Thelma & Louise, an analytical reading

Made in 1991, this movie has 80's culture caked on top of the 90's hope. Hope for what? That's the question, isn't it?

This is one of those, "it wasn't our fault," adventure stories. Thelma and Louise just wanted a weekend vacation. What they got was trouble, trouble, and then more trouble on top of that. The thing is, these characters weren't really living until they were living the "wrong" way.

These women managed to completely transcend gender roles from one end of the spectrum to the other in the movie. In the beginning they were ladylike, naive, and feminine. At the end, they were the men they had needed or not needed in their lives. They had become that which they were denied.

I really liked this movie. It was a classic action formula with a feminist twist. It wasn't an advocacy for gender equality so much as it was an advocacy for respect.

The bottom line is that on a cliff, when push comes to shove it's all or nothing.

LET'S PLAY PICK-A-ROLE-MODEL!

The David Gauntlett chapter, "Directions For Living," posed a good question. What is a role model? He went on to describe six different role models which are prominent in present or past media. I was a little surprised when I realized that most of these role model types are present in my mind.

My straightforward success role model would be Azadeh Moaveni who is an Iranian-American journalist (a foreign correspondent). She did struggle a bit when she was living in Iran, but that was after her successful career was well established. She and her German-Iranian husband now live in London with their son.

My triumph over difficult circumstances role model is Stephen Hawking who has a brilliant mind inside a very limited body. I don't pretend that I can comprehend the science of his writing and theorems, but I greatly admire his intelligence and success.

My challenging stereotypes role model is Queen Latifah who is female, black, slightly overweight, a lesbian, and ENTERTAINING! The thing is that I was a fan of hers long before I realized what stereotypes were. When she would guest star on "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" she cracked me up. I've read things about her and I've seen interviews and she just seems like a really decent person, which is always a refreshing thing from Hollywood.

My wholesome role model is Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family. My parents have been members of Focus on the Family since I could remember and I enjoyed reading the literature which Dr. Dobson would send to members. Though I didn't always agree with everything he wrote, I would always appreciate the good scholarship in which it was written.

My outsider role model is NOT Marilyn Manson. Ick. However I do agree with Gauntlett's sardonic parenthetical statement that these outsider types who defy conventions typically don't defy the conventional money which their denial of conventions rakes in by the truckload. I'm not entirely sure that I have an outsider role model.

My family role model is my mama, Sharon Elizabeth Hourigan. She could also be categorized as a triumph over difficult circumstances role model. She's had a difficult childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. She is a good mother, a good wife, and a supportive Christian. As I am growing up I am beginning to know her as a fellow woman and that makes me admire her even more.

Those are my main role models. I have more under sub-categories of various things. However, considering what Gauntlett ultimately said about role models being, "inspiring or comforting figures who offer postive-looking examples of how life can be lived," (p.231) I feel confident that I have a diverse enough collection of influences to make something of myself and maybe even inspire a few people along the way.

I Grow Weary of Strong Heroines

Ever hear of overcompensation? Well, the 90's was full of it, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a fine indicator. Feminists want chick heroes, guys want hot chicks, and television stations want money. The grand compromise ended up being something which encouraged me to turn off my TV and get to my chemistry homework.
I had a couple of friends who were crazy about the show and I would just roll my eyes. The movie was one thing. The movie was entertaining. The show had some promise, but I couldn't stand the characters. I don't understand Joss Whedon. He's pumped out some ace stuff, but I could only tolerate Buffy in barely measurable doses.
In "The Buffy Effect," Rachel Fudge seemed as cynical as me. She frequently mentioned the subtle details of offerings to girl power, which was a prevalent theme in the 90's. She described Buffy who could not only take care of herself, but she could take care of her friends as well and she looked good doing it.
I personally don't take issue with a girl who has power. I'm a fan of women who can kick butt. I just don't like the image thing. The fact that she's the perfect little high school Valley girl annoys me to no end.
In general, I feel that lately, creating a female character who is given more power than the male characters is more of a device for political correctness than anything else. Just like the "token black guy" thrown in the mix so that people don't complain, the strong heroine keeps the feminists happy.

That brings me to "The Phenomenon of Lara Croft," written by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky. I would consider myself to be a moderately hardcore gamer, but I had no idea how massive of a following the Tomb Raider games had amassed in the name of their protagonist. To tell the truth, it made me laugh. I personally am a huge fan of these games, but that's because they're fun! They are written well and the situations are exotic. The fact that Croft is a hobby archaeologist always pleased me. Being a wealthy English Lady, she has the means to go on all of these adventures and we can live vicariously through her.
Deuber-Mankowsky mentions the multi-dimensional enjoyment audiences reap from such a character. Women like that she's strong and kicks butt and men like that she's beautiful and has large breasts.
I never paid attention to the chick; I just played the games. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, the only thing Croft's body did for me or my brother was shared humor. Ultimately, I wasn't satisfied with the analysis.

Never Just a Girl; Sometimes Just a Person

Even the psychoanalysis-happy German fun-face Freud once said, "Sometimes a dream is just a dream." Maybe Gayle Wald never heard that. Well, it shows.
When I introduce myself to people I usually say, "Hello. I'm Elizabeth," not "Hello. I'm just a girl." I never paid much attention to the deeper meanings and symbolism of that No Doubt song and now that I've read Wald's analysis, I'm paying even less attention. It's not a song that I really enjoyed. It was one of those Top 40 singles and as I understand the industry, the more mainstream an artist is, the less likely they are to have a strong set of ideological beliefs which they actually hold to, act on, and write about. Therefore, the song was never more than pop culture fluff to me.

HOWEVER, for the sake of argument, learning, and all that fun stuff, let's suppose that song wasn't just fluff to me. Suppose I actually thought about it. I would still disagree with much of what Wald was asserting. Ward used the term, "girlhood" many times without really explaining what it meant. What is girlhood? I could certainly interpret it on my own, but then the article would mean something totally different.

Also, Wald went into feminism and independent girl rock which No Doubt and Gwen Stefani were never really (or officially) a part of, so that mismatched connection counter-productively served to invalidate most of the points which would have been somewhat convincing.

This video from YouTube is the girl band t.a.T.u.'s "All the Things She Said." If Wald had kick-started this analysis with this song as the foundation, I would have been convinced from the get-go. I don't like this artist or song anymore than the other (in fact I personally can't stand either one), but it's a much better example of girlhood and feminism in music. FYI the girls kiss each other in this vid, so if you're not a huge fan of lesbianism don't watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1agzp_PM-Z4

SOPHISTICATED, EDUCATED WOMEN WROTE ABOUT THINGS I'VE BEEN THINKING SINCE I WAS EIGHT.

In "Who(se) Am I," Imani Perry explained her observations of how sex is a commodity and women are objectified in the Hip-Hop industry. It's not just hip-hop, either; rap is also a guilty culprit - maybe even more so than hip-hop.
First of all, I was beyond relieved to read this, because these issues outrage me daily. I still would not define myself as a feminist, but what I'm discussing here is something so explicit that even a tool would have to stop and think about it.
Perry explained that this was present far before the 1990's, but it became unavoidably prevalent in this decade because of some different factors, such as pornography's transcendence into American popular culture. This included porn stars and exotic dancers becoming mainstream celebrities and lesbianism publicly becoming a heterosexual man's fantasy.

Perry noted that hip-hop and rap music videos have a very predictable pattern and form. The men are singing and rapping (and being deeply expressive) and the women are scantily clad and their sole function seems to be to sway suggestively and look sexy. They are not represented as people, but rather, as things. It is suggested that these sexy things are the property of a rich man instead of an equal partner in an honest relationship endeavor. I was a child in the 90's but even then I was appalled by similar things I saw on TV.
Perry drew two female hip-hop artists as examples. One seemed to perpetuate the problem of female objectification by displaying herself as an object, and the other sought to combat it by being herself with attitude and even "transcending gender categories" through tomboyishness. The first was Lil Kim and the second was Missy Elliot. The above photo I've included of Lil Kim is shocking but this was taken before she had plastic surgery on her breasts and face. She now has large implants, a smaller nose, and more pronounced lips. She also now sports very blond hair and blue eye contacts. It's personally disappointing for me to have seen this, because she was naturally beautiful and now she just looks fake. I'm not much of a hip-hop fan, but I still admire women like Missy Elliot, Alicia Keys, India.Arie, and Eve. I'd like to think that they are changing their industry with their music.

In "The More You Subtract, The More You Add," Jean Kilbourne plays a broken record in discussing the "weightism" which fashion trends have wrought upon our society and others. I've felt it. I'd like to be awesome and say that I'm impervious to it, but that would be the biggest lie I could ever tell. I began feeling self-conscious about my body in the fourth grade. I've continued to struggle with self-image issues since then. Though I choose not to feed this gnawing worry, it will always be there. I can't make it go away. No amount of self-fulfilling work, praying, hobbies, habits, or routines will ever make me feel 100% okay about my body. I'm at a comfortable 95% and I think that's the best it'll get. It's not because of the way I was made, it's because of the ideological glasses which were placed on me. Since I learned to see through them, it's difficult for me to see without them. I'm doing my best, though.

A Perspective From a Non-Feminist Female Gamer

I'd like to speak my peace about these gender issues in video games since Gauntlett was so generous as to finally touch on it (making it free game, haha). He seriously had me holding my breath for a while.

Lara Croft has a ridiculously unrealistic and obviously misogynistic-male-fantasy-generated body. There is no way I can deny it, nor would I want to. However, for me this is a humorous example of reality. Many video games designed by men more often than not will have idealized-looking women, if any at all. It's a simple fact but I don't pay much mind to it; they're very fun games to play and pointing out the ridiculousness of these "sexy" characters allow my brother and I to joke together. Anyway the only thing that bothers me is how exactly Lady Croft has the strength to climb mountains, swing on vines, and fight bad guys if she doesn't consume nourishment. Whatever.

I must disagree with the study which Gauntlett cites in chapter 4. It stated that US college students see male game characters as less "sexually provocative." No, sir! PLEASE! I once made a collage poster of male heroes and villains from my favorite games, and this was a fairly large poster. They have just as much sex appeal as their female counterparts - if not more, depending on the depth of their character development and storylines. In fact, I believe that the double standard doesn't really exist in many games of a certain genre. In the games of which I speak, the women are often emotionally stronger and posses more skills than their over-romanticized and slightly androgynous-looking male counterparts.

Marketing in the world of video games is a little different than that of non-interactive entertainment. It relies less on linear imagery and more on the promise of realistic graphics and fluid game play. For instance, Bungie's Halo games are highly combat-oriented. Yes, most of the characters are men, including the alien villains, but there are several women marines, and they are just as skilled and hardcore as the men; in fact the only reason you really know that they're women is by their voices. The only one of the main characters that's a woman is Cortana, the Master Chief's A.I. She is in no way a minor character, and excepting Halo 3 (when she had been captured and subsequently used by the Flood), she isn't a damsel in distress. She is a voice of authority, conscience (sort of the Jiminy Cricket equivalent), and direction; and she is the Master Chief's closest friend.

I guess the bottom line I'm coming to here is that yes, there are some stereotypical women in video games, but when they are being stereotyped, it's exaggerated to the point that the ideological image loses all validity. You can't take them seriously. Because you can't take them seriously, I don't see them as a threat.
Also, I realize that there are generally less games based around female characters or containing female main characters than male characters, but I don't really read too much into that. Most of the time, it's due more to historical context and accuracy than it is to a purposeful bias of writing.

Niche Literature, Feminism, and You

In "Feminist Perspectives on the Media," Liesbet van Zoonen outlines the various sects of feminism, their views, and their channels/views (or lack thereof) in/about the media. The article covered a lot of ground, but I found myself focusing on specific things in my reading.
I saw a pattern and felt that women and fashion magazines were taking a lot of flak, some of which I believe was unfairly dealt. Romance novels and pornography definitely deserved the flak, though. That's all I'll say about them.
Anyway, magazines are part of what I think of as niche literature. The way I see it is that people buy and subscribe to magazines to read articles pertaining to a specific genre and catering to a specific demographic. They represent values and hobbies, and when someone immerses his/herself in them, they can help to structure that individual's identity. It's interesting to note that some see certain magazines as perpetuating sex-role stereotyping and they are therefore contrary to the feminist agenda; but there are others who see certain magazines as a vessel of liberation for the average, everyday, oppressed and unappreciated woman. I don't really see them as either. I see them as being marketed to a specific demographic. Whether or not that particular demographic actually exists seemingly doesn't really matter, considering some of these magazines have been around for decades.
In some ways the idea of niche literature could promote the intellectual development of women by allowing them to independently carve out niches and choose their community.