Off the Wall

Off the wall is what I think this class was for me. I was so busy with other stuff that I forgot to do the last post for this class, and though I'm not getting credit for this one I think it's still worth the typing.

Off the wall is also what qualifies the art of Doze Green, graffiti writer and artist, whose work I'm linking below - I mentioned his art in class, and how crazy he is. The music to this short video piece is amazing as well, and the intricacy of his work is amazing.

This class was amazing too! I was excited to take this course merely based on its title and description but fell in love with it immediately after the first week of classes - it had everything I liked, visual culture, critique, feminist and queer theory. I was afraid that the readings would be dry, but I thought all the readings were fantastic and on point, and the way Cathy connected the visual culture to these readings was perfect. I have only encountered few instructors who are as approachable and delightful as Cathy, but also as knowledgeable as she is - and not condescending at that! My brain was stimulated on a daily basis and I felt very at ease in the class - sorry if I talked too much.

I thought the topics covered were great and diverse, I liked that we included disability studies and current topics such as the Body Exhibit because it is really important to me to relate theory and critique with current aspects of society as we live it. I also really liked that Cathy brought extra material to class to complement the lectures, which incited me more to share anecdotes and thoughts to add on to the discussions. My favorite set of readings where those dealing with Abu Ghraib, particularly those written by Puar Jasbir, and the whole concept of biopower knocked me off my feet and made me even more of a fan of Foucault.

Over all this class has taught how to critically look at the visual culture that surrounds me even outside of my field of expertise, which is film and photography. If I was skeptical of TV, advertisement and art before...imagine now. I wished everybody had to take classes like this because visual culture is such a part of our lives that not critiquing it is just nonsensical. This class is a tool to critically position yourself in your environment to understand how it affects you not just theoretically, but concretely.

So, this video is just for fun and I'm sharing it because I think it's amazing, not because it ties in to the discussions we had per se. Enjoy and have a wonderful break!

Portrayal of Disability in Fashion

Just thought this video was fascinating.

http://tomandlorenzo2.blogspot.com/2010/12/marion-cotillard-for-lady-dior-bag.html

Anne Friedberg and the Virtual Window

Thank you all for a wonderful semester and an absolutely fantastic set of conversations about the politics of visuality, bodies, and culture! You all have raised brilliant questions and made fabulous connections across texts, and the course as a whole was a smashing success in my opinion, thanks to you all.

A few of you have asked about the website we looked at for the last class. We looked at Anne Friedberg's Virtual Window website, which accompanies her book The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (MIT Press, 2009). If you're interested in the emergence of modern forms of looking and spectacle, and about how the visual architecture of the shopping mall, movie theater, car, and home theater system inform one another, check out her work. It's great.

I hope you all continue the conversations we've started with regards to the pleasures and perils of visual culture--I know I will. Thank you all.

wrapping it up- no xmas pun intended :)

Firstly, this course has been a huge eye-opener for me when it comes to viewing all visual culture. I never once took the time to think about the limitations of a picture which is supposed to be worth a thousand words. I never consider the other million words that were unspoken based on the photographers framing and simply the limitations of technology. I recall a classroom discussion where one person raised the concern of not only the photographer having sole discretion when it came to what was included and excluded in a frame, but also how the camera itself limits the photo. One shot can only include so many details—the reality is something is being excluded despite how many times you zoom out. I especially love this when considering the Elahi Hasam and the “tracking transience” site that he created. This was amazing how he chose to document his every move through photography and gps applications on his phone. He chose to include only portions of his body that provided details of his location and what he was doing—as specific as what meal he was having. The interesting aspect of this was that he excluded his face in all of the photos. This eye and face being captured in a photo in my opinion seemed to be a key factor in aligning a body to humanity.
I honestly had mixed emotions when it came to our section on fetal visual culture and how these bodies are framed. I thought about my original thoughts to only find the humanistic aspect of a body when it comes to seeing the face and connecting with the eyes of a body in a photo. Well looking back at the popular autonomous fetus that is often associated with abortion or pregnancies I barely focus on the face at all. I look at a fetus and associate it to “the future” of humankind. So when I consider this aspect of why the human fetus is of high importance- it has nothing to do with the individual, it associates more with the “ideals” of a human. So although these fetus’s hold importance, their autonomous framing align them with being needy and disabled- calling adults to speak up for them because they cannot stand for themselves. This was framing that I never considered. The sentiment that I felt for these fetuses or babies in visual culture had absolutely nothing to do with the individual baby, but more because my society has conditioned me to feel remorseful for the future of humankind. This was something that I never considered and I found most provocative in this class. I never realized how a fetus was always so conveniently lit up and floating in a sac of liquid. I never realized how invaluable a pregnancy was if a baby wasn’t exposed and the focus was placed on the mother. This was extremely interesting to me because prior to this class I never considered how biased visual culture was.
Another visual that I absolutely loved was the photo project that Ken Gonazalez-Day produced. It was so interesting how when something is extracted from a photo you find other things to focus on- or the meaning of the photo is completely different. In this case it allows for the audience member to frame the photo without outside influences- unless there is a caption associated with it. The photo that stood out to me in this photo series was the erased lynching photo. How amazing a photo changes when the center of attention is deleted.
I learned tons in this class- forcing me to be more critical about what is put in front of me. This obviously makes me more skeptical and negative when it comes to everything so this newfound lens is both hindering and helpful.

Alas, it ends.

I joined the class late and was terrified that, since I had only recently begun (read: not completed) Introduction to Feminist Theory that I was going to be far behind the intellectual level of my classmates. I will admit that the class holds many minds which one may feel intimidated by, but the intimate nature of the class made me feel welcomed regardless. I also found that I was not alone in my duel enrollment.

The first affect that this class had on me was a profound awareness of how I present me body (or how my body is presented). If I wear stripes am I naming myself a deviant of sorts? Is it wrong to wear a “harem” pant? Most of all, the course gave me the tools to begin critiquing daily occurrences in my life on a deeper level. Am I being monitored? When am I being monitored? How is my body perceived by others? While the class certainly brought up more questions than answers, I believe that to be the sign of a worthwhile course. My favorite parts of the course were when we discussed disability, performing the body, organ transplantation, and freak discourse.

The section on disability made me take a look at how I interact with specific people with disabilities. A few years ago I had a small crush on a girl who had a deformed hand. I was too nervous to tell her how interesting her thoughts were…etc. because I was paranoid that she would be paranoid that I was staring at her hand…So instead of getting to know her like the perfectly wonderful human being she was, I ignored her so that I wouldn’t be perceived as being offensive…thereby being offensive. So frequently society imagines disabled people as not having a voice—simply being in need of protection or guidance to what is normal. We are afraid of personalities which can talk back to us—which can challenge our traditional views that we have become so comfortable living in.

Which bring us (out of order, but on topic nonetheless) to freak discourse. It was incredibly fascinating to see how abnormal bodies have been displayed as spectacle. What interested me most here was a return to the idea of looking for the “tell.” As I went through the book of historical medical photographs from the Mutter museum, I felt that instead of looking for the gender tell (where can I find proof that this body is male while appearing womanly or female while appearing manly…etc) I was asked to look (frequently not very hard) for the disease tell. What makes this body strange or queer? What is wrong with this body? What ails this body? Has a doctor fixed it? Is it fixable? Do we now have the technology it would take to cure this abnormal body and allow it to live normally?

This class has also made me acutely aware of how much power and trust society gives to the hospital and medical doctors in general. Critiquing the UPMC website was particularly interesting for me because my dad has worked there my entire life and I have always conflated the two. I perhaps gave the system even more power and trust as in some way it represented him. Through critiquing I was both pleasantly surprised and utterly horrified at how easy it was to pick apart the donor body-based rhetoric used on the website.

Finally, performing the body needs to be mentioned. It was not my favorite unit, but it contains my favorite cultural production. The piece, Untitled, choreographed and danced by Bill T. Jones was spectacular. I still get chills thinking about it.

It has been a wonderful course and has made me incredibly excited to further my studies.

What is a body?

On the first day of class, we were asked a seemingly simple question: what is a body? In my notebook I wrote, “A body is a vessel, made of physical matter (flesh, bone, blood) that carries you from place to place.” How scholarly? I thought. I fashioned myself a modern day Merleau-Ponty. I was a master of the body and it was only August. Then I read the first paragraph from our first assignment in, “Why the Body?” and “The Body in the Visual Field,” by Dani Cavallaro. It went as so: “In recent years, the body has been radically rethought by both science and philosophy. We can no longer view the body as a natural object. The body is actually a cultural representation constructed through various media, especially language. Societies produce ideals of the proper body in order to define their identities. Yet time and again, the body’s boundaries turn out to be uncertain.” (Cavallaro) Oh rats! I thought. What a fool I had been. Sure, my body was a vessel made of flesh, bone, and blood, but had it really only carried me to write that “surface-deep” response to a question I found so easy? I thought of bodies only as a physical thing, but I disregarded the way in which we construct different physical bodies based on race, gender, disabilities. I also failed to think about the way in which we view bodies: face to face, through photos, and film. After this realization, I had two options. 1) I could burn my notebook scribbled with un-thoughtful prose. 2) I could continue on down the rabbit hole of corporal uncertainty. Red pill, blue pill, red pill blue pill? My mom reminded me this course was a requirement for graduation, so I took the blue pill. And down I went.

If anything, this class has reminded me to take a closer look into things we view as “everyday, normal, mundane, etc.” Actually, I would argue that this critique was the most provocative thing about the course. Sure we viewed shocking pictures, discoveries, and theories, however the most shocking discussions surrounded things we take for granted, like gendered bathrooms, sidewalks, and bodies. I had to view bodies (my body) in a different way than before.

The texts I found most intriguing were the Threadbared blogs by Mimi Thi Nguyen and Minh-ha T. Pham. The blogs were theory driven, and yet culturally relatable. I found myself connecting to these texts in particular, because I was doing a similar exercise each week on this site. The visual cultural production I was drawn to the most was, “Children of Men.” Besides loving post-apocalyptic narratives, the class discussion surround the movie was awesome. I loved connecting it to the text with the child as “hope” and I loved hearing my classmates discuss the technical film aspects in relation to theory.

Each week I was surprisingly intrigued by the topics. I was surprised, because usually I get bored with at least one weekly topic. However, if I had to add a topic to a course on “bodies,” I would probably choose one on "zombie bodies." Call me biased (because I love the new AMC show, “The Walking Dead,” and again I have an affinity for post-apocalyptic narratives) however the discourse around the “zombie body” can bring up discussions surrounding cultural reactions to devalued bodies, bodies that are both living/dead, etc. But guess what? Since this course allowed us to draw on our own cultural productions, I ended up making my own “zombie body” discussion in a past blog. That’s what I think I liked most about this class, the way in which we were encouraged to bring in outside productions of our choosing. It made the (at times difficult to understand) theory come to life—pardon my zombie rhetoric.

I was not only pleased to read my classmate’s brilliant connections on this blog, but I feel honored I was able to listen to my classmate’s brilliant connections during class. Even though many of the topics were political, loaded, and controversial, the “small class” made discussions comfortable and informative. This was the smallest class I have ever been in and it honestly made me wonder why I chose a large public school rather than a small liberal arts institution. There’s something extraordinary to be said about a learning environment where a small number of students can communicate amongst each other and their professor, while being able to listen- and more importantly, feeling that they have been listened to. Quite frankly, this excites me about learning and makes me happy that I took the blue pill. And yet, at the end I again find the most troubling and pleasurable thing about this class (or any class that provokes critical thought) is that I leave feeling that I know less. Alas, I must fall further into the bottomless pit that is theory.

Hey everybody, thanks.

The End Has No End

When I first signed up for this course, I really had no idea as to what “Gendered Bodies in Visual Culture” meant. I just really needed an upper level course to fulfill the requirements for the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies certificate. I noticed the word “gender” (which I like talking about) and I noticed the phrase “visual culture” (which I also like talking about) and figured there was a good chance there would be at least one discussion surrounding one or both of those topics. So I signed up.

On the first day, the first thing I noticed was that this was going to be a very, very intimate class. I was intimidated at the start, but now I think that this is one of my favorite aspects. With such a small class size, it is easier for organic conversations and discussions to occur. And it is easier to become more comfortable discussing certain topics. Similarly, it is easier for everyone to contribute to those conversations… and luckily for me, everyone had intelligent things to say.

It is hard for me to pick a favorite part of the course. Legitimately every class was interesting and full of great discussions. The topics and essays we read were, in general, thought provoking. If I had to pick my top three, it would probably include the section on disability, the section on fashion, and the most recent section on the body as a spectacle (the Bodies and Bodyworlds exhibits).

I found those three parts the most interesting because they were topics that I probably wouldn’t have thought as critically about without this course (though I guess I could say that about all the topics we covered). I also think I found the cultural objects associated with these topics the most intriguing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed all of the cultural objects, but I especially liked the Axis Dance Company videos, the Mimi Nguyen blog, and the websites associated with the body-themed exhibits.

The thing I liked most about the Axis Dance Company was that instead of trying to hide the difference in bodies, they embraced it and celebrated it. Wheelchairs played heavily into the choreography of the pieces. I also enjoyed the conversations surrounding it. Instead of accepting what was shown, classmates brought good and interesting challenges to what they were seeing. Why were the only disabled bodies used in wheelchairs? If this performance happens in a theater, how can a lot of disabled people go to see it since theaters are typically made for the able bodies?

The thing I like about Nguyen’s blog was that it thought critically about fashion and called out ridiculous and offensive things it was doing. For instance, I had no idea that modern day models still get put into blackface. I also liked how each classmate brought in their favorite post to discuss. It highlighted entries that I didn’t really pay any attention to at first glance.

The body-themed exhibits really blew my mind. They have so many complicated and sometimes troublesome aspects. I’m conflicted when I look at them because, on the one hand, they do have the potential to serve a scientific and useful purpose. But on the other hand, they have such gendered, racist, classist, and sexist implications.

Overall, I’m glad that I took this course. It opened my eyes to a lot of things that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Classes sometimes shape the way I view the world. For instance when I took a drawing course, I started noticing the lines and shapes within and outside of objects. With this course, I started noticing social implications and messages that the visual culture we live in has or puts out. I can’t watch television, look at advertisements, or think about museums the same way ever again. The course may be ending, but the effects of it aren’t.

Course Wrap-up

As a senior, I feel like many of the courses I have taken thus far are similar. When I think back on classes, they all start to blend together. This is especially true in my Women's Studies classes, because so many share the same subject matter. However, I can honestly say that I will always remember many of the discussions we had in this class. Each topic we covered was engaging, and many of the other students had a ton of interesting stuff to say about it.

One thing our class discussions did was give me a name for many concepts that I use often without thinking about it. An example of this is the concept of looking for “the tell.” It is a common practice in our culture to try to identify everyone we see. When someone is different and doesn’t fit the mold, we search for something to explain them or give them an excuse for the way they look. I always hear people say things like “oh it must be a man, look at their hands” or “it has little teeth, it must be a girl.” I was always disturbed by these comments, and I assumed it was because of their reference to a person as an object. Now I know that that is problematic, but it is also because they feel the need to discover a determining characteristic to make the personal more “normal” to them.

The section I found most interesting was the readings on body traffic. As a communication student who has spent a lot of time talking about popular visual media, I have spent a lot of time discussing medical shows. Our discussion about how body traffic happens in real life as opposed to television life appealed to me. I am constantly critiquing things I see on television. I am also a big fan of medical dramas. When we discussed things from new angles, it gave me another perspective and reason to critique these shows, and I look forward to thinking about the bodies on medical dramas in a whole different way.

In the same way, I am generally interested in a lot of things about bodies in advertising. I have done many critiques of advertising techniques, and I have noticed some really interesting stuff about the way bodies are used to sell products. I am writing my research paper on this topic, and because it is so interesting to me, I do wish we could have talked about the subject a little more. However, I think we did cover a very wide range of topics. Reflecting back on our discussions, I noticed just how much we managed to discuss in only one semester. Everything from politics to paintings involves the body, and now I feel that I can think about the role that bodies in play in many aspects of study.

Despite all the great things that were said in our class discussions, I was pleasantly surprised to see how many more smart things people had to say on the course blog. One of my favorite prompts was number 9, about critiquing UPMC’s organ transplant site. I was amazed to see that everyone was able to find such interesting details about the website to critique using discourse about bodies and transplants. Everyone made a lot of interesting discoveries and connections beyond what I saw. I thought it was so great that we now have the ability to take something as simple as a website and critique it so thoroughly.

Tacos, Pitas and Egg Rolls (Or, The Wrap-Up)

I think that the most important thing I'm leaving this class with is a more critical eye. I've taken plenty of other gender-themed classes before, where the aim is to arm the student with such a weapon, but I feel that this class has done that for me better than any other I've taken. The way the class is designed allows for more in-depth study than other classes do.

For me, the biggest differences between this and other classes are in the class size and this blog. I've never had the opportunity to read and listen to my classmates' points of view or to have real conversations about the class material. I know that, in reality, the class was much smaller than it could've been, but I think that I prefer that because of the allowed discussions in such a small group. I can also honestly say that there wasn't a topic that was covered, that I didn't enjoy.

I'll start with saying that, at first thought, I was going to suggest that the only thing I'd remove from this class was the discussion of Abu Ghraib. After a lot of thought, though, I realized that it wasn't because the discussion was uninteresting or too difficult in material. It was because the discussions were really disturbing to me. I'm really glad that I realized the difference, though, because I think that those discussions were some of the best we had. Since then, I've had most of the people that I know watch Standard Operating Procedure, and even watched it again myself. Such discussions of racism, nationalism and what constitutes violence are very informative on my opinion of what it means to be an American, or white, or WASPy, etc. I'm very glad we had such discussions.

Many of our topics have, in some way, been related to my personal life. The greatest of those related topics was our discussion of AIDS media. I have been working with the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force this semester, and the pieces that we read and watched regarding the AIDS battle brought me to a more sentimental understanding with some of my clients. Sadly, something that they teach you about going into fields of social work is that you have to have high levels of detachment. David Gere's piece on AIDS choreography, along with Bill T. Jones's video have made that somehow impossible for me. I think though, that it's for the best. Most of my clients cannot even try to take the normalizing approach of ignoring their illness. For many of them, they are defined by their illness. I didn't even want to consider AIDS as a "definition" for a person, but I suppose that could be the normalizer in me.

Along with those pieces, I found all of the readings from transgender photography on especially enthralling. There are fabulous links between transitioning, organ trafficking, reproductive photography and exhibitions of anatomy. The politics of photographing and visualizing the various aspects of these anatomical normalities and anomalies are explained in ways that I'd never even considered before. It has caused me took look at my own medical history (which is full of medical photography) in a different light. It's also driven me to ask the mothers that I know how they felt while they were pregnant. I was given a number of different explanations, but they all had a similar theme.

I mentioned the video posted on our blog, Pregnant Women are Smug, to the women who I'd talked to, and they all agreed that it was a good portrayal of pregnant women. Their explanation of why, though, is really striking. It seems to me, after the discussions, that pregnant women are smug because being a pregnant women does not allow for them to be themselves. Everything ends up being about pregnancy and the upcoming baby because they are no longer the woman they were before conception, and they kind of give into the societal pressure of being "the pregnant woman" instead of just a woman. Pretty crazy, huh?

I found many of the connections made this semester very interesting. I've loved our classroom discussions of various media, from films and video games to the UPMC website. The links we've made in class have made me realize just how interrelated the production and reproduction of the corporeal is to biopower, social control, and even the ability to gain citizenship are. I am very happy to be leaving this class with a more skeptical eye. Even in just watching "mindless" shows like South Park or Family Guy, I have to take into consideration such things as the portrayals of disability, gender difference, and even reproduction and trans issues. I must say, my family hates family time now!

Thanks, to all of you, for making this class awesome. I'm really glad I took it.

Blog Prompt 12: Bodies, Difference, & the Politics of Visuality--Course Wrap Up

By 9 pm on Tuesday December 7, please post a 600-word (min.) response to the following prompt:

This course was designed as an interdisciplinary inquiry into the relations between power, visual culture, and embodied difference. We have engaged with a plethora of visual cultural productions stretching across various national and transnational locations that construct bodies through regimes of race, sexuality, gender, nation, and ability/disability. Further, we've critically analyzed the pleasures and perils of visuality and visibility. I want to know what you are taking away from this course--what you found most provocative about the course, what visual cultural productions and written texts you found intriguing and why, what topics or texts or cultural productions would you add to the course that we didn't get a chance to talk about, and what brilliant connections you were excited to see your classmates make in class and/or on this blog?

From Mystical to Medical

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s book “From Wonder to Error—A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity” opens with the line “People who are visually different have always provoked the imaginations of their fellow human beings.” Who counts as being visually different? Is it only the body that is accounted for or do observable abnormal behaviors count towards one’s freakery? Garland-Thomson discusses monsters, dwarfs, albinos, bearded women, conjoined twins and many other abnormal forms that have been recorded as deviations from the normal body. Her focus was on freak shows, so I braced myself for the photograph that we were asked to look at in the book “Mütter Museum Historical Medical Photographs.”

At first there was nothing out of the ordinary—well, in the realm of freaks, anyway. You had your conjoined twins, amputated or otherwise missing limbs, enlarged breasts, extra limbs, a “tail” and some other ailments that did make me a little uneasy. At first I was confused by the lack of separation between the abnormal bodies created by nature and those which were created by accidents in our modern world [missing or malformed limbs versus gunshots leading to amputated (missing) or malformed (awkwardly healed) limbs]. This concern of mine was soundly put to rest when a classmate pointed out that, to the general public, they appear equally “freaky” as we do not get one’s life story by merely gazing at them (despite many failed attempts). As I approached the end of “Mütter Museum Historical Medical Photographs” a smaller section of the book intrigued me. The book had documented psychological disorders. Unlike the bearded lady or the conjoined twins, one could not look upon a picture of a mentally ill patient and know that they are any different even if they are observably different in person. Why would one then record the disorders in a medium that could not fully capture the disorder like photography can (at least to a certain extent) record the physical abnormalities of what the Barnum and Bailey Circus first called “freaks” and then “human curiosities”? (Garland-Thomson 13)

Despite the fact that they were not capitalized on as frequently through freak shows or the circus, those with psychological disorders were still considered to be other and a type of wonderment surrounded them. Schizophrenia and Epilepsy have a shared history in this fashion. Garland-Thomson discusses how freak discourse’s genealogy “can be characterized simply as a movement from a narrative of the marvelous to a narrative of the deviant.” While she discusses physical abnormalities, the path of mystical to medical is shared by mental disorders. In Europe in the middle ages, those with schizophrenia were thought to be possessed by demons and would go through exorcisms—sometimes even therapies which included drilling holes in one’s head in order to release the demons. Because of this link, the symptoms of schizophrenia were conflated with signs of practicing witchcraft or being the victim of another’s evildoing. Epilepsy on the other hand was frequently considered to be possession be a demon or a prophetic power. Many famous religious leaders are thought to have had epilepsy including Mohammad, Moses, and St. Paul. However, with the classification of mental disorders, science proved that these were in fact abnormalities that are observable and recordable through the study of brain function/neuroscience. The cultural difference became that schizophrenia and epilepsy became diseases to be cured through medicine and therapy and knowledge of the disease versus something to be amazed at and ask for the guidance of God.

Where are the freak shows then? How is this freakery being displayed? Why on television of course! With medical dramas like House depicting various types of medical illness for the public to be entertained by, we can still be the nameless and faceless majority looking on at a group of people who will never have a conversation with us and will never talk back. Popular real life documentary show such as Hoarders make one wonder if any of the freak spectacle has actually dissipated or if it has only changed mediums.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAnah0l0rqk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3GiAcD9BfI

www.schizophrenia.com

www.epilepsy.com

Thomson, Rosmarie Garland. "Introduction: From Wonder to Error--A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity." Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. Ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson. New York: NYU Press, 1996.

Lions and Tigers and Humans, Oh My!

The world has a long history of putting bodies on display. Of course, by ‘world’ I really just mean privileged bodies. And the bodies that were on display were those that fit into the category of ‘other.’ Regardless, a lot of people were used for the entertainment and amusement of others. A bunch of the time this was done all in the name of science. Bodies born with certain diseases, bodies that formed differently, bodies of the poor, bodies of women, and bodies of color are just some of those that were used.

As I was surfing around the internet for information and/or inspiration for this blog entry I came across something that legitimately shocked me: human zoos. What, you may ask, is a human zoo exactly? Well, it is precisely what you would think it is. “Human zoos were 19th and 20th century public exhibits of people - mostly non-Europeans. Africans, Asians, Indigenous people and many others were often caged and displayed in a makeshift ‘natural habitat’” (Channel 4). They were used as “pseudo scientific demonstrations of ‘racial difference’” (Channel 4).

In my searches, one name kept coming up in relation to human zoos. This name belonged to a member of the Mbuti pygmies, an indigenous people in the Congo region of Africa. The name is Ota Benga. Benga’s basic story is that a white man, Samuel Philips Verner, bought him from a slave trader. Verner brought Benga and several other pygmies back to America for the St’ Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Verner eventually brought Benga to New York, where Benga ended up living in the Bronx zoo. Here are is a picture of him:

In this picture, Ota Benga is seen holding a monkey. He is wearing what one would stereotypically think of when thinking of an indigenous person from Africa. He is in nature. There are trees and shrubbery all around him. When Benga lived in the zoo, his hammock was put into an orangutan’s cage “where he was encouraged to play with the orang utan and weave caps out of straw and to shoot his bow and arrow” (Channel 4). He was encouraged to perform activities that fit the stereotypes that Americans held. He was placed in a cage with animals and was displayed and treated as one. Even though it claimed to be scientific, this was all really done just for entertainment.

Now surely you would think: “These types of things can’t possibly still be going on. That was 1904… the world has come so far.” I hate to tell you this, but if you thought that you would be wrong. What shocked me more than finding out human zoos existed was finding out that human zoos recently existed.

In 2005 in Augsburgh, Germany an ‘African Village’ was put on display in the zoo. You can read more about it here, but I’ll give a brief rundown in case you don’t have time. Basically, African people were brought into the zoo, put into a recreated ‘African Village,’ and would make crafts for sale.

I really can’t understand the type of thinking that would go on to make someone think that this would be okay. I think a quote from the link sums it best: "There is an urge in Germany to see those who are not white as part of something exotic or romanticised." This urge, obviously, isn’t found just in Germany and it isn’t just directed towards non-white bodies. Most people, in general, love being able to look at different bodies in spaces where those bodies don’t have a chance to look or talk back. If this wasn’t true, human zoos and places like the Mutter Museum wouldn’t be as popular as they are.

(Image courtesy of wikipedia.com)

(Link courtesy of http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4070816.stm)

(Cited quotes courtesy of http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-human-zoo-sciences-dirty-secret/articles/human-zoo)

Constructing Normal

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s article “From Wonder to Error – A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity,” critiques the way bodies throughout history have been devalued in the way they are presented. She argues that viewing non-privileged bodies is a way of making the privileged feel better about themselves. This has happened in many ways, and today it can be seen at the Mütter Museum. While the creators of the museum claim that its purpose is for furthering science, it can also be critiqued for the way the bodies are being viewed.

By displaying the bodies in the museum as something different from the natural as a way to understand how to improve science, the bodies are being viewed as “others.” The public display is framed in science as being used for prevention of the diseases in the future. The problem with this view is that many of the medical problems were hereditary issues that the people had no control over. For this and other reasons, the purpose and use of the museum can become very controversial.

In class we watched the video “Love at the Mütter” and saw how these controversial issues could be seen. The video showcased a young, white, heterosexual couple becoming engaged within the background of the museum. We discussed how the video constructs the idea of the normative body and what the “normal” couple looks like. Something I found interesting when I looked at the video online was the comments. One viewer, Comelunch103, wrote several comments about how disgusting it was that someone would propose at such a museum. After some conversation and realization of the history of the couple, he apologized for his comments. However, he also made a statement that I think applies very well to our discussion: “Love is a disease. Incurable.” In the same way that we view medical diseases, we can view love. The Mütter Museum is a way of constructing a normative body, and in many ways, traditional ideas about love also construct “normal.”

In arguments about nature vs. nurture and why people are not heterosexual, many claim that they can’t help the way they feel about other people. For them, love is like a disease that cannot be controlled or cured. Just like the people whose bodies are displayed in the museum, they cannot help or control the way they are.

Our ideas about love and what is “normal” is heavily defined based on what is not normal rather than what is normal. In medicine, a “normal” body is determined based on the non-existence of disease. In the same way, we use ideas such as homosexuality to define “normal” love. We are socialized that love is between a man and a woman. I can recall the common picture of little boys kissing little girls because this is “normal”, meaning that we are born having feelings for the opposite sex. No one can define what love is or what it means to love. Everyone has a different ideas and normal love is not definable. However, when asked what an abnormal love is, it would be easy to list a myriad of ideas about rape and pedophiles.

Defining what is normal in any sense is very difficult. To do it, we have to define what is not normal. From love to medicine to psychological behaviors, the more we understand what it is not, the more we understand what it is. Freak shows, and museums like the Mütter display things seen as abnormal, and people view them in order to better understand themselves as normal.

Thomson, Rosmarie Garland. "Introduction: From Wonder to Error--A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity." Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. Ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson. New York: NYU Press, 1996.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZaslXPJbkw

The Spectacle of the Freak, Traditional and Modern

It's all about "guilty pleasures." People love to point out the differences between themselves and others; for most people, it is a wonderful feeling to realize that they are "better" than another person in some way. It is as it was with freak shows: "In a turbulent era of social and material change, the spectacle of the extraordinary body simulated curiosity, ignited speculation, provoked titillation, furnished novelty, filled coffers, confirmed commonality, and certified national identity" (Thomson, 4).

These are certainly turbulent times we live in. Societal rules and regulations change from day to day, with neither side of the spectrum (whether it be gender, socioeconomic, political, etc.) completely happy. We need a display of freakery for an acceptable medium to mock, show disdain for, and possibly even envy, the subject of the display. I am reminded of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, the "last place in the USA where you can experience the thrill of a traditional ten-in-one circus sideshow" (www.coneyisland.com).

The show that we experienced was a mix of social and corporeal freakery. There were performers like Donnie Vomit, "the human blockhead," who drilled a 4-inch bit up hit nose and walked on glass; and his co-showmaster Heather Holliday, who was a contortionist and a sword swallower. Bethany even had the opportunity to pull a 3-foot twisted blade out of Heather's gut. At the same time, there were performers who would, today, be called disabled, but took full enjoyment in being "freaks." One performer suffered from Phocomelia, or "flipper-like limbs," which he explained to be a side-effect of his mother's taking Thalidomide while pregnant with him; he is a fabulous percussionist, and began his bit by performing the entire dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller."The other corporeal freakish performer had fingers and toes that were fused into three digits on each extremity. He spoke with a Southern accent, juggled as well as any other person I'd ever seen, and referred to his corporeal differences as "super happy hands and feet." One might say that he was, in essence, mocking himself. I really think that he was happy with the life.

Donnie Vomit. Photos courtsey of http://www.coneyisland.com/per.donny.shtml

Heather Holliday. Photo courtesy of http://www.coneyisland.com/per.heather.shtml

Bethany and I left the sideshow, we were two people "Bound together by their purchased assurance that they are not freaks" and found that we even "longed in some sense to be extraordinary marvels instead of mundane, even banal democrats..." (Thomson, 10). We were both jealous of the beautiful Heather Holliday and the exceedingly charismatic Donnie Vomit. Though Bethany has a good job and a wide skill set, and I am nearly a college graduate going into a field that I love, we still find ourselves wanting to "go join the circus" from time to time. No matter how amazing I found the other's talents, though, I was never envious of the man with flipper-like limbs or his friend with claw-like hands and feet. What does that say?

There are boundaries on the allowances for envying "freaks." I can want to be like someone with talents, but not like someone whose talents are based off of their disabilities. It is alright to envy a "freak of culture" (Thomson, 10), rather than a corporeal freak. When looking at the situation from this angle and that of comparison, I began to understand the popular obsession with shows like MTV's Jersey Shore. Like the freak show, the pervasive popularity of such reality TV shows "fashioned...the American cultural self" (Thomson, 10).

Like freak show performers, the subjects of Jersey Shore have "conventionalized stage names," and show is entirely about their corporeal and societal differences. They sport names like Snooki and The Situation, tan themselves and work out until they are obviously unlike the people who they choose to subject as "others." The funny thing to me, though, is that the average person thinks that Jersey Shore is "a serious freak show. It's one hot mess after another. I love it!" (Scotto). In the same conversation, my cousin told me that she watches that show, and others on MTV, because it helps her get away from real life, but also helps her realize that "no matter how messed up things get, at least I'm not that bad" (Scotto).

Snooki, in her typical season 1 shot (being tended after getting hit in the face at a bar)

Photo courtesy of http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/gallery/tending-to-snooki/

In the end, I believe it's true that all forms of freakery exist "for commercial ends" (Thomson, 7) and that they are used as a comparison for normalcy. We all need the occasional reiteration of the fact that we are, in fact, just like everyone else. "Freakifying" people who are different than we is a way of reaching this understanding. Really, though...we're all just freaks of a different color.

Works Cited:

Thomson, Rosmarie Garland. "Introduction: From Wonder to Error--A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity." Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. Ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson. New York: NYU Press, 1996.

Freaks of yester year, Freaks of today.

"By its very presence, the exceptional body seems to compel explanation, inspire representation, and incite regulation. The unexpected body fires rich, if anxious, narratives and practices that probe the contours and boundaries of what w take to be human[...]" - Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Introduction: From Wonder to Error - A Geneology of Freak Discourses in Modernity.

In Introduction: From Wonder to Error - A Geneology of Freak Discourses in Modernity Rosemarie G. Thomson sets to discuss the history and beginnings of the representation of the "other", of the abnormal body. Not necessarily setting out to pinpoint a specific date, or a specific time of representation, but rather to trace a history that can help us see its own reminiscences in today's world, and particularly in today's visual culture. At the same time, what Thomson is also tracing is the evolution or historical changes of the discourse around abnormal bodies, because this discourse is what has shaped the representations of said bodies. Thomson recognizes a certain historical ambiguity within this discourse, in which bodies considered monstrous or freaks not only inspired fear or horror but also intrigue. We can say that these bodies carried a certain kind of mysticism, which moved people to fear them but at the same time respect them; whichever it was, in the end these bodies were still misunderstood, misrepresented and [mis]used. It is this fear of the unknown, this mystique surrounding freaks and their bodies what, in Thomson’s eyes, has driven a wide array of popular representation. I think a lot of it is also a social anxiety to classify, to differentiate and place each other within the norm, belonging to a group. Thomson points out that in many cases, freaks are represented as carrying a meaning beyond their own existence – their presence meaning premonitions of bad things to come, warnings for characters of stories, or obstacles to conquer in the search of truth (i.e Homer and the Cyclops). Much like photographs, representations of these bodies have aimed at portraying them as carriers of a self-evident truth, a truth beyond their own existence that perhaps reassures our own existence as “normal” bodies.

Indeed there is a fascination with making a spectacle out of the “horrible”; as we have seen through out class - i.e lynching photographs, the Abu Ghraib images, and even perhaps fetal photography - films and motion pictures are not an exception within this tendency of cultural productions. Towards the end of her article, Thomson argues that a recent, or rather modern, fascination with freak shows, vaudeville/burlesque shows, and subsequent manifestations in film/cult movies, is directly related to this history of spectacle. This is certainly true, but I would argue, however, that the presence of freaks, the burlesque and the bizarre in movies is as old as the film medium itself. I am merely arguing that popular representations in film of circuses, burlesque shows and the like are not just a modern manifestation of older obsessions, bur rather modern adaptations of already established forms of cultural productions of the fascinating freaks. In a way, everything is recycled, and this includes social anxieties. One example that comes to mind is the movie Freaks, a 1932 production by Tod Browning, who is also known for directing such motion pictures as Dracula (1931) or The Unknown (1927). Tom Browning made his career on portraying the bizarre and the unknown, and Freaks has in it many of the social anxieties and discourses of which Thomson speaks of.

I think Freaks is a very interesting in the way in portrays its characters and the voice it gives them. The movie revolves around a group of “freaks” – half man/half woman, dwarfs, deformed bodies, giants, etc – who live and work in a traveling circus. They are portrayed within this environment but with an emphasis on their daily lives behind the scenes, seldom do we see them performing and seldom do we see the audience. They are the majority in the film and in a way we are welcomed to their lives. Here we learn of their fears and their strengths and of how they defend themselves as a group when threatened by others, particularly by “normals”. One of the characters, a dwarf, falls in love with a manipulative beautiful woman of the circus who decides to play with his characters for money, while the dwarfs girlfriend – another dwarf – watches him fall to this trap. The freaks plan to show him the woman’s true intentions and make him come to his senses. Sadly, it seems that in the end coming to his senses means coming to terms with the fact that there is no place for him outside of the freak world, and that no normal person will ever seriously fall in love with him. In the end, the freaks also take revenge over this woman and transform her life forever by making her into a freak, to show her what their lives have always been like and will forever be. What I think is most unique about Browning’s film, and for a movie of that time period, is it’s positive portrayal of the freaks, their commonly human qualities and problems, an most importantly the agency that they have within their own lives even in such a restricted environment. This movie shows us that as old as this obsession of representing the unknown, or undesired, might be along with it has always been recognition of the absurdity of making a spectacle of others no matter how strange or different.

Mutant Resentment and Normative Conforming of ‘Freak Culture’ in “X-Men: The Last Stand”

Based on a Marvel comic book series, the movie “X-Men: The Last Stand” directed by Brett Ratner, presents it’s audience with an action packed story of the repercussions the human race faces as it dabbles in genetic engineering to “cure” the mutant X-Gene (the gene found in all mutants said to cause the extra-human like qualities). From the get-go, the movie documents a young Warren Worthington III (the mutant named Angel) cutting off sprouting wings from his shoulder blades (X-Men: The Last Stand). As the movie progresses we learn Warren’s father, Warren Worthington II, is embarrassed by his son’s “mutations,” and invests loads of money into a genetic project planned to stop, reverse and cure the mutant X-Gene (X-Men: The Last Stand). This cascades the movie into a fight between roughly three sides: the humans (the norm), a violent army of resisting mutants led by the powerful mutant Magneto, and a school of mutants who follow Professor Charles Xavier, dedicated to celebrating corporal difference. Among these conflicting sides, the movie’s tagline asks, “Whose Side Will You Be On?” However, underneath all of the cinematic explosions and war rhetoric, a social critique on what it means to be “normal” and what measures the government, humans and “mutants” will go to become/resist normality arises. In critically analyzing particular scenes of this movie along with arguments presented by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's essay, “Introduction: From Wonder to Error— A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity,” a discourse touching upon current political and social issues will arise. At first we must ask: what does it mean to be a mutant (a freak) and against this, what does it mean to be human?

In her essay, Garland-Thomson marks a shift in the way society views “freaks” or “corporeal others” around the time of the Enlightenment. She notes that prior to Enlightenment logic, the “foreboding monster” or “wondrous freak” was explained by mystic theories, gods, God etc. (Garland-Thomson, 4) However, with the shift to logical thinking after the Enlightenment, the “freak” was transformed into a, “category of curiosity” (Garland-Thomson, 4). At once owned by wondrous thought, in modernity the freak is now, as she said, “owned by scientists” (Garland-Thomson, 4). Hence, with modernity and rational thinking Garland-Thomson suggests, “the freak (has moved) from the embodiment of wonder to the embodiment of error.” (Garland-Thomson, 13) In other words, what makes freak bodies different than normal bodies can now be explained by scientists as a result of genetic error— gene mutation in some cases. And since, as Garland-Thomson noted, that the discourse surrounding the “freak” embodies “error,” there is a chance for a reverse of error, or a “cure.” This absolutely pertains to the “X-Men: The Last Stand” narrative, because as the movie’s trailer suggests, “A major pharmaceutical company has developed a way to suppress the mutant X-Gene permanently; they’re calling it a cure” (X-Men Trailer). The trailer continues as the mutant Storm (on Professor Xavier’s team) says, “It’s not a cure! Nothing’s wrong with any of us for that matter” (X-Men Trailer). This reasserts that while the mutants following Magneto wish to end the human race in all, Professor Xavier’s team chooses to resist the discourse of mutant as corporeal otherness, which resists the “us and them” altogether. But how does Professor Xavier's team resist this discourse without violence?

To understand this perspective, let us draw upon ideas brought up in a movie review published in The Chicago Times, written by accredited Roger Ebert. In his review, he noticed some parallels with “X:Men: The Last Stand” and “current political and social issues” (Ebert). He continued saying that, “‘Curing’ mutants is obviously a form of genetic engineering and stirs thoughts of ‘cures’ for many other conditions humans are born with, which could be loosely defined as anything that prevents you from being just like George or Georgette Clooney” (Ebert). What Ebert is touching upon is the way in which we discriminate against a natural condition if it does not fit into a societal norm. Garland-Thomson writes, “Thus, what we assume to be a freak of nature was instead a freak of culture” (Garland-Thomson, 10). However even Ebert touches upon the mutant resisting feeling in saying, “The fact is, most people grow accustomed to the hands they've been dealt and rather resent the opportunity to become ‘normal.’ (Normal in this context is whatever makes you more like them and less like yourself.)”(Ebert). This resentment is what drives Magneto and his team (freaks of culture) into violent resistance. However, as noted before the movie brings up another resisting force which is not of resentment, but rather one of “exceptionalism” and conforming with normativity. Professor Xavier’s team chooses to view mutants in a realm of cohabitation corporeality, regardless of shape, color, or power. However this view also encourages mutants to be able to control their impulses, in order to better fit in the human world. What do you think about this idea of conforming to normatively? Whose side are you on?

Work Cited:

Ebert, Roger. "X-Men: The Last Stand.” Chicago Sun Times. 26 May. 2006. Web. 27 November. 2010.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060525/REVIEWS/60509005

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “From Wonder to Error—A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity.” Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. Ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 1-19.

X-Men: The Last Stand. Dir. Brett Ratner. Perf. Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 2006. DVD.

Trailer found on Youtube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kajEhbglG7k

non- love is in the air at the Mutter museum :(

Because this blog is so open, I just want to reflect on the discussion and my immediate reaction to the Mutter Museum as well as the youtube advertisement for the museum. Firstly, I read Rosemarie Garland Thomas’s piece before viewing the museum’s site and this tainted my ideas towards the museum. I think that a showcase of different rocks found around the world is far less interesting than a skeleton display of conjoined twins. However, Thompson’s piece, “From Wonder to Error—A Genealogy of freak discourse in Modernity,” made me consider how these displays were illustrating the process of devaluing human life because of physical “differences”. This really hurt me to see how these skeletol remains weren’t seen as people, but more of a fascinating visual simply because of its “freakish” nature. “By its very presence, the exceptional body seems to compel explanation, inspire representation, and incite regulation” (Thompson 1), this point that Thompson makes in her piece gives a great perspective on why the Mutter museum is so popular. People like to look at bodies that are different and love to be able to categorize them. The Mutter Museum is a great place to fulfill those needs, its filled with freaky bodies labeled by respected and well known doctors. Of course everyone knows that science is the end all be all to every question in the universe, so once a scientist labels a weird body, then the rest of the population has the right to consider the body diseased or disordered because it has scalpalatosis eretacoctus (I just made that up like most doctors just make names up).
I just really feel awful about the entire non consenting bodies that science has deemed important to put on display at a museum who’s mission is preventative education for common people in effort to avoid death and disease…and I’m guessing “deformity”. The reason why I have internal conflict about this whole mission intertwined with this display of people who look different is because their physical reality cannot be prevented. Meaning the disease or “problems” that these bodies on represent are genetically passed on. This museum is a way for able bodies to confirm their superiority.
The confirmation of superiority really resonated in the youtube advertisement of the couple who displayed their love through a proposal in the Mutter museum. This video focused on a couple who were by American standards superior and encouraged to marry and reproduce more able bodies. This video clip that was meant to be romantic and innocent I’m sure, happened to portray the historical ideals of bodies that matter taking precedence over bodies that don’t. There were displays in the background of the recorded proposal that obviously could not speak up for itself. Obviously the framing of the video wanted you to focus on the newly engaged couple, yet they zoomed in on a display of a body without the ability to speak up. The bodies on display in the background are just there for entertainment or just for a learning experience instead of being able to be apart of the experience. This video reminded me of a photo we viewed earlier in the semester with the black body hanging on a tree and a large group of white people having a social gathering. The picture portrayed the white people happy and engaged in conversation while the black hanging body was nameless and essentially less human. The same sentiment I had in this photo for that hanging body is how I felt when I seen both the site for the Mutter museum and the youtube video for the engagement at the Mutter museum.
I believe that Mutter museum is another form of devaluing certain human bodies while confirming the superiority of others.

Blog Post 11: Open Topic--Mütter Museum, Freakshows, Colonial Spectacle

By 9 pm on Sunday November 28, please post a 600-word response to the course material and discussion from this week. The topic for this response is open so you can write about a topic that you're most interested in, but your post must engage in some way with the readings, cultural productions, and/or class discussion from this week (Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's chapter "From Wonder to Error--A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity," the Mütter Museum, medical museums, historical or contemporary "freak shows," the spectacle of the devalued body, medicine's visual culture as popular entertainment, legacies of colonialism and world fairs, etc.).

Also, by 9 pm on Monday November 29, please make a minimum of 2 comments on your classmates' posts.

Our body Our Self Evident Truth

In Valerie Hartouni’s article "Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion" she explores and deals with the ways in which the discourse around abortion rights and legitimacy has changed in the USA since the 1980’s. I think in a deeper level, focusing on how the issue has been framed also pin point to this very discourse is in turn limiting and constraining the discussion around it, thus in a way limiting the outcome of such a debate. There are some underlying notions, which Hartouni thinks are central to this new discourse on abortion, the fetus and women’s body: There is 1) a focus on the “autonomous” or free floating fetus – in other words, a disconnect between the mother, her body, and the fetus/baby; 2) an understanding of abortion as something lamentable, regrettable, a last resort – something of a [violent and destructive] necessary evil. We can see, then, that abortion is framed in negative terms, which give it a shameful connotation, undesirable but needed. These are some of the ideas that she develops while analyzing a particular video which declared itself as portraying, or rather presenting, an abortion from the inside of the body. In this video, however, no information is given about who’s body, and we have no other source of affirmation that this in fact is an abortion taking place other than what is presented – voiceovers, subtitles. While conducting her research on this video, Hartouni notices a difference of perception of the issue at hand by the members of the audience according to age. Here, the younger generations approve or at least do not negate the possibility of abortion but still construe it as a last resort, a dreaded reality women sometimes have to face. In this sense, there are no positive associations with abortion and if one truly wants it there must be something intrinsically wrong with us; if we don’t regret it in the end we must surely hate babies and/or humanity.

On the other hand, Hartouni also speaks about the role of technologies in actually helping to frame these discourses, not necessarily creating them but that as instruments or vessels for them –specifically utilized to reinforce certain notions. I would argue that, in this sense, other viewing technologies outside of photography, such as videos, are nonetheless still associated or attributed with the “myth of photographic truth” – after all motion pictures and videos come from photography, and the notion that there is a self-evident truth beyond the image. The truth of the matter is the opposite, that images are not self-evident and rather open for interpretations – which is why artists need “artist statements”. In this way, viewing technologies are used to construct this self-evident truth, to formulate it. Let’s take for example the case of Abu Grahib, in which we were forced (quite unsuccessfully) to understand and read the images and actions portrayed in them as “out of the ordinary”, as only and merely negative elements of a generally and intrinsically benevolent entity [i.e the USA]. Indeed, this is what the documentary Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris, 2008) tries to get at in reframing the issue of violence and torture within the military as rather “standard operating procedure”, nothing new in the history of imperialism and war waging. We have also read articles in which this history of torture and the spectacle of torture is shown as being a central part of American culture [and imperialist enterprises]. In this sense, I think we can make a connection between the video images Hanourti talks about in regards to abortion discourse and the images of Abru Grhaib in relation a discourse of torture. Furthermore, there is also a connection between these images and issues that have to do with a classification of bodies, of desirable and undesirable bodies, which can be disposed of and used for different socio-political purposes. On the one hand, we have unclear images of bodily fluids and processes from inside an unknown body, of a process that threatens life at different levels that is violent and desperate. We are taught to read certain way in order to obtain a distinct emotional reaction. On the other hand, we have images of tortured unknown and undesired bodies, casualties of similarly violent process of conquer and threatening of lives in order to “save” others.

This is a link to a BBC news article that talks about scientists trying to find evidence of job skills in the brain through the use of technology – self evident truth about a persons abilities? What if we decided to look for evidence of gayness in the brain? How does this change the discourse around issues of gender and sexuality? Would views on gay marriage change

Brain scans and job skills

And this is an article about the role of the placenta, with a little pic like the ones we've seen before.

placenta

But They Told Me it's a Pipe!

There is a false sense of legitimacy that is socially ingrained in the technologically produced image. Painting and sculpture are not considered by popular culture to display complete accuracy. We believe that photographers (and others who document an aspect of our world through imaging technology) reveal the truth to the viewer and do not have as heavy a hand in manipulating the scene portrayed or the emotional response of the viewer. While not every aspect of every photograph taken has been due to a deliberate intention of the photographer, photography and other imaging technologies are far from void of manipulation.

Valerie Hartouni argues in “Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion” that “technologies themselves do not peer; they are instruments and relations that facilitate or obstruct, but above all construct ‘peering’…likewise ‘peering’ is not itself a benign, impartial, disinterested, or disembodied activity, but is both mediated and situated within interpretive frameworks, points of view, and sets of purposes” (Hartouri 211)

There is a strong connection between this concept and what Errol Morris argues in his film Standard Operating Procedure. The cameras which documented the acts of torture are not intelligent in that they do not understand what it is that they commit to visual history. The camera does not “peer” at the tortured Iraqi male however the camera is the instrument that facilitates our discussions surrounding the torture at Abu Ghraib as well as obstructs the various possible truths (reality?) at the prison. The way that the photographs are presented to the viewer by the documenter has a huge affect on how the viewer receives each image. As I discussed in a previous blogpost regarding Abu Ghraib, in Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris presents images to the viewer with a white frame against a black background evocative of a scrapbook (read: we are supposed to view these images as a routine part of our soldiers’ trip abroad). This scrapbook is the “interpretive framework” in which our peering takes place. We may peer at the photographs of the soldiers’ lifestyle and think how horrible those people were—but only because we, “mediated and situated” by the photographer (and in Standard Operating Procedure, the director) into a space where outrage and horror are the (perhaps the only) appropriate response.

Appropriate responses are elicited through interactions with imaging technology and the profound “truths” that they expose (and conceal). Hartouni articulates that at one point women who received abortions and did not experience regret or loss were viewed by popular culture as “callous, hard, selfish, capricious, or ‘unwomanly,’ but that this societal view shifted along with abortion discourse surrounding the more readily available technology of the ultrasound. In the late 1980s, women who didn’t have incredibly negative experiences with abortion were now considered to simply be “maternally illiterate or simply ignorant of fetal life.” The appropriate response of wanting to keep one’s baby was thought to be attainable through ultrasound imaging—a woman would see the fetus, recognize it as her legitimate preborn child and decide to not have the abortion. (Hartouni 206) The ultrasound machine does not have the ability to peer, but as with the pictures of Abu Ghraib, the viewer is mediated and situated towards a particular response—even guided step by step. I cannot read an ultrasound image—a doctor would have to tell me where the fetus’s head is—where the fetus’s foot is. I am mediated and situated by society to look at the image and claim it as a child—possibly my child. At every step, imaging technology is used to produce images that are read to the viewer through discursive frameworks surrounding the topic which we believe to be presented to us within the image…but this is not a pipe.

Hartouni, Valerie. “Fetal Exposures: Abortion Politics and Optics of Allusion.” The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science. Eds Paula A. Treichler, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley. New York: NYU Press, 1998. 171-97.

Standard Operating Procedure. Dir. Errol Morris, 2008

Also, this reminded me off the discussion we were having in class regarding how women are supposed to just want to be mothers. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJRzBpFjJS8

The Subject(iveness) of a Photo

My interpretation of Hartouni’s argument highlighted in the prompt is a two-part piece:

Part 1: I am going to make a generic, fairly base, and perhaps bold (maybe all three?) statement: An image’s purpose is to be an object that is looked at. If there’s an image and no one sees it, that image arguably does not matter. The image only gets a meaning when someone looks at it and assigns it a meaning. Assuming this to be true (which I am) any image—no matter what kind—is open to interpretation.

Part 2: Every image is framed or edited, even without trying to be. To explain this, I’m going to go with the example of photography because it is the easiest to apply. The photographer, for instance, decides what gets into the shot. S/he chooses what is allowed in the frame of focus and snaps the picture—containing some things and leaving out others. It is physically impossible to capture everything. There’s no technology that is capable of it.

Taking these last two paragraphs into account, I’d like to turn my attention towards a specific type of technology and the image it produces. The particular kind I’d like to explore is a type of medical or biological imaging technology. This allows the viewer to see the inside of a body. The reason I want to check out this type is because it’s scientific. It is commonly viewed as being objective and matter of fact. However, as mentioned in my interpretation of Hartouni’s argument, there’s no such thing.

To test out this idea, I’d like to take a look at a specific image:

Without knowing what this image is or what context it was taken in, a person is left to assign it a meaning. Without knowing anything, the viewer is left to see only the shapes, colors, and textures. You get an overall warm feeling from it because of all the red and yellows. You see some type of blue tube-ish figure. You notice its texture. There’s bubble-like surface. The blue appears to be coming out or going into the yellow thing. You see the texture of the yellow thing. It has a ton of tiny bumps on its surface. It comes off as something fairly abstract.

I asked a few friends what they thought it was and the answers they came up with were not even close to the real thing. I got: “A frog with water spewing out of its eye,” “A mosquito sucking out of something,” and “I have no idea.” Each person brought his or her own meaning. When I revealed what the image actually was I got a much different response. It ranged from “Ohhh” to “Are you doing something on abortion?”

When I told them what it was, I didn’t say anything about abortion. I simply said that it was a sperm entering an egg. I didn’t mention “baby,” “fetus,” or “life.” As soon my one friend knew what the photo was, the nature of her interpretation changed. It went from being something abstract to being something that was loaded with meaning. This particular friend has a fairly strong belief in God. As soon as she heard the words sperm and egg together, and saw that I (she knows I’m a fairly liberal person) was writing something she automatically assigned it a new significance.

This goes to show that even “scientific” and “objective” images aren’t so scientific or objective. I think that ultimately, Hartouni is asserting that particular type of argument. No matter how big the attempt to capture a matter-of-fact image, it is impossible. Either the way in which the image is framed (zoomed in, zoomed out, off center, etc) or the way in which a viewer approaches it makes multiple meanings possible and probable.

(Image is Lennart Nilsson's and was used courtesy of http://pics.photographer.ru/nonstop/pics/pictures/573/573605.jpg)