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shadowkatHave a dull barometric pressure headach throbbing in the background,coupled with gastric-reflux, caused by god only knows what. In the continuous battle between me and my digestive system, the digestive system is winning. Same with the weather.
After my regrettable albeit interesting discussion online about the objectification of men and women on tv, I watched the third episode of S3 Mad Men - for those following the show, this is the episode that opens with Anne Margaret singing the title song of Bye Bye Birdie in the film version of the Broadway musical. Also fitting, since I just read Http://www.robwillreview.com (I think that is the correct link) review of the current revival of the same musical on lj. He posts the reviews on his lj blog and on his review blog. He didn't like it - not surprised, John Stamos is no Dick Van Dyke (who played Albert on Broadway and in the film version) and Gina Gerson is no Chita Rivera (who played it in the original Broadway version - can't remember if she did in the film, it may have been another famous hispanic singer and dancer...). They really need to get song and dance people for those roles.
At any rate - MAD MEN - a tv series about ad men on madison avenue during the 1960s, in a scene between Elizabeth Moss's Peggy and John Hamm's Don Draper - deftly tackles the topic of objectification as well as male/female roles and male power or the male gaze in a way that I almost want to post as a vid on my lj. Because I'm not sure I can make the point better than it does. Also, depressingly enough, very little has changed between now and then in the ad world - except that now the female gaze is given a bit more priority than before.
Back then, the female gaze was well close to non-existent in media. Men ruled the roost so to speak.
This is deftly shown not told in the dialogue between Peggy and Don. As well as the opening scene of the episode - which is a bunch of men, and Peggy, sitting in a room watching Anne Margret flounce her stuff. The client is trying to sell Patio Diet Soda to Women, and has decided they want an ad campaign based on Ann Margret's Bye Bye Birdie number...Peggy pipes up and says, wait, you are selling that drink to people like me, women, why would a woman want to watch a boxum 24 year old acting like a 14 year old (teen)? Because that's what the client wants...Peggy takes her complaint to Don Draper, the creative director.
Peggy tells Don about the ad, and explains her issues with it. When Don says he hasn't seen the Anne Margret bit, she shows it to him. We all watch it again. Then Don shrugs and tells Peggy that what sells is the male fantasy. Women aren't in control here. Women want to be Ann Margret. Men want Anne Margaret. So the male gaze is what sells. It's not about what women want, he implies, it is about what men want, and women being willing to become that. The ad industry to a degree has been built on that. It's what Megan Fox stated in an interview a while back - women's role in Hollywood for like forever has been to be the sex object. And that to a large degree is true - Betty Grable, Norma Jean/Marilyn Monroe, pin-up models. Note also Knocked Up, HangOver, and most of Judd Apatow's films, as well as numerous other romantic comedies of late.
The only film in recent memory that did this for women was Sex in the City. Nothing else has. Yet the romantic comedy genre has traditionally been for women. It isn't now. Men have co-opted the box office during the summer, even 500 Days of Summer - the one romantic indie flick - is for the guys, we are in his gaze, not hers.
What I found disturbing and somewhat interesting in my recent discussion on the topic - is the number of women out there who appear to not be bothered by the male gaze, but are all upset about the female one. A lot of women are upset about how James Marsters was treated on Buffy. Odd. Considering he really only appeared naked in about three episodes (Wrecked, Gone, and As You Were. Dead Things doesn't count - since both Gellar and Marsters showed skin.) He had no shirt on in five episodes in S7 (Beneath You, Never Leave Me, Bring on the Night, Showtime, and Dirty Girls). That's really nothing. And one episode of Angel S5 (Hellbound).
Yet, I don't see complaints about the attire Buffy is shown in on the packaging of the S1 DVD's - considering the actress was 18 at the time, and her character was 16. Nor complaints about how women are portrayed in recent films, not to mention the annual Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Issue that comes out every year. Heck to get her career jump-started, Charisma Carpenter appeared in Playboy. Something neither James Marsters nor David Boreanze had to do.
Are women that oblivious to the male gaze and its effects? The Sopranos on HBO, airing around the same time as Buffy, had naked women in most of the episodes, the men more or less fully clothed. It was mainstream and higher in the ratings. And look at commericials - how many do you see with attractive men? OR how about stepping into a restaurant, Hooters comes to mind. At work - I remember being at a construction site and under the glass on one of the meeting tables in the workroom was a newpaper ad of an Irish bar, with the perky little waitress, and her short short skirt, and boobs hanging out. And when the film Star Trek came out - I remember post after post talking about the wonders of Uhruha and her mini-skirt, as if it was a statement of empowerment??? This is a film in which women were either mothers, shown briefly, or a naked girl in the sack with Kirk. Urhura the female lead - was shown as a sex symbol, played by a former model. Granted Kirk is hot in the film as is Spock, but it is clearly a "male" film. Transformers - the same thing, Megan Fox struts her stuff. I mention these films because they are the blockbusters of the summer.
When women do make it to film - they are shown in traditional roles (Julia and Julie) or
as sex objects (Transformers, Public Enemies, Star Trek). Or they barely show up at all (Terminator Salvation, District 9,) or they are the object of desire, pursued but not quite gotten (500 Days of Summer). If they attempt to take on the male role, they are mocked (The Proposal, All About Steve). I haven't been to the movies that much this summer and is it any wonder?
TV is a bit better - it at least is commenting on it through series such as Dollhouse and Mad Men. Or it provides women with strong roles - such as Brothers and Sisters, Damages (one of the few that has a female anti-hero), Torchwood:Children of Earth (the only sci-fi series I've seen with multiple roles for women and no-stereotypical ones), or Glee.
Granted it still has the predominately male fare - such as Supernatural. But Supernatural in its way also comments on it. Supernatural is pure noir. It is true horror noir, complete with the doomed heroes, and the doomed dark universe. In noir man doesn't have a chance. Women are either saviors or demons, parts of his subconscious, not real outside of the male's hopes and dreams. Noir fascinates me because it puts me inside the perspective of male gaze, the male mind or rather the white male mind. Most noir is film by the group in power, for some reason or other. And most of it is bleak. Almost misanthropic or apologetic. Self-abasing. The noir hero hates himself, is self-loathing. The world he inhabits pointless, and hopeless. And women a light in the tunnel, but more often than not a coming train. Supernatural also fascinates me - because it hits my brother kink - or brother issues kink. I watch it solely for the relationship between the brothers, and well Mischa Collins Castiel (who for some reason or other turns me on). Is it sexist? Yes. Is it at times misogynistic? Yes. But it is also misanthropic. That is noir. It is to a degree - the point of noir. Blade Runner being an excellent example - the Director's cut, not the original. Also to give Supernatural credit - the women are powerful - either powerful Angels, or powerful demons. They are not weak. And it hits on the nose the male fear of female power. Of gender roles.
I've worked in predominately male fields most of my life. Just this past week I was in a meeting with twelve people, I was the only woman in the room. That is normal. And while they are respectful and I like working with men a great deal, there is an undercurrent that you have to constantly fight against. I walked through a male prison and deliberately blocked the whistles and leers and catcalls. Also taught a class to male convicts in that prison, who were considerate and didn't say a thing. But I did have a 6'7, 230 pound male classmate with me, co-teaching the class.
And I've had construction workers harass me - in London, outside of the hotel I was staying in with fellow classmates - a bunch of male construction workers kept harrassing us. One day as my girlfriends and I were leaving for the market, they formed a line or one guy on each side - which we had to go through and they grabbed, fondled and kissed us as we did. My friends went first giggling and ducking. I went, stopped and told them off. One guy took my wrist and made as if to kiss my hand, I took his hand off mine and let him know in no uncertain terms if he touched me, I would not appreciate it. Laughing he backed off. The next week another friend chided me for being rude to the workers. I told her the story. She told me to suck it up. I remember walking the opposite way, the long way around the hotel to avoide their harrassment - this was in 1987 London. That same summer a classmate told me that he wondered what I'd be like stoned or on hash, he figured I'd be like a gerbil in heat. I remember just looking at him, saying not a word. Until his friend said to him, if looks could kill - you would be dead. He later apologized to me and said he was out of line.
1988: A guy in Wales, a B&B owner, once accosted me on the moors, I was alone at the time, he was my only transportation back to civilization, it was dark, and spooky. I pushed him off, got him to take me back to his B&B, I quickly took a shower. And I left the next morning. I have never been so frightened in my life. He believed I was loose because I was an American, traveling alone in Wales, and had the audacity to go into pubs by myself to get drinks and get stories at night. Women, I found out later, did not go into pubs by themselves - men did. Not women. And not unaccompanied. If you did so, you were considered loose and wanting sex, wanting to be picked up. If I had been a man, I could have collected stories, stayed at the B&B and gone to the moors, without an mishap. He was over 30 years older than I was, and he had merely taken me up there or so I'd been told to see a haunted ruin - that I could take photos of. I don't know if it was haunted or not. This was in 1988 and in North Wales. I don't know if the custom has changed since then. I'm guessing not.
When I traveled to Turkey in 2000, I was told to travel with others, that women alone were in trouble. One night traveling home with a girlfriend to our B&B, my girlfriend was accosted, a man grabbed at her crotch. It was frightening. We stopped walking home after dark. And when I joined my sailing group - I stayed with them and never went off by myself. My friend wanted to go to Iran to see the beautiful tiles she'd studied in school, the mosaics, but she wimped out when she realized she had to get head gear to cover her entire face, her head and body. It was hot that summer. We were there in August. If she had been a man, this would not even be an issue. And in Missouri, US, when I did orders of protection - 85% -90% were women seeking protection by the way, I discovered why we had to work so hard for it, on the law books there was still a law that stated a woman was the property of her husband after marriage. Oh and as a small child in West Chester, Pa, I found Penthouse and Hustler magazines in the woods, that stoned men were reading, the magazines featured men in sexual acts with teenage and pre-teenage girls. I remember my mother, frightened and upset, picking the magazines out of the crick where we'd thrown them in our fear and disgust. And throwing them into a huge trash-can. We moved not that long after that.
I repeat these experiences as an attempt to convey what it is to be female in a society ruled by men. In a world - where women cannot travel freely without fear for their physical wellbeing. And I wish these are the only ones I've experienced. They aren't. Luckily I have not been the victim of sexual violence or rape. So far. Knocks on wood.
My granny once said before you judge someone try walking a mile in their mocassins...it's not as easy as it sounds. But I wonder sometimes, what world we would live in if every guy experienced one day of the discomfort that James Marsters complains of on the Buffy set? Would that change things? Would they realize that is how we feel? If every guy who was made uncomfortable by those scenes or how the male characters were objectified in Sex in the City or in Buffy, thought that is how women feel all the time. Imagine feeling that way every day you go to work? Every place you travel? Imagine what it would feel like.
[Not edited due to lateness of the hour and I have to go to bed.]
After my regrettable albeit interesting discussion online about the objectification of men and women on tv, I watched the third episode of S3 Mad Men - for those following the show, this is the episode that opens with Anne Margaret singing the title song of Bye Bye Birdie in the film version of the Broadway musical. Also fitting, since I just read Http://www.robwillreview.com (I think that is the correct link) review of the current revival of the same musical on lj. He posts the reviews on his lj blog and on his review blog. He didn't like it - not surprised, John Stamos is no Dick Van Dyke (who played Albert on Broadway and in the film version) and Gina Gerson is no Chita Rivera (who played it in the original Broadway version - can't remember if she did in the film, it may have been another famous hispanic singer and dancer...). They really need to get song and dance people for those roles.
At any rate - MAD MEN - a tv series about ad men on madison avenue during the 1960s, in a scene between Elizabeth Moss's Peggy and John Hamm's Don Draper - deftly tackles the topic of objectification as well as male/female roles and male power or the male gaze in a way that I almost want to post as a vid on my lj. Because I'm not sure I can make the point better than it does. Also, depressingly enough, very little has changed between now and then in the ad world - except that now the female gaze is given a bit more priority than before.
Back then, the female gaze was well close to non-existent in media. Men ruled the roost so to speak.
This is deftly shown not told in the dialogue between Peggy and Don. As well as the opening scene of the episode - which is a bunch of men, and Peggy, sitting in a room watching Anne Margret flounce her stuff. The client is trying to sell Patio Diet Soda to Women, and has decided they want an ad campaign based on Ann Margret's Bye Bye Birdie number...Peggy pipes up and says, wait, you are selling that drink to people like me, women, why would a woman want to watch a boxum 24 year old acting like a 14 year old (teen)? Because that's what the client wants...Peggy takes her complaint to Don Draper, the creative director.
Peggy tells Don about the ad, and explains her issues with it. When Don says he hasn't seen the Anne Margret bit, she shows it to him. We all watch it again. Then Don shrugs and tells Peggy that what sells is the male fantasy. Women aren't in control here. Women want to be Ann Margret. Men want Anne Margaret. So the male gaze is what sells. It's not about what women want, he implies, it is about what men want, and women being willing to become that. The ad industry to a degree has been built on that. It's what Megan Fox stated in an interview a while back - women's role in Hollywood for like forever has been to be the sex object. And that to a large degree is true - Betty Grable, Norma Jean/Marilyn Monroe, pin-up models. Note also Knocked Up, HangOver, and most of Judd Apatow's films, as well as numerous other romantic comedies of late.
The only film in recent memory that did this for women was Sex in the City. Nothing else has. Yet the romantic comedy genre has traditionally been for women. It isn't now. Men have co-opted the box office during the summer, even 500 Days of Summer - the one romantic indie flick - is for the guys, we are in his gaze, not hers.
What I found disturbing and somewhat interesting in my recent discussion on the topic - is the number of women out there who appear to not be bothered by the male gaze, but are all upset about the female one. A lot of women are upset about how James Marsters was treated on Buffy. Odd. Considering he really only appeared naked in about three episodes (Wrecked, Gone, and As You Were. Dead Things doesn't count - since both Gellar and Marsters showed skin.) He had no shirt on in five episodes in S7 (Beneath You, Never Leave Me, Bring on the Night, Showtime, and Dirty Girls). That's really nothing. And one episode of Angel S5 (Hellbound).
Yet, I don't see complaints about the attire Buffy is shown in on the packaging of the S1 DVD's - considering the actress was 18 at the time, and her character was 16. Nor complaints about how women are portrayed in recent films, not to mention the annual Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Issue that comes out every year. Heck to get her career jump-started, Charisma Carpenter appeared in Playboy. Something neither James Marsters nor David Boreanze had to do.
Are women that oblivious to the male gaze and its effects? The Sopranos on HBO, airing around the same time as Buffy, had naked women in most of the episodes, the men more or less fully clothed. It was mainstream and higher in the ratings. And look at commericials - how many do you see with attractive men? OR how about stepping into a restaurant, Hooters comes to mind. At work - I remember being at a construction site and under the glass on one of the meeting tables in the workroom was a newpaper ad of an Irish bar, with the perky little waitress, and her short short skirt, and boobs hanging out. And when the film Star Trek came out - I remember post after post talking about the wonders of Uhruha and her mini-skirt, as if it was a statement of empowerment??? This is a film in which women were either mothers, shown briefly, or a naked girl in the sack with Kirk. Urhura the female lead - was shown as a sex symbol, played by a former model. Granted Kirk is hot in the film as is Spock, but it is clearly a "male" film. Transformers - the same thing, Megan Fox struts her stuff. I mention these films because they are the blockbusters of the summer.
When women do make it to film - they are shown in traditional roles (Julia and Julie) or
as sex objects (Transformers, Public Enemies, Star Trek). Or they barely show up at all (Terminator Salvation, District 9,) or they are the object of desire, pursued but not quite gotten (500 Days of Summer). If they attempt to take on the male role, they are mocked (The Proposal, All About Steve). I haven't been to the movies that much this summer and is it any wonder?
TV is a bit better - it at least is commenting on it through series such as Dollhouse and Mad Men. Or it provides women with strong roles - such as Brothers and Sisters, Damages (one of the few that has a female anti-hero), Torchwood:Children of Earth (the only sci-fi series I've seen with multiple roles for women and no-stereotypical ones), or Glee.
Granted it still has the predominately male fare - such as Supernatural. But Supernatural in its way also comments on it. Supernatural is pure noir. It is true horror noir, complete with the doomed heroes, and the doomed dark universe. In noir man doesn't have a chance. Women are either saviors or demons, parts of his subconscious, not real outside of the male's hopes and dreams. Noir fascinates me because it puts me inside the perspective of male gaze, the male mind or rather the white male mind. Most noir is film by the group in power, for some reason or other. And most of it is bleak. Almost misanthropic or apologetic. Self-abasing. The noir hero hates himself, is self-loathing. The world he inhabits pointless, and hopeless. And women a light in the tunnel, but more often than not a coming train. Supernatural also fascinates me - because it hits my brother kink - or brother issues kink. I watch it solely for the relationship between the brothers, and well Mischa Collins Castiel (who for some reason or other turns me on). Is it sexist? Yes. Is it at times misogynistic? Yes. But it is also misanthropic. That is noir. It is to a degree - the point of noir. Blade Runner being an excellent example - the Director's cut, not the original. Also to give Supernatural credit - the women are powerful - either powerful Angels, or powerful demons. They are not weak. And it hits on the nose the male fear of female power. Of gender roles.
I've worked in predominately male fields most of my life. Just this past week I was in a meeting with twelve people, I was the only woman in the room. That is normal. And while they are respectful and I like working with men a great deal, there is an undercurrent that you have to constantly fight against. I walked through a male prison and deliberately blocked the whistles and leers and catcalls. Also taught a class to male convicts in that prison, who were considerate and didn't say a thing. But I did have a 6'7, 230 pound male classmate with me, co-teaching the class.
And I've had construction workers harass me - in London, outside of the hotel I was staying in with fellow classmates - a bunch of male construction workers kept harrassing us. One day as my girlfriends and I were leaving for the market, they formed a line or one guy on each side - which we had to go through and they grabbed, fondled and kissed us as we did. My friends went first giggling and ducking. I went, stopped and told them off. One guy took my wrist and made as if to kiss my hand, I took his hand off mine and let him know in no uncertain terms if he touched me, I would not appreciate it. Laughing he backed off. The next week another friend chided me for being rude to the workers. I told her the story. She told me to suck it up. I remember walking the opposite way, the long way around the hotel to avoide their harrassment - this was in 1987 London. That same summer a classmate told me that he wondered what I'd be like stoned or on hash, he figured I'd be like a gerbil in heat. I remember just looking at him, saying not a word. Until his friend said to him, if looks could kill - you would be dead. He later apologized to me and said he was out of line.
1988: A guy in Wales, a B&B owner, once accosted me on the moors, I was alone at the time, he was my only transportation back to civilization, it was dark, and spooky. I pushed him off, got him to take me back to his B&B, I quickly took a shower. And I left the next morning. I have never been so frightened in my life. He believed I was loose because I was an American, traveling alone in Wales, and had the audacity to go into pubs by myself to get drinks and get stories at night. Women, I found out later, did not go into pubs by themselves - men did. Not women. And not unaccompanied. If you did so, you were considered loose and wanting sex, wanting to be picked up. If I had been a man, I could have collected stories, stayed at the B&B and gone to the moors, without an mishap. He was over 30 years older than I was, and he had merely taken me up there or so I'd been told to see a haunted ruin - that I could take photos of. I don't know if it was haunted or not. This was in 1988 and in North Wales. I don't know if the custom has changed since then. I'm guessing not.
When I traveled to Turkey in 2000, I was told to travel with others, that women alone were in trouble. One night traveling home with a girlfriend to our B&B, my girlfriend was accosted, a man grabbed at her crotch. It was frightening. We stopped walking home after dark. And when I joined my sailing group - I stayed with them and never went off by myself. My friend wanted to go to Iran to see the beautiful tiles she'd studied in school, the mosaics, but she wimped out when she realized she had to get head gear to cover her entire face, her head and body. It was hot that summer. We were there in August. If she had been a man, this would not even be an issue. And in Missouri, US, when I did orders of protection - 85% -90% were women seeking protection by the way, I discovered why we had to work so hard for it, on the law books there was still a law that stated a woman was the property of her husband after marriage. Oh and as a small child in West Chester, Pa, I found Penthouse and Hustler magazines in the woods, that stoned men were reading, the magazines featured men in sexual acts with teenage and pre-teenage girls. I remember my mother, frightened and upset, picking the magazines out of the crick where we'd thrown them in our fear and disgust. And throwing them into a huge trash-can. We moved not that long after that.
I repeat these experiences as an attempt to convey what it is to be female in a society ruled by men. In a world - where women cannot travel freely without fear for their physical wellbeing. And I wish these are the only ones I've experienced. They aren't. Luckily I have not been the victim of sexual violence or rape. So far. Knocks on wood.
My granny once said before you judge someone try walking a mile in their mocassins...it's not as easy as it sounds. But I wonder sometimes, what world we would live in if every guy experienced one day of the discomfort that James Marsters complains of on the Buffy set? Would that change things? Would they realize that is how we feel? If every guy who was made uncomfortable by those scenes or how the male characters were objectified in Sex in the City or in Buffy, thought that is how women feel all the time. Imagine feeling that way every day you go to work? Every place you travel? Imagine what it would feel like.
[Not edited due to lateness of the hour and I have to go to bed.]
no subject
Date: 2009-09-16 02:28 am (UTC)For me personally? Because it was the only thing I disagreed with in Gabs' post. And a conversation about something we disagree on is a lot more interesting than just nodding along to everything else.
Why state - oh we are as bad as the men? We aren't, because we are not in power.
I disagree. Objectification is objectification, no matter who's doing it. Yes, women face a much greater systemic problem of sexism in which female objectification occurs, but that doesn't make it any less wrong to objectify men.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-16 02:42 am (UTC)I didn't.
Anymore than it is right to judge people on their race or gender.
The argument was never that it was okay to objectify men and not women. The argument was that women are objectified CONSTANTLY. Every day. Every moment. Every minute. Without anyone stopping it. Yet men are rarely objectified and when they are - people jump to their defense.
Oh, why don't you like the poor short guy or the old guy or the fat guy??? Yet women are expected to be young and sexy.
How many magazines have naked women on the cover? How many have men?
Until men are objectified in a way that robs them of their rights and equates to the way women are objectified - I seriously do not see it as an issue.
Ask yourself this question - when was the last time you saw a guy heckled in public by a bunch of women?
I saw a woman heckled just about every day.
Yes, I think we all agree that objectification is wrong, but we can also all agree that it is to a degree instinctual and we all do it. (How many Spike icons have you lusted after?)
Men don't need to be defended. They aren't the ones who have to go out of their way not to be groped on the sidewalk on their way to work each morning.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-16 12:27 pm (UTC)The original comment was that Gabs was pleased to see male objectification. I think that brings with it at least some connotation of it being acceptable or okay. Either that, or it's "I like seeing bad things happen to other people, as long as it's not my gender," which seems cruel and not what I expected from her.
The argument was that women are objectified CONSTANTLY.
And I get that. I don't understand why you feel I need a lecture on this, since I've stated that I am aware of the problem.
It's obvious that you and Gabs both see objectification first and foremost from a feminist perspective. I don't. When I talk about objectification, I'm not talking about power imbalance or oppression. I'm simply talking about treating people the way they deserve to be treated - as people, not objects.
I learned about objectification way before I learned about feminism, in a very different context. Thus, when I object to objectification, the oppression of women is not my top priority. I'm sorry if that bothers you. You can go ahead and call me a bad feminist or not a feminist at all. I don't really care. Either way, you and I are clearly on different pages, and if you care to understand more about my perspective, you can read the conversation I had with Gabs on her original post.
Why are we pleased by the female gaze?
Date: 2009-09-16 04:40 pm (UTC)I only read a portion of your debate with gabs, and as I noted in the email thread above, I agreed with the view that one should not objectify people - what I did not see in what I read nor see in any of your responses above is an understanding on your part regarding why we found the female gaze to be pleasing. Note understanding should not be confused with justification or excuse. People often confuse the two terms. I'm not saying that you are, just trying to be clear.
Like you, I was raised first from the perspective that you do not objectify, and came to the "feminist" perspective much later in life. After an in-depth struggle with it.I argued from your perspective. I said -objectifying is wrong period. How can you be pleased by the female gaze? How?
What I never asked was WHY? Because how is a simple enough question to answer - it's a lizard brain function. And I'm not enough of an expert to engage in a lengthy discussion on it.
I tried to explain the why in my post above and did it again in my response to you - so that is flogging a dead horse and we obviously both get it.
The last line of my initial post above was meant to explain why I was pleased to see the female gaze examined. Please note - and I can't speak for gabs here - but for myself, a portion of that pleasure came from the fact that the woman's perspective was finally being addressed - we are finally inside our gaze not just his. If we could objectify someone else, then this meant we were not mere objects ourselves. That we lived outside of men, that we were equal to them, equal faults, equal needs, and equal desires. We are neither saints nor sinners. We are human like they are.
[This is not meant to be a justification by the way, just an explanation. They are not the same thing.]
Ironically, Buffy the Vampire Slayer answers the why questions quite well.
In S6 - the female gaze - or sexual objectification of Spike - is both a turn-on and a turn-off. We are shown what it does to both Buffy and to Spike in horrific detail. In Beneath You - Spike asks a horrified Buffy, Am I Flesh? Am I flesh to you? But the counter part to that equation is shown, with Warren in I Was Made to Love You and in Dead Things.
What is pleasing here - is that the writer by flipping the gender roles at times, shows how the woman feels - he goes inside her pov.
It is forcing the man to step inside the female perspective. To see through her eyes, and not necessarily see what he wants. To realize we aren't as different as he may wish.
It is also about power. That is also why we are pleased.
In Lessons:
Buffy to Dawn: Who has the power?
Dawn has a stake and feels powerful: I do
Buffy rolls her eyes and Dawn gets bitten by the vamp she's fighting.
Buffy: Who has the power?
Dawn: He does.
Buffy: Yes. You're just a girl.
Think about that last line. It is repeated through the series.
When Spike is turned into a sex object by Buffy, in a way, it is almost karmic justice - because Spike throughout his life has made women objects for his pleasure or derision. They are just girls for him to kill or fuck or shag or love or take care of. Harmony. Drusilla (who gets off of taking care of, when the tables turn, he can't handle it and he notes to Angelus that Dru is his in Destiny. His property.)Buffy - he sees as his. And constantly discusses in proprietary tones - "not 'your'bint anymore" or to the Buffbot - "your mine". In fact with the Buffbot - he literally turned Buffy into a sex object. When the tables are turned, he goes insane - she has the power, not him.
That is why it is pleasing. Not because we get off on him getting his just deserts - that's not it. But because, finally we are shown it from our point of view and we can be something more than an object of desire.
It's not about right, it's not about wrong. It is about power.
Re: Why are we pleased by the female gaze?
Date: 2009-09-16 05:40 pm (UTC)Re: Why are we pleased by the female gaze?
Date: 2009-09-16 06:14 pm (UTC)why can't it be about both?
I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive.
How we treat people has a lot to do with how much power we have and how much they have. Example: how do you treat your boss as opposed to how you treat your friend? Or how do you treat a fellow student as opposed to a teacher?
You treat them differently? Right?
How we treat people is based on how much power we have.
Our disagreement is that you appear believe that power and treatment are exclusive and can be discussed separately and have no bearing on one another?
Am I correct? Or am I misreading you?
For the record - everyone agrees that you should not "treat" people as objects. That is a given. But do you understand why we do? Do you understand why the female gaze could be appealing? I'm not asking for you to say that yes under certain circumstances treating people like objects is okay. That is not what I am saying at all. Nor am I saying that treating someone like an object is a good idea. Nor do I believe gabs is necessarily stating that - she's stating the extreme version is bad, but the one in which you say oh that guy on the street is hot or that girl is hot - is not bad.
I'm not asking for agreement, I am asking for understanding - it's not the same thing.
Re: Why are we pleased by the female gaze?
Date: 2009-09-16 06:19 pm (UTC)In attempt to clarify that last statement - I guess, from your responses, I don't think you are understanding what we are saying.
It sounds to me as if you are oversimplifying it.
ie. Fire bad. Tree pretty.
When in some cases fire is good and trees aren't necessarily always pretty.
or "treating people as objects is bad, you don't do it"
as opposed to why do people do it? what is behind it?
and to what degree is it bad?
Does that make sense?
Re: Why are we pleased by the female gaze?
Date: 2009-09-16 06:43 pm (UTC)And yet, I've said I understand, and you're still arguing with me.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but what do you want from me? I feel like you won't let this go until I give you the right answers to your questions, like I'm being forced to take a comprehension test or something.
I thought my last comment was a pretty clear "I'm exiting the discussion" comment. If you don't think I'm leaving with a full understanding of what you were saying, that's a shame, but quite honestly, I'm not interested in proving it to you. I'd rather just agree to disagree and go our separate ways peacefully.
Re: Why are we pleased by the female gaze?
Date: 2009-09-16 07:41 pm (UTC)My apologies. I realized after reading your last two posts that you may be understanding me fine, but I don't understand your perspective at all.
It makes no sense to me.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-16 05:09 pm (UTC)Obviously, that's seeing things from an ideal perspective, but...hey, that's what I do.