Race and Manufacturing (reading response)

In Handmaidens of the Glamour Culture: Costumers in the Hollywood Studio System, Elizabeth Nielsen traces the work of costumers from the “Golden Studio Era” of the 1920s to the present, and the role organized labor played in excluding certain female laborers (particularly African American) during the studio era to the current state of a female driven and influential Hollywood labor union. Neilsen contends that women were restricted from most Hollywood unions until the 1970s to keep men’s salaries high, and most women during this era were clustered in two local unions—the film lab workers and costumers union. Neilson points out that many of the women employed in as costumers where immigrant laborers from such countries as Mexico, Italy, Japan or Russia inter alia. They often specialized in the manufacture of clothing in their native lands and English was a second language in the shops. Interestingly, Neilsen points out that African American were not among these workers, and to illuminate Inna’s point about the “obliteration of labor from the final fantasy,” –the issue of why African American women were excluded while Latino or Asian immigrants were allowed (albeit limited) access to costumer positions and the union should to be addressed. Neilsen does not engage the issue further—whether Black female bodies associated with “agitation” more so than recent immigrant laborers. I am reminded about a similar issue involving Latino and Black professional athletes, where some Black players have public raised the issue that professional sports organizations prefer Latino players over Black players due to the perception that Latinos are easier to ‘control.’ Is this the same rationale adopted by the union leader and studio heads, or as Inna suggest, a deliberate mechanism used to disrupt a collective and unified female union? If, as the author suggests, costume labor was not a respected profession, and the conditions and wages for costumers were among the worst in the industry, why were studio and union heads reluctant to hire a skilled Black seamstress or relegate her to “dirty work” while employing other ethnic minority costume laborers?

Creativity in the Political Economy (Reading Response)

Nielsen’s piece “Handmaidens of the Glamour Culture” and Andrew Ross’s collection of essays on garment workers and sweatshops generate the sort of productive anger that I think is essential to academic work that aims at social change. Somehow, despite our progressive awareness of the economies of slavery and exploitative labor practices, the types of examinations Nielsen and Ross engage in never fail to infuriate (and hopefully politicize). It seems clear that analyzing the division of labor in these practices is conducive to the Marxist project – the obliteration of labor from the final fantasy, the alienation of the worker from the finished product, validation of exploitation via myths of personal work ethic and integrity of labor, etc. Ross asserts that the tradition of sweatshops in the garment industry has always paid allegiance to “a three-tier system of small producers.” Meanwhile, Nielsen goes to great lengths to delineate the hierarchy of labor (in Hollywood movie studios), only to ultimately suggest that while the segmentation of workers into specific tiers of expertise complicates simplistic binaries, the Marxist logic of proletariat-owners still holds. Crystallized bureaucracies, as evident in contract agreements that cement roles of laborers, are deliberately rigid, ultimately prohibiting growth and innovation. Assumingly, what this segmentation also accomplishes is the fracturing of potential labor coalition. Nielsen talks about African Americans being employed in predominantly specialty shops as a result of discriminatory hiring practices. Solidarity among workers then works only to the extent that racial exclusion is possible. Furthermore, Steve Nutter, in his essay (in “No Sweat”) on the LA garment industry breaks down expertise by racial identification. But these fragmentations are also layered with class, gender, and age (post-feminist disassociation) politics. True to the Marxist method, both Nielsen and Ross’s contributors look to the political economy to explore how domestic deregulation and rapid globalization (usually, as a result of even the slightest hint of potential regulation, as was the case for Guess) undermine the labor movement.
My point in unpacking the Marxist project with regard to labor in the fashion industry is to suggest that this methodological lens is simply not enough to facilitate the kind of social change that these authors are (admirably) shooting for. It occurred to me that perhaps considering the life of the creative cycle (rather than only the manufacturing) would be another productive point of intervention. In other words, where is the site of creativity? And – because I’m convinced that it is neither stable nor residing only at the top of the food chain – how is aesthetic innovation harnessed through the division of labor? What critical lens is necessary to interrogate the flow and temporary hubs of creativity in fashion manufacture?
To be fair, Nielsen tries her hand at “creativity,” but her version is “synonymous with resourcefulness.” While this is a completely valid component of creative production, I’m proposing to look at aesthetic innovation. Robin Givhan’s essay on “ugly chic” (in “No Sweat”) is more in line with the notion of interrogating aesthetic innovation. She looks specifically at designers’ (violent) appropriation of poverty, homelessness and perhaps even drug use to create a sort of “ugly” aesthetic (poor-boy and poor-girl chic). What is rendered as “exotic poverty,” deliberately paired for obvious incongruence, on the runway is an inescapable material reality for most of the world’s population. She concludes that this branding of poverty (much like the branding of race, girl power, and class consciousness) not only de-politicizes the actual struggles of these constructs but also works to reveal that fashionable edge often relies on “the poor, resourceful masses.” While this abstraction is certainly important, it seems clear that not only is Marc Jacobs pilfering from the poverty-stricken and globalized masses, but from the exact same workers employed in his sweatshops (figuratively speaking – I don’t know for sure that he has sweatshops). Yes, designers are “mocking global poverty,” but more pointedly, they are appropriating the creativity of their very own workers. These practices, coupled with Howard Becker’s examination of the collectivity of artistic innovation (I’m thinking of his book “Art Worlds”) are, I think, instructive in beginning to examine the life of creativity in the processes of the fashion industry.

Otaku: The Japanese Nerds Stand Tall and Proud

In my continued research on nerd / geek culture, costuming, the immasculated male, my head keeps turning to Japan, and my fascination for the Otaku, the Japanese nerd, is starting to verge on obsession! They "live out their fantasies at 'maid cafes' " and the funny thing is, I hear there is one here in our very own city of Lost Angels! 

Garment Worker's Center-- Shop with a Heart 2008

From a friend over in the ASE department, in anticipation of our last class:


Shop with a Heart 2008

Fair Trade Fundraiser Dec 4th, Thursday 6pm
The Garment Worker Center is gearing up for our annual fair trade sale. We have a new site to sign up to support our event. Please check it out and share with your friends:

www.garmentworkercenter.org


Our fair trade sale, which will be on December 4th thru December 11th will give you an opportunity to buy fair trade gifts - meaning that the workers who made those items were paid properly and worked in safe environments. Part of the proceeds then help to support local garment workers in their effort to organize and stop sweatshops in LA.

There is no fair trade store in Los Angeles right now - so come to our event and buy your gifts and feel good about your purchases. We will also have our fair trade store open for a week after the reception date to give people more chances to shop.

Please join us for an evening of fair trade shopping and a very special reception honoring exiting Executive Director Kimi Lee and the Bet Tzedek Employment Rights Project.

With Kimi's departure, we enter an exciting new chapter in the future of the Garment Worker Center. We cannot continue our work without community support and we hope that you consider sponsorship to help make our fundraiser a success!

GWC: 1250 So. Los Angeles Street, Suite 213, Los Angeles, CA 90015

www.garmentworkercenter.org

Happy holiday shopping!

Ode to Jeans

In light of our Friday conversation about jeans (skinny jeans, specifically) and Kate’s brave post on the matter, I wanted to add my two cents in.

On skinny jeans: it seems everyone is in agreement that skinny jeans are manifestation of a masochist mechanism that attempts eroticize and infantilize grown women (they do, after all, look an awful lot like little girls’ leggings… all we’re missing is the matching scrunchie). I totally agree. They don’t fit anyone how they’re supposed to, they’re way too expensive for a fad, the colors make me think of ice cream, and the ankle opening might as well be a joke. Plus, the really popular ones like J Brand (I think I might have railed against the brand in class already), are pretty much made for pre-pubescent boys – the inseam zipper is like 2 inches.

That said, I have a pair of skinny jeans. Black ones. And I love them. And here’s why: utility. (Stay with me) For those of us who go back-and-forth between wearing high heels, higher heels, and flats, the same problem emerges: length of jeans. I’m convinced that it’s the industry’s way of making us purchase a million pairs of jeans (seriously, can’t they make a secretly unfolding bottom hem? Seems so simple) I know, I know, it’s a major life dilemma. But here’s the thing, the skinny jeans completely solve that problem because they can go with any heel height. Plus, you can wear old dresses that are way too short to wear as originally intended, as tops.
So, if you’re publicly shaming wearers but secretly pining for a pair, I think the trick might be in the fabric – they have to be real denim (I had to go up 2 sizes, but they fit). Not the 90% stretch kind, but the hard denim variety, with maybe only 1-2% stretch. Levi’s, Gap, Apple Bottom, and AG make good ones. Levi’s and Apple Bottoms are especially good for curves. If you’re unconvinced by the skinny, Joe’s “Muse” jeans are cut like regular pants – slightly higher rise, wider leg, and longer – and fit many different body types. And, the best part is that they go on huge sales, pretty often at Nordstrom Rack and sometimes Marshall’s.

xoxo,
Shallow

Denim advice

It's Friday night, so I am going to bring down the level of discussion on the blog...sorry guys! So here are my denim suggestions to get the ball rolling...

Deener denim - They have a bit of give (but they aren't stretch denim), so they are a bit forgiving in the hip region (although the calves are a bit tight). They are an LA company, but I have only seen them in NY, so here is the website...

http://www.deenerdenim.com/

I also recently discovered Martin + Osa's jeans...they are very forgiving, they come in different lengths and they do free alterations if needed...they might not have the cool cache of some brands, but they did have the best white denim that I could find.

Star Doll: The Ultimate Fashion Power

In researching for my last post I came across Stardoll. A site where you can dress up your favorite celebrities paper doll style in infinite wardrobes of your choosing. I created an Avril Lavigne doll using outfits from her new clothing line, Abbey Dawn. Talk about genius marketing.

Dress up Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson and many more, but with the power to make them fashion disasters at your whim. I think I am enjoying this way too much...

Subcultures as newer economies of re-signification.

From this week's readings, I was interested in the kinds of political affinities between diverse subcultural practices, and was thinking about how practices of retro-dressing could be compared with those of thrift-shopping. Both seem to proceed with a messing up of the logic of quick obsolescence that the capitalism-fashion nexus works with and perpetrates. I am particularly interested in the ways in which the practice of thrifting seemed to undo the rigid and limited typologies of commodities and consumers that first-order retailing imposes and structures demand, perception and consumption with. So the work of thrifting as a political practice seems akin to feminist media studies as well as subcultural studies in so far as the latter work by deconstructing monolithic notions of femininity, class, subjugation, protest and pleasure. And this might seem unconnected and may be a bit of a stretch, but I was also wondering if, in Mi Vida Loca, Ernesto's car is a signifier of his vertical, phallic and resistant power, as well as his desire for competing in the male exhibitionism of a car show; then the feminist collective initiative, the tussle over and staking of claim to it, as also being a kind of recycling and re-induction of the fetishized commodity into the feminine realm of domestic utility and feminine pleasure (doing laundry, as well as going out).
Silverman's brilliant explication of how exhibitionism is fundamental to the constitution of male subjectivity (and not just female) resonated with my understanding of the display and valence of bodies in Mi Vida Loca. While costumes of the characters were fairly conspicuous, I was intrigued by the adornation and styling of hair, and the plethora of styles that were on display with both male as well as female characters. Perhaps, these practices could be connected with a notion of care of the self even when living within financially straitened circumstances. I am also grappling with how naming is shown to work within the dynamics of this particular class and ethnic community of Echo Park. The nature of the names adopted by the characters at one level seem to express a disaffiliation with the individual proper names of mainstream white culture and a distinctive economy of individuation; and at another, the almost incantatory reference to each other as 'our home-boy' or 'our home-girl' seems to signal an equal desire for a collective identity, a shared sense of honor and responsibility. The unique and distinctive kinds of styling and self-identification seem to emerge in starker contrast within the homogenous precincts of Burger King and McDonald's.

Avril Lavigne and the Mainstreaming of Subcultures

For me, Silverman's article is the best jumping off point to explore this week's loosely defined theme of "subcultures." Silverman's historical examination of the the gendered role of fashion in relation to power structures contextualized and defined what is "mainstream." The readings this week primarily defined (or assumed) "subcultures" to be located outside mainstream society. She says “masculine clothing ceased to proclaim hierarchical distinction and became a harmonizing and homogenizing uniform” (141) thus placing all marks of class on the fashion of the woman. Male fashion remains relatively constant, linking male sexuality to stability, whereas the changing locations of “erotic gravity” on the female body over time and the rapid turnaround of women’s fashion serves to destabilize and undermine potential power derived from her clothing/body. Siverman’s definition of mainstream since the 18th century locates sexual difference as the “primary marker of power, privilege and authority, closing the specular gap between men of different classes, placing men and women on opposite sides of the great visual divide” (147). She subsequently defines subcultures through “imaginative dress” that challenge “not only dominant values, but traditional class and gender demarcations” (148). Then she goes on to say, contrary to my expectations, that there is power in having deviant dress be absorbed by the mainstream. “If a given “look” is appropriated by the fashion industry from a subculture or subordinate class, that is because its ideological force and formal bravura can no longer be ignored” (149).

In reading this I was forced to re-examine my feelings on the new Avril Lavigne designed clothing line, Abbey Dawn, now available at Kohl’s. Avril Lavigne’s style has always been punk inspired, but her mainstream music and now fashion line has always been a point of contention for the the true punk rockers out there who find their power in their position outside the mainstream. This is true in general for the readings this week, subcultures can only be defined as oppositional or outside mainstream, but what happens, in the case of Avril and her clothes, when the subculture is now available for mass retail? This has been a reoccurring theme for our class this semester in terms of agency. Can one have power while operating within the established repressive order? Silverman seems to think yes. And although I was mighty tempted to buy myself an Avril Lavigne designed sweatshirt the last time I was shopping at Kohl’s with my mom, if only because her subculture style definitely fits my idea of my own relation to fashion much more than Kohl’s traditional mainstream fair, I just couldn’t do it in the end. A mass produced Avril Lavigne sweatshirt just misses the heart of the punk rock credo.

McRobbie’s article, while interesting in its exploration of race, class, style, youth and gender as organizing principles for subcultures was tremendously confusing to me having not read the 2 texts she continually references. She assumes a definition of mainstream that is unspoken and can only be understood as whatever she doesn’t define as a subculture. Example: “It has always been on the street that most subcultural activity takes place” (29). And so the leap is that mainstream does not take place on the streets. But if it doesn’t rely on the streets for visibility, than where does mainstream visibility lie? Malls, media? I was having continual problems locating what she considers mainstream in relation to her extremely varied examples of subcultures which seemed to be loosely defined as anything “other.” Maybe I just missed something?

I don’t really have anything concrete to say on the Fergosa article other than that I found her anecdotal method of address to be refreshing and easy to follow. Ditto for the Acker interview. The “On Thrifting” article did not work for me. Its mix of academic and colloquial language and reliance on personal experience was frustrating for me. The exploration of value coding was insightful and useful, but the tips and the totalizing generalizations of thrift shoppers as a whole distracted me from the value of the authors’ other arguments. I thought this article would be my favorite to read since it is in “Hop on Pop” edited by Jenkins and Tara, but man I had to put it down and come back to it several times. Am I crazy for responding in this way?

Tinkom, Fuqua and Villarejo's discussion of the complicated ways that people assign value to goods has caused me to return to an issue that I was thinking about for several weeks earlier in the semester in regard to relationships clothes and their wearers. Tinkcom et al. assert that the lack of consumer society's ability to use up the high volume of goods it produces creates a small niche space where thrift operates. In the basic model of producer to consumer first-order shopping values are largely assigned based on where a particular good falls in hierarchical pecking order of its market. Goods in thrift however can frequently be worth almost nothing monetarily and quite a lot to individuals for a complex array of potential reasons. As the authors map out, the age and history of a thrift garment is often something to be embraced unlike in first-order fashion which rewrites its history into complete obsolution almost the moment the goods are produced in order to maintain a market that is constantly in need of something new.
I would argue that women (or people in general although I will use women here) do not write their fashion histories out of existence however. Most women build on those histories as their styles and wardrobes evolve but are not constantly erased as they are on the main cultural and economic stage of fashion. I think women develop complex affinities for individual fashions, and particularly for individual garments.
The archetype of the fashionista who "never wears anything twice" and whose life is a revolving door of looks and garments is clearly very different from the average consumer, and I think for most, not at all the ideal. I think for many women, a garment that fits well and makes them feel good is a rare find and becomes like a friend. They develop an intimate tactile and aesthetic relationship with it and the garment often takes on the character or value of the experiences that occur while she is in it. Unlike the fashion industry ideal in which the closet is a bottomless pit of newness and surprise, the closet of most women is more like a library of cherished possibilities, many endowed with meaning and value beyond their surfaces.

Subcultures and domesticity

I thought there was an interesting overlap between the Acker, McRobbie and Fregoso articles, as domesticity figures centrally in all of their works. McRobbie offers a feminist re-appraisal of subcultural studies, noting the remarkable absence of attention paid to the gendered implications of what are usually masculinist, homosocially organized subculltures constituted by men: “If we look for the structured absences in this youth literature, it is the sphere of family and domestic life that is missing...few writers seemed interested in what happened when a mod went home after a weekend on speed. Only what happened on the streets mattered” (19). Here, McRobbie comments on the ways in which academic conceptualizations of subcultures -- though her grievance is with both male-centered theories and praxis “in the streets” -- are mapped spatially onto feminine domestic and masculine public spheres. I believe Kelly has already pointed to this in her post. In other words, while the boys were busy giving the finger to the pressures of entering a normative domestic life, women were there to provide feminine structures of support for the boys’ other life on the street; they were left to take care of the kids, make the food, endure the physical violence after a bad comedown, and were expected to be available for the occasional (or frequent) shag. And, as McRobbie notes, it is not only that the women weren’t allowed into these subcultures, but that “access to its thrills...would hardly be compensation” because the girl’s function is so deeply instantiated (I know I haven’t included all of the subtle class readings that McRobbie makes).

As for the Acker article, because it is an interview, it is not as coherently organized. To be sure, her comments on domesticity are tangential to her broader comments about a woman’s relationship to her own body’s sites of pleasure/pain/fantasy/play. But, perhaps this is why these moments struck me. When she challenges the misconception that women who want to be spanked position themselves submissively, she moves into an argument about suburban women who really “are” submissive: “Actually submissive women freak me out; I like women who know what they’re doing... I guess everybody makes a choice, somewhere down the line: that they’re going to abide by society’s rules and hide in their nice suburban house and do what they’re told... and maybe, just maybe, they’ll be ‘safe.’” To me, this seems uncharacteristically uncomplicated -- as are her comments about plastic surgery -- but perhaps signals a particular feminist discourse circulating at the time (1991). I mean what would Lynn Spigel say? Or maybe Spigel’s comments about post-War domesticity and post-Reagan domesticity would be different. I digress-- more importantly, Acker positions the woman contained in her suburban house as a foil for those women who are more polymorphous(ly perverse), adventurous, “true to themselves” and not to society’s norms. But, who’s to say that these women aren’t finding their own radical pleasures and getting kinky somewhere behind or on those well-manicured lawns when no one is looking? So, while Acker points in some way to the existence of sexual subcultures that are inclusive of women (orgies in her room, BDSM communities, etc.), she does so by re-inscribing the domestic as something separated from the vibrant worlds lived “in the streets.”

Fregoso’s comments about domesticity versus the streets perhaps offers the most textured account. She begins by re-constructing for us the image of the pachuco, whose immediate familiarity already offers evidence of her point. Chicano urban style has been representationally reserved for the province of men, in spite of the vast presence of women in the actual barrios. If anyone went to see the Cheech Marin collection at the LACMA this summer can attest to just how masculine and heterosexual Chicano art of the 1960s and 1970s was, though it was a really impressive show. Needless to say, the feminist absence in spite of its historical importance, with the exception of a few Diane Gamboa pieces, was striking. Fregoso, like McRobbie, critiques the gendered street/domestic divide, though she addresses it more specifically as it cuts across with race. The body of the pachuca, and the chola, ruptured these spatial divisions; she “refused to be confined by domesticity” (75). However, she returns to these "domestic refusals" in her analysis of Mi Vida Loca. One of her primary complaints with the film is its construction of the dysfunctional Latina family in spite of the crucial importance that the extended system of support that the family provides in the barrio.

I know this post was all over the place. I just really wanted to zone in on the trope of domesticity, because it offers such an interesting contrast to last week's conversations about domestic sitcoms.

8 Things I Hate about "Pretty in Pink"

I'm sorry for being so vocal (and annoying) this week, but I just couldn't resist this.  I’m going to say it: I hate and have always hated Pretty in Pink. And here's why:

1.  Andie's clothes do not look for a second like they were handmade.  And they are ugly.   

2.  Ducky is really a very tragic character, and for some reason we are meant to laugh at him (and somehow his uncoded homosexuality makes this acceptable).

3.  The idea that prom is one of the most important moments of your life. Gross.

4.  That Andie is never, even in the end, proud of her clothes (even though I wouldn't be, if I made them).  

5.  The fetishization of wealth and the signification of clothing as a division (but only of class because race and sexuality are non-issues since everyone is white and (apparently) straight).  

5.  Iona's normalization -- I am so with you Stephanie!

6.  That Andie's dreamboat Blane (with that awful 5 o'clock shadow mustache) is a cowardly sniveling asshole and we're supposed to be thrilled that they get together in the end.  

7.  That it has one of those dumb "poor girl goes into a high-end store and gets snubbed by the snobby staff" scenes.  

8.  And lastly, that prom dress is one of the ugliest articles of clothing I have ever seen.  We're supposed to be happy that she decided to wear a pink bag with some lace on it to prom?    

I'm not all negative though, I do like the music and James Spader. 

"Thrift Store Chic"

I must admit I was positively giddy reading this week's articles, and (in a very narcissistic, lifestyle affirming way) I was especially beaming with "On Thrifting" and "Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse" and I just have TOO much I want to say about them!!!!

Although incredibly spot on, I do think that "On Thrifting" needs an update.  While reading it I started thinking about how the barriers between first and second order forms of clothing are being increasingly blurred.  Retail stores like Urban Outfitters and Top Shop, and designers like Marc Jacobs and Chloe are designing clothes that look like they are from a thrift store but with a first-order (and often very extravagant) price-tag! Scouring the net for examples of high-end thrift inspired clothes, I stumbled upon an article from The Independent about Chloe’s spring 2002 collection titled “Thrift Shop Chic at it’s Finest.” Here are some quotes: “Sweaters looked as if they had been worn and washed for decades” and “It was thrift shop chic at its finest and at designer prices.” Is it just me, or is that counter-intuitive?  This is taking value-coding to a whole new level by assigning absurdly high prices to clothes that are replicas of clothes that cost a few dollars!

One result of the increasing collapse of first and second order clothing is an increased acceptance of thrift store clothes, via either new "thrift store chic" or the real thing, in mainstream culture.  The articles, Fregoso's in particular, look at counter-cultural fashion and identity as an expression of individuality that violates culturally inscribed positions.  I'm a bit miffed that the articles didn't really address the fact that subcultural styles are still dress codes; how can something be an expression of individuality if everyone that dresses in that way looks the same?  Silverman points out that "deviant dress" is always quickly absorbed by the fashion industry, but that this absorption, instead of neutralizing its political messages, signifies that its "ideological force can no longer be ignored."  I understand this argument, but I'm not sure its possible to argue that there is anything politically subversive in something like Hot Topic.  

I prophesize that if the grimness of our economic times continues, thrift will not only become more and more popular, but also more and more necessary.  In fact, my prophecy is already a reality, as mainstream merchants are struggling, many secondhand stores are posting record sales, up 30% overall from a year ago.  So what happens to its cultural and political message when thrift store dress is subsumed by mainstream culture?  

In another vein, what the articles had trouble reconciling for me was the gap in the theorization of subcultural fashions and their lived experience. Although I very much admire Kathy Acker’s idea of tattoo art as a way to remake the body as a challenge to the way the body has been culturally contained, I don’t know how many of the women that get tattoos think of it in this way. And I don’t know how many women that wear thrift store clothes are, in Silverman's words "re-reading them in ways that maximize their radical and transformative potential" (even though I really want them to be!!!).   

***As a side note, I know for a fact that Marc Jacobs can often be found rummaging the aisles of Western Costume borrowing (or stealing, although you didn't hear it from me) inspiration from Hollywood’s moth-eaten and well-worn history. And he’s not the only one. So now what we read about in Nielson’s article is being filched by the much lauded, prolific, and "creative" high-end designers.

Reading Response: Subcultures

Kathy Acker articulates a longing she has for the emergence of communal ritual in a privatized world: "I mean, ecstasy--be it sexual (or some other kind...) should be taking place somehow in our 'community'" (184).  This might be the sort of thing one gets from being in a subculture (or organized religion...or political activism...)--an intensely felt, cathected, group feeling, experienced in the public domain.

If being in a subculture might be a way of getting away with feeling intense emotions in public, McRobbie and Fregoso note the way in which subcultures (at least as they are taken up within popular and academic discourses) tend to be coded male, and they tend to be enacted in the male-coded space of "the streets."  The rough world of male subcultures that McRobbie adumbrates generates a negativity in their members against The Man, (whether by this we denote a racist and/or a class authority), but this very toughness may be vented, in an access of impotence, upon the domestic, private world of women whose subservient, unpaid labor supports these working-class males.  In a familiar misogynistic move, men blame capitalism on women--since women "seduce" and entrap men (by giving birth to their babies) into a position where they need to capitulate to the daily grind of soul-killing labor in order to earn the money to support them.  In effect, such males revolt against patriarchy (and its paternalistic responsibilities to care and to provide),  ironically, in a way which leads them to behave in revoltingly sexist and irresponsible ways towards the women in their lives.  There is, sadly, no sense, in McRobbie or Fregoso, of the possibility of a male-female alliance against patriarchy.

McRobbie's piece is interesting for the way it brings out certain complexities in male sexuality, in a way that the Silverman piece helps to delineate.  If, for Silverman, exhibitionism is a fundamental drive equally shared by males and females (but historically lost to mainstream males since the Great Masculine Renunciation in the 18th century), subcultural style enables males to regain access to sartorial excess, to show-boat in the visual field.  The result, McRobbie insinuates, may be sexual self-sufficiency, (at least temporarily, McRobbie hastens to clarify)--a means of escape from the oppressive strictures of adolescent heterosexuality, into an intensely felt, homosocial world.

McRobbie rightly resents girls' relative lack of access to a similar path of escape from compulsory heterosexuality, with its tediously inevitable marriage plot and relentless teleology towards a "premature middle-age induced by childbirth and housework," a premature shutting down of the possibilities (33).

McRobbie notes that the press tends to rationalize and play down the outbreak of subcultural activity as "boys having fun," "sowing their wild oats" (27).  Even sexually subversive gestures such as tranvestism in youth subcultures, may be rationalized and recuperated as just a healthy, temporary kink on the developmental path towards flawless heteronormativity.  In a way, McRobbie reinscribes these assumptions in that she does not challenge outright the assumption that subcultures are the exclusive property of "youth culture."  Instead of romantically privileging youth as the time of transgression and stylishly symbolic rebellion, it might be nice to try to see the possibilities of being subcultural as extending throughout the life-span--maybe even increasing with age.  (Cf. Acker on getting beyond "the age of beauty" (179)).     

Style Culture and Female Masculinity (reading/screening response)

The majority of the readings seem to take to task the biases of subcultural analyses of style, whether the biases are masculinist disavowals of privilege (McRobbie), the elision and omission of female possibility within the dynamics of space (Fregoso), or the potential of sartorially alternative modes of consumption that disrupt gendered and classed assumptions (Tinkcom, Villarejo, Fuqua). McRobbie’s engagement with what she (among others) almost begrudgingly recognizes as one of the “most sophisticated accounts to date of youth culture and style” reveals more than a few limitations, not all of which can be attributed to Hebdige and Willis’s celebratory discussion of working class escape from the drudgery of familial and capitalistic systems. I simultaneously appreciate McRobbie’s critique of Hebdige’s seeming denial of the violent and patriarchal nature that often characterizes male youth discursive practices and fantasies but also find what appears to be a disturbingly imprecise employment of “sex” and “gender” as she privileges a particularized notion of “feminism”. McRobbie seems to slip too easily between how “highly differentiated according to gender, style is” and that if “we speak through our clothes we do so in the accents of our sex”. (26) (emphasis mine)

McRobbie briefly discusses the spatial marginalization of working class women embedded in British subculture, a preview to Fregoso’s extended engagement with the politics of public visibility that governs the Chuca-Homegirl-Chola’s subcultural style. Fregoso also bemoans the invisibility of the Pachuca within Chicano and mainstream white media culture, performing a similar criticism of the bias seen through films that attempt to recreate Chicano gang life through exclusively male perspectives and spaces. Through praise for Mi Vida Loca’s complication of the public/private dichotomy that often becomes normalized via “gangxploitation” films, Fregoso recognizes the importance of homosocial spaces to the articulation of Homegirl-Pachuca-Chola self-reliance. While Fregoso recognizes the potential for homoeroticism (not quite homosexuality) as a component of the transgressive, oppositional politics in Homegirl social figurations, however, how can we read across their style culture and affect forms of female masculinity that complicate the binaristic virgen/malinche formation that seems to be rooted in forms of femininity?

Subculture and the case for Kamikaze Girls (2005)

Due to a cosmic chain of events, I sat down to watch the Japanese Kamikaze Girls on Monday night. Despite the fact that this film was intended to constitute my break film, it seems so relevant to this week’s readings and some of the past week’s discussions that I feel the need to integrate it into this week’s posting (apologies for relying on an outside film here). Additionally, and this is not something that I seem to be able to answer within this week’s readings, or even within the film (at this moment), I wonder where we can make room in these ideas about subcultural style to discuss style that seems to span nations (is this a kind of eating of the other?).

Kamikaze Girls is a coming-of-age story of two girls, Momoko and Ichigo. The film begins with Momoko being hit by a truck and much of the film is seen in flashback. Although I am describing the film as a coming-of-age story, the film primarily negotiates the development and drama between the two young women through their respective styles. Momoko is obsessed with the store, Baby the stars shine bright (which sells her “Lolita-style” dresses and bonnets) and Ichigo is a bad-ass biker who is described as a “Yanki.”

Their friendship begins when Momoko needs to figure out how to make money so that she can continue to buy clothes from Baby the stars shine bright (http://www.babyssb.co.jp/), and she begins to sell some of the backstock of her fathers “Versashe” and “Universal Stadium Versashe” clothing. Although these two young women have very different styles and social groups (Momoko doesn’t actually have any friends), they come together and become friends when Ichigo arrives at Momoko’s house to buy some Versashe clothing.

In many ways this film is only taking up the issue of subcultural style (as a set of codes), which allows it to avoid some of the complexities of group dynamics (unlike Mi Vida Loca). Despite the fact that the film bypasses some of the sexual politics and ramifications of style choices (the Lolita look starts to get eerie),

there is a very conscious engagement in the film with the way in which women engage with consumer choices (highlighting a female prerogative in style) and the construction of their styles. In the film the designer from Baby the stars shine bright calls Momoko in an attempt to employ her as a designer for the company after she finishes high school. Instead of accepting the job, Momoko decides that she does not want to make the clothing that she loves because it will eliminate the fantasy of the clothing. While the translation of style into a job (which allows her to actively participate in the system of capital) seems like a way out (or progressive development), Momoko’s decision signals that there is more to her consumer choices and style than simply buying and/or making clothing. For Ichigo, style becomes a way to connect her to her female biker gang, but also to Momoko and Kimi (the leader of the gang) through Momoko’s embroidery on her clothing. On the other hand, Momoko’s style becomes a way to alienate her from both her peers and the community at large (as none of them understand why she can’t go to the local supermarket and buy what they wear). In the case of Momoko, this hyperfeminity provides a means to distance herself from teenage heterosexual desire (at least in the narrative world of the film) and exist in a fantasy world (although there seem to be a few undeveloped lesbian undertones between Momoko and Ichigo). Ultimately, why I think that this film fits in with a discussion of McRobbie's "Settling Accounts with Subcultures" is that it takes up issues of female style both in the context of female relationships, but also within a female engagement with style, consumer choices and to a particular extent, elements of DIY (via Momoko's embroidery skills).

Eat your heart out Rachel Maddow

I was sifting through photos because I wanted to write more of a personal post this week and include some pics, and happened to run into this. So, here's my prom queer photo. Anyone else care to follow my lead in radical narcissist solidarity? And, more importantly, can someone tell me what in god's name would possess me to wear closed toe heels with a full length dress?

Iona!

A reading response will be coming tomorrow, but for now I wanted to include this link for a very awesome picture of Iona and youtube video of Duckie from Pretty in Pink. I don't know how many of you had a chance to re-watch this film, but it has always been one of my favorites for many reasons (Duckie being one of them). However, in terms of style, I definitely remember not being a huge fan of Molly Ringwald's in this film but LOVING the variety of "looks" embodied by her friend, Iona (played awesomely by Annie Potts). When I was in high school and first discovered this film, I remember wanting to be "punk" so badly and Iona was definitely an influence (although I never had the guts to do to my hair what she did in the picture below). Furthermore, I find Iona's ending within the movie as tragic as the blogger I linked to above.

Her transformation from this:
















To this:
Is tragic and definitely something worth talking about in terms of subcultural female style. On a side note, to explain the picture of the Jonas brothers, I had the most difficult time finding the image of Iona in a suit and the only one I could find was on a blog comparing her look to the Jonas brothers. At first I thought about cropping it, but then I thought this could provide for even more fascinating conversation.

Style on a Budget

Celebrities do it too! Don't be shy, "mix with the great unwashed."

Michelle Obama and Vogue

I'm sorry to all that I could not be in class on Friday. I hope this wasn't shown at that time (although it looks as though it was created after class was over). Regardless, I thought I'd throw out one last political link in honor of the general "theme" of this semester.

Any votes as to what she should wear?

Sidewalk Aporia

Imagine you are a USC undergraduate woman with a fairly competitive "feminine" look going on, walking down a nearly deserted side-street in an outfit that is (as they say) "revealing."  (It's not your fault, the cut of the clothes coercively sexualizes your body: they were given to you by a distant aunt and are the only clothes you own.)  You are aware that you are drawing some attention:  A dodgy-looking guy, approaching you along the sidewalk, appears to be eager to extract visual pleasure from you.  Indeed, you sense that he is staring.  Do you look at/acknowledge this bearer of the male gaze to deflect his voyeurism, let him know that you see him back?  Or do you ignore him?  If you ignore him, it may enrage him and lead him to seek acknowledgment (perhaps violently).  On the other hand, if you acknowledge him, he may misinterpret it as "come-hither" and it may garner you unwanted attention.  He is drawing near, so you'll need to make up your mind soon whether to make eye contact or not...

Gossip Girl clothing blogs

Ok, so this might be more of a self-indulgent post than an informative one...however, given our conversation today I thought I would provide a link to one of the websites that provide links to all the clothing from the show. This is a very well-researched example of a site that provides links to all of the main clothing items in Gossip Girl.

http://www.gossipgirlcloset.com/

Labor, technology and markets - thinking through some of the connections.

Annie brought up Far From Heaven, for me it's a more pop-culture association. Reading Lipsitz, I am reminded of Julia Roberts' feminist art-teacher's angry outburst in Monalisa Smile at the images of women used to advertise consumer products ranging from domestic appliances to girdles. And her culminating question about, "How will the coming generations remember us?" Both Lipsitz and Berry make similar revelations about the intoroduction of more technologically advanced apparatuses into both, the precincts of the home in the 1940s-50s, as well as into the factories producing garments around the turn of the century. In both cases, appliances understood to (a) drastically reduce the labor of production and (b) make possible a greater variety and 'customization' of the product - whether clothes or dinner, in fact lead to more exploitation of the producers. Of course, while the immigrant, diffusedly-placed sweat-shop workers were disabled by an alienated relation with their actual employers and kept completely out of view, the market-forming 50s' middle and working class wives had to be ideologically interpellated by sitcoms. Berry's discussion of these nearly century-old production practices as precursors of today's 'mass-customization', also radically altered my earlier understanding of the dynamics of today's outsourcing-to-the-third-world-based global economy and the challenges that precisely this diffused production base (with minimised over-production and near-instantaneous response to new trends) presents to any possibilities of a collective labor alliance and politics. In Threads, Jane Collins works with two case-studies of changing production practices, and the corporate textile houses under focus are - the very successful Liz Claiborne and the eventually unsuccessful Tultex Corporation. The former survives because it is able to anticipate cuts in labor costs as being the area where the greatest profitability would lie - and eventually develops a loose, well spread-out, outsourced manufacturing base (in countries like Mexico) where the individual workers who sew discrete tags onto finished garments have virtually no idea of who their employers are.
I am also wondering what the co-existence of resistant readings of the televisual narratives (seeking to co-opt viewers to the ideologies of self-realization) as well as consumption and enjoyment of the same may ultimately amount to. I am reminded here of the reference to Modleski's idea of the intellectual pleasure of 'getting the joke' but not laughing with it, that had come up in an essay we read a few weeks ago, as one model of ambivalent reception. I am also thinking whether the presentation of particular kinds of gender steriotypes (the inept husband and the tolerant, thrifty wife; or the sardonic husband and the twittering, zero financial quotient wife) all of whom seem to still be enjoying an after-life, may also not be read as articulating dissatisfaction with existing codes of pecuniary responsibleness and compulsions while also enacting dysfunctionalities.

Packing Heat

Forgive me for being fairly off-topic... this has nothing to do with fashion but it does have to do with consumption. I am sure many of you have read that October was a huge month for gun sales and the boom has continued in the wake of Obama's win despite the state of the economy. Apparently Obama said that he believes in "common sense safety measures" in regard to gun control and those inflammatory fighting-words were enough to send weapons enthusiasts on a mad dash to stock their gun cabinets before it's too late. In light of discussion in the readings this week about the amassing of consumer goods as an identity building exercise combined with the body of film writing on guns as extensions of the human body, I am curious about the relationships of many of these firearms buyers to their possessions. Phallus anyone?

Consumption and Transgression (Reading Response)

George Lipsitz contends that 1950s television programs, particularly urban working class situation comedies, put greater emphasis on nuclear families and less on extended kinship identities and ethnicity than their radio predecessors. In post-WWII America, these situation comedies served as a means of ideological legitimation for a fundamental revolution in economic, social and cultural life. The origins of television’s drive toward consumerism rests with government-induced subsidies and incentives to promote consumerism via post-war television narratives. The result of this consumer consumption fetishism included greater home ownership by the working class to go along with greater credit debt. Television narratives placed greater emphasis on values placed on the ability to consume. It is interesting to note that for homemakers (most of whom in the 1950s were women), the gains in product/food technology (which intuitively would have meant less time spent doing housework), whether it meant the technological advancement in processing food or electric appliances—were cancelled out by the consumer ads and mass marketing of consumer culture that Lipsitz concludes promulgated upgraded standards of cleanliness and expanded desires of material consumption which resulted in a zero net gain in terms of hours doing housework. This trend of zero net or even negative net gain in terms of housework or leisure time has continued since the 1950s, as working time has actually lengthened (even with greater techonological/communication advances since the 1950s), partly in response to satisfy desires for material goods in an ever-expanding consumer culture.

Shows like Life with Luigi and Amos and Andy reflected the narrative unities involving individual material consumption aspirations as if such desires and subsequent consumption was transgressive—that is, you can transcend class, status and race through consumption of goods. As earlier readings from Berry point out, particular fashion lines enabled working class women to ‘elevate’ their own class positions through the consumption of certain fashion lines. Similarly, these urban television sit-coms, with their ethnic sensibility, also presented marginalized groups with the romantic ideas of transgression and collectivity through material consumption. Whether you purchased homes, cars and other electronic appliances on credit, these sit-coms promoted the idea that consumption amounted to ethnic and class transgression. I think today’s consumer culture, through celebrity tabloid periodicals or shows like ‘Sex and City’ have continued to promote this idea of ‘blurring the lines’ of mass and high culture via consumption. Nobody knows you are buying a Birken bag with an installment payment plan. However, the purchasing of goods beyond your means is, as ‘Molly Goldberg’ states “the American way.”

Lipsitz, White and The Honeymooners

I think the episode of The Honeymooners (“Better Living Through TV”) wedges in interesting ways between Lipsitz’s “Meaning of Memory” and Mimi White’s “Watching the Girls Go Buy.” Also, it might prove interesting to bring both Lipsitz’s article and White’s chapter into conversation with each other because they seem to set up their arguments similarly, insofar as they present television as a vehicle for American consumerism (Lipsitz’ discusses TV as a vehicle for legitimation; White talks about these programs appeal to ‘repeated consumption and extended accumulation’), while illuminating how the medium’s codes of consumerism become the very tools by which a complicated set of readings counter to its economic imperatives can arise. They both intently lay out the ideological fissures inherent in these two bodies of programming, which is, of course, a quick comparison that momentarily sets aside the historical distance between their objects. Indeed, they do take quite different approaches to their objects. Lipsitz locates these white ethnic working class sitcoms within the class histories of the U.S., beginning with the Great Depression of the 1930s through the post-war boom. His formal analyses primarily focuses on narrative, as he pays more attention to how the story arcs of specific episodes revolve around disciplining the American viewer, who might still carry over from the Depression lessons of frugality and self-abnegation, into patterns of spending “above one’s means” and asserting one’s individualism/family loyalty (even feminism -- the mother deserves her pleasures, too) through consumptive pleasures. However, these shows’ references to historical realities of working-class immigrant in fact undercut their commodified messages. White, on the other hand, is more finely attuned to visual strategies of home shopping television, specifically HSN. She really picks apart the “bargain-basement” production quality (which was so much fun to read for me, for some reason; something about White talking about the star filters brought joy into my world) and specifies that it is in these more spectacular aesthetics where a complicated set of class constructions sit: the working-class, “chintzy” quality to the look and products being sold actually hail both those viewers with the cultural capital to scrutinize the programming for precisely these qualities and those who traffic within this taste culture. And, of course, these taste cultures are feminized.

I thought it interesting then how the particular episode of “The Honeymooners” we watched kind of moves between these two arguments in certain ways. For one, as Lipsitz notes, Alice Kramden is constructed as the practical, frugal character while Ralph is constantly getting himself into trouble with his irresponsible spending habits. In “Better Living Through TV,” Ralph gets involved in a get rich quick scheme, as he stumbles upon a bunch of all-in-one kitchen gadgets that he wants to sell (I want one, though I could do without the corn remover). In order to move his product, however, he goes onto none-other-than a home shopping show, pointing to obvious existence of precursors to networks like the Home Shopping Network. Most interstingly, it seems like the Honeymooners in fact ironizes, nay critiques, the class underpinnings of home shopping TV. In keeping with the conventions of this subgenre, Ralph is made to appear as the class fool as he believes he is going to make a ton of money but then freezes on live TV. But his antics also the expose the cracks in how these shows might inflate the value of its products - I think the object breaks on camera (this might have been a blooper), he can’t core the apple, etc. So the scenario sort of points to an America that has shifted to a consumerist economy where there might be a market of “working-class dupes” who would be willing to purchase such products off of television. But it doesn't critique the dupes, but the production of these working class desires, embodied by the figure of Ralph.

My Own Producer/Consumer Identity and Raining Shoes

As Annie, Kate and Kelly have already aptly pointed out, this week’s articles trace the history of (feminine) consumption and spectatorship. While reading the Lipsitz article, I found myself, like Annie, interrogating my own relation to consumption and its role in my identity. Although, as a filmmaker and budding theoretician(?) I like to think I am situated more on the production edge of the divide, yet when it comes to basic everyday life, Lipsitz article is right on the money. We have all been successfully reprogrammed by television to be consumers at heart. When stress overwhelms me, I inevitably turn to the comforts of consumption, Starbucks, Diet Coke, buying virtual property in my Facebook application. Just as White tries to argue that HSC consumers participate in their own hegemony by buying cheap, knock off goods under the guise of quality, thus placing themselves firmly in the lower class, I consciously allow my stress to be alleviated through habitually purchasing comforts. For me, this gives me a feeling of control, which I think is what is at the heart of many of the articles for this week. Marketing and TV situate consumption as the means to have control, and by extension, power and agency in your life.

I must say though, that 2 weeks ago, when my car was broken into and attempted stolen, I felt completely helpless and just stunned that someone would personally attack me in such a way. I was powerless and had no recourse to recover my stolen property. What I did next, surprised me. I spent 2 hours making, with my hands, a crazy wired futuristic gadget for my film shoot. When everything spun out of control for me, it was my place as a producer, actually having the satisfaction of creating something tangible, that exists in the world, that I could feel (rather painfully) come to life of my own volition, that gave me back that sense of control I needed. In this moment, it was my role as a producer as opposed to a consumer that gave me the greatest sense of power and control over my life. So, are we really so dependent on consumerism for our sense of identity and worth as these articles suggest?

Of course, given what bits of my own research that I have presented so far in class, Berry’s article about “mass customization” and micromarketing on the internet was fascinating. The-N website is already tracking consumer opinion by having kids post on threads and vote in polls and rewarding them with “creds” for their time, which then, in turn, encourages virtual spending. Sites like Second Life, further blur production/consumption because you can produce virtual objects and then sell them, within the realm of the game for real money. Whether you are playing with an in-game/site currency or real money, virtual consumerism is the new landscape.

Ok, I have to derail for a second because I just looked up at my muted TV and caught a car commercial where it was raining shoes. The point of the commercial is that you should buy a giant SUV because you never know when you will need the extra space Like, for example, when it rains shoes and you, as a woman consumer, are literally in heaven stuffing as many shoes as you possibly can in the back of your brand new Chevy Traverse.



This commercial speaks volumes to what all of the articles danced around, Haralovich, Rabinovitz, White and Lipsitz in particular are specifically speaking of the woman as a consumer. The notion of the male consumer is almost entirely absent. The one male in the commercial is eating a hot dog and looking at all the rabid, shoe-mongering women as if they were aliens from mars. Vapid consumerism is feminine and always has been, a silly, yet necessary past-time.

Rewriting Domestic Consumption (Reading Response)

The teleological narrative of entertainment programming’s collusion with practices of consumption reads, to me, like a history of surveillance more than anything else. Between creating a desire for celebrity soap-opera weddings and then delivering them in full spectacle (Rabinovitz) and providing a free personal fashion consultant, the panopticon looms. Of course, my suspicions are only exacerbated with Sarah Berry’s article on online micromarketing.

Although I’m not convinced that the extensive contrasts between Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best were any more than just amusing (are these the kinds of differences that make a difference?), Haralovich’s piece seems a good establishment of the social context in which TV crystallized the marriage between gendered domesticity and consumption. The next natural step, it seems, would be to examine how these same images are now nostalgically deployed to assert the kind of homogeneous, nationalist past that early TV and radio originally worked towards. Now sold as kitsch and as a sort of ironic hyper-history in Technicolor, these representations are still doing the cultural work of nationhood – their revival re-imagines and effectively, rewrites a collective past, sanctioning a move into the future, a move severed and therefore untroubled by histories of heterosexism, racism, and gender binaries. The whole notion of “fragmenting demand” (Berry), as assumingly conducive to our fluid, fragmented identities (as we’re constantly told anyway), just begs for a mention of Frederic Jameson and his (albeit incredibly pessimistic) definition of postmodernity. This fragmentation, fueled by capitalist consumption and its twin promises of cultural innovation (Jameson says it’s really all pastiche) and personalization undermine coalition and progressive social change. Berry cites the Dell computer website to suggest that some product customization can sometimes be beneficial for consumers. Sure, but at what cost? What no one in the readings seems to consider are the double-bind illusions of choice and empowerment that niche marketing seamlessly accomplishes and the bearing this state of content has on political work.

Haralovich does a good job of situating the suburban home and reducing it to all of its consumable parts. Since white flight was so instrumental in making the Cleavers’ dream a reality, I think it would be a worthwhile project to study how the marketing of gendered domesticity is responding to the current reversal of white flight. There were several articles this summer that boldly proclaimed the “end to white flight,” citing the kind of population shifts across major cosmopolitan areas across the U.S. that would make even the eager supporter of gentrification cringe.

Regarding customer management, Berry notes that “the most basic classifications of women began with three 'fundamental' types (dramatic, ingénue, and athletic).” It would be interesting to catalogue the current “fundamental types” and see to what an extent each of these categories has become more overtly sexualized. In other words, what type of sexual subjectivity has been attributed to “types” in light of third-wave and post-feminism’s (doomed, in my opinion) reclaiming of the body as a space for agency and the right to raunchiness. Is the athlete really the sexy athlete with the panty endorsement deal and is the ingénue more of a self-aware and strategic Lolita?

Working Class Taste Labor (reading response)

Most of the readings for this week latch onto the construction of the domestic sphere as a site through which the feminine becomes commodified through various techniques. According to both Lipsitz and Haralovitz, commercial network television, in conjunction with government and cultural policies, worked to create an idealized suburban space through which modes of consumption were encouraged via a range of representational strategies and appeals to memories of traditional living. Whether it was the creation of the feminine “suburban object of desire” (Haralovitz, 134) through stylish middle class interior design and the layout of domestic consumer goods, or the persuasive enticement of buying on credit, the television industry had a centralized role in the “resolution of the conflict between consumer desires and family roles” through the offering of “commodities as the key to solving personal problems”(Lipsitz, 83-84).

We can see the reincarnation, and even reinvigoration, of the early 1950s urban family sitcoms, that Lipsitz focuses on, and their appeals to working class taste cultures through the Home Shopping Network strategies of product marketing that White discusses. Here the viewer’s domestic space becomes the staging ground for their own productive and actualized forms of consumption, an engagement with the products and people seen onscreen. What is particularly interesting (I admit to my own outsider fascination with how these networks function) about White’s discussion is how she critiques the “conventional denigratory paradigms”(91) that characterize feminine consumer participation as precisely lacking the proper distance required to discern the “real” worth behind a product and its promotion. Even though White never engages them, this echoes some of the psychoanalytic feminist theories we encountered earlier (primarily Doane), but would position them in way that ascribes to them a similar level of condescension and derision.

Some questions are raised in relation to White’s work that might help us expand upon the ideas of the female viewer and televisual modes of consumption. As White comments on the prevalence of testimonial callers on HSN, one might question how much the labor of the consumer/viewer gets factored into the pedagogical function of online and televisual forms of marketing and commodification. How then, as these viewer-consumers are participating in the construction of these televisual marketing environments, are they also actively cultivating a larger taste culture?

Addiction, Obsession, and Compulsion

I really liked the way in which you could trace through our readings for this week a trajectory of the creation and exponential growth of the commodity consumer.  They most definitely helped contribute to my understanding of today's economy (and sadly to my own understanding of myself as a consumer).  

Lipsitz points out the ways in which the postwar economy very much depended on increased consumer spending and an expansion of credit, and the necessity of early television programming to legitimize excessive and arbitrary spending, breaking from frugal Depression-era mindsets.  With the help of working-class suburban sitcoms, the economic situation was not only redefined, but ethnic, class, and family identities were transformed into consumer identities.  Once this break was in place it was necessary for television via the suburban middle class family sitcom to naturalize the homogenous definition of the ideal white, middle class, suburban (and consumerist) family, and this is where Haralovich picks up. One problem I had with Haralovich's article is that she doesn't acknowledge working-class suburban sitcoms, saying, "the working class is marginalized in and minorities are absent from these discourses and from the social economy of consumption."  Lipsitz explicitly points out that the working-class and minorities were in fact used to justify new modes of consumption through early working class sitcoms, and actually set up what would come later.  Although Haralovich is concerned with a later time frame, there is some overlap, as The Life of Riley debuted in 1949 and the second version of the series ran until 1958.  Father Knows Best ran from 1954 to 1960.  

It is through an understanding of the way in which consumers were positioned in the early days of television that we can understand how something like HSN ever came into being ("might legitimately be considered the fifth 'commercial network' in the US" WHAT???), or the ideas of 'mass customization' that Bruzzi explores.  Although only briefly mentioned, what interested me most about White's article was her discussion of the addiction, obsession, and compulsion that commodity consumption breeds (I think this may have hit a personal nerve as well).  If we look at the ways in which Haralovich and and Lipsitz trace how consumers (especially women) were positioned in relation to products, it is not actually that surprising that we find ourselves in such an economic predicament today.

As a side note, I can't think about 1950s suburban sitcoms without thinking about Douglas Sirk (and Far From Heaven).  Haralovich's quoting of Robert Woods Kennedy's theory that housing design should display the female as sexual being is definitely something that was taken up and unpacked by Sirk and Haynes in their films, and the *amazing* costumes in their films function to expose the entrapment of the 1950s housewife to serve the ultimate goal of commenting on the emptiness of 1950s domestic life.  The fact that Sirk was acknowledging this in the 50s shows that there was, on some level, an awareness of the detrimental effects of the economic changes in America while they were happening.  

'Celebrity hosts inject glamour and credibility into the world of TV home shopping'

 "Raquel Welch wigs"?

I don't know if it has to do with when the book was published, but I was shocked that Mimi White's article on Shop-at-Home Television didn't consider the phenomenon of the "celebrity host."  

This is an interesting article from 2003, about celebrity hosts on Home Shopping Channels bringing "glamour" and "credibility" to the programs.  The article names Raquel Welch, Marie Osmond, Susan Lucci, Joan Rivers, and Wolfgang Puck as just a few of the multitude of celebrity faces seen on Home Shopping shows (who knows how many "celebrities" have added their names to the list over the last 5 years).  I suspect that the influx of celebrities has something to do with the online shopping craze, which most likely made it necessary for the channels to re-vamp and re-think their marketing strategies.  

The celebrity phenomenon does seem to relate to the White's ideas about the HSC appealing to both "bourgeois and working-class taste cultures simultaneously," as some viewers might be awed by and attracted to the stars while others might find some perverse pleasure in the "how the mighty have fallen" appeal.  

Here's one quote from the article: "The stigma of buying online or on television lessens as the pleasure of it increases…five years ago, if you said you bought your wardrobe at Target, people would think you were wacko. Now, at Fifth Ave. dinner parties people aren't afraid to say they bought that great outfit at Wal-Mart.""

Hmm...I'm not so sure about that.  

Spectators, Consumers, and Users

Spectators and Consumers

The articles for this week all seem to circulate around several different historically specific models of the spectator-consumer, all of which trouble the idea that television viewers are merely mindless dupes ready and willing to buy anything advertised (although maybe Rabinovitz does suggest this), but at the same time explicitly attempt to negotiate the way in which spectators have been figured as consumers. While none of these articles explicitly take up the issue of the “spectator” vs. the “consumer,” these articles do seem to willingly collapse the two, or at the very least they recognize that there is an industrial rationale for figuring the spectator as consumer that cannot be ignored. Haralovich situates the spectator-consumer against a specific historical context of market research and suburban development, Lipsitz discusses the role of ethnic sitcoms as modes of working out consumer insecurities (through an acknowledgement of the past and simultaneous rewriting of the past), Rabinovitz presents a view on soap opera weddings that focuses on the spectator as consumer rather than the hypothetical, idealized spectator, White looks for a place to locate spectatorial pleasure within the Home Shopping Network, and Berry traces the history (the discussion of make-up on p. 57 was very familiar….) of the personalized product while questioning the contemporary consumer’s excitement to give personal purchasing and preference (or fingerprint?) information. In many ways I think that this is a very appropriate set of readings as we move forward in class to discuss certain types of new media technology, since some of these ideas about how the spectator and consumer become collapsed (fairly easily and gleefully), seem to resonate strongly with the ways in which “user” and “consumer” have been and can be collapsed (I am thinking particularly about the introduction to Convergence Culture here). In some ways I think Lipsitz is really working through this tension at the end of his article by asserting the importance of a reconnection with history, and he seems to be open to a kind of resistance that seems to be shut off in Rabinovitz’s article on soap opera weddings. In some ways I found the title, “Soap opera bridal fantasies” to be a bit misleading. Whereas I understand Rabinovitz’s maneuver toward focusing on “real life” consumers (as the spectator), rather than an idealized spectator that can invest in the way in which soap operas interrogate the process of marriage (rather than accept it as an end), her conclusion about the disappointment that inevitably ensues when women try to recreate the soap opera wedding, seems to reinforce an idea of the spectator as cultural dupe in a mode that is both unsettling and seems to be only vaguely substantiated by anecdotes (although I am willing to take criticisms that I am being naïve here….).

Realism and Excess

If there is some level of collapse between spectator and consumer, Mary Beth Haralovich’s article, “Sit-coms and Suburbs: Positioning the 1950s Homemaker” presents a historical argument that combines information on growing changes and developments in market research, the growth of the consumer product industry and the policies and politics of urban and suburban planning in the 1950s to illustrate how Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver reproduce the values and policies of the time. The result is an argument that relies on the way in which both the articulation of space and a detailed mise-en-scene reproduce the division of labor and gender roles within the 1950s family (although it also seems like the “open plan” that she discusses seems to reek of some kind of family surveillance system). While Haralovich convincingly details the way in which the homes of the Andersons and the Cleavers produce an idealized suburban lifestyle, she also briefly mentions Robert Woods Kennedy’s idea that housing design should emphasize female sexuality, a point which Haralovich discusses through costume design. At several points within the semester we have talked about the way in which both mise-en-scene and costume can produce a degree of excess (that triggers or generates alternate forms of identification). Thus if these shows attempt to produce a spectatorial engagement with the home life, it seems to me that the presence of appliances and the suburban environment is producing a kind of excess that is the fantasy of more free time for housewives/homemakers. Admittedly part of my question here comes from the fact that none of these articles take up the particularly messy issue of integrating television and appliances within the family home (by the time I started the Lipsitz article I began to feel like I should have also been reading Spigel’s chapter “Women’s Work” for this week).

Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Film critic Nathan Raban coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl to denote "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures."  It might be productive to imagine the Manic Pixie Dream Girl as a classed (upper) and raced (white) model of femininity--despite her breaks from feminine decorum, her "breeding" is never in doubt, and her anarchic exuberance never loses its edge of stubborn innocence.

Click on the link to read more.

Stylista host Anne Slowey's Food Diary

Ah, the paradox of eating stylishly - the price tag on one day's food/drink for Ms. Slowey is likely more than I spend on groceries in a week (depends on where she's getting her alcohol, to be perfectly frank), and yet the calorie intake is roughly equivalent to a single meal - and not a particularly extravagant one. I'm surprised that something as plebeian as Emergen-C makes the cut at all.

(ETA: This could be triggering for anyone who suffers/has suffered from an eating disorder. Some of the comments may take a toll on your Sanity Watchers points.)

Elyse Sewell

I'm mostly just sharing this link because of the breathtaking photograph it contains, but to contextualize a bit, Elyse Sewell was the 3rd place finisher (she was ROBBED) in the first cycle of America's Next Top Model. She blogs fairly prolifically on her lucrative modeling travails in Asia at her blog, elysesewell.livejournal.com, and definitely provides a nice complication to the model-as-cipher hypothesis I put forward in my presentation. (To be fair, I was speaking more of the portrayal of modeling on television, but this post isn't about me.) Her blogs are witty, irreverent, and profoundly intelligent, and they provide a fleeting, clear glimpse into a world based almost entirely on telling us that illusion is reality.

Which is a verbose way of saying, click the title of this post. You've got to see this shot. It's totally my new computer wallpaper.

1950s television episodes and Lipsitz

As someone who has not seen a ton of 1950s television, some of the references in this week’s reading are a bit lost on me. I plan on leaving a much longer reading related post either tonight or tomorrow, but I wanted to try to get a bit of 1950s television conversations going before Friday. I think that the episodes we watched in class both provided some interesting intersections with the readings and offered some points or questions about narrative (which aren’t fully addressed in some of these readings). Basically I would love to hear from anybody with love of 1950s sitcoms!

As I was reading Lipsitz, I found it helpful that he provides numerous examples of how different shows work out a variety of different consumer insecurities (which stem from post-Depression anxiety). His example of Mama on p.101 seems to be a particularly effective example of “putting the borrowed moral capital of the past at the service of the values of the present.” While Lipsitz is focusing on the ways in which historical memory is reworked in television to serve the needs of capital, it seems to me that the episode of The Honeymooners screened in class works out consumer insecurities in a different fashion (one which particularly resonates with Mimi White’s chapter on the Home Shopping Network). Therefore, if Lipsitz is talking about the role of history in the construction of the consumer, is there a way that we can talk about how taste functions within these shows as well? The Honeymooners episode screened in class seems to set up a binary between “good” consumer objects (tv, washing machine, vacuum – all the objects that cannot be obtained) versus the “bad” object of the 85-in-1 corn remover/can opener/paring knife/thingy. While the humor from the episode is derived from the viewer’s ability to clearly identify the uselessness of the item, which in turn validates the utility of items such as the television, vacuum, etc and the viewer’s role as discerning consumer.

Lastly, Lipsitz also discusses the way in which the narrative of many of these shows can often be resolved by consumer products (p.81). My comment on narrative seems to depart a bit from this analysis, but I found it curious that in both Make Room for Daddy and The Burns and Allen show that the narrative action seemed to be primarily driven by the female actions and decisions. As I said before, I have very little frame of reference for 1950s television, but it seemed curious to me that the narrative was primarily driven by the mother.

Michelle Obama's real world style

It seems like a serendipitous convergence that we're taking this course amidst such a dense web of conversations about feminine consumption and politics. I never cease to be fascinated by the media (and our own) obsession with these political ladies' wardrobes and the constant ties made to questions of class in America, especially at a moment when the global and national economy is absolutely tanking. Maybe Imelda Marcos really did set the model for first lady fashions...

And, Nancy Reagan was a size 2??

Visceral Impressions: The Fashion-Music Discussion + Angela Davis

First, I apologize for the extreme lateness of this post. Blogger has just allowed me to sign in after a couple hours of 'server not found' madness.

I have been ruminating recently on the relationship between music and fashion that appeared here on the blog a few weeks ago. I think that music and fashion share some interesting commonalities in the ways that they are recognized and consumed. Each of them is made up of a host of minute details—notes, sounds, instruments, fibers, fabrics and textures—but each is also very frequently processed at a macro level of mood or tone without the consumer’s (in this case meaning anyone encountering and visually or aurally consuming the music or fashion in question… “perceiver” might be a more suitable word) attention being paid to the often significant details of the article's construction.

While it might easily be argued that any media or art may be approached with varying levels of attention to detail, I would contend that fashion and music (among other possible social or artistic projects I’m not thinking of right now) are uniquely consumable and recognizable from a distance without enjoyment being predicated on notice and processing of said detail (unlike, for example, a story or film). The style of a given ensemble is most frequently perceived as a hazy combination of colors and shapes, just as a piece of music is initially a collection of sounds. Each has a specific emotional character. Without further attention paid, they remain just those hazy constructions in a person’s consciousness, but this lack of attention to detail does not mean that the article has not been enjoyed. I think consumers frequently have a very strong visceral sense of a particular fashion (be it an entire style or a specific outfit) or song, without being able to recall or describe many of the components of its construction. When people do attempt to describe the qualities of something with which they have come in contact, they often do so in terms of comparisons with other styles, outfits, pieces or songs that have a similar qualities or evoke a like feeling. It is often only at the level of emulation or connoisseurship that a consumer actually invests their attention in the individual components that actually make up the feeling of a particular presentation. I think this experience is one in which the consumer processes the form of an artifact and then may or may not ever proceed to engage with the details that create the individual artifact’s content.

In some ways I think that this relates to Angela Davis’s discussion of her experience as a photographic subject. Above, I am suggesting that the impression of a style is essentially that style for viewers that do not undergo further investigation. The photograph compounds this issue, as it further distances the article from its detail and context. This impression of an impression becomes permanently encapsulated in the two-dimensional image. Davis’s photographs divorce her from the content of both her physical style and her larger persona in general, reducing her to a synecdoche of her form—the Afro. Like many cultural or historical figures, she remains a vague impression to the uniformed or uninitiated. The strikingness of her image may actually impede consumer’s inquiry and understanding of her cultural meaning, as her form, via the photographs, is so richly endowed with impressions and associations, that they are assumed to be that image's content.

Nostalgia and black style politics

This is a bit late and unnecessarily long. I thought I would be able to go back and edit it down, but I just wanted to get it posted. Apologies.

I want to map some of the temporal threads that run through Mercer, Davis and hooks’ work, as I am fascinated by how nostalgia and romanticism centrally function in their configurations. And, I think it’s an important point of convergence between these articles.

Angela Davis offers a personal account of how her images, which have been used by the FBI to criminalize her and by black cultural movements to heroize her, have recently circulated as emblems of style. She points to how her subjectivity and her political work have been conflated with the Afro, attributing this remarkably stubborn association to a visual commodity culture that is more invested in shaping the criteria for fashion, or more specifically, black fashion (she refers largely to a spread in Vibe magazine), than repossessing the political histories of how these photographs circulated in the first place. Davis, of course, holds an ambivalent relationship to these recent trends. She notes, “The unprecedented contemporary circulation of photographic and filmic images of African Americans has multiple and contradictory implications,” as they “promise the visual memory of older and departed generations” but faces the “danger that this historical memory may become ahistorical and apolitical” (38). She then borrows from John Berger’s About Looking to note the problems and possibilities of photography: the photograph can either become a part of everyday historiographic practice, a ‘living context,’ or be petrified as ‘arrested moments,’ incapable of being laced into present. Indeed, Davis understandably bemoans the nostalgic function, the temporal freezing, performed by the dissemination of her images in contemporary fashion magazines, as her Afro-donning image becomes paralyzed as an empty sign or artifact and ignores the political heft they carried in speaking on behalf of the number of black women who were persecuted and harassed by law enforcement for also wearing their hair big as well. But, Davis hardly calls for a return to the past; rather she calls for ‘strategies of engagement’ with these types of historical images in order to disarticulate romanticized attachments to once politicized style choices, like the Afro.

bell hooks’ chapter moves between an address of erotic desire for the racialized subject and the commodity desire or fetishism for the Other, which for her are linked. Central to her argument is the notion of ‘imperialist nostalgia,’ which ‘takes the form of reenacting and reritualizing in different ways the imperialist, colonizing journey as narrative fantasy of power and desire, of seduction by the Other” (25). In other words, the Other, for the desiring white subject, embodies the ‘primitivism,’ the ‘exoticism’ and ‘wildness’ that was supposed to be supplanted by modernity and imperialism. This temporal loss is recovered by the white subject’s consumption of the racialized body, which enacts itself not in the form of suppression, as it once was before, but through a supposedly exonerating desire for diversity and pluralism. This nostalgic function also accounts for a resurgence and commodification of black nationalism, a ‘fantasy of Otherness that reduces protest to spectacle and stimulates even greater longing for the primitive’ (33). Thus, hooks and Davis share a fundamental mistrust of these historical evacuations of black political culture of the 1960s.

Mercer, of course, offers a more nuanced take on black style politics, paying particularly close attention to black hair in the 1950s and 1960s. He refutes the association of the Afro and dreadlocks with the natural blackness, carefully articulating the ways in which these hairstyles required meticulous manipulation and maintenance. Rather, these hairstyles’ connotative links to ‘the natural’ functioned symbolically as ‘strategic contestations’ against European aesthetics of ‘artifice’ and beauty. That is, in order to be strategic, the Afro had to be defined against the associations of beauty with whiteness; in true post-structural style, Mercer moves away from strict binaries and reminds that there is a certain ‘western inheritance’ that comes with the ‘natural’ written into the significations made by the Afro. However, what is particularly interesting and useful in Mercer’s article, in my opinion, is the way he points out the nostalgic constructions of black style politics of the 1960s. The Afro and dreadlocks were imagined to hold historical roots in Africa. These connections were indeed ‘strategic’ as well. There were no actual connections between these hairstyles and African culture; the Afro and deadlocks would actually most likely read in Africa as distinctly first world. So, I think that this particular reading is an important one to make because it allows for a complication of the more blanketed argument about the commodity fetishism of black style politics made by hooks and Davis. Although, it would have been nice for Mercer to pose some readings about black women's hair. He seems to focus more on black male hair styles.