Disrupting the Content
Feminism
Television, the alternative view
By Catherine Elwes
The author analyses the two different ways television has been analyzed and deconstructed, one is -----, the other one was regarding content. The author refers to the different networks, which more than inform in an impartial way, they represent and stand for the groups in power and their commercial interests. Then Elwes refers to the process of television and its relation to reality, magnifying the use of television for political propaganda and thus avoiding the representation of reality. She points to the example of Vietnam, as the first U.S. war broadcast directly into our homes, and the effects of the exposure of the war’s reality to the people, who questioned the justification of the war, and contradicted the official war position. Since then, television broadcast has been politically practical. The author points out that in order to neutralize the networks points of view about “reality”, artists used video as a medium to show their perception of reality, “their version of history”(p.38). In the 70’s and 80’s, television didn’t present real people; society was represented through the exposition of fictional figures, or celebrities that represented the white, heterosexual, middle class males who controlled these networks. The rest of the population, according to the author, was represented through stereotypes, or not at all.
Feminism – The personal is political
Throughout history, the most societies have been based on a patriarchal system with patriarchal institutions. Men were in control of the public sphere; meanwhile women were limited to the domestic sphere. In spite of the influence and earlier work of the suffragettes in the 20’s, by 1960 and 1970 women were underrepresented everywhere - including the art world. During this time, feminism began challenging and questioning issues like gender inequality, roles determined by sexual differences, different roles in procreation, as well as biological essentialism. Elwes states that the private sphere (women’s world) was “created by politics in general and patriarchy in particular” (p.39). The author refers to the filmmaker Sally Potter, who said, “. . . ideology is not merely reflected but produced in the context of the family and in personal relationships . . . ”(p.39). In order to break this cycle of oppression and fight to gain equal opportunities in public life, feminists used an instrument of communication inside the domestic sphere to create consciousness, exchange personal stories, and recreate them as a collective story of patriarchy oppression. The author presents the “personal as political” (p.40), a slogan that became a rallying cry for activists and artists.
The main focus of women artists was to raise consciousness about women’s private life: to render private life public. Feminist art had a political influence and help to make possible political initiatives such as abortion, measures against domestic violence and childcare. According to the author, feminist art was created to promote “political enlightenment” and to inspire women to participate in and make social changes. Feminist art based on oral history, stories shared by women, information passed from mothers to daughters, translated these exchange of information from an underground level to a public level through the visual arts, as well as video, where the analysis of personal identity become a main point. The author points out that feminism promoted activism, and at the same time analyzed femininity, focusing on representation. The different images or representations of women were narrowed to a dichotomy, in which the patriarchy created a classification of female stereotypes, as desirable or undesirable. It can be characterized as a virgin-whore dichotomy, in which an image of a woman as highly sexualized is contrasted with the image of a saint domestic mother which “society turned and reproduced”(p.40). Television was the medium through which the patriarchy spread stereotypical images of women, so logically video was the perfect medium to contrast these images and to begin to raise viewers’ consciousness. Video created the conditions for the exploration of “feminine experience,” as well as the exploration of the use of technology to search for identity.
Feminist Video – Instantaneity
Feminism as a political movement rose fast, after a long period of silence. Women had the urgent need to express themselves, as well as the need to be visible. Women artists chose performance for its confrontational nature, and video, for the ease with which the message is delivered. The author refers to the writer David Ross; he points out that video was formed by disciplines like film, theatre and television. However, according to the author, video and performance were “virgin territories for the exploration of the feminine” (p. 41). Video was attractive, because of its characteristics to mirror back the image of the artist to herself (p. 41). This medium was useful for artists dealing with issues like introspection; women were able to experiment with a certain autonomy. Another important feature of video was its possibility of “mass communication” (p. 42).
Domesticity and family relations
Domesticity and family life have been seen as a woman’s sphere and her near total identity. Family and family relationships were the main theme, in the beginning of feminism, of many women artist. The author refers to Martha Rosler’s video Semiotics of the kitchen (1975). In this video the artist performs a violent cooking session; she is behind a table in which she seems to be ready to cook, but instead, she creates a selective show of the kitchen tools like knife, fork, ice pick, etc and transforms these tools into weapons. She begins to use them to attack a non-existent entity in front of her. After this, the artist, uses a ladle to spill the contents of the pots making a disaster and with this the artist makes an statement about the destruction of the image of womanhood. The artist Vivienne Dick created a video It’s 3 a.m. in which the artist protests the role of women at home and her endless maternal and domestic activities. This period of early feminism was about the disappearance of women – in their roles as mothers and housewives - into endless activities of a domestic nature.
Fathers, Husbands, Lovers, Strangers
Women’s identity was attached to the identity of their male relatives. According to the author, along with the new idea to make the private life public, family relationship were a source of analysis. The abuse of women, inside in the house was exposed. Louise Forshaw’s video Hammer and Knife (1987) exposes her own sexual attack, and presents the artist sleeping with a hammer and a knife under the pillow. The exposition of violence against women was clear in the video Sari Red (1988) by artist Patibha Parmar. This video was made in the memory of Kalbinder Kaul Hayre, a young Indian woman killed in England for racist reasons. In the Ballad of Dan Peoples (1976) Lisa Steele sits with a photograph of a man. In the piece there is a transposition of adult and children voices as a way to recreate memories, and to find the identity, and relationship with the old man. The transposition of the voice from female to male is explored, as well by the Canadian artist Laurie Anderson, who presented a performance in which the artist switched her voice for a male voice and changing identity. Other women artists had been working in collaboration with male artist, and in some cases exchanging identities like in the case of Abramovic and Ulay.
Daughters and Sons
In this section the author refers to the work of diverse artists working about their children, showing different aspects of family dynamics ranging from parental influence to domestic violence. In some cases - like in the work of the artist Katharine Meynell –she collaborated with her daughter to create Hannah’s song (1986), a piece that explores the fusion of identities. The author refers to her own work There is a Myth (1984) in which she presents an image of her feeding her son and with this she tries to analyze the separation of male from the mother, and its social and political meaning.
The Body in Proximity
Feminist artists analyzed the way they were going to represent the female body to escape from the biological essentialism and from the male culture, as “reiterative patterns of sexual objectification” (p. 48). For English women artists, video was another tool objectifying women’s bodies. Peggy Phelan suggested using vanishing image as a way to “avoid patriarchal recuperation” (p.48). But, obviously this didn’t work for performance and video. In America, women artists were “resolving new forms of visibility” (p.48) and issues of proximity and “entitlement of the viewer” were explored. The author refers to Peggy Phelan, who suggested that is wa possible, with the use of extreme close-up, to “establish ownership by the woman who examines herself” (p.49). Nan Hoover explored close-up, and created videos in white and black about her own body, using the magnification of the image making indefinable the identity of it. Mona Hatoum in her piece Corps Etranger (1994) explores the inside of the body in order to escape all the political and social complexities that determine a woman’s outer appearance.
The Body Distant and Still
The different solutions feminist artists used to change or distort representation, according to the author, of “the most branded of all patriarchal products” (p.51) wasn’t as immediate in video as in film. The early quality of video gave a certain grade of distortion giving room for “subjective interpretations” (p.51). For some women artists, the limitation of the quality of video made this medium the perfect tool to become visible while avoiding confrontation with the audience. The author recalls the fact that the performance artist needs the audience to fulfill the act. She then refers to Lucy Lippard, who makes a really interesting observation that there is hardly any difference between a man’s use of the female body for sexual excitement and a “women’s use of women to expose that insult” (p.52).
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