Art and Gender Winter 2012

The Effect of Intimacy: Tracey Emin’s Bad Sex Aesthetics

-discussion of Doyle’s essay-

The idea of bad sex is one that is notably absent from our usual discussions of sex in present-day America. We talk about sex all the time, think about it, even have it, but somehow we are still very sex-negative, especially where women are concerned. On the one hand, we have the double-bind: women who have sex too much (or enjoy sex at all) are sluts, women who don’t have sex are prudes. On the other side of the coin, we have the hyper-feminist idea of sex: pure, perfect, consensual, enjoyable sex (often between lesbians), or non-consensual, sadomasochistic, humiliating, damaging sex (often heterosexual). The discussion of porn is colored by these various extremes, as is the discussion of sex in general. But Tracey Emin’s work explores the use of various kinds of sex and how they can be positive and negative, but along the spectrum of experience rather than as an objective extreme. Sex is different for everyone, and deciding that one kidn of sex is objectively best sounds a lot like sex policing to me. So when someone says that sadomasochism, or bondage, or humiliation, or simply being objectified in the bedroom, is always damaging and a form of rape in some cases, I have to disagree.

The essay also talks about how objectification manifests in sex, which I thought was really interesting, since I’d never thought of the act of connecting bodies sexually as being self-destroying. I’m not sure I agree with it, since I think the individual is unaffected by the experience in the end (that is, they are affected, since every experience colors the way someone sees and reacts to the world, but they are no less themselves in most cases), but the idea of two sexual participants bonding to create a temporary, single unit is intriguing. I will agree, however, that certain experiences of sex can cause a severe change in self. For instance, rape (which, to be fair, is more of an act of violence than an act of sexual desire) can change a victim’s personality intensely, and sometimes personally. In most cases of consensual sex, however, I think the biggest effect a sexual experience can have on a person is their future knowledge of what they do and do not want/like from other sexual experiences.

Jennifer Doyle Tracey Emin

Dan Fishback’s Talk

I thought Dan was an incredible speaker. He seemed very approachable, which I think is part of why the discussion afterwards was so valuable- people were able to speak up and say things without being nervous, so what they said was more thoughtful. The talk itself occasionally included some things that I wasn’t very comfortable with (I don’t remember everything he said, but I think there was a Holocaust comparison that I disagreed with somewhat), but overall the points he made were really interesting and well tied together.

I think one of his strongest points (and one of his main points, obviously) was that the current queer generation doesn’t really know what to do with itself, because it has very few predecessors since so many of them died of AIDS in the 1980s. I had never thought about the absence of gay men of that age group, since I grew up with an uncle and his partner who are of that age, and it never really came to mind. But when Dan talked about all the artists who had passed before their time, especially the ones who hadn’t yet hit their prime or made their great work, I realized how huge of an epidemic this really was. It was before my time, but the effects it has had on my time—on people I would have looked up to, members of the queer community whose influence and experience and ideas I will never learn from—are immense.

Dan Fishback

How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic; and Binding to Another’s Wound: Of Weddings and Witness

-discussion on the Crimp and Blocker essays-

Although these essays only had a few things tying them together (AIDS and how it affects lovers and their art), there was a shared underlying theme of the influence of society on relationships, and the subsequent influence of relationship on artwork. Society is what gives validity to marriage (and therefore what denies validity to gay relationships, since they cannot get married in most places). Equally, it is what chooses who should be protected from AIDS and who is “asking for it.” It makes gay people into lesser people, who deserve less. Obviously this isn’t a new subject, since there is such a widespread amount of homophobia all over the world (and, in the focus of these articles, in America), but having it driven to home to the extent that these articles (particularly Crimp’s article about the AIDS propoganda crisis) do is a very different experience. It creates a very strong us-vs-them mentality, which is generally absent from the Blocker essay. Perhaps this is partially influenced by Crimp’s being a gay man. Since he’s suffered these problems and biases himself, it might understandably make him more sensitive to those issues than Blocker is. 

Douglas Crimp Jane Blocker

Reinventing Herself: The Black Female Nude

-discussion of Farrington’s article-

This article contained some great examples of why minority presence is not necessarily desirable without also including fair representation. Visibility is a wonderful thing for marginalized groups, but when it comes as a stereotype, particularly one that lessens the validity of that marginalized group as being equal to whatever the “norm” is, it almost isn’t worth it. I don’t want to compare it too much to the Sassy Gay Friend stereotype, since that’s usually fairly positive and the Hottentot Venus is very negative, but it’s the same overall concept. In media portrayals, minority groups fit into one very specific mold. Maybe they think that showing someone from that minority group who does not fit into that mold is portraying that group incorrectly, that they are the “wrong” kind of gay, that they aren’t “ethnic” enough. Whatever it is that causes this phenomenon, it’s obviously not new (judging from the age of the art included in the Farrington essay), and it needs to be dealt with.

The Feminist Art Programs at Fresno and CalArts, 1970-75

-discussion of Wilding’s article-

I do really like the idea of a feminist art program, one where women artists could have their own space and freedom to work and express themselves. I think the consciousness-raising is a good idea, and I also like the fact that they met off-campus so that they would have a completely free and safe space. I do wonder, however, if the campus itself suffered from having the feminist art group meet off-campus rather than on-campus. I think in order to be really effective, a social justice group of any kind needs to be involved with other people as well as having safe spaces for its members. Womanhouse did a good job bringing “the outside world” into the realm of the feminist artists, which I think is a good example of opening the group up to the public for the purposes of education. I feel like having meetings on campus would have made them more visible, though, which might have made them more effective. 

Faith Wilding Judy Chicago

my art

The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is a measurement of female presence in movies. Not fair representation, not non-misogynistic characters, not feminism, simply the existence of women.

The test is simple:

• there must be at least two women in the movie.
• they must both have names.
• they must converse during the movie at least once, about something OTHER than a man.

A surprising and and saddening number of movies can’t pass this simple test. This website has a pretty good catalogue of movies that pass the Bechdel Test, and ones that fail for various reasons: http://bechdeltest.com/ 

Cloud Nine

As confusing as this play could be at times (I understood most of it, but a few bits were hard to get at first), I really liked the contrasts between the Act One characters and the Act Two characters. So I kind of wanted to compare some of the characters from Act One with the characters that their actors played in Act Two, because those doubled-up roles were definitely chosen with purpose.

Act One ——> Act Two

• CLIVE: The stereotypical father, disgusted by homosexuality and other forms of sin (adultery, his son being effeminate) but falls prey to adultery himself ——> GROWN UP EDWARD, his gay son who nevertheless ends up having a relationship with two women (one of whom is his younger sister)
• MAUD: Betty’s mother who has started living with Clive and Betty; she is very opinionated and overprotective (read: nosy and meddling) about Betty, and very judgmental ——> LIN, Vic’s lesbian friend and eventually her lover (and Edward’s), who is fairly open-minded but doesn’t like to be told how to raise her child and who is very protective of Cathy. (There’s also the “maudlin” pun.)
• ELLEN, the governess who hates children, who is in love with Betty but who eventually falls into a mutually reluctant marriage with Harry Bagley ——> VIC, who is in a turbulent marriage with Martin (played by the same person who played Harry) and who eventually experiments with (and enjoys greatly) loving a woman, Lin; she is also fiercely devoted to her son, Tommy.
• MRS. SAUNDERS, a very independent widow who refuses to be “protected” from bad news like the other women, who carries a gun at all times, who does not wish to ever be married again, and who carries on an affair with Clive ——> SOLDIER, the ghostly version of Lin’s brother that she sees, who speaks only of boredom and a wish to have killed someone before he was killed, and of fucking.

The parallels and relationships between these characters are really interesting, especially when the characters from Act One start interacting with the Act Two characters. Probably the most moving example of this was at the very end, when modern Betty reflects on her life and renewed sexuality, and has to literally face the criticism of her ex-husband and mother… and then spites them, realizing that she is happy with her new, sexually liberated self, at which point her younger, oppressed, self-deprecating, limited self enters the stage, and the two embrace and reconcile. That part made me tear up, to be honest; it was odd that Betty became such an important character right at the end when she hadn’t been the major focus since early in Act One, but it was put together very well.

Cloud Nine Caryl Churchill