Judith Butler: Gender Trouble

Why does Judith Butler call gender “trouble? She starts off by explaining that the word trouble always caries a negative connotation with it, instead of thinking of trouble as something negative, we should embrace the idea of the indeterminacy of gender. “To make trouble was, within the reigning discourse of my childhood, something one should never do precisely because that would get one in trouble. The rebellion and its reprimand seemed to be caught up in the subtle ruse of power: the prevailing law threatened one with trouble, even put one in trouble, all to keep one out of trouble” (Butler 2540). When Butler speaks about power, I believe she is speaking about the power an individual has in the rebellion against the “prevailing law”. Trouble is hard to escape when it comes to gender because trouble seems to threaten and linger all around it in its attempts to keep one out of trouble. Trouble is a paradoxical phenomenon because it convinces us to stay away from it but if you are a subject it is inevitable. “Power seemed to be more than an exchange between subjects or a relation of constant inversion between a subject and an Other; indeed, power appeared to operate in the production of that very binary frame for thinking about gender” (Butler 2540). To be a female is to be subject to the male gaze power, therefore, to be female is to always be in trouble.

Why does Judith Butler speak about the body so much and why is it important? Speaking about the body is imperative to Judith Butler’s argument because it fits into the idea of inner and outer expression. Butler starts off by speaking about this “otherness” and the pollution of the body and how this all was constructed in society. “Any discourse that establishes the boundaries of the body serves the purpose of instating and naturalizing certain taboos regarding the appropriate limits, postures, and modes of exchange that define what it is that constitutes bodies” (Butler 2544) Bodies are seen to have boundaries, and when these boundaries are trespassed (taboos) they become demonized, are seen as pollution to the body, unnatural and uncivilized. Homosexuality is seen as crossing a boundary, which shows how bodies are permeable and impermeable in the power structure of hegemonic order. “Those sexual practices in both homosexual and heterosexual contexts that open surfaces and orifices to erotic signification or close down others effectively reinscribe the boundaries of the body along new cultural lines” (Butler 2545). I think in this piece, Butler wants to expose the power of hegemonic order and show how it has been naturalized through society, she then makes us realize that these “bodies” and “polluted actions” are not as black and white as we make them seem. Bodies and actions can cross boundaries as they are completely. Butler also speaks about abjection as the process of how we constitute “others” in our society. She goes on Young’s point about fitting into the hegemonic order, identities have been created to separate each other through exclusion and domination. “…homophobia, and racism, the repudiation of bodies for their sex, sexuality, and/or color is an ‘expulsion’ followed by a ‘repulsion’ that founds and consolidates culturally hegemonic identities along sex/race/sexuality axes of differentiation” (Butler 2546). Butler applies this to our body and excrement and explains the division between “inner” and “outer” worlds that causes us to form this idea of an “other”. Boundaries are being passed during the process of excrement, therefore, bodies show permeability as well. This relates to gender because Butler argues that gender is a permeable line that is not fixed with the actual anatomy.

Why is drag such an imperative point in her argument? Drag captures the epitome of her argument and acts as a proof or an example of the dynamics between the anatomy, gender identity and gender performance. “As much as drag creates a unified picture of ‘woman’ (what its critics often oppose), it also reveals the distinctness of those aspects of gendered experience which are falsely naturalized as a unity through the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence.” (Butler 2550). Drag is the proof that just because you have a penis, does not mean you have to act a certain way, but it also proves that you will be trained a certain way according to culture.

My favorite line within the piece that Butler presents is “That disciplinary production of gender effects a false stabilization of gender in the interests of the heterosexual construction and regulation of sexuality within the reproductive domain.” this line tells us that the construction of gender may operate as a part of a larger power structure of heterosexuality within our culture.

What If Katniss Didn’t Have to Choose Between Peeta and Gale?

NPR’s Linda Holmes wrote a great article about the gender dynamics in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and concluded, “…you could argue that Katniss’ conflict between Peeta and Gale is effectively a choice between a traditional Movie Girlfriend and a traditional Movie Boyfriend.” I do love the way Holmes puts this.

Minus the whole point about monogamy and polygamy, I believe that this article highlights Butler’s point about gender being performative. When Katniss is with Gale, she plays more of a nurturing role. When Katniss is with Peeta however, she plays a more masculine and protective role. Her gender role switches depending on the person she’s with, proving that sex and gender are two completely separate things and that gender is based on performance.

In “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Laura Mulvey explicitly states that she is out to annihilate the, frankly, pervy delights audience members extract from their experiences at the cinema. Despite her aggression, she claims to be doing us a solid: through her destruction of the subconsciously engrained voyeuristic “pleasure centre”, Mulvey guarantees that we will receive “the thrill that comes from leaving the past behind without simply rejecting it” (2085), which will ultimately result in learning “a new language of desire” (2085). Basically, it is sort of like she is forcefully changing our car insurance on our behalf – she is switching out a lacking plan we are currently covered by (ie: where the pleasure of observation is derived entirely from the degradation of the female form to mere source of spectacle) in exchange for a more beneficial/substantial one.

That false reality we enter each time we sit in a pitch black theatre and the film is projected onto the screen in front of us? Our delusions about the similarities between ourselves and the characters we observe in that film? Mulvey wants us to get rid of all that, as well; to destroy our suspension of disbelief and to remain wary of the fictitious nature of films and the storylines they depict. We do not fight the bad guys and win. We do not get the smoking hot babe whom we have saved from danger countless times. A film’s protagonist is not the “projection of [our] repressed desire” (2087). Quit being a ninny, Mulvey is ultimately saying.

Scopophilia is defined as the “pleasure of looking”. Through our cinematic experiences, we are given the power to “[take] other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (2086). As spectators, we easily attain this power via the stark visual contrast of the movie theatre-going experience: Again, we are in a dark auditorium. All the while, these luminescent images flash on the screen before us. The physical divide between ourselves (people present in the real world and in real-time) and the manifestations on-screen (immortalized beings in an artificial construct of a world) gives the illusion that we are looking in on a private world. What is so appealing about this is that it is not a two-way street: we can do the observing without our self-consciousness being heightened by being observed ourselves. We can be “obsessive voyeurs” (2088) and get as creepy as we like and no one is the wiser.

 However, this perverse joy is almost restricted to men. Their active leering preys on the forcedly imposed passivity of the female, who makes an appearance in film primarily to be gawked at. She plays this role for two distinct audiences: the males within the story and those in the auditorium. This degradation of the female form is promoted further by stylistic choices, like the camera’s prolonged focus on fragments of the body.

 Women can be objectified and reduced to masturbation material, sure. But men? Not on your life. Mulvey states that this is due to their inability to “bear the burden of sexual objectification” (2089). The observer in the audience cannot take it upon himself to gaze at his eroticized likeness. This leaves the male protagonist to bring out the action and further the plot.

Freud explain to us the Oedipus Complex, a subject I find very fascinating. Freud relates every child’s latent desires to the tragedy of King Oedipus, in which through the act of destiny, he slays his father and weds his mother. The story’s appeal transcends even to our time because of how us, the audience, are able to relate to Oedipus. Freud theorizes that men all have sexual impulses towards their mothers beginning in childhood, and have murderous desires towards their father. Oedipus meets a tragic end, in which he blinds himself after realizing his horrendous acts. His demise serves as a repulsive force for us to refrain from committing similar acts, which explains why most people have their desires repressed.

I believe most people with a healthy mind would find Freud’s theory absurd, given the morals and traditions we’ve followed up to today. Freud takes our desires to a completely radical level, but still, we can’t deny that Freud’s ideas are logical in some sense. Admittedly, I had a strong attachment to my mother and many instances of hatred for my father when I was a child. If we assume that it is our morals that prevent us from going in the same path as Oedipus, would the desires Freud believes us to have still be repressed if our morals are altered? I don’t suppose that question can be answered unless we look into a parallel universe.

I would like to challenge Freud’s theory by talking about some of things he fails to address, that is: homosexuality and pedophilia. The Oedipus Complex explains our latent desires for the opposite sex parent, but in the case of those who are homosexual, the theory falls apart. Likewise, how would Freud explain the desires of pedophiles? Freud’s theory falls under the premise that people are inherently heterosexual and are attracted to people of similar or older age, but as we know it, many cases stray from that norm. Given the time in which Freud came up with the theory, topics such as homosexuality and pedophilia were probably not so prevalent in society, but certainly not absent. I would love to see how Freud would respond to such topics, even if it requires a separate theory.

Freud continues by talking about our dreams, in which he says that the latent content we perceive are only a part of a not-yet-deciphered transcript. He believes that dreams are conveyed in another language, in which we must interpret its meaning through a intricate series of steps to find the underlying meaning.

After reflecting on one of my recent dreams, I don’t believe that all dreams have as much of the underlying, manifest content, that Freud thinks they might have. The dream I reflected on, and am a little too embarrassed to share, was quite straight-forward in the sense that it didn’t require the complex process of condensation, displacement and translating the means of representation. This process would be more useful for dreams I find completely random, confusing, or seemingly irrelevant to my life. I never indulge too much on those dreams, so I cannot confirm that there is, in fact, a true underlying meaning.

In a previous lecture, we talked about Lacan’s theory of how we (as people) project idealized versions of ourselves in mirrors and how we desire to become this idealized version. A thought that came across my mind were how patients with anorexia nervosa correspond with the process of the “mirror stage”. Those with anorexia nervosa project a negative image of themselves, namely, an overweight/fattened version. This leads me to thinking of how this may correlate to their initial viewing of themselves as a baby/toddler, and how that may somehow have a lasting effect later in their life. Rather than what Lacan implies, that we strive for this projection, those with anorexia nervosa strives against their mirrored projection.

The drag show does not have to be a source of aporia. Yes drag performers can act out two conflicting roles (woman trapped in man’s body vs man playing with entrenched gender roles), but it is a rash generalization to say that individual performers in drag do not know which role they are acting out.  It does not make sense to think that a drag queen does not know whether or not he is actually more comfortable as a woman or if he is performing for the sake of satire.
My confusion is whether both views of drag can be viewed as a choice between the two or if they constitute a mixture that cannot really be combined or separated.

Also this clip from Modern Family
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H07vN7DstZA&w=560&h=315]

Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema’  published in 1975, sparked a major discussion regarding the “interweaving of erotic pleasure within film, its meaning and in particular, the central place of the image of the woman” (2084). This essay was among the first to create a shift of film theory to a psychoanalytic framework, commonly influenced from the works of Freud and Lacan. Mulvey’s essay challenges the pleasure we experience from cinema by raising the concept of “women as an image and man as bearer of the look” (2088). 

Within cinematic displays, as a viewer we are “offered a number of possible pleasures” (2086). The first of pleasures we are offered is scopophilia or deriving pleasure from looking. “Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the component instincts of sexuality which exist as drives quite independently of the erotogenic zones. At this point, he associated scopophilia with taking other people in as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (2086). By participating in the cinema, a viewer is immediately cast into a scopophilia based environment. The cinema “portrays a hermetically concealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy” (2086). The darkness of the theatre contrasting with the brightness of the projection also helps to promote the illusion of a voyeuristic separation. 

The second of pleasures we are offered in cinematic viewings is scopophilia developed into a narcissistic aspect. Most mainstream films pay attention to the human form. The characters within a cinematic production are recognized with likeness of the “human face, body, the relationships between human form and its surroundings- the visible presence of the person in the world” (2087). As a movie goer, the male viewer connects with the male protagonist or hero of the story. The character who has the big muscles, the big house in hollywood, the sports car and hot babe on his arm. Sympathizing with a character in this way allows the viewer to “act out a complex process of likeness and difference or the glamourous impersonates the ordinary” (2087). 

This narcissistic aspect of scopophilia directly related to Lacan’s theory involving the mirror stage within child development. Lacan implements the concept that when a child first views themselves in a mirror, their self-image becomes more complete. Due to the lack of motor skills, when a young child sees themselves in a mirror, they feel a sense of perfection that isn’t felt from their own body. The same theory applies in the cinema. An image on the screen creates a sense of recognition and misrecognition for the viewer: the image recognized is conceived as the reflected body of the self, but its misrecognition as superior projects this body outside itself as an ideal ego, the alienated subject which, re-introjected as the ego ideal. The viewer can lose their sense of self and ego as they re-imagine themselves living the life of the protagonist. 

Mulvey contrasts these two concepts of scopophilia with a woman as the direct object of a viewer. Within films throughout hollywood, women have been objectified as an image of the determining male gaze. “The female figure possesses strong exhibitionist roles, in which women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so they can be said to connote a ‘looked-at-ness’”(2088). The place of a women in cinematic productions creates “an indispensable element of spectacle in a narrative film” (2088). Her presence often works against the storyline, to freeze the flow of action in erotic contemplation. “The female character provokes and represents an idea that spurs a will or inspires a fear/love within the hero. The woman causes the man to act the way he does- but, the woman herself has not the slightest importance” (2089). 

Mulvey published this essay in 1975, during a time where most films portrayed a male hero with a female love interest. Films and television have changed dramatically in the last 38 years. An example of this would be the popular HBO series ‘Game of Thrones’. This show portrays several different story lines revolving around a private sphere of family (Starks), blood rivalry (Lannisters), a female protagonist with a male love interest (Kahlessi), an orphan male with a traditional female love interest (Snow) among many others. I feel that this show demonstrates the concept of scopophilia to an endless degree on many different spectrums for every type of viewer. There are many other modern cinematic works that stray from her theory of a woman as an objective image; however, the conversation she struck at the time of this articles publication pressured hollywood to re-examine the filmic strategies of classical hollywood.

                In T.S. Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent, he situates tradition as the hallmark of significant works of art rather than uniqueness. Tradition can be loosely defined in the framework of Eliot’s writing as related to the reconstruction of the past or “archaeological reconstruction” (955). Eliot highlights the affinity of people to emphasize the individuality of a work of art as opposed to evaluating it based on how it fits into the existing tradition of art. Eliot states, “We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, […], we endeavor to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed” (956). This idea of isolating one component of a work underscores one of his major points which is that you can’t divorce the work of art from it context steeped in both the traditional past and the present. He states, “You cannot value [the artist] alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead” (956). According to Eliot, this is where a work of art finds its value and significance. However, Eliot doesn’t advocate for a mindless imitation of works past. He states, “novelty is better than repetition” (956). He promotes an active participation in tradition – in the learning and reproduction of it. He states, “[tradition] cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour” (956). He details the historical sense which he deems necessary to be a prolific artist past the years of one’s youth. He defines the historical sense as the perception of the “pastness of the past” coupled with a “feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order” (956). This simultaneous order isn’t depicted as static but constantly changing as new works of art are added to it which reorders the whole structure. In this way, the new and contemporary alters the past or more specifically our perception of the past. He states, “The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art towards the whole readjusted” (957). This idea of some sort of trans-historical gallery of works of art with values determined by their comparison to one another seems plausible enough – although perhaps a little problematic. It is in my opinion, human nature to order entities of any kind and to make groupings of classifications. However, Eliot asserts that this order is in no way hierarchial. Order and comparison, in a way, connotes judgments of value. He states, “[the poet] must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same” (957). He speaks of a “refinement” rather than “improvement” but that also seems to suggest a progression and judgment. It is hard to situate what exactly the basis of this order is.

                Eliot states, “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry” (958). Eliot aims for art to be seen as a science with different elements that combine to make a new work of art. In order to do this he states that “the progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” (958). This “depersonalization” divorces the artist from his work. As practical as this may be, it seems to be in opposition to his emphasis of context in the beginning of his argument in Tradition and the Individual Talent. He posits the more mature artist as a “more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations” (958). He states, “the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material” (959). This suggests that writing should be less cathartic for the author and more directed towards eliciting a desired effect upon the audience. This requires a mastery over the author’s self and their emotions. This provides more mastery over the audience and the desired response. This discipline involved and degree of separation/removal from the writing is required, for example, in the editing process. He states, “The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together” (959). He devalues the emotions and personality of the author in favor of “the intensity of the artistic process” and “technical excellence” (961).  For Eliot, this removal of the author creates a variety that would not be able to sustain itself otherwise.

Separate thoughts:

Can one actually divorce themselves from their writings? The artists and works he cites as good examples of that – do they continuously follow this pattern or do intrusions of their personalities always crop up in veiled ways?

(I could be interpreting this wrong but….)

His order of works of art and tradition might be seen as putting greater emphasis on “European” and “traditional” literature but he also states that “the poet must be very conscious of the main current, which does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations” (957). He emphasizes the “whole of literature” on several occasions. He also states that he has “suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all poetry that has ever been written” (958). Although he uses the male European writers in his examples and they are inextricably tied to what many think of as canonical or traditional writers/artist, he does speak of a whole that deviates from what is currently popular because what is popular today may be less so tomorrow. Perhaps we give him less credit for being inclusive because he doesn’t give specific examples of artists we think of as outside the standard conception of tradition such as female artists. When he says “all” he could mean “all”. Here again, context is valuable. He is perhaps writing from a context – a history that is exclusionary – and therefore we can’t really judge his theories as separate from that context.

Laura Mulvey: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

• What is Scopophilia? In short, it is pleasure in looking. Mulvey uses Freud as her vehicle to explain his theory of scopophilia to further progress how scopophilia affects women: “..Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the compenent instincts of sexuality which exist as drives quite independently of the erotogenic zones… Although the instinct is modified by other factors, inparticular the constitution of the ego, it continues to exist as the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object. At the extreme, it can become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms whose onlu sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, and objectified other” (Mulvey 2086). Mulvey uses Freud’s point of scopophilia, being the pleasure of looking at others for satisfaction, to argue that women in movies have become the object to look at for pleasure.

  Is this point always true? In terms of the “peeping tom” I would have to agree. Peeping toms are mainly known to be committed by men, having the woman become the object. I think nowadays however, movies such as Magic Mike cast the male as the ‘eye candy’, or object to be looked at for pleasure. Channing Tatum stars in a movie that reflects his actual life as a stripper, while it is a fun comedy movie, we can see that the character Tatum plays is for sexual pleasure. Mulvery creates a great point that scopophilia occurs when watching a movie and that it can be transformed into objectifying women, but it can also happen to males as well. Although Mulvery does not say it can’t be possible for males, we can assume from her point that the main characters subjected in cinema are women.

• What is her intention for this essay? The title of section B is “Destruction of Pleasure as a Radical Weapon” I think this title is overdramatic, it’s a great title to capture the audience’s attention but it does not catch the exact intention of her essay. Destroy is not the correct word, I think she intends to bring attention to how cinema perpetuates patriarchy by objecting the female and making her our pleasure of looking (active scopophilia). “Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen” (Mulvey 2089). She also mentions how the male character in a movie is the protagonist that advance the story while the female character is “his screen surrogate” (Mulvey 2089). The female becomes sexualized in the movie, making her the object of desire, but once she falls in love with the male protagonist her sexuality belongs to him and only him. This act exemplifies how women are expected to belong to a male.

• This essay reminds me of a TED talks video, where Colin Stokes argues that movies nowadays perpetuate masculinity by making the female character the person in need of saving and the prize to be claimed while the male character is the one who must do good to claim their prize and be the hero. He presented facts on sexual assaults (1/5 women in America have been sexuality assaulted), saying that it had nothing to do with pornography, but more to do with the movies we show younger kids. He raised the point saying that if 1/5 women in America are being sexuality assaulted, then there must be a lot of sexual assailants out there. His main question was “What are children’s movies teaching our kids?” and “Is girl power enough to prepare our daughters when we are simultaneously training our sons to maintain their boy power?” I think movies are one of the perfect ways to show hidden messages of patriarchy because not everyone would be able to notice the underlying messages, nor would much of the audience pay attention to it. I think we also must take into account who holds the leadership roles behind the camera, and according to ABC, it is still males. “The study looked beyond just on-camera roles, also finding that only 8 percent of directors, 13.6 percent of writers and 19.1 percent of producers were female.” (ABC news) Until the numbers change, we can only to see slow and steady progress and hope for it to change.

• Here are the links to some resources that might be useful in thinking about male leadership in the film industry:
• http://abcnews.go.com/US/men-dominate-film-industry-study/story?id=13439590
• http://www.ted.com/talks/colin_stokes_how_movies_teach_manhood.html

Hey guys! So I mentioned this article in class, but I thought I’d post it here in case anyone wants to check it out. It contemporarizes some of Mulvey’s points in a really interesting way. Hope you guys have a happy thanksgiving!

What Really Makes Katniss Stand Out? Peeta, Her Movie Girlfriend

There’s been a lot of talk about Katniss Everdeen as an unconventional heroine, but she’s also got a pretty unconventional love interest, in that he would be a more Hollywood-conventional girlfriend than boyfriend.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUcvlJmCVcI&w=560&h=315]