The inability to truly showcase perfume has led to a necessary, if bizarre, evolution in advertising. Where perfume is almost always in the midst of surreal, unrelated scenes packed to the brim with tulle and glitter and blatant soft core pornography straight out of the 80’s.

This ad, shown above, chose a more erotic path, but it is just as disconnected from its product as the Cirque du Soleil nonsense Britney Spears is so fond of.

There’s a naked woman which, logically, makes sense if you subscribe to a “Sex Sells” mentality, and her nudity does a good job of capturing attention amidst a sea of identical, more fully clothed, ads. The woman is also beautiful, and clearly we’re supposed to do the leg work here and assume the message is “if you wear these good smelling chemicals, you too could be sexy like her.” That, is a rather straightforward link. In fact it’s downright Pavlovian, hoping to associate the perfume with being sexy and desirable in the minds of the viewers.

The woman is also decked out in, presumably, expensive and fashionable jewelry. In this, the ad is hoping to create another consumer association of wealth, prosperity, and success. The green silk the model is leaning on also taps our ready-made “green means money” heuristic, working in tandem to form a very explicit message, “buy our product, and you’ll be wealthy, fashionable, and successful too.”

Finally there’s the product itself, obscured by the sexy woman and shine to make it both mysterious and very physically coveted. The model wants it, and she seems nice, therefore I too want it. That may seem silly, but social validation is a powerful force of persuasion. Just ask Cialdini.

But, here’s where it gets weird.

There’s also a lion.

For some reason.

And that’s fine, lions are “kings of the jungle,” despite the fact that lions are neither in the jungle nor capable of forming an organized monarchy, but that’s beside the point. The point is the lion is there to symbolize power and strength and intrigue, but none of that changes the fact that in a very literal way there’s a naked woman spooning a giant bottle of perfume and leaning up against a lion.

That’s absolutely ludicrous.

And the ad is hoping that you don’t view it literally, it’s trying desperately to maintain an aura of fashion and artistry but that’s where, I would argue, it fails. This situation doesn’t form a “could be” scenario attainable by wearing a perfume, or a dreamscape somehow inspired by glorified vanilla extract, instead this scene is just too silly. It’s too improbable and impossible and it shatters the fantasy of wealth and excess it’s meant to inspire.

It’s hard to be taken with the idea of a perfume that can make you sexy and powerful and rich when it includes some really uncomfortable zoophilic overtones. And once that illusion of fantasy is ruined, the other elements, the nudity, the giant perfume bottle, the jewelry, all of it seems ridiculous and out of place. Instead of walking away aspiring to be that model, the consumer walks away confused and aroused in a very disconcerting way.