#lookinglearning

“An active/passive heterosexual division of labour has similarly controlled narrative structure. According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification” (Mulvey, 838). 

I have been thinking a lot about what it means for women/ people who are read as female to perform pain. In part as a result of Hillary Clinton getting pneumonia, and Donald Trump making a logical leap (that many American voters followed, and will continue to all the way to the polls), as well as someone close to me needing emergency surgery for a problem with her ovary. Although Mulvey’s piece is about sexual objectification on screen, I think the objectification and subsequent writing off of women and their pain is related. 

In Women’s Studies, we talk often about the creation of, and access to knowledge. Who gets to decide how and when and what knowledge to make, as well as dictating the power structure  that will be represented both in the creation of that knowledge, and in the knowledge itself. 

In reading Evie’s post, I too was struck by Mulvey’s comment that 

“Although the film is really being shown, is there to be seen, conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world. Among other things, the position of the spectators in the cinema is blatantly one of repression of their exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire on to the performer” (836) -- and thinking about the moments when female pain is made public in the real world, but kept private or hush hush on screen.

This week’s curation and the readings made me think a lot about the way that I consume performances in different contexts. The Dolan readings clarified for me two ways that I think that I and others consume performances. Dolan’s teaching philosophy, of providing her students with theories so that they can observe and think critically about what they are seeing constitutes a learning mode of consumption. Her thoughts, and Mulvey’s, on looking and observing passively in the viewpoint of the creator of the performance constitutes a looking mode of consumption. 

As Evie articulated, and Magary in the “The Internet has a ‘Problem’ Problem”, each of these are problematic in their own ways. It is important to be aware and critical of the underlying biases in performances like Foreman’s and fight against the prejudices that cause them but performances are also about enjoyment, humor and awe of aesthetic beauty. “A rose is a rose is a rose.” 

This is a difficulty which I often face as a theater student and a person who simply likes to enjoy a good show. For example, usually when I watch Adult Swim videos, I am watching with my friends as a late night form of amusement, not to analyze it. But my friends and I, like most college students are guilty of not looking to closely at the things we enjoy, because we might see something we don’t feel comfortable with. 

Dolan writes in her piece “Ideology in Performance: Looking through the Male Gaze” that, “Voyeurism is ‘naturalized’ in representation constructed for the male spectator. But calling attention to it in the postmodern context does not make it comic, so mach as it reifies it and allows it to continue operating as a referent” (Dolan, 55). Here Dolan is addressing an issue which plagues media, particularly forms of comedic media, in several contexts outside of just voyeurism. There has become a pattern in which problematic ideologies, particularly in relation to the representation of women and people of color, in film and other sources of media, are perpetuated over and over, yet this time by people who recognize the problematic behavior and address it, therefore “fixing” the problem because they’re “in on the joke too.”  

This theme is evident in otherwise progressive political satires such as “Unbreakable: Kimmy Schmidt” where a white actress plays a character who is later revealed to have native american heritage. The character, Jacqueline Voorhees has a flashback to her teenage years being raised “Jackie Lynn” who later rebels against her family and culture to follow an elite upper class white life in New York City (complete with contacts that change her eye color to the more easily distinguishable “white” color of blue.) 

On the note of ‘think-piece culture’ and the need to hyperanalyze everything, Drew Magary writes in “The Internet has a ‘Problem’ Problem”: “Now 90% of all internet think-pieces are dedicated to explaining why you should have a problem with something you originally had no problem with. OPEN YOUR EYES, SHEEPLE....There’s a whole black hole of the internet that spends all day up its own ass, endlessly worried about approving of pop culture rather than actually fucking enjoying it. This is shitty, pointless writing.” Is Drew Magary emblematic of what Laura Mulvey calls “fetishistic scopophilia,” or making the object beautiful in and of itself? For the purposes of her piece “Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema,” Mulvey talks about the object as the woman. However, I am applying this to spectators’, often male spectators’, consistent need to make art—particularly that which provokes critique of social and institutional power—all about their own pleasure. This is something I think about often. As a Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major with a concentration in Race and Ethnicity Studies, I am consistently scolded for not ‘letting people’ enjoy things without any analysis, academic or otherwise. It is the ‘ignorance is bliss’ mindset, the idea that television and film exist always as a break from reality, as a way to take one’s mind off of the ‘real’ problems and stresses going on in his life. However, this is not only a narrow and dangerous approach to art and spectatorship, but one that is somewhat delusional as well. On the point of delusion, I turn to Mulvey who writes that “Although the film is really being shown, is there to be seen, conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world. Among other things, the position of the spectators in the cinema is blatantly one of repression of their exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire on to the performer” (836). Thus, the spectator is not simply ‘turning off’ and ‘enjoying,’ but rather is implicated in the performance as well.  

When I read Magary’s words, I cannot help but think of Jill Dolan’s piece “Performance as Feminist Pedagogy,” in which she explains that “I had to chart my own way through feminist studies because my department offered no coursework in the field... The faculty person I first approached to advice my dissertation on feminism and theater spectatorship turned me down because it was feminist and ‘political’; he refused to mentor me, even though I’d worked closely with him in other capacities throughout my graduate career” (122). Who is Magary referencing when he says that there is a problem with think-pieces “...explaining why you should have a problem with something you originally had no problem with.” Clearly, somebody had a problem. That is why they wrote the think-piece. Further, the internet can provide a great platform for marginalized voices, such as Jill Dolan’s, to gain relevance in the discourse on traditional art, Feminism, and intersecting oppression. Thus, it is spectators such as Magary that shed a light not on the problem of the feminist critique and analysis of performance, but rather on the necessity of it. 

Article: “The Internet Has A ‘Problem’ Problem,” The Concourse 

“Now 90 percent of all internet thinkpieces are dedicated to explaining why you should have a problem with something you originally had no problem with. OPEN YOUR EYES, SHEEPLE. Don't you see that keyboard cat is a way of enforcing traditional heteronormative privilege in America today? The cat is wearing a house robe, which means that it he/she is clearly being forced into a domesticated, subservient role against his/her free will. NOT FUNNY. NOT ON MY WATCH. There's a whole black hole of the internet that spends all day up its own ass, endlessly worried about approving of pop culture rather than actually fucking enjoying it.”

Article: Why the Internet can't stop overanalyzing 'Too Many Cooks,' The Daily Dot

“The trend of hyper-analysis isn’t inherently a bad thing; this is not the point of this piece... Knowledge has become broader, and people are far more capable of articulating concepts that used to be privileged knowledge and are now widespread discursive canon. In principle, this is a fantastic thing. Access never hurt anybody in and of itself. 

But what thinkpiece culture has added to the mix is the idea that because we are now able to analyze things in this way, we must analyze it this way and, more importantly, we must analyze anything and everything in this way. It’s led to the widespread revocation of the idea that sometimes the cigar is just a cigar, that the thing can just exist without being defined by what is said of it. As a culture we’ve been handed the raw, crude materials of textual analysis, without the framework or the necessary discussions of when to say when.   

Article: LOOKING FOR MEANING IN “TOO MANY COOKS,” The New Yorker

“It’s terrifying, genius, amazing or insane... What did it all mean? Maybe everything: it was a postmodern satire of television and Web culture, a commentary on the power of nostalgia, a glimpse at the violence that lurks within us all. Perhaps it was a deconstruction on the very idea of virality itself: it’s the Internet that has too many cooks, and all of us, together, with our sharing and repeated clever comments and urge to be the first to share what thousands of others have already shared, have spoiled the broth. Or else it meant nothing, and quit it, you dummies.”

Article: “’Too Many Cooks’ is a Sublime Postmodern Masterpiece,” Sequart Organization 

“The label is now the thing, and the thing the label. This sort of reversal, between symbolism and substance, is strongly associated with the postmodern condition, in which representations like images can seem more ‘real’ than ‘real’ experience.”

Interview: “'Too Many Cooks' creator tries to explain his awesomely bizarre Adult Swim short,” Entertainment Weekly

Interviewer: What does this all mean? People are going to dissect this thing and pull out the themes and deeper implications. What do you want the takeaway to be?                                                                          

SUPPLEMENT: Election 2016: Too Many Cooks