[pixiedust]

Ok...I mentioned this in the forum and it was agreed that we could start a thread about how feminism is portrayed in pop culture. I am starting it with a lecture Mr. Pixie was emailed in his online literature class in grad school.

There are a lot of different angles in feminist literary theory, so I'm going to give you the basics for this week's discussion. One thing I want to clarify right now, A FEMINIST IS NOT A MAN HATER. A feminist is a person who thinks people should be treated equally regardless of gender. Most of the men I know are feminists. Many women are angry about the idea that they are inferior because they are women, but they do not represent the intellectual attitudes of feminism. In fact, these women are sexist pigs. So I hope to avoid any shrill invective in this discussion. Let us look at the book intellectually, not emotionally.

All of this information is from Bressler, Charles E. "Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice." 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. 142-156.

The basic premise is that while sex is determined biologically, gender is determined socially, and women have been oppressed for millennia. Various feminists have tried to figure out exactly how women have been represented in literature, and that is the gist of feminist theory.

Kate Millet (1960s-70s) noted the following treatment of women in canonical literature:
1. In literature of the past, women have been considered "the Other." This means that the literature is written from the male point of view and that women are not men; therefore, they are "other" than men.
2. Women are stereotyped as "sex maniacs, goddesses of beauty, mindless entities, or old spinsters"
3. Few female authors appeared in literary anthologies, so women's writing was overlooked
4. The roles of female fictional characters were limited to secondary positions, more frequently than not occupying minor parts within the stories or simply reverting to the male's stereotypical images of women.
5. Female scholars were ignored
6. It was assumed by male literary scholars that all readers were male, so women reading these works were unconsciously duped into reading as a male.

Elaine Showalter concentrated on uncovering examples of misogyny (hatred of women) in texts. There is plenty of misogyny to be uncovered.

Gilbert and Gubar identified two types of women in fiction: the angel in the house and the madwoman in the attic. In Victorian fiction, the angel in the house was the wife who spent all of her energy making sure that her husband's house (it was not her house) was a refuge from the horrors of industrial society. It is this idea that we see in 1950s TV shows, where the loving wife brings his slippers and pipe to her husband after he gets home from a long day at work. The madwoman in the attic is an idea from Bronte's Jane Eyre where Rochester's first wife is locked in the attic because she has gone insane. Gilbert and Gubar maintain that she is actually a liberated woman who doesn't ascribe to the angel in the house model, so people thought she was insane. Bressler says: "Gilbert and Gubar assert that either of these images--the angel or the madwoman--are unrealistic representations of woman in society. One canonizes and places the woman above the world, while the other denigrates and places her below the world. Further, the message is clear to all women: If you are not an angel, then you are a monster" (151).

NOTE: The word "canon" indicates that books and women are made into saints or are superior to the common mold. Canonized books are those that are studied often because they are considered to be the best. Canonizing a woman makes her a saint.

Bressler gives some questions for analysis of a work according to feminist theory:
1. Is the author male or female?
2. Is the text narrated by a male or female?
3. What types of roles do women have in the text?
4. Are the female characters the protagonists or secondary and minor characters?
5. Do any stereotypical characterizations of women appear?
6. What are the attitudes toward women held by the male characters?
7. What is the author's attitude toward women in society?
8. How does the author's culture influence her or his attitude?
9. Is feminine imagery used? If so, what is the significance of such imagery?
10. Do the female characters speak differently than do the male characters? In your investigation, compare the frequency of speech for the male characters to the frequency of speech for the female characters.

Thoughts or discussion?

[spiderella]

Like mermaidgirl, I've been thinking a lot about sexism in cartoons. If I ever had a child, I have no idea what I'd let them watch. There are so many things I watched as a little girl that disturbed me and taught me terrible things. Most of it had to do with sexist sexuality.

One example is the common scenario of the male villain kidnapping and wanting to marry the princess/leading lady. This always really freaked me out. I don't think the writers of cartoons realize how scary that scenario actually is from the female standpoint (for them, this is just a reason for the hero to be heroic and save the girl). Even though I was a kid, it didn't take long for me to realize, "If he's going to marry her against her will, then that means he's going to have sex with her against her will!" Which was horrible. I didn't want Princess Allura to get raped. But, because that was the only sexually charged situation I was allowed to see, that became my whole idea of what sex was.

Princes and heroes in kid's cartoons don't usually seem to be sexual beings - in Disney cartoons, the attraction between prince and princess seems to be so chaste. I wonder if this is because people think that little girls don't want the prince to be a sexual being, because that's "scary." Which, I guess, is why the villain is a sexual being - that's why he's villainous. But then sex really is scary when the villain is forcing it on someone. It would be so much better if the prince/hero got to be a friendly sexual image. I just don't get why little boys are allowed to drool over female characters made specifically for them to drool over (i.e. - most female comic book characters). They don't get taught that sex is scary. Why should we?

My other beef is with live-action comedies - I saw a lot of "funny" situations where men/boys were spying on a lady undressing, or stealing her underwear, or grabbing her ass. I would see that, and then I would see all the adults (even my mother) laughing. And I would and think to myself, "I would feel horrible if that happened to me! That would be so humiliating! But if that happens to me, nobody is going to care how I feel! They're just going to laugh." And like the first example, this became part of how I came to view sex. All the sexual content (overt or subliminal) I had seen had been acts of violation, and so I came to think that sex was necessarily an act of violation. When I thought about sex, I didn't think as much about princes on horses as I did about perverts and villains. I mean, I was having masochist fantasies about the bullies on Power Rangers (who were totally gross, not even attractive in a bad boy way, but my disgust was part of the fantasy). This is why I don't really believe that sadism/masochism is "natural" or inborn - most of my own tendencies are directly traceable to things I saw and things I was taught by the media. Which is why, if I ever have a daughter, I'm going to take a sledgehammer to the TV...