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.