Snuggie Rode Silly Ads to Stardom Over Rivals
I kid you not.
Update: Leo's grandparents bought him a Snuggie last weekend, so there is now one ensconced in my home. It's the kid's, but he lets me use it.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Foucault and Ang/Hermes questions
1. With regards to the repressive hypothesis discussed on page 10, Foucault disagrees with the arguments because he sees society as being more tolerant than repressive, which is true with regards to French society. Can the same be said about American culture though? No. How then has American censorship changed from the 17th/18th century compared to today?
For one, the role the church plays has taken on a secondary or even tertiary position as we have become a society governed by the state rather than by the church. Despite the role religion has played recently in the discourse, it has not been forgotten as people still use the teachings of their religion as a way to keep others “pure” until marriage. Secondly, the presence of censoring sex through public discourses has changed in that coitus is not seen as something should only be done based on biological (it being a woman’s “duty” to bear children) or economical (having as many children possible to work the land) rationale. Today, not only are women prolonging the age at which they have children, they are also choosing not to have any at all. As the cost of living has risen tremendously since the 18th century, people have chosen not to have a big family, or any children, because of the economic drain it would impose on the family.
The discourse of sexuality pertaining to children has in my eyes changed on a smaller scale compared to the change in the church and adults. There is a great unease with people when it comes to thinking and or talking about infantile/pre-adolescent/adolescent/young adult sexuality, especially when it comes to the infantile/pre-adolescent age groups. Despite known knowledge about sexuality beginning in the womb, people choose to turn a blind eye to this issue. Perhaps because it removes the “innocence” people have when thinking about children or maybe they just don’t know how to broach the subject. When it comes to the adolescent/young adult cohorts, more discussion is being had publicly because of the rising pre/teen sti/pregnancy/abortion rates. Thus, sexuality among pre/teens is still talked about in a preventative manner rather than an honest, informational manner. So, while sex, according to Foucault (1976) was “driven out of hiding and constrained to lead a discursive existence,” the discourse still talks about sex as something that is ignored in infants/small children, shunned and viewed negatively amongst pre/teens and preferred to be engaged in only by those adults who are in a committed relationship, preferably married (p. 33).
2. What sort of devices of surveillance and corrective discourses were used to combat the assumed guilt non/adults were seen as having with regards to their sexuality?
In the colonial era, it was perfectly acceptable for neighbors to literally peek into their neighbors’ windows to see what was going on in the house. Thus, the concept of “policing you neighborhood” became a literal translation especially when it came to sexual practices. It was every person’s duty to make sure that no transgressions against God were being committed in the bedroom. This meant those married couples engaging in any “non-vanilla sexual activity” and for those who were, they were brought forth in front of their community and made to repent against their sin(s) with the promise never to commit that same “crime” again. Unlike in today’s society, people in the 18th and 19th century did not carry their crime’s stigma with them for the rest of their lives, as long as they were sorry and never caught doing the same criminal act again, the notion of forgive and forget was very true.
When it came to sexuality and all non-adults, the approach to safeguard them from sexual temptation was combated in numerous ways, two of which I will discuss now. The first was a device designed specifically for adolescent boys whose bodies were maturing. This specific device can be thought of as an anti-erection invention in that the boy would put it on sort of like a pair of underwear and the phallus was positioned in a way within the device so that if he should become erect while sleeping, a spiked metal ball would come in contact with the tip of his phallus. The purpose of this device then was to get a boy’s body to associate pain with his erection so that his phallus will not want to become erect. Another method used for adolescents was if an arrangement had been made between a girl’s family and a boy’s family with regards to marriage, the soon-to-be husband was allowed to spend the night at the girl’s family’s home, but could not be trusted to control his sexual urges during the night while everyone else was sleeping. To prevent any sort of hanky-panky that could go on when no one was watching, the covers of the bed the boy was sleeping in would be sewn to the mattress so that he could not get out of the bed at night.
There was this obsessive compulsion with sexuality then during these times, and while discussions were being had about sexuality, the nature of those conversations were not to education people on sexuality but rather to keep people from resisting to give in to the devil’s temptations. For both adults and their children, they were led to believe that since they must always be on the lookout for any moment of weakness they might encounter with their body or someone else’s, they were denied the right to eat certain foods. It was once believed that spicy foods had a direct correlation to a person’s sexual appetite. As a result, spicy foods were banned from the diet of everyone. In addition, it was thought that whole grains kept people’s sexuality in check, which led to the General-Mills company to capitalize on this need for healthy foods.
3. Looking back on the history of sexuality in America and how it has changed since the first colonists arrived, was Foucault right in saying that we do not live in a sexually repressed society?
The answer to this question is not as clear-cut as one might expect it to be for there are multiple levels that come into play when trying to answer this question. For instance, I could argue that society is still repressed sexually, if not more than before with regard to the “nervous” woman. During the 20th and 21st centuries, woman who were diagnosed with certain medical afflictions pertaining to their physiological and mental state were treated with masturbatory therapy. Two specific types of therapy were to either have a doctor or nurse use a dildo on a woman to get her to climax, as it was reported afterward that the woman’s physical and mental state appeared to have gotten much better, or to prescribe that a woman sit in a hot spring to get the woman to climax from the jets of water hitting certain parts of a woman’s body. This practice was so common during those times that advertisements could be found in any regular household magazine opposite the page for clothing or household items. No longer are these practices in use medically because of the idea that women are asexual and because of the increase in knowledge about the human body that has allowed for physicians to better recognize what is ailing a person’s mind or body.
Interestingly though, sex education films produced in the early 20th century were made for teenage males to warn them about the “dangers” of sex. While the act of coitus was never fully explained, the focus of those films was to scare them into holding off on having sex until marriage. The roles of women in those films were always the giver of a sti rather than a recipient of one which presents a contradictory image of women. On the one hand, women were not to be trusted sexually because they would give an unsuspecting guy a sti, but on the other hand, women were socialized to be pure and innocent when it came to their sexuality. Another interesting point to make about these early sex education films is that the if a reason was given for how a woman became infected with a sti, it was usually because she felt lonely and or neglected by her husband and sought refuge in the arms/bed of another man who consequently had an infectious disease. Even though the woman in this scenario was infected by another man, you are not made to feel sympathetic for her, but rather for her “innocent” husband who now has to go to the doctor to see if he too has been infected. Thus, that was just one more way to represent the “fallen woman” and Madonna/whore persona within cinematic media. So, even though sexuality was discussed and sexual medical practices were used, it was done more so in a repressive or medicinal manner rather than an expressive approach.
4. In the Ang and Hermes piece, their focus was to examine the role gender plays in media consumption as opposed to only looking at how gender is represented in various media outlets. While the difference between the two approaches might seem subtle, they are very different in the type of questions that can be asked. For instance, the authors raise a question of interest to me pertaining to couples who like to watch porn together. What unspoken messages are being sent by women who watch pornography?
To quote Wendy McElroy (1995), “…I am a woman so who is so psychologically damaged by patriarchy that I have fallen in love with my own oppression” (p. vi). Are women who watch pornographic media or make pornographic media reinforcing their own subordination in a patriarchic society? Does the type of pornographic media a woman watches or makes effect how she is resisting or accepting her subordinate status in society? For instance, if a woman engages in watching or making mainstream pornography, that which is made by white men and aimed at heterosexual white men, as opposed to watching or making non-mainstream porn, specifically, that which is made by white women for heterosexual white female viewers, make one genre better or worse than the other? Mainstream porn has been under attack in the U.S. for centuries because of the assumed lack of morals, violent themes and treatment/presentation of women and after centuries of trying to censor and eradicate porn from American society; women’s response was to make porn geared towards women. Now, what sets the two types of porn apart from one another are often believed to have to do with the presentation of sex in each category. Mainstream porn has also been accused of lacking loving/affectionate themes, so to fill that void women began producing porn that involved loving and or affectionate themes for their female viewers. By making those types of films, does that not also oppress women because those types of films imply that women by nature are only interested in those media that involve loving and/or affectionate themes. Like the romance novels, that type of pornography is used as an outlet to tap into another world with which to escape to. Do women really like that sort of porn though? Granted there are some women who do, can it be said that the majority of women find that type of porn entertaining?
For one, the role the church plays has taken on a secondary or even tertiary position as we have become a society governed by the state rather than by the church. Despite the role religion has played recently in the discourse, it has not been forgotten as people still use the teachings of their religion as a way to keep others “pure” until marriage. Secondly, the presence of censoring sex through public discourses has changed in that coitus is not seen as something should only be done based on biological (it being a woman’s “duty” to bear children) or economical (having as many children possible to work the land) rationale. Today, not only are women prolonging the age at which they have children, they are also choosing not to have any at all. As the cost of living has risen tremendously since the 18th century, people have chosen not to have a big family, or any children, because of the economic drain it would impose on the family.
The discourse of sexuality pertaining to children has in my eyes changed on a smaller scale compared to the change in the church and adults. There is a great unease with people when it comes to thinking and or talking about infantile/pre-adolescent/adolescent/young adult sexuality, especially when it comes to the infantile/pre-adolescent age groups. Despite known knowledge about sexuality beginning in the womb, people choose to turn a blind eye to this issue. Perhaps because it removes the “innocence” people have when thinking about children or maybe they just don’t know how to broach the subject. When it comes to the adolescent/young adult cohorts, more discussion is being had publicly because of the rising pre/teen sti/pregnancy/abortion rates. Thus, sexuality among pre/teens is still talked about in a preventative manner rather than an honest, informational manner. So, while sex, according to Foucault (1976) was “driven out of hiding and constrained to lead a discursive existence,” the discourse still talks about sex as something that is ignored in infants/small children, shunned and viewed negatively amongst pre/teens and preferred to be engaged in only by those adults who are in a committed relationship, preferably married (p. 33).
2. What sort of devices of surveillance and corrective discourses were used to combat the assumed guilt non/adults were seen as having with regards to their sexuality?
In the colonial era, it was perfectly acceptable for neighbors to literally peek into their neighbors’ windows to see what was going on in the house. Thus, the concept of “policing you neighborhood” became a literal translation especially when it came to sexual practices. It was every person’s duty to make sure that no transgressions against God were being committed in the bedroom. This meant those married couples engaging in any “non-vanilla sexual activity” and for those who were, they were brought forth in front of their community and made to repent against their sin(s) with the promise never to commit that same “crime” again. Unlike in today’s society, people in the 18th and 19th century did not carry their crime’s stigma with them for the rest of their lives, as long as they were sorry and never caught doing the same criminal act again, the notion of forgive and forget was very true.
When it came to sexuality and all non-adults, the approach to safeguard them from sexual temptation was combated in numerous ways, two of which I will discuss now. The first was a device designed specifically for adolescent boys whose bodies were maturing. This specific device can be thought of as an anti-erection invention in that the boy would put it on sort of like a pair of underwear and the phallus was positioned in a way within the device so that if he should become erect while sleeping, a spiked metal ball would come in contact with the tip of his phallus. The purpose of this device then was to get a boy’s body to associate pain with his erection so that his phallus will not want to become erect. Another method used for adolescents was if an arrangement had been made between a girl’s family and a boy’s family with regards to marriage, the soon-to-be husband was allowed to spend the night at the girl’s family’s home, but could not be trusted to control his sexual urges during the night while everyone else was sleeping. To prevent any sort of hanky-panky that could go on when no one was watching, the covers of the bed the boy was sleeping in would be sewn to the mattress so that he could not get out of the bed at night.
There was this obsessive compulsion with sexuality then during these times, and while discussions were being had about sexuality, the nature of those conversations were not to education people on sexuality but rather to keep people from resisting to give in to the devil’s temptations. For both adults and their children, they were led to believe that since they must always be on the lookout for any moment of weakness they might encounter with their body or someone else’s, they were denied the right to eat certain foods. It was once believed that spicy foods had a direct correlation to a person’s sexual appetite. As a result, spicy foods were banned from the diet of everyone. In addition, it was thought that whole grains kept people’s sexuality in check, which led to the General-Mills company to capitalize on this need for healthy foods.
3. Looking back on the history of sexuality in America and how it has changed since the first colonists arrived, was Foucault right in saying that we do not live in a sexually repressed society?
The answer to this question is not as clear-cut as one might expect it to be for there are multiple levels that come into play when trying to answer this question. For instance, I could argue that society is still repressed sexually, if not more than before with regard to the “nervous” woman. During the 20th and 21st centuries, woman who were diagnosed with certain medical afflictions pertaining to their physiological and mental state were treated with masturbatory therapy. Two specific types of therapy were to either have a doctor or nurse use a dildo on a woman to get her to climax, as it was reported afterward that the woman’s physical and mental state appeared to have gotten much better, or to prescribe that a woman sit in a hot spring to get the woman to climax from the jets of water hitting certain parts of a woman’s body. This practice was so common during those times that advertisements could be found in any regular household magazine opposite the page for clothing or household items. No longer are these practices in use medically because of the idea that women are asexual and because of the increase in knowledge about the human body that has allowed for physicians to better recognize what is ailing a person’s mind or body.
Interestingly though, sex education films produced in the early 20th century were made for teenage males to warn them about the “dangers” of sex. While the act of coitus was never fully explained, the focus of those films was to scare them into holding off on having sex until marriage. The roles of women in those films were always the giver of a sti rather than a recipient of one which presents a contradictory image of women. On the one hand, women were not to be trusted sexually because they would give an unsuspecting guy a sti, but on the other hand, women were socialized to be pure and innocent when it came to their sexuality. Another interesting point to make about these early sex education films is that the if a reason was given for how a woman became infected with a sti, it was usually because she felt lonely and or neglected by her husband and sought refuge in the arms/bed of another man who consequently had an infectious disease. Even though the woman in this scenario was infected by another man, you are not made to feel sympathetic for her, but rather for her “innocent” husband who now has to go to the doctor to see if he too has been infected. Thus, that was just one more way to represent the “fallen woman” and Madonna/whore persona within cinematic media. So, even though sexuality was discussed and sexual medical practices were used, it was done more so in a repressive or medicinal manner rather than an expressive approach.
4. In the Ang and Hermes piece, their focus was to examine the role gender plays in media consumption as opposed to only looking at how gender is represented in various media outlets. While the difference between the two approaches might seem subtle, they are very different in the type of questions that can be asked. For instance, the authors raise a question of interest to me pertaining to couples who like to watch porn together. What unspoken messages are being sent by women who watch pornography?
To quote Wendy McElroy (1995), “…I am a woman so who is so psychologically damaged by patriarchy that I have fallen in love with my own oppression” (p. vi). Are women who watch pornographic media or make pornographic media reinforcing their own subordination in a patriarchic society? Does the type of pornographic media a woman watches or makes effect how she is resisting or accepting her subordinate status in society? For instance, if a woman engages in watching or making mainstream pornography, that which is made by white men and aimed at heterosexual white men, as opposed to watching or making non-mainstream porn, specifically, that which is made by white women for heterosexual white female viewers, make one genre better or worse than the other? Mainstream porn has been under attack in the U.S. for centuries because of the assumed lack of morals, violent themes and treatment/presentation of women and after centuries of trying to censor and eradicate porn from American society; women’s response was to make porn geared towards women. Now, what sets the two types of porn apart from one another are often believed to have to do with the presentation of sex in each category. Mainstream porn has also been accused of lacking loving/affectionate themes, so to fill that void women began producing porn that involved loving and or affectionate themes for their female viewers. By making those types of films, does that not also oppress women because those types of films imply that women by nature are only interested in those media that involve loving and/or affectionate themes. Like the romance novels, that type of pornography is used as an outlet to tap into another world with which to escape to. Do women really like that sort of porn though? Granted there are some women who do, can it be said that the majority of women find that type of porn entertaining?
2/26
Fellow readers,
By the end of part two, on pages 48-9, Foucault seems to be arguing that when power increases, variations in sexuality and pleasure multiply. However, If this is true, then we should be at a point of unprecedented conformity of sexuality because this society has systematically disempowered people by making possible decisions for individuals. We are left with little but the ability to choose between predetermined options. So, is Foucault ‘s notion of power that of the individual, or is he talking about the empowerment of institutions that develop at the cost of individual liberty and power? [his explanation of power on p. 92 seems to fall outside of either category] Does it not seem too convenient for Foucault begin his grand “History” of sexuality a mere four hundred years ago?
"Sex, the explanation for everything."
[An effort to make this blog more "bloggy"]
Foucault cont'd:
On 140, Michel describes biopower as "the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations." He seems to be speaking specifically about humans and, more broadly, "social bodies." What is the usefulness of biopower as a concept applied to non-human life as in an agricultural or genetically-modified organism sense? What does the scope of a feminist critique of biopower contain? Beyond gender equality, perhaps it would go on to question anthropocentrism and humans' entitlement to the earth's "resources." As a more amorphous and insidious method of control, what does resisting the biopolitical look like to individuals? to populations?
Re: Ang and Hermes:
Ang and Hermes do a good job complicating previous research by challenging the conception of a female audience having a homogenous feminine gender. They also question the validity and genearalizability of previous research that isolated peoples’ experience of a text from its relation to other texts within the bricolage of our post-modern mediascape. Importantly, Ang and Hermes also cite the fact that media use is a “social process” with a multitude of forces that mediate the effects of media on people with ever-changing subject positions. Each of these complications are welcome in a field that seems to continue trying to establish apparent direct media effects despite widespread abandonment of the belief that media messages cause predictable behavior via the hypodermic needle theory. Much psychological research seeks to understand human behavior as a social phenomenon that is affected by the perceived expectations of others. Why do Ang and Hermes and other researchers seem to avoid acknowledging this in their research? Why hasn’t the research we’ve focused on so far considered third person effects? Perhaps women continue to absorb gender roles and expectations through the expectation that everyone else is affected by such media stereotypes. This, at least, partially explains the lack of evidence for direct media effects in the face of an overwhelming conformity amid conceptions of sex and gender.
By the end of part two, on pages 48-9, Foucault seems to be arguing that when power increases, variations in sexuality and pleasure multiply. However, If this is true, then we should be at a point of unprecedented conformity of sexuality because this society has systematically disempowered people by making possible decisions for individuals. We are left with little but the ability to choose between predetermined options. So, is Foucault ‘s notion of power that of the individual, or is he talking about the empowerment of institutions that develop at the cost of individual liberty and power? [his explanation of power on p. 92 seems to fall outside of either category] Does it not seem too convenient for Foucault begin his grand “History” of sexuality a mere four hundred years ago?
"Politics is war pursued by other means."
"Sex, the explanation for everything."[An effort to make this blog more "bloggy"]
Foucault cont'd:
On 140, Michel describes biopower as "the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations." He seems to be speaking specifically about humans and, more broadly, "social bodies." What is the usefulness of biopower as a concept applied to non-human life as in an agricultural or genetically-modified organism sense? What does the scope of a feminist critique of biopower contain? Beyond gender equality, perhaps it would go on to question anthropocentrism and humans' entitlement to the earth's "resources." As a more amorphous and insidious method of control, what does resisting the biopolitical look like to individuals? to populations?
Re: Ang and Hermes:
Ang and Hermes do a good job complicating previous research by challenging the conception of a female audience having a homogenous feminine gender. They also question the validity and genearalizability of previous research that isolated peoples’ experience of a text from its relation to other texts within the bricolage of our post-modern mediascape. Importantly, Ang and Hermes also cite the fact that media use is a “social process” with a multitude of forces that mediate the effects of media on people with ever-changing subject positions. Each of these complications are welcome in a field that seems to continue trying to establish apparent direct media effects despite widespread abandonment of the belief that media messages cause predictable behavior via the hypodermic needle theory. Much psychological research seeks to understand human behavior as a social phenomenon that is affected by the perceived expectations of others. Why do Ang and Hermes and other researchers seem to avoid acknowledging this in their research? Why hasn’t the research we’ve focused on so far considered third person effects? Perhaps women continue to absorb gender roles and expectations through the expectation that everyone else is affected by such media stereotypes. This, at least, partially explains the lack of evidence for direct media effects in the face of an overwhelming conformity amid conceptions of sex and gender.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Questions 2-26
At the end of the Foucault book, he poses a mental exercise to ponder. “We are often reminded of the countless procedures which Christianity once employed to make us detest the body; but let us ponder all the ruses that were employed for centuries to make us love sex, to make the knowledge of it desirable and everything said about it precious” (159). The function of discourse is ultimately to exercise control over, and presumably arrive at a masterful understanding of a subject. Foucault contends that it is ultimately us that are enslaved by the discourse as we become unable to conceptualize ourselves outside of it. How does this concept relate to hegemony? I’m left with the feeling that I’ve been duped my desire to better understand things, when it ultimately serves to keep me in check, which is a hegemonic function. The proliferation of discourse on sex forces us to understand sex only through the lens of the discourse, so how can we try to better understand the nature of texts like romance novels if we are unable to think outside of the established discourse.
Ang and Hermes do a terrific job of articulating the problems and contradictions we all run into when discussing gender and/in the media. One of those contradictions I frequently encounter is the assertion that all viewers and consumers of media interact with the text and create their own meanings from it. We accept as fact that there is no uniform, predictable, homogeneous audience response. How then can we discuss cultivation theory, which suggests that prolonged exposure to a media text will ultimately lead to the adoption of certain ideals that are unrealistic, untrue, exaggerated, etc. Many scholars assert that females (and possibly males) come to accept unhealthily thin body images as the norm because of their constant exposure to them in the media. Wouldn’t this conflict with the idea that we are constantly managing and negotiating the meanings within these texts?
I found the Ang and Hermes discussion of audience studies to be incredibly compelling. But is it really possible for scholars to ignore the role that certain factors may play in predicting an ethnographic result. Gender may be more of a slippery slope, for obvious reasons, but I find it difficult to believe that class doesn’t play a giant role in determining how people are likely to receive a text (If for no other reason than Distinction). We live in a pseudo-fractured society. Indeed, we share experiences across gender, race, and class lines, and they may not be rigid in determining what we watch and like. But the habitus of an upper class individual will not reflect that of a poor person. What are the advantages of separating a group by class in order to study their response to a media text? What are its limitations?
Monday, February 23, 2009
reading questions for 2/26/09
Both of these readings are incredibly concerned with discourse. Foucault pretty much slams his audience over the head with it (I’ve never read the word so much in one setting, ever), but Ang and Hermes also heavily deal with discourse. To choose the word discourse over theory, or some other derivative, has a lot of implications. Or at least I feel like it does. Am I totally wrong about this? I feel like discourse is more directly connected to power than theory is, as discourse implies a universal institutionalization. Discourse is also concerned with a lot more than what is said and the implications of that, but also with who said it and when and in what context, etc. Why is it important to these authors to focus on discourse, as opposed to theory? Is there a difference? What difference does it make, especially in regard to power?
On page 10, Foucault asks if power is ultimately repressive, if it serves no purpose other than to repress. He uses much of the rest of the book to prove that this is not the case. He sees power as coming from everywhere, present in all relations, and even grants acts that are usually deemed passive (like silence) with attributes of power. He’s essentially telling us that power is everywhere, that we can’t resist it because it’s a part of everything. But he concludes the book by saying that, in order to free ourselves from the repressive hypothesis, we must resist the discourse of sexuality. Is this contradictory? If we can’t resist power, how can we resist this discourse?
I loved Foucault’s analysis about sexuality as a construct, specifically the part about how sexuality is used to try to come to an understanding of personality, or a person’s fundamental character. Basically, I love that he’s saying that sexuality doesn’t exist in the terms in which we think of it. Gay people are only gay because the discourse on sexuality needs to differentiate from what it has established as normal. There is nothing constitutive about a person’s identity based on how that person partakes in sexual pleasure. But for many queer people, a queer identity is really important. Entire communities are based around these identities. Are they false identities? In trying to deconstruct the discourse of sexuality, has Foucault invalidated communities?
On page 10, Foucault asks if power is ultimately repressive, if it serves no purpose other than to repress. He uses much of the rest of the book to prove that this is not the case. He sees power as coming from everywhere, present in all relations, and even grants acts that are usually deemed passive (like silence) with attributes of power. He’s essentially telling us that power is everywhere, that we can’t resist it because it’s a part of everything. But he concludes the book by saying that, in order to free ourselves from the repressive hypothesis, we must resist the discourse of sexuality. Is this contradictory? If we can’t resist power, how can we resist this discourse?
I loved Foucault’s analysis about sexuality as a construct, specifically the part about how sexuality is used to try to come to an understanding of personality, or a person’s fundamental character. Basically, I love that he’s saying that sexuality doesn’t exist in the terms in which we think of it. Gay people are only gay because the discourse on sexuality needs to differentiate from what it has established as normal. There is nothing constitutive about a person’s identity based on how that person partakes in sexual pleasure. But for many queer people, a queer identity is really important. Entire communities are based around these identities. Are they false identities? In trying to deconstruct the discourse of sexuality, has Foucault invalidated communities?
Thursday, February 19, 2009
and they all lived happily ever after
Radway mentions that the Smithton women’s “need to see the story and the emotions aroused by it resolved is so intense . . . [that] the women dislike having to leave a story before it is concluded” (59). I understand this in the context of Radway’s findings, because the women seek an emotional reaffirmation and the feelings that go along with finding the ideal partner to both protect and nurture them, but I find this contradicts the narrative structure of the soap opera which essentially delays such endings or resolutions indefinitely. Assuming there is a proportion of women who consume both media products, how do we reconcile this? On one hand, the gratification comes with the conclusion, but on the other, the gratification is in the continual process.
One way the Smithton women justify their reading is by claiming to learn facts and knowledge while reading, thus proving that “the novels are not merely frothy, purposeless entertainment but possess a certain intrinsic value that can be transferred to the reader” (107). I want to suggest that the negative view of romance novels as unproductive, simple-minded distractions translates over to many, if not all, forms of popular culture. Much like the Smithton women, we often have to justify our enjoyment of television shows (I know it’s bad, but . . .) or certain music played on the radio (I know it sucks, but . . .) or, for me personally, my enjoyment of video games, which still maintain, regardless of statistical data, their infantilized and marginalized societal position. In what ways are these justifications a product of patriarchy, and in what ways to we reinforce conceptions of usefulness when we acquiesce to providing them?
Radway argues that the female foil character in a good romance novel “views men as little more than tools for her own aggrandizement . . . [and] is perfectly willing to man-ipulate [my edit] them by flaunting her sexual availability” (131). I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought of the villainess character from soap operas. Like my previous question related to soaps, though, I find a contradiction in the way this character is viewed by the Smithton women compared to how the villainess is supposedly viewed by her audience. I did not get the indication that the Smithton women “loved to hate” the female foil nor did Radway position her as a symbol of feminine power; rather, she is what her name implies, a foil to the true and ideal female lead, an intelligent, innocent, and ignorant girl who, unlike her counterpart, is capable of true love and selfless compassion and caring. Again, how do we reconcile the two polarized readings of these two very similar characters, the female foil and the villainess?
Writing in 1984, Radway argues that “whether such [feminist] developments [in the romance genre] will be widespread and general in the future is impossible to say since we have no way of knowing how many women will give up their safe, limited, and barely conscious contestation of patriarchy for the uncertainty of feminism’s conscious assault on both its categorization of the world and its institutional structure” (220). I think it is clear to say that Radway includes, if not specifically, then at least generally, the Smithton women when she writes that sentence. Over twenty years later, have romances changed? How have they evolved to more directly challenge and incite women against a male-dominated society, if at all? If the core readership has remained similar to the Smithton women, is this model of the romance novel even possible if women reject all but one specific kind of romance narrative, one that alleviates, but does not directly oppose, the pressures and subordination patriarchy imposes?
One way the Smithton women justify their reading is by claiming to learn facts and knowledge while reading, thus proving that “the novels are not merely frothy, purposeless entertainment but possess a certain intrinsic value that can be transferred to the reader” (107). I want to suggest that the negative view of romance novels as unproductive, simple-minded distractions translates over to many, if not all, forms of popular culture. Much like the Smithton women, we often have to justify our enjoyment of television shows (I know it’s bad, but . . .) or certain music played on the radio (I know it sucks, but . . .) or, for me personally, my enjoyment of video games, which still maintain, regardless of statistical data, their infantilized and marginalized societal position. In what ways are these justifications a product of patriarchy, and in what ways to we reinforce conceptions of usefulness when we acquiesce to providing them?
Radway argues that the female foil character in a good romance novel “views men as little more than tools for her own aggrandizement . . . [and] is perfectly willing to man-ipulate [my edit] them by flaunting her sexual availability” (131). I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought of the villainess character from soap operas. Like my previous question related to soaps, though, I find a contradiction in the way this character is viewed by the Smithton women compared to how the villainess is supposedly viewed by her audience. I did not get the indication that the Smithton women “loved to hate” the female foil nor did Radway position her as a symbol of feminine power; rather, she is what her name implies, a foil to the true and ideal female lead, an intelligent, innocent, and ignorant girl who, unlike her counterpart, is capable of true love and selfless compassion and caring. Again, how do we reconcile the two polarized readings of these two very similar characters, the female foil and the villainess?
Writing in 1984, Radway argues that “whether such [feminist] developments [in the romance genre] will be widespread and general in the future is impossible to say since we have no way of knowing how many women will give up their safe, limited, and barely conscious contestation of patriarchy for the uncertainty of feminism’s conscious assault on both its categorization of the world and its institutional structure” (220). I think it is clear to say that Radway includes, if not specifically, then at least generally, the Smithton women when she writes that sentence. Over twenty years later, have romances changed? How have they evolved to more directly challenge and incite women against a male-dominated society, if at all? If the core readership has remained similar to the Smithton women, is this model of the romance novel even possible if women reject all but one specific kind of romance narrative, one that alleviates, but does not directly oppose, the pressures and subordination patriarchy imposes?
The future of romance novels?
As I read Radway, I found her observations of romance reading in a particular historical moment interesting and her observations on how the women used the romance genre to "escape". Also historically how she follows how the political women's movement of the time period influenced readership and the type of novels that the women may be attracted to.
Also her first chapters about the history of books was fascinating to me as a library professional as I did not realize how genres were started as a publishing industry here in the United States. As her study was conducted in the late 1970-80's, I wonder how much the publishing industry has changed in regards to the romance genre? Has readership gone down or up? What are the current demographics of romance readers today?
Also I wonder what genres might also provide the same "escape" and pleasure as for the women readers Radway interviews. Has the emergence of "chick lit" replaced or given another type of genre women can relate to? What are they relating to in regards to chick lit?
Also, there is a growing number of lesbian and gay romance novels as well. I personally enjoy Jane Fletcher, who writes fantasy romance novels involving two lesbians. It's been a while since I have read one of her novels, but I wonder if those books also follow some of the same themes, plots, and character developments that the romance novel contains from Radway observations.
Radway discusses how reading romance gives the women a chance to relax, gives them time of their own, allows them to indulge in fantasy, and escape (p. 60). Many of these same ideas are seen in Reader Response Theory, which is a reading theory that educators are taught in regards to school-age children. What I have not seen (at least in my limited experience with educational theory) is this being applied to adult readers. Yet, many of their experiences seem to fit within how theorists have observed younger readers who "escape" into literature and make meaningful experiences.
Here's a definition of Reader Response Theory:
reader‐response theory, a body of literary investigations, chiefly German and American, into the nature of the reader's activity in the process of understanding literary texts. A major contribution to debates on this topic was made by Wolfgang Iser ( 1926 – ), whose books The Implied Reader ( 1974 ) and The Act of Reading ( 1979 ) argue that a literary work is incomplete until the reader has ‘actualized’ those elements that are left to her imagination. The more controversial arguments of Stanley Fish ( 1938 – ), in his essays collected as Is There a Text in This Class? ( 1980 ), include the claim that literary texts are produced by the strategies of interpretation that guide us to seek certain meanings in them; and that the way we read poems is determined by the ‘interpretive community’ in which we are trained
reader‐response theory" The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer. Oxford university Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Marquette University. 19 February 2009
For my last thoughts, I'm going to end on page 211. Radway brings up an interesting observation when she says "the act of reading as combative and compensatory. It is combative in the sense that it enables them to refuse the other-directed social role prescribed for them by their position within the institution of marriage....Their activity is compensatory, then, in that it permits them to focus on themselves and to carve out a solitary space within an arena where their self-interest is usually identified with the interests of others and where they are defined as a public resource to be mined as will by the family."
This duel role that these women play in their communities, as mothers who take care of their family and household and then the independent women they are as they allow space and time for their wants and needs is something I think Radway shows through her observations throughout the book. Again, I wonder is this type of reading only held to the romance genre or has that changed? Is this unique to popular culture as a whole, this appeal only to a very specific type of woman in a particular society or is it possible to see in other cultures or genres?
Also her first chapters about the history of books was fascinating to me as a library professional as I did not realize how genres were started as a publishing industry here in the United States. As her study was conducted in the late 1970-80's, I wonder how much the publishing industry has changed in regards to the romance genre? Has readership gone down or up? What are the current demographics of romance readers today?
Also I wonder what genres might also provide the same "escape" and pleasure as for the women readers Radway interviews. Has the emergence of "chick lit" replaced or given another type of genre women can relate to? What are they relating to in regards to chick lit?
Also, there is a growing number of lesbian and gay romance novels as well. I personally enjoy Jane Fletcher, who writes fantasy romance novels involving two lesbians. It's been a while since I have read one of her novels, but I wonder if those books also follow some of the same themes, plots, and character developments that the romance novel contains from Radway observations.
Radway discusses how reading romance gives the women a chance to relax, gives them time of their own, allows them to indulge in fantasy, and escape (p. 60). Many of these same ideas are seen in Reader Response Theory, which is a reading theory that educators are taught in regards to school-age children. What I have not seen (at least in my limited experience with educational theory) is this being applied to adult readers. Yet, many of their experiences seem to fit within how theorists have observed younger readers who "escape" into literature and make meaningful experiences.
Here's a definition of Reader Response Theory:
reader‐response theory, a body of literary investigations, chiefly German and American, into the nature of the reader's activity in the process of understanding literary texts. A major contribution to debates on this topic was made by Wolfgang Iser ( 1926 – ), whose books The Implied Reader ( 1974 ) and The Act of Reading ( 1979 ) argue that a literary work is incomplete until the reader has ‘actualized’ those elements that are left to her imagination. The more controversial arguments of Stanley Fish ( 1938 – ), in his essays collected as Is There a Text in This Class? ( 1980 ), include the claim that literary texts are produced by the strategies of interpretation that guide us to seek certain meanings in them; and that the way we read poems is determined by the ‘interpretive community’ in which we are trained
reader‐response theory" The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer. Oxford university Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Marquette University. 19 February 2009
For my last thoughts, I'm going to end on page 211. Radway brings up an interesting observation when she says "the act of reading as combative and compensatory. It is combative in the sense that it enables them to refuse the other-directed social role prescribed for them by their position within the institution of marriage....Their activity is compensatory, then, in that it permits them to focus on themselves and to carve out a solitary space within an arena where their self-interest is usually identified with the interests of others and where they are defined as a public resource to be mined as will by the family."
This duel role that these women play in their communities, as mothers who take care of their family and household and then the independent women they are as they allow space and time for their wants and needs is something I think Radway shows through her observations throughout the book. Again, I wonder is this type of reading only held to the romance genre or has that changed? Is this unique to popular culture as a whole, this appeal only to a very specific type of woman in a particular society or is it possible to see in other cultures or genres?
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