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Revenge as Postfeminist Dystopia
NOTE: Spoiler-free. Some characteristics/life events are revealed in Episodes 1-3, but nothing earth-shattering.
Revenge has been one of my greatest elliptical machine pleasures this Winter. It’s well-acted, the clothes are fantastic, intricately plotted, and melodramatic as all get out — just how I like a good elliptical machine show. Revenge is (very) loosely based on The Count of Monte Cristo, which is to say that it rotates on the premise of someone who is betrayed by his intimates, sent to jail, realizes that his intimates put him there, and returns, disguised, to take revenge on them.
The twist of Revenge is clever: the betrayed figure dies in prison, but his daughter, a young girl at the time of his imprisonment, returns, now a grown woman with an assumed identity, to their beach house (in the Hamptons, OF COURSE), to take revenge on all the high-powered business men (and their spouses) who betrayed him. What makes it escapist isn’t the revenge narrative, but the beautiful, monied background. Everyone loves a story about The Hamptons — the people are gorgeous, the clothes are immaculate, the parties are so…..planned. And while our main character once had money, she was sent to group homes, and then to juvey, and didn’t get released until she was 18….at which point she discovered that she was half-owner in the TV-world version of Google! I won’t explain the mechanics, but what you need to understand is that she is ridiculously wealthy — the sort of wealthy that proves so handy for screenwriters, who can essentially grant her every privilege, convenience, and beautiful dress she desires.
In other words: this is some good soapy TV. But over the course of the first half of the series, I’ve become increasingly convinced that the female characters in the show, and the harsh realities that face them, represent the ugly flipside of the “freedoms” promised by postfeminism.
Postfeminism is a loaded term. Here’s my simplified and contentious definition:
Postfeminism is, most explicitly, the idea that feminism is no longer necessary. Feminism accomplished its goals in the ’70s and ’80s, and we’re ready to move on and just “be” women, whatever that means. (Suggestions that we live in a “post-race” society often hinge on the idea that a black president means that racism is no longer an issue in our society, let alone a defining issue). We don’t need feminism, we just need “girl power” - a very different concept than the “grrl power” that undergirded the Riot Grrl movement of the early ’90s (which was, itself, a response to the rise of postfeminism). Postfeminism is forgoing freedoms or equal rights in the name of prettier dresses, more expensive make-up, and other sartorial “freedoms” to consume. Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman is postfeminism manifest — a self-sustaining (sex worker) who meets her prince, who will allow her to consume (and become her “true” self). Sex & the City is postfeminist. Bridget Jones is postfeminist. 27 Dresses is postfeminist.
In short, the idea that consumption and self-objectification (which usually leads to romantic monogamy) = equal rights and equal treatment is postfeminist.
In text after text of the last twenty years, postfeminist philosophy, for lack of a better word, is portrayed as the path towards happiness and fulfillment. Until, in a text like Revenge, it doesn’t.
To be clear: Revenge is not the first to highlight the negative aspects of postfeminism. I mean, you could read the disasters that were the Sex and the City movies as the dystopic end to the fantasy narrative displayed in the television show. You could also look at the hysteria in the vast majority of female-oriented reality programming and read it as the postfeminist dream of success and “having it all” gone tragically wrong. Put differently, Revenge isn’t the first television show to present the opportunity for such a reading.
But let’s get down to the analysis and look at our two main characters, their postfeminist choices, and the dystopic realities in which they find themselves.
EXAMPLE ONE: VICTORIA GRAYSON
Victoria is vintage Hampton’s. Pilates body, Botox face, age-appropriate yet still sexy gowns, long hair that still connotes beauty (as opposed to middle-aged-ness). A handsome son in his mid-20s, a beautiful daughter in her late teens. A silver fox husband who spends most of his summer in the city and runs a well-regarded global capitol something-or-another. Her name carries tremendous weight. She can ruin someone’s reputation with a single word. People anticipate her parties. She’s apparently the social doyenne of, oh, I dunno, all rich people on the East Coast. Her anniversary is carried on the front page of some section of what appears to be The New York Times. She came from nothing to become the second wife of a major-player capitalist and gets all of the benefits.
BUT WAIT JUST ONE SECOND.
Let’s talk about these benefits:
1.) Sacrifices former identity (seriously — it’s totally sublimated, save the mention of “coming from nothing” every once in awhile) to steal another woman’s husband.
2.) Alienates both of her children for reasons for various unforgivable reasons
3.) But she can ruin her best friend’s reputation! Which she does! When she discovers that said best friend is sleeping with her husband!
4.) She is incapable of showing emotion. I mean that literally: she has a frozen face from plastic surgery and collagen injections, which evacuates her face from expression and suggests (this is a melodrama, after all, when emotion and character traits overflow into the mise-en-scene) a heart that wants, but no longer has the muscle memory, to feel.
5.) Her body is slim and toned (despite lack of toning activity — I’m guessing she has a Pilates Reformer in the basement) but girl never eats. Or even really gets to drink.
6.) Spends a lot of time thinking about how to destroy the younger, seemingly history-less girl who threatens to take her son away via marriage.
7.) Doesn’t read.
8.) Doesn’t know how to use the computer (seriously, one scene with her daughter’s computer confirms as much).
9.) Doesn’t have any hobbies other than party planning, which her party planner does for her, and wearing dresses at all times.
10.) Has no interests or sense of self-worth other than her childrens’ affection, which is now lost to her.
11.) Clearly loathes her husband, who loathes her in return.
12.) Periodically pines for a time when she had a sense of true love, but forsook that true love in the name of money and prestige.
13.) Has no friends. No lady friends, no male friends, no child friends, no underling sidekick friends. No friends, no confidantes, no community. She’s never alone but the loneliest person on the Eastern seaboard.
The lesson of Victoria: if you don’t care about equality or a life of your own, then you can have all of the pretty dresses you want. And be miserable, wholly miserable, in ten years’ time. Victoria Grayson is the first wave of postfeminism, come to fruition and left to rot.
EXAMPLE #2: EMILY THORNE/AMANDA CLARKE
Educated, well-traveled, lovely accent, well-spoken, attractive. Beautiful slightly wavy blonde hair and innovative if somewhat circumscribed fashion taste. Gets the hottest man in her age bracket to fall in love with her in about three days. Allied with the most wealthy man in America. Kind, polite, thoughtful, and spends a lot of time donating her time and energy to philanthropy. Orphaned but has developed a firm sense of self and purpose. Enormously and independently wealthy. Able to bestow favor and fame upon anyone. Wields tremendous (albeit unseen) power. Understands the puppetry of social interactions and how to pull the strings. One savvy young lady.
BUT WAIT JUST ONE MORE SECOND.
Let’s talk about Emily/Amanda’s life:
1.) Due to admittedly tragic circumstances, she spent her youth in foster care (which wronged her) followed by the juvenile detention system (which also wronged her). But instead of spending her newfound and abundant wealth working to right the systemic wrongs that led to a situation like hers, she goes after the individuals that caused her distress. This strategy isn’t necessarily post-feminist, but it is certainly neo-liberal: like Crash or The Blind Side, which suggest that repairing relationships between individuals can correct systemic problems. Her father died; her vendetta is not against society, or against those who might inflect the same sort of process (albeit within different parameters) on someone else, but against the specific individuals who led to the suffering of her and her father.
2.) Has one supposed friend. Apart from the very first scene in the very first episode, when she suggests that they get drunk on champagne, they mostly spend time talking about they’ll spend some quality time together at some later point. Her ostensible friendship with the Google-owner-guy is a mix of passive-aggression and aggression and utilitarianism.
3.) Has no hobbies or interests other than exacting revenge. She can, however, use a computer, but only to exact said revenge.
4.) Has no media interests other than re-watching clips and re-reading newspaper clippings related to her revenge plot.
5.) Has forsaken her childhood bond with a very nice, very working class, very authentic (he has a beard!) man (who named a sailboat after her, jeez) in order to pursue her revenge.
6.) Never enjoys any of her richy-rich toys because she is so busy being revengeful.
7.) Somehow has several mentor figures who provide her with sporadic guidance…on being revengeful, never on self-actualizing or letting go of said revenge and doing something with her one precious life.
8.) Never gets to hang out in any public spaces — life seems to be limited to fleeting visits to the bar to fetch people and the private party circuit (but only private parties hosted by Victoria at that).
9.) Uses beauty and charisma to attract handsome man….who she plans to destroy! But oh no, turns out she has feelings for him??!!?? WHICH SHE MUST DESTROY!
10.) Can never find happiness because she’s living a lie in order to avenge the wrongs of the generation before her.
The lesson of Emily: as the second generation of postfeminism, you are reaping the “awards” of your parents’ decisions. Which, as it turns out, means that you get all of the clothes and good hair and fortune….and nothing to guide you or add meaning to your life, save your elaborate revenge strategy and her beautiful wardrobe.
Revenge is clearly a tragedy: a young girl’s father is taken from her; her life is ruined; she dedicates her life to harming those who caused her (and her father) harm. We’re obviously encouraged to pity Emily — not just because her father was taken from her, but because she’s so hopefully mired in the whirlpool of revenge….and we have no idea how she’ll function once that purpose and drive is taken from her.
But as I’ve demonstrated above, Revenge can also be read as the tragedy of postfeminism: what happens when you trade the politics of feminism for the bounty of consumerism, what happens when you grow up in a world where those are the realities for women set before you, both by the media and the other women in your life.
I’m not saying this works perfectly, but I am saying that our two main characters (and several others in the show) don’t suggest Being a Woman in 21st Century America is Awesome. They suggest that it’s claustrophobic, prescribed, unhappy, and even if you have all the tools that you thought you needed to play the game, deeply, deeply unsatisfying. The moral isn’t just that revenge is never satisfying, but that postfeminism, for all of its glossy, gorgeous surfaces, is rotten at its core.
Joining the Slumberparty: A Response to Molly Fischer’s “Ladyblog” Critique
I’ve been distracted all day. Or at least ever since reading Molly Fischer’s recent piece in n+1, “So Many Feelings,” outlining the demise of the ladies’ magazine and the rise of what she terms the “ladyblog.” Sassy and Jane are dead; Cosmo and Glamour aren’t hip; Vogue is for people who don’t actually exist. In their place, we have now have Jezebel, The Hairpin and, more recently, XOJane and Rookie. I’m going to quote Fischer’s piece at length below, but here’s the gist: ladyblogs don’t grapple with serious issues. They’re either self-effacing and whimsical (The Hairpin) or working really hard to be P.C. (Jezebel) and thus evacuate the site of any real feminist or political work. Because these sites are neither radical nor unceasingly serious, they’re essentially spectacle and/or pablum for the (middle-class, educated) masses.
To wit:
The Hairpin was sort of about women, but really it was about editor Edith Zimmerman’s sensibility: internet-fluent and self-consciously eccentric, with a nostalgic streak for both childhood and history. There were photographs of brightly colored items organized by color, a list of “Things to Name Your Oregon Trail Family,” and a discussion of 17th-century dildo pranks. Creepy dolls were objects of ongoing fascination, and Steve Buscemi was included in a game of Fuck/Marry/Kill. This was cute performed for an audience that disliked Zooey Deschanel but still liked reading about eco-friendly cat bonnets. It was cute that was always also a joke about being cute, with hyperbole or alcohol or icky things thrown in to make sure everyone got the joke. Accompanying some posts were Zimmerman’s own shaky little line drawings of a dolphin, a birthday cake, a disembodied smile.
The Hairpin’s media criticism tended toward the observational, peculiar, and irrefutable. (In what must have been her most popular post of all time, Zimmerman presented “Women Laughing Alone With Salad,” a collection of stock photos, without commentary.) The exception was posts by Liz Colville, who at first sat below Zimmerman on the masthead. Seemingly there to legitimize The Hairpin’s status as a “women’s website,” Colville dealt straightforwardly with gender and politics; many of her posts wouldn’t have been out of place on early Jezebel. Last January, Colville posted “How Lady Magazines Fared in 2010,” an earnest breakdown of 2010 circulation figures and cover subjects for women’s magazines. “The data suggests that in a lot of cases women just aren’t getting what they want from a magazine,” she concluded. Her post appeared back-to-back with Zimmerman’s “Oo-ooh, Someone’s Mad at the New Yorker,” about a woman who was demanding a refund because the vast majority of the magazine’s writers were men. “Does this bother you?” Zimmerman wrote. “This doesn’t bother me. If you like a magazine, read it; if you don’t, don’t. Also, if you’re mad at a magazine, sounding like a total drag can’t be the best way to get what you want.” By January, Colville had left the website.
After this weird insinuation that Edith essentially offed Liz for being “too feminist,” the piece goes on to belittle other columnists and past and current Hairpin editors, segues into an overview of XOJane and Rookie, and concludes with the following:
My own mother went to college in the early ‘70s. She started a women’s resource center with a newsletter; it was called The Bimonthly Period. She retains a second-wave feminist’s fondness for the very deliberate use of the word “woman.” She is a doctor, though, and occasionally she says “lady” when discussing gynecological matters. (“Sometimes ladies need a few stitches after labor.”) The word allows a certain decorous remove from discomfort—it is a polite way to acknowledge the listener’s presumed squeamishness or embarrassment about anything particular to her sex.
On the ladyblogs, adult womanhood is a source of discomfort, and so when we write posts or comments, we tend to call ourselves ladies. We also might be tempted, at slightly braver moments, to call ourselves feminists. Indeed, each ladyblog’s approach appears intended to counter a particular brand of easy misogyny. Women are not mindless consumers, declares Jezebel; women are funny, proclaims The Hairpin.
But the ladyblogs are not feminist simply by virtue of offering women an alternative to traditional female media—feminist blogs are of a different genre, with a specific and explicitly political project. The ladyblogs are fundamentally mainstream general interest outlets, even if a façade of superiority to the mainstream (edginess, quirkiness, knowingness) constitutes part of their appeal. Neither Jezebel or the Hairpin concerns itself with the harder to articulate, more insidious expectations about women’s behavior. Neither knows how to write for and about women without almost embarrassing itself in its eagerness to please. Jezebel is too painstakingly inoffensive to hurt anyone’s feelings. The Hairpin is too charmingly self-effacing to take itself seriously, too tirelessly entertaining to ever bore a visitor. They bake pies with low-hanging fruit: they are helpful, agreeable, relatable, and above all likable.
Surely one can’t, and shouldn’t, strive to like and be liked all the time. But how else can one be? This is not a likable enough question for the ladyblogs to entertain. In the end, they tell us less about how to be than about how to belong, and they are better at this than Sassy ever was, because no place is better for performing inclusion than the internet. Readers write to The Hairpin’s advice columns in painful imitations of the house style. (“SO MANY FEELINGS.”) Commenters squeal over plans for real-life meet-ups in bars. (“I registered just so I could RSVP YES to this!”) The internet, it turned out, was a place to make people like you: the world’s biggest slumber party, and the best place to trade tokens of slumber party intimacy—makeup tips, girl crushes, endless inside jokes. The notion that women might share some fundamental experience and interests, a notion on which women’s websites would seem to depend—“sisterhood,” let’s call it—has curdled into BFF-ship.
I would strongly suggest reading the piece in its entirety (here’s the link one more time, go for it, I’ll be waiting). And full disclosure, my brother, Charles Petersen, is an editor for n+1, although he gave me no indication that this piece was in the pipeline. And, of course, I am a regular contributor to The Hairpin, and I am proud to associate its good name with my own. Which is precisely why I take such umbrage at this piece: Fischer’s critique of The Hairpin (and ladybloggers) not only applies to The Hairpin, but my own writing on The Hairpin, and, by extension, this blog.
I challenge Fischer’s argument on several levels, but the most crucial thing she gets wrong is perhaps the simplest. She suggests that feminism and fun are mutually exclusive, and that a site that makes room for eyeliner techniques doesn’t also have room to talk about women’s reproductive rights, historical (problematic, hilarious) representations of women, American Dolls, being a queer woman today, white wine, and (ahem) scandals of classic Hollywood.
The urge to delineate between “good” and “bad” feminisms has divided women for YEARS. Decades! The Porn Wars divided an entire generation of women against one another! YOU GUYS, THAT IS TOTALLY WHAT PATRIARCHY LOVES! Divide and conquer….. YOURSELVES! Jezebel vs. Hairpin, Second Wave Feminists vs. Third Wave Feminists, Feminists of Color vs. Feminists Not-of-Color. We just keep on thinking of ways to disagree with one another instead of uniting around the issues that make a difference in our material realities. Sometimes those issues are Capital Letter Big Issues like “Do I have the right to get an abortion?” or “Do I receive equal pay?”; sometimes they’re lower-case issues like “How do I negotiate the pleasure I take in non-feminist texts, like Twilight?” or “I like how my eyes look with make-up on; is that okay, and if so, can you teach me how to do it better?” It’s not that we shouldn’t talk about these things, but when we do, we should talk about them in a way that’s fair and
Some people like a solid dose of didactic, self-serious, in-your-face, militaristic feminism everyday. That’s what makes them feel energized to be a person in the world. Other people encounter issues that make them think about the place of feminism in our world EVERYDAY. Take a look at my life: I interact with 15-18 year old girls constantly. In the classroom, in the place where I live, while eating, while working out — I am constantly thinking about what feminism means to both myself and to these girls. Put differently, because I am a feminist, feminism inflects everything that I do, everything that I write, everything that I read. Sometimes my feminism manifests itself critically, sometimes it’s trying to work through my apathy, sometimes it’s disgusted, other times it feels proud, especially when I see things like the teens here organizing a male-and-female feminism group on their own accord. Because here’s one thing that feminism should never be: prescriptive. I don’t necessarily agree with women who see sex work as liberating, but I also don’t hate them, or tell them that they’re doing feminism wrong. Why? Because I still want them on my team, and want to continue the conversation, and talk about what each of thinks about how sex work functions within patriarchy. I don’t call them sluts, and they don’t tell me that all I want in life is happy f-ing sleepovers.
And that’s exactly what I feel Fischer is attempting to do. But I don’t need to prove it to you, because The Hairpin commenterati has done the work for me. (See the comment in their ever-growing entirety here). Ultimately, I’m less concerned with my own reaction to the piece and more interested in what the Hairpin readership has had to say in response, which demonstrates their particular awareness of the site, its balance between the (ostensibly) frivolous and the explicitly political, and the benefits of cultivating a commenting atmosphere that is inclusive (and not, crucially, without disagreement — it’s just that people aren’t being assholes when they don’t believe the exact same thing).
Here’s a sampling of my favorites, at once serious and hilarious….which, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down, doesn’t mean that they’re not also good, or smart, or political, or feminist.
******
Come to think of it, I am getting sick of the hairpin being fun to read and the commenters being funny and welcoming.
******
And yo, if you don’t catch any smart, important shit on this site, you ain’t readin’ it.
******
That’s the thing. People, (ladies and dudes, or as that writer would prefer, MEN AND WOMEN) come to the Hairpin because the comments section is that unicorn of the internet: intelligent, funny, humane and most of all, civilised. The recent Bob and Eli thread is a perfect example. All the while I was reading the thread and and admiring people’s insight and perspicacity, and laughing at the funny stuff, I was thinking that on nearly any other site, no matter what its remit or readership, the civilised comment response to that letter would almost immediately be swamped by irrational fury, ad hominen attacks on other commenters, rampant misogyny, prejudice, racism etc etc etc. The Hairpin is a haven for commenters who are like real life friends. That’s why it’s great.
******
Just because the writing can be a bit whimsical doesn’t mean it’s glib.
******
Her last sentence:”The notion that women might share some fundamental experience and interests, a notion on which women’s websites would seem to depend—’sisterhood,’ let’s call it—has curdled into BFF-ship.”
I mean, I don’t even get why she thinks sisterhood would “curdle” if it becomes “BFF-ship.” Shouldn’t sisterhood encompass that, or does she have this imagined notion that “sisterhood” is adulterated if it’s not always unequivocally and expressly written with the intent to stick it to the patriarchy?
The Hairpin sincerely trying to connect with readers and commenters on a “hey friend” level sounds gravy to me. Just because she doesn’t like the tone of it doesn’t make it wrong-if you don’t like slumber parties where we drink Qream and listen to Robyn while talking about pertinent issues, then don’t come. But you’re still invited, anyway.
******
Ladyblogs are a big enough ‘thing’ now to warrant a critical media eye and thinkpieces. Yay?
Regardless, ladyblogs were some of the first places where it was … cool to be a girl, again. A woman. A feminist. And not just because we were raised to believe we were equals and could do it all, but because we could be MORE than equals. The “silly” things we value and enjoy didn’t have to be silly at all. No need to pretend to like dude stuff, just to get dude approval. What do YOU actually like? From political to profane to pretty, baby, you can have whatever you like. Let’s talk about Roe and our reproductive rights, debunk the economic value of Newt’s proposed simplified tax code, have a chat about hair-pulling during sex and then let’s all make paper snowflakes, apply fake eyelashes and drink Qream, shall we? SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT ALL OF THOSE!
Ladyblogs also, I think, taught a lot of people about how to name yourself as a feminist and be okay with that. And they brought the language and knowledge of the LBGTQ community to the forefront. If only in vocab(cis-gender, transwhatever, hell, the idea of queer itself) but also so much more.
I get the concept of ladyblog as a likeable on-line slumber party, but what I don’t get is why that’s a bad thing. The readership and commentariat is self-selecting. And there are many places to go. If I choose to seek out the blogs that resemble me the most because that’s what I like…I fail to see the problem.
*****
I have so much gratitude to Jezebel and Hairpin, for reasons beyond makeup tips, girl crushes and endless inside jokes.
Both sites SHOWED me what a feminist is, what it means to be a positive, responsible person, what it means to command self-respect and self-confidence. Y’all called out Rich Santos’ bullshit and made me less willing to take that bullshit in real life. Jez and the Pin introduced me to LGBTQ issues, and to issues around race and privilege. AND all this in a fun, sometimes funny, but always approachable manner.
Thanks for the slumber party.
*****
I think there’s a point worth looking at there, but also not? It does get sort of disappointingly vapid in the “Friday Bargain Bin” posts or likewise sometimes. If I had to venture a guess, I would say it’s because the women reading this site *are* super-smart feminists who feel uncomfortable talking about lipstick and rompers in their real lives and here they are provided the space to talk about them with the implication being that it’s safe to do so without being judged as vapid (heh, I proved them wrong?), because it’s a defined “smart -lady blog”. That’s cool and I appreciate it, but I sometimes do feel like it can tip in mindless consumerism, especially when some of the more absurd things (like crazy high heels or rompers you can’t pee in without discomfort) are presented without commentary as to just how absurd they are and maybe we should look at *why* we like the things instead of snapping them up like magpies. <3 you, Edith & Jane et. al, and also aware that I can just not read what I don’t like, but I kind of wanted to speak up on this, because it’s been itching me for a while.
Blogging and Advertisements: Where’s the line?
So here’s a meta-post for you:
What do I do about all these offers to advertise on my blog? How can I say yes? Or, more importantly, how can I say no?
My blog garners moderate traffic — generally between 1500 and 2000 hits a day, although that number jumps considerably when I have a post up at The Hairpin (or a new post on the blog). That’s by no means rockstar traffic. But I nevertheless receive at least one email every week offering compensation for various forms of advertisement, from streaming car videos to links to other celebrity sites.
Now, this isn’t an elaborate humblebrag — most of these solicitors most likely see the “celebrity” in my blog title and little else — but it does bring up a genuine question concerning blogging (and “academic” blogging in particular) and compensation.
As I tweeted a few weeks ago, a decent blog post of average length (around 2000 words) takes at least four hours to complete. With zero compensation, I am paid zero dollars an hour for that work. But then again, I am also paid zero dollars an hour for the work I put in on every academic article, and am at times even asked to pay for the privilege of submitting my work for potential publication. I am effectively paying to do work so that massive academic publishing companies can make money by selling their journals at exorbitant rates to libraries.
But my blog is not peer-reviewed. It will not get me tenure, although, as Jason Mittell points out in his recent post on blogging and its relationship to tenure, a blog may not = tenure, but it will increasingly be considered part of the constellation of a candidate’s body of scholarship. It may not be as serious (or proof-read) or vetted as the work that he/she does for, say, Cinema Journal, but it’s still an extension of the scholar’s thought process and (as loathe as I know many are to use this word) their academic “image.”
For many reasons, some warranted, others silly, academia and “making money” have been deemed mutually exclusive. In other words, scholarship that turns a profit is suspect; work that sells to libraries and other academics is highly valued. It follows, then, that a blog that makes any sort of profit is, by default, not as serious or academic (or valuable, ironically) as a blog that does not have advertisements. I can understand the rationale — an academic’s work should not be biased by sponsors — but I cannot understand the poverty mentality. Perhaps I’ve lived too long with the economic realities of being an academic in the humanities, and am too much in debt: but this is bullshit. I really like writing this blog, but I’m working so hard on actually making money to pay off my loans that I can’t write nearly as often as I’d like. Obviously this situation is ridiculous.
But because I have a a job, and am no longer on the market, I made an executive decision. When an ad salesman emailed me asking if I’d put a non-obstrusive link to AT&T U-Verse on my homepage and, in exchange, he’d pay me $200 for every six months that I stayed there, I went for it. Was I implicitly endorsing U-Verse? Perhaps. Was I explicitly doing so? Not at all. Was I finally being compensated for intellectual labor? Yes. Did you, as a reader, get pissed at me and think that I had compromised my academic ethics? You tell me.
I started thinking about Google Ads. What if I just put a little banner on the side? Is that okay? You’re exposed to Google Ads all day, every day — and they don’t make you think less of various sites; they only make you realize that they have an imperative to actually turn a profit if they wish to employ writers and pay them salaries and give them health benefits. But here’s the ridiculous thing: after four months of using Google Ads, four months of 1,000-2,000 people a day seeing a banner directed towards them (but not necessarily clicking through on said banner), do you know how much I earned? GUESS.
No seriously, guess.
I bet your guess was nowhere near…..
20 CENTS!
I’m yanking these ads soon — the visual distraction (and clear commerciality) is not worth less than half a cent a day. I think most readers would agree that it’s okay to get paid something to blog, so long as it doesn’t compromise the integrity of the blog. But the other day I received an interesting offer — one on which I’d like your advice, whether as an academic or a non-academic.
On Monday, I received the following email:
Hello,
I was doing research for one of my clients and came across your web page - annehelenpetersen.com. Your site stands out as an excellent candidate for a partnership with my client. Specifically, they are interested in placing a resource on one of your pages that would be relevant to your content and useful to your visitors.
You would receive compensation in exchange for your partnership as well as relevant future partnership offers. I would appreciate the chance to discuss this proposal in further detail. Please let me know if you have any interest, and I’ll send you specifics.
Thanks in advance!
Seemed pretty vague, but I thought I’d see what this person had to offer. I requested further details, and the guy, who works at an ad company, responded with the following:
Thanks for your response. The client is the Nipissing University and they’re just looking for a simple anchor text link. Here are the details:
We would like to use this page:
http://www.annehelenpetersen.com/?p=2413
The placement would be in a short sentence with the anchor text: masters of education
We would prefer that the link be placed within your existing content near the sentence in the second paragraph of the section SECOND, THE JOB : My undergraduate and M.A. degrees qualify me to teach English; my five years of teaching experience qualify me to teach; my two summers teaching gifted and talented high school students qualified me to teach high school students.
We must first check with the client to confirm the specific sentence and placement and permission to use the page. Hopefully this email provides you with a basic idea of what we’d like. I will follow up shortly with the sentence and wording we want so you know exactly what we’re looking for.
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To summarize: I would need to place a link to Nipissing University, a public, liberal arts institution in Ontario, in the body of the blog post that I wrote last year about getting my job here at The Putney School. I wouldn’t need to explicitly endorse it, but in the paragraph where I mention my teaching experience and M.A., that link would need to pop up.
The first question is whether or not it would be ethical for me to accept this sort of advertising. (Is it ethical that I have that link to U-Verse over there? You tell me). The second, more complicated question, and on on which I am honestly confused, is whether an ostensibly “academic” blog should accept advertising at all.
Channing Tatum: My Favorite Doofus
Image via GQ.com
Think about every time you’ve seen Channing Tatum onscreen.
From Fighting to The Eagle, from Step Up to Dear John, there’s a clear line that runs through his performances:
*He is a (very heterosexual) man — a fact authenticated by a love interest of some kind.
*He’s working class in some form, meaning he’s in the military (either in the present or in Ancient Rome; see Stop/Loss, Dear John, G.I. Joe, and The Eagle), a foster kid doing community service (Step Up), a street peddler (Fighting), a cop (21 Jump Street), or a stripper (the upcoming Magic Mike). [Notable exceptions: "normal" high school kid in She's the Man and Coach Carter; covert operative in Haywire; I honestly can't tell what he is in The Vow, but he seems to drive a crappy car in the trailer, so who knows].
*He’s very sincere.
*He’s very American. HE’S G.I. JOE. He’s the modern American military personified. Sometimes he’s bitter and f-ed up (Stop Loss), more often he’s stoic and honorable (Dear John). Even when he’s playing a Roman Centurian he speaks with an American accent.
*His character’s goal = 1.) find and/or restore honor (to himself, to his family); 2.) find and/or restore love, usually while doing thething that restores honor; 3.) Look good with his shirt off.
Don’t mistake me: I’m not complaining. Because Channing Tatum is by far my favorite lovable doofus, and I’ll seriously watch him in anything. As in I went to the movie theater and watched Fighting all by myself. I am not joking. But what makes him lovable and other bad-acting, Ken-Doll-action-figure-Nicholas-Sparks schmaltzy doofuses intolerable?
Because Channing (Call me ‘Chan’) Tatum is by no means novel. He is the latest in a time-tested lineage of star types, a lineage that includes Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Bruce Willis. He’s a hard body with a soft heart. His picture personality is static, and his extra-textual life mirrors it with startling symmetry.
Because Channing Tatum, off-screen, is also very heterosexual, with a love interest (read: his wife, who neatly also happened to play his love interest in Step Up; more on that later), (formerly) working class, very sincere, very American, very honorable and loving and LOOKS GOOD WITH HIS SHIRT OFF.
I know these things about Tatum because men’s magazines LOVE HIM. GQ adores him. Details has profiled him twice. He’s been the “next big thing” for the last three years — ever since he landed the lead in G.I. Joe - and the boy is game. For his first big GQ interview, he took his (female) interviewer to his Uncle’s spread in Alabama, where they rode around the place on four-wheelers and drank six-packs of beer. Lots of talk about where Tatum would build his modest cabin on the land (it’s the place where he feels most safe — his escape from the outside world) and how his accent thickens when he gets back home. To wit:
He’s just a normal Joe Schmoe: went to high school, almost flunked out, got a football scholarship to small state college, realized it wasn’t for him, and went in search of menial labor. Easy, familiar, accessible points of personal history.
For his second interview with GQ, published during the ramp-up to the release of The Eagle, he takes his (once again female) interviewer to a tiny old mining town. They’re “breaking all the publicist’s rules” — they get wasted on tequila, buy Snuggies, and sleep in Rite-Aid sleeping bags in the bushes. It’s the Rolling Stone-brand profile taken to its 21st century extension: if you can’t pull an Almost Famous and ride along with the band until you find yourself in an airplane that’s about to crash, then you have to make a crazy situation on your own. But there’s no funny business: Tatum steps out at one point to call his wife; they play pool with a guy named “Ordinary Mike,” even the hangover seems underplayed. (Compare this interview to Edith Zimmerman’s interview with Chris Pine, also in GQ,also known as my favorite interview of all time, in which the narrative becomes much more about Edith and the act of interviewing an otherwise bland star and much less about illuminating down home aspects about the subject).
In the most recent issue of Details, he takes the (male) interviewer to go shoot lots and lots of guns while loading up on whiskey, then takes him home, where his wife is waiting, and Tatum spends time dancing with dog.
That's a very sensitive sweater.
The underlying message of the profile, like every profile of Tatum, is that he’s an awesome guy: a fun, beer-drinking, risk-taking, goofy, loving guy. The sub-title for the middle-of-nowhere GQ profile says it all:
Channing Tatum is crazy. That’s not an epithet. That’s his life’s motto. Don’t believe us? We invite you to spend twenty-four hours deep in the California desert (bring some tequila and a sleeping bag) with probably America’s most fun movie star.
Hick-ing out Crappy Diner Style
Tatum can actually dance. He’s not classically trained (how un-American would that be!); he’s self-taught. In Step Up, he naturally plays a self-taught dancer who “spices up” his love interest’s formal choreography. See for yourself:
[My personal favorite dance moment comes earlier in the film, when Tatum does a weird dippy move and pops his collar. So good, SO BAD!] He rejects all the feminine connotations of “male dancer” — he dances in sweat pants rather than tights; the scene when she makes him do ballet is played for pure laughs. His dancing is physical, improvisational, and marked as amateur.
So the dancing is cute. But the “Dancing” component of Tatum’s star image is packed with meaning -
1.) How he started dancing.
Here’s where it gets so good: Tatum didn’t just start dancing around his living room. He was a STRIPPER. A male exotic dancer. There is tape, and it is right here. SO. MUCH. HAIR. GEL. While Tatum didn’t exactly broadcast the fact during his early film career, once it did arise, he embraced it whole-heartedly. As he told GQ, “I had wanted to tell people [...] I’m not ashamed of it. I don’t regret one thing. I’m not a person who hides shit.”
He then proceeded to make fun of himself all over the place — he laughs about it on Ellen and then gives her a lap dance. He developed a script on the inside of the male stripping “industry,” and Steven Soderbergh jumped to direct it. He’s not just “owning” his past as a stripper, he’s exploiting it. A past as a male stripper could be emasculating, it could be gross, it could be embarrassing. But Tatum, working, I’m sure, with some coaching from his PR team, has rendered it endearing.
2.) Dancing —> Monogamy
Tatum met his wife, Jenna Dewan, while filming Step Up. As they danced together, they fell in love, etc. etc. Fans love it when the actors who play characters who fall in love actually fall in love themselves (McGoslings, Twi-Hards), but this is something a little different. Crucially, Tatum has been with Dewan the entire time that he has been in the public eye.
His star text is that of a pure monogamist. Even in his movies, he’s never a philanderer — always into one girl; in fact, totally, selflessly devoted to one girl. It’s the perfect counterpoint to the ostensible “crazy” of his textual and extra-textual roles: sure, Tatum drinks whiskey and shoots guns, but he loves his wife. The moment in the latest GQ profile when he steps out of the house to call his wife is just pure monogamist gold.
3.) Dancing -> Sincerity
Tatum may be a self-taught dancer. He may play his “route” to dancing as a joke. But dancing is totally a sincere thing. Look at his face when he dances! He is SERIOUS about choreography! At other times, he’s just reveling in the dexterity of his own body. He loves to dance, and he doesn’t care who knows it.
That sort of transparent sincerity inflects Tatum’s entire image. You see it in the very earnest way he professes his love in Dear John, and you see it in the way that he talks about “real people” in nearly every profile. When someone in the bar in the old mining town uses the phrase “shit brickhouse,” he replies
“Oh, my God! Yes! Brick shithouse!” Chan says, slapping his knee the next day at Rusty’s. “See! This is why I wanted to come out here. I love these places. You can’t get this good a time in the city! Real people, man. Real people.”
I’m this close to cringing. But then I remember that it’s coming from Channing Tatum’s big, over-sized, attractive face — that he doesn’t want to observe and laugh at these “real people” so much as go back to the time when he was one of them, that I forgive him all his dopey authenticity-seeking. I mean, look at this closer to the Details interview:
You see this sincere Tatum in half of his pictures — the half when he’s straight-faced and doing awkward things with his body, model-y, mooney-looking things. But something about it makes me love him even more, like the guy writing really bad yet really sincere acrostic love poetry.
Lainey Gossip argues that he out-Matthew McConaughey’s Matthew McConaghey. But these days, McConaghey’s just a douche with his shirt off. Tatum, on the other hand, has three high profile movies coming out this year and two in pre-production. The trick, I think, is that Tatum can do what McConaughey has never quite been able to pull off: he can play his sincerity straight, as he does in nearly every film. But he can also play that sincerity for laughs, as he does in the trailer for 21 Jump Street.
I could be wrong, but this actually looks hilarious — in part because it takes Tatum’s established image and satirizes it. Ultimately, this knowledge forms the crux of Tatum’s success: he and his team know his image and how to exploit it, but they also know how to make fun of it. And that, more than any actual acting skill, is a ticket to stardom.
Five Crotchedy-Ass Questions about Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Let’s make this clear: I liked this movie. David Fincher has established himself as a master of making otherwise unexciting and unfilmic activities (computer coding, researching) into heart-pounding, exciting, and filmic montages. The film is still overlong, but it had to set itself up for the sequel and there’s only so much you can cut from a densely plotted narrative in keep it cogent. I don’t think Fincher was trying to be faithful to the book so much as faithful to the actual chain of events: Point A must happen so that Point B can happen, which must also happen so that C can happen, etc. etc. and so on. And while I enjoyed the film more than Mission Impossible: Make People Like Tom Cruise Again, which I saw the day before, my inner crotchedy-ass self has some lingering questions:
1.) No seriously, why the fuck is this film named Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?
This beef is more with the English-language publishers of the book than the film itself, but my complaint holds: in Swedish, the book is titled Men Who Hate Women. This title underlines Larson’s feminist intent with the novels, which was not to make entertainment out of sexual violence, but rather to highlight misogyny in all its manifestations. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo not only makes Lisbeth into a nameless Girl, but also a girl whose overarching signifier is a tattoo. One of the points of the narrative is to encourage us to see Lisbeth as much more than her appearance suggests, and the title does the absolute opposite.
2.) Why is the sexual violence played as catharsis?
The sexual violence against Lisbeth is not cathartic. It’s visceral and horrible and necessary to the plot, and to shy away from it would be to shy away from what makes Lisbeth who she is. (Narratively speaking, it would also decrease her resolution to find the serial rapist/killer). There was a lot of gasping and swearing in the theater by unsuspecting viewers during these scenes. But the scene when Lisbeth takes revenge is essentially played as catharsis: the brutality she inflects upon her rapist is framed not only as just, but as narrative closure. Sure, Lisbeth comes to check up on him, but it’s played for laughs, not as a moment of continued trauma. Within this paradigm, the state, even a progressive state like that of Sweden, will always ignore sexual violence, and it’s up to the victim to take revenge — and after it is taken, she can move on with her life. Do you see how this is problematic? It’s also problematic for the audience, which is encouraged to feel a similar catharsis: that thing that happened to her was horrible, but now that she’s sodomized her killer and blackmailed and tattooed him so that he won’t do it again, whew, problem solved, I feel great, let’s move on to the heady MacBook investigating!
3.) Why is the death of a serial killer played off as a plot point?
YOU GUYS, MARTIN VANGER AND HIS FATHER BRUTALIZED LOTS AND LOTS OF WOMEN. But again, vigilante justice takes precedence: because he dies in giant fireball, his last memory that of a woman (who had just clubbed in the head and forced him to flee) coming slowly towards him, we are to believe that he’s received what’s coming for him. But then nothing! No expose! No information given over to the victims’ families, nothing! He just dies and then we go on to Lisbeth’s dress up party!
In the book, we’re given some hemming and hawing over whether or not the Vanger family should make the information public. But in the film, Martin Vanger dies and we just up and move on to the third act of the film. Seriously! That’s it! There’s not even a mention, save to prompt the woman we believe to be Anita Vanger to contact Harriet.
4.) Why is Lisbeth’s Macbook Pro so much more awesome than mine?
First of all, I couldn’t help thinking of Steig Larson’s totally bizarre fascination with Apple hardware (remember how he detailed the hard drive specifics of each machine Lisbeth touches? I can understand working for accuracy, but there was some serious fetishism going on, and it only gets worse in the (much worse) second and third books). But here’s the thing: we’re used to seeing awesome next-gen technology on-screen. Mission Impossible was filled with it. It makes our heroes seem cooler and more savvy simply because they know that such things exist, let alone how to work them. And we suspend our disbelief in Google Maps that pop on on the windshield of the actual car because we’ve already suspending our disbelief that agents like Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) exist. But Lisbeth is given a machine that is absolutely the same as mine. And they do enough close-ups to make that abundantly clear. But why do her PDFs look so much more vibrant? How does she go through all of them so quickly? Where’s that hacker interface? Can I buy it at the App Store?
Now, I realize that the filmmakers are underlining that Lisbeth does things with “normal” technology that others cannot. She’s not a special agent; she’s just a savant. But instead of making me feel like she’s totally awesome, so makes me feel like I’m a bumbling Grandpa.
5.) How did Fincher manage to turn a narrative about solving an intricate mystery into a contemplation of what Rooney Mara would look like in pretty girl clothes?
Look to the extra-textuals: in the lead-up to the release of the film, nearly every article focused on how Rooney Mara, a cute, blonde, every-girl, transformed herself into an androgynous punk. (See especially the creepy Vogue profile, which I wrote about two months ago). With established stars, a “character” (I won’t say Method) performance such as this one is viewed as an Oscar turn, and most viewers spend a considerable amount of time marveling at how effectively the star has transformed him/herself into something not suggested by his/her image, namely fat, poor, mentally disabled, homeless, genius-level mathematician, etc. But Rooney Mara wasn’t an established star. Her most visible role was a brief appearance in a notable scene in The Social Network. And while many media savvy viewers would have seen pictures of her looking “normal,” many had not. But there’s something in Lisbeth’s facial structure and body that suggests she might be hiding a Hollywood star — the defined cheekbones, the eyes, the near-emaciation that treads the fine line between “hot body” and “obvious eating disorder.”
The film thus becomes a game of “how pretty would this girl be if we could just get some normal clothes on her”? The wonder is only underlined by the scene in which Lisbeth dons expensive, feminine clothing, and physically alters her body to become stereotypically womanly: yes! She’s gorgeous! Look at her legs in those heels! The discourse about Mara’s performance centers on transformation, not the way she portrays vulnerability and strength.
Lisbeth, as is, can’t be beautiful. An actress who actually looks like Lisbeth could never be Lisbeth. She has to be played as masquerade — as something that an otherwise traditionally beautiful girl dresses up as. Otherwise, she, a bisexual, androgynous, intelligent woman who rejects Western standards of beauty, is altogether too troubling of the status quo.
So what are your lingering crotchedy-ass questions? Or do you have answers to mine?
Previously: Five Crotchedy-Ass Questions about X-Men: First Class
The Ryan Gosling Meme Has Jumped the Shark
Three things happened in Ryan Gosling meta-commentary news this week:
1.) The Ryan Gosling Tumblr-sphere expanded to include “Biostatistics Ryan Gosling.” Add it to the pre-existing blogroll of “Medieval History Ryan Gosling,” “Public History Ryan Gosling,” “Feminist Ryan Gosling,” and dozens more discipline-specific Gozes to which I have not even been made aware.
2.) Inside Higher Ed published a (brief) thinkpiece on the phenomenon.
3.) Well-known media theorist Nancy Baym tweeted “What’s up with this Ryan Gosling tumblr meme thing?
4.) My friend Rebecca, pop culture enthusiast and American Studies dissertator, posited “Don’t you think this whole thing has jumped the shark? You need to write about it quick.”
I have to agree. Biostatistics Ryan Gosling is Jumping the Ryan Gosling Tumblr Shark. Not because I don’t like Biology, but because it lacks the very thing that made the original Ryan Gosling Tumblr (Hey Girl) work so well: you could actually imagine Ryan Gosling saying the very phrases that adoring bloggers were photoshopping into his mouth.
To be more precise: The reason “Hey Girl” works is because Ryan Gosling’s image supports it. You can imagine The Goz saying things like….
…because his image is that of a considerate, intelligent, somewhat quirky yet somehow also adorable and amusing man. (For the specifics of Gosling’s image, see my earlier post on “Why You Love the Goz“). His picture personality may dictate otherwise (read: he plays a lot of assholes and weirdos), but somehow the weight of his extratextual image is enough to convince most of America that he’s really Noah Calhoun (of Notebook fame) transplanted off the screen and into the 21st century.
What’s more, the very notion that Ryan Gosling COULD SAY THESE THINGS is reinforced by clips of him being adorable WHILE SAYING THESE THINGS. He knows about the Tumblr; he finds it quite funny (and somewhat absurd); he laughs at himself and his image which, in reality, just reinforces his image. He gets the joke! The Hotness just multiples!
And Feminist Ryan Gosling is “Hey Girl” taken to its natural (feminist) conclusion. Ryan Gosling’s image goes to grad school! But here’s the thing: Ryan Gosling’s image wouldn’t go to get his PhD in Biology. Or Public History. His image has evidenced no interest in biology other than hanging out with those ducks in The Notebook. Ryan Gosling’s image would either sell out and become a lawyer (see, for example, many of his picture personalities) or pursue an altruistic career in the humanities (see Half Nelson), more specifically, English and/or Gender Studies. And I’m not just saying that because I have a Ph.D. in the humanities: if I were interested in making The Goz be part of my cohort, then I’d be arguing that Ryan Gosling Film Studies is awesome, which I’m not. See below).
But Feminist Ryan Gosling is doing more than just placing feminist theory next to well-chosen pictures. It’s combining rigorous feminist theory with something that’s not quite so rigorous — it couples the theoretical stances we believe in with the negotiated way we live them.
Take this image, for example. Yes! I believe that the hegemonic relationship between the state and the prison industrial complex is bullshit, and needs to be eradicated. But I also want someone to hold me! (And in my personal fantasy space, that person could be Ryan Gosling. It couldn’t be, say, Brad Pitt, because his image doesn’t seem like it would want to go to gender studies grad school. Architectural school, sure).
Or here. Yes, gender is a construct. To live that idea everyday — that’s tough (necessary) work. To emphasize it to your students, to your parents, to your kids, to your peers — seriously, that’s tough, because you’re pushing against a whole heavy load of ideology. But again, the idea is paired with the idea that everyone, including those who make theory in personal praxis, enjoy and hunger for human touch and intimacy.
Apart from the fit with Gosling’s image, there’s also an element of pleasure and play at work. As Danielle Henderson, creator of Feminist Ryan Gosling, explains,
Feminists are apparently not supposed to have a sense of humor. I think people are really liking the fact that this site is intelligent while simultaneously silly, and obviously self-referential. A lot of my followers are women’s studies majors, or people who have taken women’s studies classes, and love seeing inside jokes presented in this way. For example, if you’re a women’s studies major, you’ve probably read “The Yellow Wallpaper” at least 18 times. Now matter how much you like that story, it gets a little ridiculous.
There’s a lot of “snark” (hate that word), and a lot of intellectual examination of pop culture going on with most popular feminist sites, but not a lot of fun. I think I’m having fun with feminism, but not making fun of feminism. People recognize and respond to that crucial difference.
That element of play has far less to do with Ryan Gosling’s image and far more to do with feminism‘s image. But again, it only really works because the feminism can actually work with Gosling’s image. Would it work with Will Smith? With Tom Cruise? With Daniel Craig or Jackie Chan or Channing Tatum? You need a very specific constellation of star attributes in order to make it seem plausible that the person in that picture could potentially read, understand, and repeat the theory contained therein. You need an image as inflected with feminism as The Goz’s.
(Note: I realize that part of this process is self-fulfilling and tautological: Gosling’s image seems feminist so feminist theory can be ascribed to him, which, in turn, makes his image seem even more feminist. Star image formation is complicated shit).
As I was writing this post, several of my friends alerted me to “Film Studies Ryan Gosling.” Part of me wants to love this, if only because I want to imagine Gosling’s image’s familiarity with the likes of Bordwell and Thompson. But Ryan Gosling image isn’t that of a cinephile, and it’s most definitely not indicated an interest in apparatus. I so wish he were. If anyone should be responding to these meme, it should be me — someone who loves Gosling AND film theory. But when you apply his name to film studies, it only make sense with knowledge of the meme and its previous application - not by itself. In other words, if “Hey Girl” is Ryan Gosling’s extratextual image turned into a meme, and Feminist Ryan Gosling is the higher ed extension of that image, then there’s just not a space for Ryan Gosling, Film Theoretician.
What’s more, the author gets it wrong: sure, Grad School Gosling would know Mulvey and the theory of the male gaze, but he would also twist the theory so that he wasn’t embodying the very oppressing gaze against which Mulvey was arguing. For Gosling to be the male gaze suggests that he’s fully enveloped in patriarchy — which is the exact opposite of what his image suggests.
Here’s the simple truth: all pop culture phenomenons, especially those which gain traction on the internet, exhaust themselves eventually. Sometimes it happens through overexposure, sometimes it happens by being spread too thin and thus losing their potency. Whether Stuff White People Like or even LOLcatz, there’s a certain point at which the very thing that made it work — made it special, made if hilarious, made it something that you wanted to pass along to your friends and laugh at a common joke — ceases to function in the same way.
Pairing star images with dense theory is funny. Every scholar wants to think that an object of their desire would be interested in the things they’re interested in — would have a discussion in which you share a secret language familiar to a select few (and then, after you’ve had a good debate, you an go to the Farmer’s Market and snuggle). I wish Ryan Gosling’s image wanted to get his PhD in media studies with me. But it doesn’t — he fell in with the gender studies people long ago. That’s where his image belongs. That’s where it works. To take it beyond can be funny……but, if we’re honest with ourselves, misses the point. It’s a meme built on a meme, and thus evacuated of its core.
Maybe Postmodern Ryan Gosling would have something to say about this?
Why You Love The Fassbender
Am I getting ahead of myself? Do you even know The Fassbender? If you do, then you know why this column is worth your time. If you do not, let’s begin with a down-and-dirty orientation.
Plainly put, Michael Fassbender is the next big thing. GQ just put him on its cover as 2010′s Breakout Star, and it’s no joke: this guy was all over the place, but in the very best of ways.
After toiling for many years on the periphery of visibility, Fassbender’s big break came in the form of Steve McQueen’s Hunger, in which he plays the lead role of an IRA hunger striker. The film won the Camera d’Or at Cannes, and both McQueen and Fassbender were suddenly very visible. (Link to disturbing image of Fassbender’s emaciation here).
Fassbender followed Hunger with Fish Tank, a totally awesome and under-seen (in the United States, at least) film about a British teenager and the, uh, unique relationship between her and her mother’s boyfriend. Lots of film festival awards, Jury Prize at Cannes, BAFTA for Best British Film. But Fassbender didn’t become truly visible to American eyes until Inglourious Basterds, in which he plays a British spy (in one of the tensest moments of the film, and that’s saying something).
Basterds led to Jonah Hex, which was primed to be a big blockbuster. All the pieces were in place: big lead stars (Josh Brolin, John Malkovich), sexy girl-on-the-side (Megan Fox), pre-sold comic book franchise….but the film was a STINKBOMB. Panned across the board (12% Rotten Tomatoes score!) and made back only $10 million of its $47 million budget. But Fassbender was already off and filming what would become his gangbuster 2011: Rochester in Jane Eyre, Young Magneto in the rebooted X-Men, Carl Jung in David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, repaired with Steve McQueen as a sex addict in Shame, some sort of secret agentness in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire (Winter 2012), and the male lead (android) in Ridley Scott’s new sci-fi film Prometheus (Summer 2012).
We’re right in the middle of that list right now: both A Dangerous Method and Shame are in limited release right now, with Oscar Buzz slowly accumulating around Fassbender’s performance in the later.
Add in the fact that Fassbender is spectacularly, unequivocally, viscerally handsome.
But handsomeness does not make a star. And it certainly does not make a cult of fandom, the way that The Fassbender has recently inspired (if you follow the blog’s feed on Facebook, you know what exactly what I’m talking about).
[Quick Clarifying Note: When I title a post using the "second person," insinuating I magically know Why You Love The Fassbender (or, before, The Goz -- who knows, maybe this will become a regular column?), I'm not so much suggesting that I know why you, specifically, find him endearing/attractive/compelling so much as why society/Hollywood has found him endearing/attractive/compelling, a grouping of which the magic 'you' are obviously a part. Perhaps that much is obvious].
So here’s the big (somewhat obviously) revelation: You love The Fassbender because He’s a Method Actor. That seems obvious and facile, so let’s break it down:
1.) THE PRETTY FACE + THE TALENT
First and foremost. Pretty face is one thing, pretty face that can act — and act astoundingly well, in myriad and diverse parts, is like taking “pretty face” and squaring it. It makes the hotness level go off the charts. Pretty face without talent is two dimensional eye candy — a model in a fashion magazine, not someone with whom you’d actually want (or be able) to interact. Pretty face with talent = three-dimensional. Suddenly you can imagine having a discussion. Touching his face. It’s not just because he’s acting, three-dimensionally, on the screen, but because he seems less like a pin-up and more like a person. That’s what skill does to people: it makes them interesting.
And Fassbender isn’t just a decent actor. In all the articles I read preparing for this post, I saw him compared to Daniel Day-Lewis at least a dozen times. That sort of praise is not fucking around. You can nonchalantly compare someone to, say, Brad Pitt, or George Clooney — underlining the way he matches charisma with skill, etc. etc. But Day-Lewis is the contemporary actor par excellence. He is our moment’s Method Actor.
The comparison between Fassbender and Day-Lewis stems from two qualities: Fassbender’s devotion to specific characters, and the diversity of characters to which he has devoted himself. Profiles love to retell the methods of “The Method” — how he holed up and fasted for weeks to emaciate himself for Hunger, subsisting on sardines and nuts. For the famous 17-minute unbroken take in the film, he and his co-star moved in together, practicing the scene twelve times a day. CRAZYTIME. When A Dangerous Method screened at the Venice Film Festival, Fassbender had so effectively become Jung (and not “Fassbender”) that he had to introduce himself and his character when he went on stage afterwards.
Cronenberg calls him a “working class actor,” by which he means that Fassbender works for each role, spends hours devoting himself to the script and losing himself within the character. According to one interview, “To prepare for a role, he’ll read a screenplay as many as 300 times in daily shifts of seven hours.” He’s best known for his performances in minor keys: moody sad-sacks with little way out. Rochester, his character in Shame, Magneto. But his character in Fish Tank is a marvel to behold, all smiles and sun-kissed charisma. Cronenberg calls him a shape-shifter, a chameleon.
From Fish Tank (2009)
In some ways, a chameleon is frightening: you never know which Fassbender you’ll get onscreen, whether he’ll terrify or seduce you. But that chance is also extremely beguiling, and the talent it takes to affect that sort of transformation is, on a meta-level, extremely attractive.
As Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method
2.) THE INTELLIGENCE.
Or, more specifically, the intelligence that stems from Method Acting.
Here, for example, is Fassbender’s take on Rochester:
“[Rochester is]….A Byronic character burnt by experience, arrogant but also eloquent and introspective. He’s world-weary and jaded, sensual, selfdestructive, yet there’s a good sense of humor in there, and at the end of the day a good heart. He sees the freshness and beauty in Jane when everybody else looks past her.”
As Rochester in Jane Eyre
I don’t think Fassbender is smart about everything, but he has evidenced himself to be extremely intelligent about people - and he’s done so not only in the way he speaks about characters (who are, in fact, people) but in the way his performances underline a deep understanding of the diversity of human experience. To be a method actor is to be capable of understanding how other people work, and embodying that understanding with your performance. Fassbender is thus intelligent in the way that all method actors are intelligent. Consider our current crop of method actors: Day-Lewis, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Sean Penn. We associate each of these mena nd women with intelligence. (Poor choices sometimes, yes, especially in the case of De Niro’s late film career, but intelligence nonetheless). Actors that “play themselves,” like, say, Gary Cooper, are likable, but we don’t think of them as necessarily smart. Method Acting is a learned and difficult skill, and it differentiates those who excel at it from the rest of Hollywood.
You — readers of this blog who like to think deeply about the popular culture you consume — are most likely attracted to thoughtful, intelligent men, whether as friends or as objects of affection. With his close association with The Method, ratified by his own meta-textual perceptiveness, The Fassbender is this man.
3.) THE BLANK SLATE.
If you’ve only seen Jane Eyre and X-Men Origins, you might think Fassbender is a type. I certainly did. But having watched his other films, I’ve become convinced of the Method/Talent stuff up above. As mentioned above, I have no idea what this man could do, what character he could embody next, whether or not he’ll be creepy or endearing. He could be anyone.
Including Your Total Boyfriend. Your Best Guy Friend. You can paint him into your elaborate fantasy and it so totally works.
It’s because he’s a Method Actor, but it’s also because he’s Not a Real Movie Star. I know this comes as a surprise — haven’t I been saying that he’s the next big thing? Isn’t he on all of these magazines? — but he’s not a movie star in the same way that Brad Pitt, or Will Smith, or Ben Affleck are movie stars. Not because he’s not a blockbuster star — because with Ridley Scott’s film, he will be — but because we know virtually nothing of his extra-textual life.
Because as much as people love to argue this point,
Star = Picture Personality (accumulation of roles) + Extra-Textual Personality (the image of their lifestyle off screen).
Fassbender has submitted to dozens of interviews. He’s posed for GQ fashion shoots. He’s super visible. But what do you know of his homelife? Sure, you know a bit about his family — that his father is German, that he lived in Germany — but that was emphasized to explain his near-perfect (if accented) German in Basterds. Maybe you know that his father is a chef. Maybe you know that he dated Zoe Kravitz, his co-star in X-Men, over the summer. But it’s unlikely that you knew that, because they were caught a total of ONCE by photographers. The man is intensely guarded about his private life. In fact, the most illuminating thing he’s said about his private life is that he’d like to to model his career on Viggo Morgensten’s, which is to say he’d like to remain intensely private and choose his roles carefully, balancing high profile films with personal projects.
This level of privacy — and the resultant blank slate of his private life — is part of the reason he’s able to recede into his roles so effectively. Even tremendous, transformative actors — like Brad Pitt- can only go so far with a role, if only because every time you see his face, you’re reminded of his everpresent star image. Fassbender, in his current iteration, is free of the heft of a star image.
As a result, we can project our own fantasies of “what he’s really like” onto Fassbender’s highly mutable image, and Fassbender can continue to refine his non-star-image as a method actor. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. The less we know about him, the more Method he seems, the hotter he becomes…..and The More You Love The Fassbender.
THE FASSBENDER.
Girls’ Media: What are your essential texts?
At the school where I teach, the students don’t have finals. Instead, at the end of each semester, they embark upon two massive, two-week projects of their own devising. For example, I’m sponsoring individual project weeks on Cult Film and classic feminist texts. But students can also pick to participate in a “group” project, which means that a teacher comes up with a very specific idea (kind of like a mini-seminar) and they investigate said idea in detail.
There are about 12 group projects this semester, ranging from The Study of Happiness to The Cultural and Musical Roots of ’60s Rock. As for geeky me, I’m doing Girls’ Media Studies.
I took a grad seminar in Girls’ Media Studies during my first year in my Ph.D. program at UT, but the idea of girls, media, and the relationship between the two has long been a pet project of mine — in part because I was strongly influenced by several media texts as a “girl,” but also just because I find girlhood — as a discursive construction, as a societal point of anxiety, as a generally sucky time — really fascinating, and I love thinking about my own girlhood and where it fits within the historical continuums of girlhoods, including girlhood’s current iteration, marked, as it is, by constant mediation, ubiquitous screens, and contradictory messages about what it measn to be “good,” “pretty,” “smart,” “sexual,” etc. (Of course, all of our girlhoods were filled with contradictory messages on these topics).
So long story short: I’m looking for texts. The class is only two weeks, and I’m going to be doing some background on how “girls” have been conceived over time and in media, some Patty Duke, some Nancy Drew, some old school Seventeen, and, of course, some seminal texts from my own girlhood. The students will also select some texts on which they’d like to focus, and they’ll do final projects on a text of their choice.
If you were teaching a class of 14-17 year old girls, what would you show them? What sort of questions would you consider? What television shows, magazines, books, movies, albums, songs, etc. would you want to discuss? What would you want to say about it? Stuff from now, stuff from then, stuff from whenever. Help me make this class as awesome as possible.
Almost-Winter Media Endorsements
Television:
I’ve already told you how much I love Claire Danes, but seriously, you should be watching Homeland. I realize it’s nearly impossible to obtain without premium cable, but there are ways, media-savvy readers, THERE ARE WAYS. It’s the best thing on television right now.
Speaking of which, did you know that My So-Called Life is streaming in its entirety on Netflix? I’m teaching Girls Media Studies and am going to screen the entire thing — it’s still just as good as it was when you watched it every night at 7 pm on MTV. (Or, if you were like me, it’s just as good as when you watched it every Thursday on ABC and then every night, over and over again, on MTV for the next four years). And if you’ve never seen it…it’s never too late to jump on the best-teen-show-until-FNL bandwagon.
No show — not even Parks and Rec, which I love with abandon — has made me laugh as deeply as Louie. You might not want to watch it with your Grandma or 5-year-old, but it has the verve and honesty that 99% of comedic television lacks. (Season 1, also streaming on Netflix).
Film:
Prestige-film season is in full-swing, but I still think Beginners is the best film I’ve seen this year. Innovatively-plotted, perfectly-acted, beautiful and poignant and elegant and sad. I absolutely loved it, and think you will too. Even the trailer is charming.
(But have no fear — the movie never veers into the overly cutesy or overly sentimental).
I’ve spent two long nights watching Carlos, a mini-series/really long film (three two-hour chunks) about a terrorist/freedom-fighter/Marxist/really complicated real-life guy, commonly known as “Carlos the Jackel.” The plot is convoluted and the politics are complex, but it is gripping as filmmaking gets. Directed by Olivier Assayas, the man behind the gorgeous Summer Hours, with a stunning star turn by Edgar Ramirez. Also streaming on Netflix (do you see a pattern here?).
Music:
First of all, I highly recommend investigating Spotify. I’m still dubious about the way it compensates the millions of artists whose music is available, but for things like, say, yoga playlists, it is aces. I pay $4.99 and have access to pretty much everything released by a mainstream or even quasi-mainstream artist. It’s like Pandora with a whole lot more control.
As for specific albums — I’m listening to so much of the following:
The Head and the Heart, The Head and the Heart, specifically “Down in the Valley.” Just listening to these guys makes me miss the Northwest like whoa.
The National, Boxer, specifically “Green Gloves” (I go through periods of listening to The National when I become physically addicted to an album — as in cannot not be listening to it while I’m awake. I’m just emerging from one of those periods).
Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues, specifically “Battery Kinzie”
Feist, Metals, specifically “Anti-Pioneer.” GORGEOUS.
Rihanna, Talk that Talk, specifically “Drunk on Love.” The xx + RiRi = Annie’s new favorite song.
The Bieber, specifically “Mistletoe.” The video! I DIE! No shame!
Reading:
I’ve been spending a lot of time reading things with my students, but I’ve also had a chance to do some pleasure reading on the side, including Jeffrey Eugenides’ much-ballyhooed The Marriage Plot. I liked it quite a bit, but wonder if those who are not familiar with the woes and confusions of first encountering post-structuralism will feel the same. (Tell me? Do those sections make sense?)
Jill Lepore’s essay “Birthright,” on the war against Planned Parenthood, is an absolute must-read, no matter your political affiliation. It’s historical, contextual, and packs a huge punch. It’s behind the New Yorker paywall, but it is so worth the article charge. Or find your favorite New Yorker reader and bum a copy off of them. (Or if you live in close proximity to me, bum my copy).
I generally abhor Caitlin Flanagan. But her Atlantic essay on why girls - and women — read Twilight is, bar none, the best explanation for why the particulars of the narrative (not just the vampire narrative, but this vampire narrative) draws us in. Not behind the pay-wall, and especially appropriate given the release of Breaking Dawn. (If you’re interested in my own article on feminist readers of Twilight, it’s coming out this summer, but I’d be happy to send you a digital copy. Just let me know). The recent Hairpin article on “Our Bella, Our Selves” is also quite good.
So there we go — share your own endorsements in the comments? Or try and fight me on the merits of The Biebs? Let’s go.
Claire Danes’ Second Act
Here is what you need to understand about Claire Danes: for the millions of women (and a few hundred thousand men) who watched My So-Called Life, she will always be Angela Chase. Let me rephrase — for the millions of women for whom My So-Called Life became the seminal text of young adulthood (Generation Catalano, as Slate recently dubbed us) Claire Danes must be Angela Chase. While the show lasted but 19 episodes and Angela Chase remains frozen at age 15, it is essential to think that Angela grew up, grew out of her Jordan Catalano phase, and went on to success. Such is the crux of Danes’ star image: she’s teenage angst made good, proof positive that teenagers became adults (who may sometimes make bad decisions, as evidenced below).
Granted, millions around the world know Danes as Juliet to Leonardo DiCaprio’s Romeo. And although Juliet obviously dies, the fact that Danes lives is, yet again, proof that the intensity of teenage love can be endured, can be “lived through.” Even if you’ve never seen or loved a Claire Danes text, you might still know that she survived growing up Hollywood, and that this girl:
But something else happened around 2004 — something that turned many fans, ardent or casual, against her. During the filming of Stage Beauty (which, admit it, is laughably bad), Danes and co-star Billy Crudup developed some sort of relationship. Crudup left his long-term (and seven-months-pregnant) girlfriend, Mary-Louise Parker. Overnight, Danes became a family-wrecker. Look at her in the corner! Classic “Other Woman” picture placement!
While Dane and Crudup didn’t flaunt their relationship in the press the way that, say, LeAnn Rimes and What’s-His-Bad-Acting-Name did, they did stay together. Danes starred in Shopgirl (woefully underrated) and played a bit-part (as a relationship-wrecker!) in The Family Stone. Crudup’s career stayed in second gear with supporting roles in a smattering of high profile pictures (Trust the Man, Mission Impossible III, The Good Shepherd). It’s difficult to correlate negative P.R. and film performance when the actors aren’t the principle stars, but it was clear that neither Danes nor Crudup were getting big roles. Scandal didn’t make them more interesting to audiences; instead, the details of the scandal made them both seem inconsiderate and cold. (Again, Crudup and Danes maintained that their relationship did not start until after the disintegration of Crudup and Parker’s relationship. Still, Crudup left his pregnant girlfriend. Some actions can never be positively spun).
And I mean look! Adorable! Something about Crudup’s face just screams cad, whereas Dancy looks like he just wants to cuddle.
The marriage marked the beginning of Act II of Danes’ career. Not only had she jettisoned the association with Crudup, but she went back to television, the medium where audiences had loved her the most. Danes transformed herself to play the role of Temple Grandin — an Autistic woman with a truly astounding life story — in an HBO documentary. On the surface, playing Grandin was just a chance for Danes to show that she could transform herself into something more than a pretty face, the way that, say, Charlize Theron did for her turn in Monster.
Which is why Danes’ impressive work on Homeland should be no surprise. On the recommendation of the cultural gurus at the Slate Cultural Gabfest, I started watching earlier this week and quickly burned through seven episodes. I was a bit turned off by the premise — returned P.O.W., War on Terror, CIA operatives, etc. etc…..hadn’t I sorta kinda watched this show before? Isn’t it Rubicon meets 24? But Homeland is everything that I want from a thriller, filled with nuance, moral ambiguity, and intricate plotting. It also escapes the fatal Showtime curse of really shitty supporting characters (Dexter, I’m talking to you). The show is very, very good, and Danes is very, very good in it.
But Danes’ character, Carrie Anderson, also seems to be a culmination of Danes’ star text to date. New York Mag‘s Vulture already established that Carrie is Angela Chase all grown up , but Carrie is also a notorious home-wrecker, very smart, and filled with anxiety about fucking things up the way she did in the not-so-distant past.
The show works because the writing is excellent, the acting, especially on the part of the three principles, is superb, and the production values are high. But it also presents Danes in the way we want to think about her: as an extension of Angela Chase, imperfect and scarred and striving. While stars can change the conversation about their images, it’s impossible to undo an aspect of your established star image. I wouldn’t say that Danes has “embraced” her image as a one-time home-wrecker, but this role shows that she, and the writers of the show, understand the associations that many viewers will bring to the show.
The stars that last are those that understand their own images and make decisions accordingly. It is my hope, then, that the character of Carrie Anderson, and its cognizant play on Danes’ star image, is but the beginning of the long second act of Danes’ career. Angela Chase was (and is) so important to the person I am today — for her to endure is, in some small, significant way, for me to endure. I realize this might sound ridiculous. But that sort of attachment, even by someone, such as myself, with ostensible academic distance from stars, underlines the ways in which stars matter, and why I spent a Sunday morning thinking about Angela Chase, myself, and the way we’ve both changed and accumulated meanings since age 15.
[IN RESPONSE] I feel like at the Hairpin, the assumption is that everyone here is smart enough to understand absurdity when we see it, even if we simultaneously enjoy (ironically, guiltily, or just plain enjoy) it in whatever form it takes.
*****
I’m a raging feminist complete with Dr. Tiller pins and a chip on my shoulder everywhere I go, but if I felt that part of being a srs bsns feminist was completely detaching myself from all problematic media, products, websites, etc….well, I would not have much to do, and that would be pretty fucking boring. After all, you don’t really get to judge and impact a culture without participating in it.
*****
The assumption that Girl Things are stupid because they are Girl Things is just flat poisonous. And I say this as someone who is by and large just not into most feminine frippery, so I don’t even want to think about the message being broadcast at someone who can’t get enough of it. The idea that shoes and make-up and nail art is stupid and shallow but gadgets and weight-lifting and performance cars are serious things for serious people is fucked up and bullshit.
*****
As a woman who has never been into a lot of traditional feminine stuff I think reading the Hairpin has helped me get over some of my own unconscious partaking of this attitude about Girl Things. Seeing eye shadow posts discussed by the same folks who are talking about nerdy books and art history has made me realize how much I have in common with ladies who don’t pick the same presentation style as I do but still have brains and senses of humor. It’s terrible, but I didn’t realize how much I was sort of automatically dismissing women who read as ‘too girly’ to me - or how much I was assuming that they dismiss me.