GenderQueer

In class last week, our class discussed queer and transgendered issues in the media. I particularly found this class the most informative yet as I am much more familiar with representations of race and cisgender in the media. Up until recently, the mid-1990s it seems, "deviant" sexualities and genders have been symbolically annihilated (Tuchner 1978) through their lack of representation in the media. Although homosexuality has become more predominant in popular films and literature, while it is not cast into the negative stereotypes as it once was, still requires the annihilation of the queer, which recognizes its own un-articulability (Warner 1993), through assimilation to hegemonic (Gramsci) construction of "the family", or what they call in media theory, mainstreaming (). Certainly mainstreaming has the benefit of what Bandura calls "social learning, in which one learns certain behaviors through watching media. For instance, I have little doubt that the mainstreaming of homosexuality has contributed to the linear growth in acceptance to gay and lesbian marriages, especially as youth come into contact with such acceptable and "acceptable" characters who are "like us", verses "the other." On the other hand, many queers have fought against such a mainstreaming and assimilation of queer identities into hegemonic social good, a good which is never questioned (Edelman 2004).

In particular, genderqueers and transgendered and transexuals have yet to be accepted societally. Still, there are no federal hate crime laws protecting them (although, hate crime laws are another contested issue in the queer community--it is argued they support a racist, classist, unjust prison system at the expense of offering restorative and transformative justice). Nip/Tuck was mentioned in the documentary, in particular, how it offered a positive, non-stereotyped role. Yet, this was only in the first season. By the second season, trans women were being used as props for plot twists and by the third they were victims of transphoic violence. By the fifth season, lesbians became the target of homophobic humor. This is an instance whereby the phenonmenon of mainstreaming may also produce media backlash as a show rises in popularity and thus emblemises what is called "gratification theory," that people watch media in part to validate their own values and experiences.

In class before the video, we looked at a news article about a transgender student who wanted to be homecoming queen, however, the school board decided that since her birth certificate said she was a boy that she could only run for homecoming king, a position that insists upon biological reductionism and essentialism and also what Julia Serano (2007) calls "oppositional sexism" (in which there no continuity and transition between "opposite" poles is accepted). It was noted that the journalism made the decision to identify her as a "her" and not a "him." This brings up the inevitable political consequences and construction that discourse is, that any journalist can never escape the categorizing of language. However, just the other day I also encountered a story on feministing about a story that deliberately used the pronoun "he" instead of "her" for the story and another in which there was a very objectifying description of a trans woman:

One of those men, who asked not to be identified, said “Stacey” was beautiful and could pass for a woman.

“She was pretty, but if you didn’t know what time it was, you wouldn’t know what she was,” he said. “She was built . . . and she drew attention from men just walking down the street.”

This does to show how just as there is a male gaze (), a particular hegemonic perspective in which to perceive women, so is there perhaps a cissexual gaze through which we see transexuals. This also relates to what Serano calls "transmisogyny," a particular form of transphobia directed at trans women in a culture that knocks on females and feminity, and especially those male bodies that privilege the feminine over the hegemonic norms of masculinity performance.

The Question of the Animal

Rate of Slaughter of Chickens, Pigs, and Cows in the United States, 2008


Through the intensification of carnophallogocentrism, animals are increasingly entrapped, enclosed, corralled, and sacrificed both symbolically within a single term and literally within what Barbara Noske (1998) calls “the animal industrial complex.” Derrida notes that the conditions under which animals are subjected today are “conditions that previous generations would have judged monstrous, outside of every supposed norm of a life proper to animals that are thus exterminated by means of their continued existence or even their overpopulation” (26). Just as farmed animals have been reduced to the general singular “meat,” so has their suffering been hidden from presence “in order to organize on a global scale the forgetting or misunderstanding of this violence that some would compare to the worst cases of genocide” (26).
http://picasaweb.google.com/Adam.Weitzenfeld/TheIndustrialMeatComplex#


Free Range Studios (2003) The Meatrix




PETA (20014) "Meet Your Meat"

NOTCOT: Banksy's Village Petstore & Charcoal Grill from Jean Aw on Vimeo.

Banksy (2008) "Village Petstore & Charcoal Grill"




To Love or Kill: Man Vs Animal



The Onion (2010) "Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday"






Koko All Ball






Hero dog saves another after it was hit in the highway.






Dans Le Couloir De La Mort (Death Row)






Maxine's Dash for Freedom






Georges Franju (1949) Le Sange de Betes










Nature's tools! How birds use them - David Attenborough - BBC wildlife


Wild crows inhabiting the city use it to their advantage - David Attenborough - BBC wildlife


Birds With a Memory to Envy


Christian the Lion



Leopard seal teaches photographer how to catch penguins



Monkey kitten


Crow adopts kitten


MUST WATCH: A Lioness Adopts a baby antelope. A short documentary that will open your eyes.


Leopard saves baby baboon


HIPPO SAVES IMPALA


Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry Part A 3/5


Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry Part A 4/5


Shirley and Jenny reunited


Dog Cat Rat


Dog and Elephant, odd couple


snake Hampster


The Orangutan and the Hound


The Tortoise and the Hippo


Mississippi Baby Squirrel Adopted By Mother Cat Learns How to Purr


Polar bears and dogs playing

Existential Animal: The Inhumanity of Man

Philosophy in Film:
Existentialist Film Series

Fridays 2-5pm @ ENV 190

What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance. Man wants to know that his life has counted, if not for himself, then at least in the scheme of things, that it has left a trace, a trace of meaning.

The paradox is that evil comes from man’s urge to heroic victory over evil. The evil that troubles him the most is his vulnerability; he seems impotent to guarantee the absolute meaning of his life, its significance in the cosmos... Men cause evil by wanting to heroically to triumph over it, because man is a frightened animal who tries to triumph, an animal who will not admit his own insignificance

-Ernest Becker in Escape from Evil (1975: 4, 135, 151)

INTRO

[SEP 10] Waking Life (Richard Linklater 2003)

DEATH

[SEP 17] The Seventh Seal (Ingar Bergman 1957)

[SEP 24] Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa 1952)

IDENTITY

[OCT 1] Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman 2008)

[OCT 8] Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze 1999)

MEMORY

[OCT 15] La Jette (Chris Marker 1962, 26min)

[OCT 22] Memento (Christopher Nolan 2000)

POSTHUMAN

[NOV 5] Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshi 1995)

[NOV 12] Blade Runner (Ridley Scott 1982)

APPLICATION

[NOV 19] Flight from Death (Patrick Shen 2003)

* Also watch some great animal documentaries.

The Humane Myth: Le Sang des Betes

Gastronomica:

This 22-minute documentary established Franju as a formidable French filmmaker, and the slaughterhouse as a horror house within contemporary society. Here, a peaceful Paris suburb also yields an endless carnage of sheep, cattle, and horses, bludgeoned to feed meat-loving humans. Franju's work is viciously graphic and surrealistic, perfectly and simultaneously attractive and repulsive.

I think it is naive for people to think that industrial slaughter has made killing more humane or cruel than it was previously; in some ways it may have become even more "humane." Niether "Old MacDonald's farm" nor "humane" killing of animals ever existed ni the past. Both are romanticised images of a past that never was and never will be--just as is the "noble savage." Each are abject misrepresentations, revisionist apologetics, a denial of our own crimes.

Anyways, I think Franju's Le sang des bêtes (1949) may be one of the first documentaries on slaughterhouses and illustrates this point. I at least cannot watch the scene with the calves and not feel the perversity of such a relationship between humans and other creatures. Slaughter can never really be a compassionate and dignified act. At its worst, it is cruel, unnecessary, and arrogant. And at its best... well such only exists ni the abstract, an abstract whereby we intend only human character and experience, not the experience of the animal other who falls victim to our whims.

[Fastforward to 3:00, 7:50, 14:00 for the "best" of the worst examples. From 14:00 on, it's difficult not to be moved to anger andd/or tears or both. I think this video highlights the wrongness in killing naimals much better than Meet your Mea and similar videos that concentrate more on the suffering/welfare (it seems that death may even be a good thing in the case of those CAFO animals). Here we do not care how well the animals are treated before, we are regardlessly disgusted by the disloyalty and arrogance inherit within slaughter]

Mascots: Representation and the Trivialization of Violence

In Thinking Animals, human ecologist, Paul Shepard, argues that animals are core compenents of human cognitive development following Claude Levi-Strauss's famous words, "animals are good to think." Shepard points to the affluence of animal symbology throughout cultures, even within those societies, such as the United States, which is often said to be alienated from nature. While many people find the use of such symbols romantic, spiritual, empowering, closer to nature, etc. often these symbols occlude the historical and representational violence done to particular animals belonging to such categories such as "bear," "bull," "tiger," etc.

To understand this, let's first take a look at how sports mascots appropriate other people's cultures and trivialize the genocide of those people. There has been much controversy over the use of Amerindian mascots, particularly the "Fighting Illini," "The Fighting Sioux," "the Seminoles," the "Cleveland Indians," the "Boston Redskins," etc.

Representation, Appropriation, & The Logic of Genocide
Caricatures can sometimes be very fun and even have a prodound truth to their simplicity--as is evident in the best politicla cartoons--, however they can also trivialize and occlude actual violence. According to Wikipedia, a caricature "exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness." In other words, caricatures are representations that signify a "truth" that is truer than truth (the presence of the actual person/group being depicted) itself through distortion. However, these caricatures of Amerindians do not only function as stereotypes, they also appropriate and signify the logic of genocide. In "Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy," Andrea Smith argues that the

[logic of genocide] holds that indigenous people must dissapear...non-native people then become the rightful inheritors of all that was indigenous--land resources, indigenous spirituality, or culture... why would non-Native people need to play Indian--which often includes acts of spiritual appropriation and land theft--if they thought Indians were alive and still capable of being Indian themselves.

Likewise, Brenda Farnell notes that the passionate supporters of such mascots "defend a "White public space" in which any contemporary NativeAmerican presence is positioned as disorderly." Of course, such a White public space can only exist by exlcuding Amerindians, who are majorly opposed to such symbols, from the public shere. As Charles Springwood explains, White people claim "Indianness" "not to realign themselves psychically or sympathetically withNative Americans but rather to obscure, if not dissolve, Native voices." "Demolishing the mascot slot," argues Pauline Strong, "is a prerequisite for full cultural recognition and participatory citizenship for Native Americans."

Because the appropriation and genocide of Amerindians in American culture is a historical "tradition," it is oftena ccepted as "natural" and or valuable as such colonialism is itself proudly part of the American narrative/identity. However, when European people who survived genocide are used as sports mascots, the perversity of such exploitation/appropriation becomes all the more apparent. Take for example the Dutch soccer team the Ajax Juden, or Jews. Lisa @ Sociological Images notes

This brings up some interesting issues about the appropriation of cultural symbols...Critics of American Indian mascots often ask questions along the lines of “What would happen if a team called itself the Fighting Jews?”... but it’s always presented as an unimaginable, completely hypothetical situation. And yet it turns out not to be so hypothetical after all

Just as it is difficult for many Americans to give up their supposed-entitlement to their tradition of characterizing Amerindians so it is the same for Ajax fans. According to a New York Times article "forcing the fans to change their behavior was a daunting task... because it has become part of their identity."

Ajax fans are proud of their "Jewish Club," eventhough they themselves know or care little about Jewish affairs and culture. They adorn themselves with Star of David tatoos and wave Israeli flags (which is itself unessential to Judaism). Meanwhile, their opponents will adorn themselves with swastikas, calling themselves the SS and shout anti-semitic rhetoric such as "we're hunting Jews," "death to the Jews," "Ajax to the gas chamber."

during a game against a German team late last year, a group of Ajax supporters displayed a banner that read “Jews take revenge for ‘40-’45,”

Ssssssssssssssssssssssssss… (the hissing sound of gas)
We’re hunting the Jews!
There is the Ajax train to Auschwitz!
Sieg! Sieg! Sieg! (German for ‘victory’, yelled while performing the Hitler’s Salute)

While such rhetoric may seem more obscene to Americans than rhetoric surrounding Amerindian mascots--painting them as savages--, it is not so different from the "cowboy and indian" games/themes affluent today. In both cases, the "logic of genocide" is in action in which both groups "must always be dissapearing;" both are treated as history despite the oppression of both groups today; both trivialize the very real violence; both stereotype and reduce.

Animal Symbols: Anthropocentrism and the Rhetoric of Genocide
There seems to be a formula for going about token-fying an entire group of individuals as a symbol. First, one must recognise that group as an Other--without doing so, one cannot objectify. If one did belong to that group, the mascot would not be so much a symbol as a marker of one's own identiy, one would be the subject of one's own discourse, thus subjectivity would be rretained. This requires then, secondly, that the Other must be made into an object through the denial/ignorance of their subjectivity--they have no right to signify themselves. Third, the Other preferaly ought to dissapear so that one has the absolute authority to objectify them, as their would be no other subjectivity to challenge such a representation. Further, through their dissapearance, the symbol takes on more truth as it is "alive," the last survivor of the group.

Finally, the objectified, extinguished Other is celebrated. We celebrate everything it stands for not it in and of itself; we hold romanticized views of it an mourn the past, a presense in which we terminated. We love these mascots/symbols because they fit within a romantic narrative about our past orpossibilities that could have been; we relive the past (or rather, a truncated history) by cheerishing these icons and "eat the other" as bell hooks would say. We appropriate that otherness and assimilate it into our own self-project with little if any recognition of the full otherness of those beings. The same process occurs within the ecocide of developers, when, once the habitat is cleared, the developers name the property after the community hthey wiped out: Park Ridge, Redwood falls, etc.

This brings us back to the question of animal representation and symbology. Animals in art and stories tend to be treated as props and symbols rather than characters themselves (for instance, in a creative writing seminar I was told that choosing the right prop for a story is essential and that if a cat doesn't work out, substitute n a dog). In another post at Sociological Images, Lisa explains how, like animals, women are often always representing something for men as allegorical figures:

Male figures appear in these paintings too, but almost always as gods or Biblical figures, people with names. Men are characters, women are symbols...Is it any surprise that women’s bodies are treated as a public concern? The entire culture is accustomed to seeing them used as metonymies for our highest (and lowest) values. The long historical pedigree of anti-woman sentiment means that the fact that women’s bodies contain women’s minds has always been elided, in favor of metaphorical elevation or degradation. We always have to stand for something, and what we stand for is everyone’s business... This is why objectification isn’t just the province of misogynists, by the way. Often you’ll hear Nice Guys protest that they don’t objectify women — no, they worship them! So instead of just being sexual receptacles, women stand for all that is good and beautiful in the world. (my emphasis)

Though animal others are in a sense subjects, they (mostly) are not capable of self-representation through language–at least not to humans. As such, they have often been de-particularized and objectified into tokens for human virtues and vices (much like women’s bodies have). I’ve been wondering whether the Bears and the Bulls (among other animal-named sports teams) are similarly "wrong" as the Red Skins, eventhough they may not offend "animals" themselves. Both de-subjectify and stereotype the category of beings represented.

Such de-subjectification, I think, rationalizes their literal and figural disappearance as equals (whether through genocide, eviction, or cultural marginalization). And of course, Amerindians, women, and animal others don’t produce and distribute these images–they are not in control of their own signification. Rather, the privileged construct and consume these images in a dominating way as discussed by bell hooks in “Eating the Other.”

One objection may be that "animals" are more biologically determined, so they do not vary as much as humans, and thus that such stereotpes about species is justified. I would argue, however, that is stipulated in always already thinking about animals as categories rather than singularities. similarly, just because "animals" may not themselves be subjects the tokenfying gaze's presupossition tiself may be violent, though it does not de-subjectify. For instance, say Amerinidians of jews were no longer in existence; would these macots be honoring them in any true way, or ought we still be disturbed by their token-fied representations of those people, a trace of colonial genocide? I'd say the latter.

Thoughts?