Canvas Journal XII - Winter 2013

The McGill Undergraduate Journal of Art History and Communication Studies | Vol. 12 | Winter 2013

CANVAS Winter 2013

CANVAS

EDITOR’S NOTE

Winter 2013

If you are reading this, then the editorial team and I would like to thank you for being a part of the 12th volume of Canvas, McGill’s undergraduate journal of Art History and Communication Studies.

As students, we are all well-aware of the fact that the academic environment is constantly changing and evolving. Publications such as this journal constitue a microcosmic, but nevertheless vital, part of this process of growth. This year’s edition of Canvas is home to ten carefully selected undergraduate papers from the disciplines of both Art History and Communication Studies. The sample is meant to represent the wide range of topics that each discipline has the potential to encompass.

With this edition of Canvas, we hope to aid readers in discovering (or perhaps continuing to explore) new material and new perspectives, whether they be within contemporary or more canonical, even antiquated contexts. The papers that follow consider everything from celebrity tabloid culture to Ancient Roman cemeteries, from installation pieces to the aesthetics of typefaces, from crime coverage in the 1960s to reality shows on MTV. It is our hope that within this broad range of topics, readers will be able to discover at least one thing that piques their interest, gives them pause and makes them think a little differently.

— Nouran Sedaghat Editor-in-Chief

Editor-in-Chief Nouran Sedaghat

Editorial Board Queen Arsem-O’Malley Ludivine Baugier Nicole Ioffredi Anna Kanduth Jennifer Knoll Vincent Marquis Lily Martin Erica Morassutti Lauren Pires Alexandria Proctor

Cover Artist Noah Tavlin

Special Thanks The Department of Art History and Communications Studies, The Arts Undergraduate Society, The AUS Journal Fund, The Art History and Communications Studies Students’ Association

CONTENTS Modern Efficiency and Typography:

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Adrian Frutiger and Univers Font Mira Katz-Blumenthal

Contemporary Chinese Women Artists:

14

Identity, Political Will and Empowerment Through Contemporary Haida Art

24

Trans-fiction and the Cyborg: Sexing the Post Human

33

Owing to the Dead:

40

Vir Heroicus Sublimis et le sublime dans l’oeuvre de

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Negotiating a Space of Their Own Charlotte Jacob-Maguire

Brenda Chang

Lyota Bonyeme

Reciprocal Relationships Between the Living and the Dead in the Ancient Roman Cemetery of Isola Sacra Marianne Cole

Barnett Newman Vincent Marquis

From Jim Crow to Flava Flav:

61

Kristen Stewart and The Sexualized Discourse of Celebrity Production Culture

68

Virtual Arenas of Exchange:

77

Thirty-Eight Witnesses:

93

Manifestations of the Minstrel Daisy Charles

Jenny Knoll

Complicating Relational Aesthetics through Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Under Scan: Relational Architecture 11 Caroline Dutka The Kitty Genovese Murder and its Creation of Moral Panic in Urban America Kierra Young

Modern Efficiency and Typography: Adrian Frutiger and Univers Font

Mira Katz-Blumenthal

T

he Modernist style, which favours efficiency, clarity, and streamlined design, brought to the fore a new demand for communication technologies that embodied these preferences. The aesthetic standards of modernity shifted gradually as the era progressed, with developments occurring in many disciplines, including graphic design and typography.

Twentieth century font styles originated in the early 1800s with the first sans-serif fonts; over the course of the next century, typography became more experimental and unconventional. With the influence of Bauhaus design and other avant-garde artistic movements, different typographies came to represent modernity through their sleek formal and visual qualities. Adrian Frutiger’s Univers font (Fig.1), invented in 1950, represents these modern aesthetic preferences. Univers epitomizes modernity’s preference for functional, clean lines that can communicate messages effectively.

Through its multiple stroke widths, styles, and thus applications, Univers is emblematic of the modern era in that it symbolizes a break from the cold, grotesque fonts of early typography1 yet incorporates certain traditional elements within its intricate design—Univers, then, is emblematic of a multifaceted, complex, gradually established modernity.

In an attempt to make mass communication more globally uniform, a movement of “information design” emerged in the latter years of the Modernist epoch, particularly in the middle of the 1900s, when Univers font was first introduced.

Graphic and typographic design attempted to create systems through which information was “eloquently and more easily understandable.”2 Font, then, became a rhetorical device; the artistic process of creating fonts was reevaluated in order to reorganize internally and externally to better persuade the intended audience.

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Typography’s reestablishment through Modern style principles allowed it to be utilized in a new variety of ways. Frutiger’s font in particular became representative of his era; it integrated the innovations of modernism that had taken place up until 1950, and became an “irreplaceable conceptual model for all other text alphabets.”3 The Swiss designer’s mathematicaly constructed style differentiated itself from the more ornate alphabetical systems that preceded it. Frutiger’s font is considered a rationally designed sans-serif, due to its being more simple and stremlined than earlier models of typography. Frutiger’s font was thus an inventive conception for his time, and exemplified the experimental yet sensible artwork of his age.

While Frutiger was working in Paris, he formulated a family of twenty-one sans-serif fonts that ultimately became his Univers typeset. Frutiger expanded the traditional threefold system of regular, italic, and bold font. His twenty-one font arrangement allowed for variance, yet maintained its uniformity, for all twentyone fonts have “the same x-height and ascender and descender lengths.” The font series, then, can be used together in complete harmony—a uniformity that was absent from earlier typefaces.4 By releasing all twenty-one variants in a short amount of time, Frutiger established himself in opposition to the slower development of earlier designs. Moreover, Frutiger chose a rational, systematic nomenclature for his font series. Univers, as implied by its name, was created with the intention to reach an international audience.5 The notion of an invention having universal potential is in itself a Modern conception that could manifest in new communications technologies, such as font families. In similar fashion to early cinema, font systems were considered to be a vehicle for universal language.6 Univers font emerged at a time

when the English language was becoming thought of as the common language of the world. Sans-serif ’s characters, like those of Univers, were being adapted to serve nonlatin alphabets such as Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew and even Chinese and Korean.7 The assumed neutrality of the system, as well as its capability for variance, allowed for worldwide dissemination, regardless of its Latin and Germanic origins. Through its clarity and practicality, the “Swiss style,” of which Univers was a part, quickly became part of a broader attempt to diffuse the new typographic systems to urban societies around the world.8 The mathematical quality, in addition to harmony and universality of Frutiger’s invention, emphasizes the font’s embodiments of modern characteristics.

The homogeneity of Frutiger’s font resembles other modern phenomena in the entertainment industry. Siegfried Kracauer, in his essay “The Mass Ornament,” describes the shifts that occurred in the realm of “body culture” in the early to mid-twentieth century. Kracauer employs the example of the Tiller Girls dance troupe in order to substantiate his claim for the monotony of the modern age. For Kracauer, the chorus of dancers represented the new modern appreciation of regularity and sharpness; the “geometrical exactitude” of their dance formations is analogous to the modern assembly line. The Tiller Girls, argues Kracauer, were “indissoluble girl clusters whose movements [were] demonstrations of mathematics.” The rationality of their movements, their uniform costumes, and their geometrical formations mimicked the repetitious gestures of the modern assembly line labourer.

The precision of the Tiller Girls’ choreography, as well as its parallels with the modern factory, are evident in the meticulously designed Univers font.

Kracauer describes the girls as an ornament, a distracting spectacle of entertainment, For

the German cultural critic, the dance troupe was an “ornament...of thousands of bodies, sexless bodies.”9 The Tiller Girls came to be seen as a mass—they represented the loss of individuality that arose at the turn of the century. The monotony of the Girls is comparable with the harmony for which Frutiger is praised. Although Kracauer considered the uniformity to represent a loss of uniqueness, Univers became widely disseminated and popular for commercial use due to its similar harmonious traits.

Like the Tiller Girls, the mechanical style of Univers is also linked to the modern factory system. Moreover, the Deberny Peignot foundtry in Paris, where the Univers font was mechanicall produced, invested more than 200 000 hours of machine “engraving, retouching, and final hand-punching” in order to produce the 35 000 matrixes needed to create all twenty-one fonts in the entire range of sizes.10 The ways in which the font was mass-produced was not unlike the machine-like movements of the Tiller Girls; the cohesivenss of Univers’ design, as well as its means of production, nomenclature, and appearance, is thus indicative of modernity.

The factory-produced font is therefore intimately connected to the urban city, both in procedure and style. Much of the early Modern era was characterized by a massive population shift from rural to urban areas.

The urban city was considered to be a place that valued efficiency and speed over tradition and community,11 and, as such, was the site of mass production and factory work. Typography was one of the many tools that was employed as a device that could “cater to the needs of the modern world”— and this meant that it must represent the efficiency and speed of the modern urban space12 in order to navigate it. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century the sans-serif family of fonts, and especially its more condensed forms, became the WINTER 2013

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most commonly used for scientific texts and advertising in Germany. As the Modernist era progressed, the use of these fonts spread to other Western European nations, particularly Switzerland, and was considered to be the “only one in spiritual accordance” with the Modern time. By the 1950s and the inception of the Univers font, the newer sans-serif font families, such as Univers, had become the primary choice for Modernist designers in Switzerland.13 Designers appreciated Univers for its “commercial pedigree” and its modern yet rounded letters. Univers font was more accessible in comparison to the older, more literary and complex German and Roman fonts. It was also was less mechanical looking and geometric than newer sans-serifs, like Helvetica.14 Though Univers detached itself from typography’s decorative past, it was not as fully refined as the fonts that succeeded it. Frutiger allowed the calligraphic traditions he had learned from his teachers in Zurich, Alfred Willimann and Walter Kach, to influence his typeface.15 As such, Univers was an intermediary font between the ornate past and the cold future. Univers, then, comes to symbolize a kind of modernity that is not an instantaneous shift in ideology but a gradual progression from tradition to innovation.16 Although stylistically Univers was sleek and progressive, it offered its users a font that embodied the convention of the past with the progressiveness of the future.

Through globalization, which many argue accompanied the emergence of Modernity, many ideas regarding graphic design were filtered through a multitude of networks.

This multifaceted system of dissemination culminated in a multilayered definition of modernity, and this is evident through the history of univers and its cultural circumstance.

The Bauhaus movement is another factor that greatly influenced the production of the

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Univers font. The experimental status of the Bauhaus artists influenced the conservative medium of type which had been primarily shaped in both thought and form by the Renaissance. Bauhaus had a strong impact on the discipline of typography as a whole; in this new unorthodox school of design, typographic artists “finally broke with the past and developed significant shapes applicable to the twentieth century.”17 Bauhaus artists strongly believed in typography as a tool of communication— an idea that revolutionized the graphic design industry.18 The Bauhaus school of design arose at a time of both a “social and aesthetic revolution” in Europe in the 1920s. It played a strong role in modern design for the next decade, until it was deemed antagonistic to the conservative Nazi regime and ceased production in its country of origin, Germay. In the postwar era, however, the modernist Bauhaus designs, which had “dispersed and diluted,” reemerged in the West and, “somehow, rather mysteriously, became a common visual currency” during the 1950s and 1960s.19 Bauhaus’s resurfacing undoubtedly impacted Frutiger’s conception of Univers as a functional, modern font family.

The Bauhaus movement’s impact on Swiss typography is particularly notable.

Bauhaus “attracted radical ideas from abroad” and brought them to Switzerland.

One “driving force of Bauhaus was abstract art, particularly from the Dutch De Stijl movement. In the time of its inception in the 1920s, Bauhaus represented a threat to established order—making it the perfect vehicle for young, experimental arists such as Frutiger. Bauhaus’s progressive designs and artistic ideals, such as the unification of art, craft, and technology, brought together ideas from Cubism, Dadaism, and Expressionism to create a new community of radical artists and craftspeople. Although Frutiger’s inventin of Univers emerged

several decades after the estabilshment of the Bauhaus movement, his font designed contained elements that were definitely inspired by it. The Bauhaus artists aimed to create a “new language of typography” that was fresh, variable, and flexible.20 Univers, with all of its variations, weights, and associated design posibilities, certainly embodies all of these qualities.The pragmatic quality of all Bauhaus art and design aimed to create artwork that was accessible and functional for the modern middle class.

The work of Bauhaus designers targeted the urban consumer —the same demographic as Frutiger’s Univers. The simple lines and unostentatious quality of Bauhaus design, then, are evident in the Univers font series.

Univers preceded Helvetica as the modern Swiss-designed sans-serif. Frutiger created a more open line, and a less mechanical appearance than the betterknown Helvetica font. Univers ultimately obtained international success; not only was it popular with designers in Basel, but Air France also used Frutiger’s font for their timetables in the 1960s. The mulitude of weights and widths of Univers made it a convenient font to use in a complex tabular typeset. The combination of extra-bold (Fig. 2), normal-condensed (Fig. 3), and bold-condensed (Fig . 4) allowed users to employ a singular font system to create multifaceted and complicated designs.21 The clarity and utilitarianism of Univers’s design epitomizes Bauhaus’s attempt to create a “simplified mode of writing...the form of the future.”22 The simple forms and reduction of elements of the Bauhaus style and Frutiger’s Univers were not only appreciated for reasons of style, but also for reasons of need —the modern need to “save labour, time, and money, and to improve communication.”23 The efficiency and austerity of the Univers typeset is also similar to the comprehensive and time-saving modern memo. The

uniformity and standardization of both the memo and Univers font are emblematic of modern communication technology’s prioritization of seamless organization.24 Both of these modern innovations are part of the “information design” era of modernity. Text writers and typographic designers of the modern age were concerned with discovering effective graphic and typographic communication.25 Notions that communication technologies, particularly those involving text, were capable of controlling, guiding, and organizing the new modern masses, such as those to which Kracauer refers in his analysis of the modern entertainment industry, are evident in both the modern font and the memo.

The memo relays specific orders by filtering information and disseminating it to the proper receivers. Univers font functions in a similar way in that it conveys information to its users through the rhetoric of its design.

Visual rhetoric, such as Univers font, is interlaid with informative assertions. The clear conveyance of “pure information” is the primary goal of the graphic designer, and such information is given shape through his or her design. Adrian Frutiger was able to “give visual presence to information” in his font system through its comprehensible shape and innovative design.26 Adrian Frutiger understood that his twentieth-century Western audience did not want a world in which a void or chaos was apparen. Instead, he understood that they preferred “a kind of order [...] to prevail in both the infinitely small and the infinitely large.” For Frutiger, even a symbol as simple as a letter can convey stability and simplicity to its users. An ordered pattern inevitably communicates meaning and significance; “even the simplest blot or scribble cannot exist by pure chance.”27 For the designer, the spirit and intellectual climate of each age find expression...in the... lettering style of...print.”28 In the twentieth WINTER 2013 | 11

century, the preference for uniformity was central to the spiritual and intellectual climate, and Frutiger’s Univers supplied its users with the solidity they sought in the economic recovery period of the postWorld-War-II era. Univers’s design, form, and history culminate in a family of fonts that are not only relevant to their time, but also represent characteristics of the modern epoch as a whole. The Univers sans-serif form is expressive of harmony, uniformity, and clarity. The design of the font family is a hybrid of traditional calligraphy and innovative font styles, the production of it is intricately tied to the modern, and its popularization is due to its streamlined design and variability. Univers ultimately represents a multifaceted modernity; it is emblematic of modern society’s need and appreciation for organization, coherence, and efficiency. In this way, it is symbolic of modernity as a gradual process.

Mira Katz Blumenthal is a U3 English Literature major with minors in Art History and Communication Studies.

NOTES 1. 1. “Univers Font: Adrian Frutiger,” in Icons of Design: the 20th Century, ed.

Volker Albus, Reyer Kras and Jonathan M. Woodham (Munich: Prestel, 2004), 94.

2. 2. Robin Kinross, “The Rhetoric of Neutrality,” Design Issues 2, no. 2 (1986): 21.

3. 3. “Univers Font,” 94.

4. 4. Phillip B. Meggs, “International Typographic Design,” in A History of Graphic Design (New York: J. Wiley, 1998), 325.

5. 5. Patrick Cramsie, “Systems and Signs: Swiss Typography, c. 1945-1972,” in The Story of Graphic Design (New York: Abrams, 2010), 243.

6. 6. Dwayne Avery, “Media, Intimacy, 12 | CANVAS

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

and Personality” (lecture, McGill University, Montreal QC, March 7, 2011).

7. Cramsie, “Systems and Signs,” 239.

8. Laurence Mauderli, “The Graphic Collection of the Zurich Museum of Design,” in Journal of Design History, 15, no. 1 (2002): 51.

9. Siegfried Kracauer, “The Mass Ornament,” in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1927), 405.

10. Meggs, “International Typographic Design,” 325.

11. Dwayne Avery, “Definitions of Modernity” (lecture, McGill University, Montreal QC, January 24, 2011).

12. Kinross, “Rhetoric of Neutrality,” 23.

13. Cramsie, “Systems and Signs,” 240.

14. Cramsie, “Systems and Signs,” 241.

15. Richard Hollis, “Typography and Typefaces,” in Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style 1920-1965, (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2006), 201.

16. Dwayne Avery, “Gender, Media and Modern Life” (lecture, McGill University, Montreal QC, February 7, 2011).

17. “Univers Font,” 94.

18. Richard Hollis, “The Bauhaus and Switzerland,” in Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style 1920-1965, (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2006), 21.

19. Kinross, “Rhetoric of Neutrality,” 24 20. Hollis,“The Bauhaus and Switzerland,” 21.

21. Hollis, “Typography and Typefaces,” 201.

22. Kinross, “Rhetoric of Neutrality,” 25.

23. Ibid.

24. Dwayne Avery, “Print Culture”

25.

26.

27.

28.

(lecture, McGill University, Montreal QC, January 21, 2011.

25. Kinross, “Rhetoric of Neutrality,” 18.

26. Ibid, 19.

27. Adrian Frutiger, Signs and Symbols: Their Design and Meaning trans. Andrew Bluhm (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1928), 17.

28. Ibid, 166.

REFERENCES Avery, Dwayne. “Definitions of Modernity.”

Lecture. McGill University. Montreal, QC. January 24 2011.

Avery, Dwayne. “Gender, Media and Modern Life.” Lecture.

McGill University. Montreal, QC. February 7 2011.

Avery, Dwayne. “Media, Intimacy, and Personality.” Lecture. McGill University.

Montreal, QC. March 7 2011.

Avery, Dwayne. “Print Culture.” Lecture.

McGill University. Montreal, QC. January 31 2011.

Cramsie, Patrick. “Systems and Signs: Swiss Typography, c. 1945-1972.” In The Story of Graphic Design, 239-261. New York: Abrams, 2010.

Frutiger, Adrian. Signs and Symbols: Their Design and Meaning. Translated by

Andrew Bluhm. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1928.

Hollis, Richard. “The Bauhaus and Switzerland.” In Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style 1920-1965, 20-23.

London: Laurence King Publishing, 2006.

Hollis, Richard. “Typography and Typefaces.” In Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style 1920-1965, 197-202. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2006.

Kinross, Robin. “The Rhetoric of Neutrality.”

Design Issues 2, no. 2 (1985): 18-30.

Kracauer, Siegfried. “The Mass Ornament.”

In The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, 404-407. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1927.

Mauderli, Laurence. “The Graphic Collection of the Zurich Museum of Design. ” Journal of Design History 15, no. 1 (2002): 47-55.

Meggs, Philip B. “The International Typographic Style.” In A History of Graphic Design, 320-337. New York: J. Wiley, 1998.

“Univers Font: Adrian Frutiger,” in Icons of Design: the 20th Century, edited by Volker Albus, Reyer Kras and Jonathan M. Woodham, 94-95 Munich: Prestel, 2004.

Fig. 1 Univers font, Roman

Fig. 2 Univers font, Extra-Bold

Fig. 3 Univers font, Normal-Condensed

Fig. 4 Univers font, Bold-Condensed

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Contemporary Chinese Women Artists: Negotiating a Space of Their Own Between the Masculine Spaces of The State and Market Economy Charlotte Jacob-Maguire

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n 2009, art historian Joan Kee asked “Is the notion of contemporary Asian women’s art necessarily feminist in nature?”1 Embedded in the term “contemporary Asian women’s art” are frameworks of interpretation to approach such works, namely time (the contemporary), space (the geographical region of Asia) as well as gender. Such frameworks can become problematic when they circumvent the individuality of the artist or presume that the artwork is a passive presence that can be inserted or omitted from the historical record of a region at will.2 Treating the artwork as evidence of a theory, Kee writes, “can actually work against feminism’s goals of parity, liberation, and the recognition of the individual.” 3 At the root of the question posed by Kee is a matter of choice, a choice that must be made by art historians when examining the works of artists from a specific geographical region. As such, she argues that works should “not be framed under a limited set of parameters, but instead should be accepted as situations where change is always imminent.”4 Crucial to this activity is to endorse the value of art’s capacity to work within a network of connections to other artworks. Despite these legitimate concerns raised by Kee, in the context of curating the works of artists from a non-Western context, it is imperative that we be attentive to the locally specific ideologies that can inform the artistic process of the artists. One must consider whether or not feminist theories and the ways of framing questions in visual culture from a Western context have any significance in other contexts.5 In this exhibit, the context of contemporary Chinese women artists from mainland China is explored. In order to avoid “the very real problem of non-Western and non-white artists being forced to conform to the expectations of more powerful Western, white, and, often,

male interlocutors,”6 one must seek to understand the significance of art made by women in China as well as the limited use of the term “feminist” to describe these artists by Chinese women critics. According to Lisa E. Bloom, this is in part due to the fact that “the term ‘feminist’ is sometimes seen as a Western concept, and one that is often used pejoratively by Asian men to construct Asian women as outsiders to the nation.”7 Different types of feminisms must be acknowledged so as to avoid the constraining of non-Western women artists working in other regional contexts to the “grand narrative” of feminism that is restricted to the story of art within the West.

For Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, Chinese feminism today may be caught up in a historical that requires reconstructing binary gender, rather than a deconstruction of gender, as advocated at this historical moment in a West where modern sexual differentiation and gender identity have well-established and hegemonic histories.8

The modern category of gender in China is indeed still a fragile formation whose emergence was completely overshadowed by the project of nation building following the Communist Revolution. So much so that “it did not develop into a category of affirmative self-identity for a women’s movement led by women themselves.”9 The narrative of the liberation of the nation and state during the Revolution came to circumscribe the liberation of women, so that the first came to submerge “the needs of women and women’s concerns were endlessly deferred in favour of projects of nation building.”10 Binary genders were erased from the political discourse and in effect had an adverse impact on the trajectory of feminism. In her essay “Female Images and National Myth”, Meng Yue analyses revolutionary narratives and images. She argues that socialist fiction WINTER 2013 | 15

used the female image to signify either a certain class or socio-political group or the authority of the Communist party.11 She further states that female images in the realm of mass media and didactic art functioned as a special agent of the state’s appropriation of the “public”, as women normally took on the role of representatives of the private sphere.

(Fig. 1) Notwithstanding the “real” reality of Chinese women throughout the decades after the Liberation, the government’s official position after 1942 was that Chinese men and women were equal. Thus, sex and gender differences did not officially exist. As historian Harriet Evans has noted: “what often got erased were not only women’s bodies and female gender but also sexual desire itself,”12 through a combined process of repression and an emptying out of public discourse on sex.

While some Western scholars have attempted to problematize the categories of gender and to critique the naturalized binary gender order, in turn proposing a move toward a post-gender order, such methodologies have often been framed in ahistorical and universalistic terms. Donna Haraway’s classic formulation of the cyborg as “a hybrid of machine and organism”13 was meant to transcend naturalized sexual binary through the “constructedness of organic-machinic formations.”14 In the case of China, the 1980’s and the 1990’s were a time for the reconstruction of women’s identity and the “extrication of feminism from its imprisonment in state discourse.”15 These two elements chiefly called for a “strategic use of [the] essentialism”16 of gender binary, which was not historically rooted in China.

In unpacking works by four women artists from mainland China: Xing Danwen (1967-), Ciu Xiuwen (1970-), Chen Lingyang (1975-) and Cai Jin (1965-), the shift from Maoist China to a post-ideological society is tangible. This shift signified the move 16 | CANVAS

from a society built on the assumption that its ideology was uniform and monolithic, radiating outward from Mao as its center, to a post-ideological society largely defined by economic processes and commodity culture.

For women, this transition was complex as it meant a “fundamental transformation of positional stance” (genben lichang de zhuangyi), from that of identifying with the proletariat to participating in bourgeois culture and becoming a woman.17 Xing Danwen’s 1995 photographic series “Born With the Cultural Revolution” examines the women of her own transitory generation. (Fig 2) In this triptych, a pregnant woman is depicted naked in her home. The central image focuses on the pregnant belly juxtaposed with a poster of Mao. The two side panels show the same woman in different poses, looking directly at the camera. The two side images first appear as portraits, however the images are rapidly invaded by smaller posters of the young Mao. He pervades the private space. Dealing with the immediate past of the socialist revolution, Xing Danwen struggles to define her generation’s relation to Mao (the state) and all that he represents.

Starting in 1949, the Party indeed became so intimately bound to the conception of self that one could not separate from it.

For Meng Yue and Dai Jinhua, prominent Chinese feminist scholars, The important task at hand is to awaken gender identity in women, and a convenient visible basis from which to claim this identity is bodily difference and the physiological and psychological experiences that are particular to women.18

As Kang Xiujin, a woman doctor during the Cultural Revolution remarked: “you felt like a woman when you gave birth, at other times you didn’t exist as a woman.”19 It was only when she became pregnant and her

body swelled up that the category of gender intruded on her self-identity and to all who saw the physical markers of her sex.20 Otherwise, gender, especially female gender, was culturally invisible. In presenting a naked pregnant body, Xing engages and distances herself from the revolutionary past. While she engages with the revolutionary past’s most famous symbol, she also distances herself from the past by embodying the vulnerability and subjectivity that is at the heart of the post-ideological society.

This vulnerability appears in the works of Cui Xiuwen wherein the theme of childhood and maternity recur almost obsessively in her highly finished photographs and paintings. (Fig. 3 and Fig. 4) One Day in 2004 No.3-2 (Fig. 3) is part of a series depicting adolescent girls wearing school uniforms or white gauzy garbs. Sometimes bruised or bloodied, the girls are set in what appears to be the Forbidden City. Bright red walls direct the viewer’s gaze to one faceless young girl in No. 3-2, as though she were a target. The bright blue sky crosses through the middle of the painting, however for the character set in it, this open space is unattainable; her experience takes place within the walls which she cannot escape. The girl is contrived in this space and the experience is suffocating.

This notion almost seems to refer back to a video-game mentality and aesthetic, to what Walter Benjamin termed the “sexappeal of the inorganic.”21 This ‘inorganic’ world is moreover characterized by the effacement of the face.22 It is important to note that “the centrality of face is intimately tied to the Chinese relational construction of personhood in which threats to one’s face constitute threats to one’s identity, which is constructed relationally by internalizing the judgement of others in oneself.”23 The face is credited, according to Ellen Hertz, as one of the sources for articulating the distinctive conception of the person that

governs the individual’s relation to society in China.24 The young girl from the painting does not have a distinctive face because for the artist, she reflects the inner feelings of a young woman in China. Similarly, Cui’s Angel No. 13 (Fig. 4) depicting a pregnant somnambulant angel above Beijing rooftops reflects her interest in fundamental aspects of a woman’s life in China in the urban context. As Holland Cottler remarks “art by women in China is not confined to ‘women’s issues,’ like family and home. Much of the art is about excavating a personal past and bringing it into the present, and about examining that present and how women are living it.”25 Another woman’s experience, this time that of menstruation, is specifically related to Chen Lingyang’s conception of her body.

The use of the female body here is used as a medium and a sign, to express “sexual psychology and a woman’s perspective.”26 Twelve Flower Months (Fig. 5 and 6) presents the view from a mirror of her genitalia during the time of menstruation.

The photographs use traditional forms such as mirrors to frame her vagina (Fig. 6), or lattice windows, commonly found in traditional Chinese gardens, to frame one leg on which blood has trickled down. (Fig. 5) The images are highly aestheticized; each month she would light and photograph her bleeding genitals, matching the result with a flower and then printing the result on round, leaf-shaped or fan-shaped paper.

Using the traditional poetic idea that different species of flower bloom in each of the twelve months of the year, Chen also utilizes the traditional forms of mirrors and lattices, while destroying traditional notions of propriety related to a woman’s body. This body is conceptualized differently from that of the Western tradition. The lack of a Chinese term that designates a body abstracted from lived experience and distinct from mind and spirit complicates WINTER 2013 | 17

the reading of bodily images.27 The body in China was never understood “as object differentiated from the external social, natural environment. Instead, the body was understood as evolving through a dynamic process of continual resonance with internal and external phenomena.”28 The body was never conceptualized according to “Western dualistic binaries, which function to construct the mind and body, self and other, as distinct and isolated entities.”29 The Chinese conceptualization of the individual as irreducibly social structured an understanding of the body as fundamentally connected to external phenomena.30 One must then ask: what are the resonances of the blood associated with menstruation, gestation and birth in contemporary China? In the Maoist family, The body of woman was a realm of the state and the entry point was reproductive science. Texts drilled women in reproductive physiology (it’s just like your farm animals) and dispensed information on bodily functions like the menstrual cycle and hygiene. Scientific midwifery connected reproduction to politic.31

Despite evidence to suggest a matter-offact attitude with regards to menstruation that prevailed in post-Revolutionary China, menstrual taboos persist.

According to Carol Archer, it is perhaps because such taboos exist that commentators take their cue from Cai Jin when they describe her Beauty Banana Series. (Fig. 7) Made between 1991 and 1996, these paintings are filled with dense, almost venous clusters of red. The viewer is told by the artist that these textured and coloured shapes reference the “beauty banana” plant which the artist has observed intensely through its death and decay. In each red cluster however, there seems to lie more meaning than simply the life of a plant. The red pulpy and wrinkled 18 | CANVAS

shapes allude to the shapes and textures of a woman’s labia as well as to the plants after which the works are titled.32 Taboos about such sexual imagery might limit the evocation of sexual arousal and menstrual blood in China when looking at this work, however the artist herself incites the viewer to read her pigments as blood: The colour red drives me insane.

Whenever I use it. I wield my brush with extraordinary sensitivity. This is a matter which dominates my experience…

The red on my brush gives off a famey odour which pervades my mind and my senses. The odour flows from my brush, and even more so from my mind, and congeals in my paintings.33

The experience she recounts appears to correspond to menstrual flow. The artist continues by saying that “something familiar was coming out of [her] when the sticky paint began to move, invading the canvas of its own accord.”34 This familiar sensation is said to have lasted a few days, recalling the temporal frame of the period of menstruation. The painting process and its result echo an “involuntary femininespecific corporeal flow,” that is both familiar and emblematic of the cyclical nature of life observed in the wilting beauty banana plant.

Moreover, social and political implications can also be discerned in Cai’s paintings. In effect, she is personalizing a colour, which had for decades signified the power of the state. In doing so, she has made the colour intimate, attributing new meaning to it and depoliticizing it.

The works by Xing Danwen, Ciu Xiuwen, Chen Lingyang and Cai Jin attempt to respond in personal ways to a revolutionary past. In different ways they have reclaimed their female gender through the depiction of a “feminine” body, which had for decades been erased from mass culture and political discourse. Yet, just “as they thematize gender

difference, the market and consumer culture have already started to appropriate it for its own ends.”35 On the one hand, for Li Xiaojiang, this economic development is viewed as instrumental in the realization of a utopic feminine possibility. On the other hand, Dai Jinhua reads this contemporary commodity culture as an impediment to its emergence.36 Mass consumer culture supplied the missing element in state feminism: that of the power of sexuality in reconstructing gender. However, the new market economy has also harboured retrograde constraints for women, i.e., the return of women to the domestic sphere and the subjugation of women to male desires.

Set between the market economy and the past forces of the state, Chinese “feminism” must negotiate a space for itself between these two forces. This is the challenge of future Chinese women artists.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Charlotte Jacob-Maguire is a U3 Art History and East Asian Studies major.

NOTES 1. Joan Kee, “What Is Feminist about Contemporary Asian Women’s Art,” in Contemporary Art in Asia, ed. Melissa Chiu and Benjamin Genocchio (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011), 347.

2. Ibid, 351.

3. Ibid, 362.

4. Ibid, 362.

5. Lisa Bloom, “Negotiating Feminisms in Contemporary Asian Women’s Art,” in The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, ed. Amelia Jones (New York: Routledge, 2010), 16.

6. Kee, “What Is Feminist about Contemporary Asian Women’s Art,” 364.

7. Bloom, “Negotiating Feminisms in Contemporary Asian Women’s Art,”16.

8. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, “From Gender

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

Erasure to Gender Difference: State Feminism, Consumer Sexuality, and Women’s Public Sphere in China,” In Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China, ed Mayfair Mei-hui Yang (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 36.

Yang, “From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference,” 36.

Ibid, 40.

Meng Yue, “Female Image and National Myth,” in Gender Politics in Modern China: Writing and Feminism, ed. Tani E. Barlow. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 118.

Harriet Evans, “Defining Difference: The Scientific Construction of Sexuality and Gender in the People’s Republic of China,” Signs 20 (1995): 395.

Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century” in The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, ed. Amelia Jones (New York: Routledge, 2010), 587.

Yang, “From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference,” 47.

Ibid.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in Selected Subaltern Studies ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayarti C. Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 13.

Yang, “From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference,” 48.

Meng Yue and Dai Jinhua, Fuchu lishi dibiao (Emerging from the Horizon of History: Modern Chinese Women’s Literature) (Zhenzhou: Henan Renmin Chubanshe, 1988), 132-33.

Yang, “From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference,” 41.

Holland Cotter, “China’s Female Artists Quietly Emerge,” The New WINTER 2013 | 19

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

York Times, July 30, 2008. Accessed November 11, 2011. http://www. nytimes.com/2008/07/30/arts/ design/30arti.html?pagewanted=all Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Modernités chinoises (Milano: Skira, 2003), 132.

Ibid.

Ellen Hertz, “Face in the Crowd: The Cultural Construction of Anonymity in Urban China,” in China Urban, eds.

Nancy N. Chen and al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 276.

Ibid.

Cotter, “China’s Female Artists Quietly Emerge.”

Wen Liao, “Women’s Art as Part of Contemporary Chinese Art since 1990,” in Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990-2000) ed. Wu Hung, Wang Huangsheng and Feng Boyi (Guangzhou: Guangdong Museum of Art, 2002), 65.

Gabrielle, Steiger Levine, Deviance and disorder: the naked body in Chinese art, (M.A. McGill University, 2008), 13.

Ibid, 19.

Steiger Levine, Deviance and disorder: the naked body in Chinese art, 30.

Barlow, “Theorizing Woman: Fünu, Guojia, Jiating,”, 272-73.

Archer, Carol. Frames, flows, feminist aesthetics : paintings by Judy Watson, Cai Jin and Marlene Dumas (Phd, The University of Hong Kong, 2006), 271.

Valerie C. Doran, China’s New Art, Post 1989 (exhibition catalog).

(Hong Kong: Asia Art Archive, 1993), 164.

Wu Hung, Transcience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century (exh. cat.).

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 85 Yang, “From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference,” 59.

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36. Tani E. Barlow, The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004), 306.

REFERENCES Archer, Carol. Frames, flows, feminist aesthetics : paintings by Judy Watson, Cai Jin and Marlene Dumas Thesis (Phd) The University of Hong Kong, 2006.

Barlow, Tani E. “Theorizing Woman: Fünu, Guojia, Jiating.” In Body, Subject and Power in China, edited by Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Barlow, Tani E. The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.

Bloom, Lisa. “Negotiating Feminisms in Contemporary Asian Women’s Art.” In The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia Jones, 14-19.

New York: Routledge, 2010.

Cotter, Holland. “China’s Female Artists Quietly Emerge.” The New York Times, July 30, 2008. Accessed November 11, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/ arts/design/30arti.html?pagewanted=all Decrop, Jean-Marc, and Christine BuciGlucksmann. Modernités chinoises.

Milano: Skira, 2003.

Doran, Valerie C. China’s New Art, Post 1989 (exhibition catalog).

Hong Kong: Asia Art Archive, 1993.

Evans, Harriet. “Defining Difference: The Scientific Construction of Sexuality and Gender in the People’s Republic of China.” Signs 20 (1995): 357-94.

Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, edited by Amelia Jones, 587-608. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Hertz, Ellen. “Face in the Crowd: The

Cultural Construction of Anonymity in Urban China.” In China Urban, edited

by Nancy N. Chen, Constance D. Clark, Suzanne Z. Gottschang and Lyn Jeffrey, 274-294. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.

Kee, Joan. “What Is Feminist about Contemporary Asian Women’s Art.” In Contemporary Art in Asia, edited by Melissa Chiu and Benjamin Genocchio, 347-69. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011.

Lim, Lucy. Six Contemporary Chinese Women Artists. Published by the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco. EBSCO Media: Birmingham, Alabama, 1991.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography.”

In Selected Subaltern Studies edited by Ranajit Guha and Gayarti C. Spivak.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Steiger Levine, Gabrielle. Deviance and disorder: the naked body in Chinese art.

Thesis (M.A.)--McGill University, 2008.

Meng Yue and Dai Jinhua. Fuchu lishi dibiao (Emerging from the Horizon of History: Modern Chinese Women’s Literature). Zhenzhou: Henan Renmin Chubanshe, 1988.

Meng Yue. “Female Image and National

Myth.” In Gender Politics in Modern China: Writing and Feminism, edited by Tani E. Barlow, 118-136. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.

Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui, “From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference: State Feminism, Consumer Sexuality, and Women’s Public Sphere in China.” In Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China, edited

by Mayfair Mei-hui Yang. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

Wen Liao, “Women’s Art as Part of Contemporary Chinese Art since 1990.” In Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990-2000) edited by Wu Hung, Wang Huangsheng and Feng Boyi. Guangzhou: Guangdong Museum of Art, 2002.

Wen Liao, “Women’s Art as Part of Contemporary Chinese Art since 1990,” in Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990-2000) ed. Wu Hung, Wang Huangsheng and Feng Boyi (Guangzhou: Guangdong Museum of Art, 2002) Wu Hung. Transcience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century (exh. cat.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Fig. 1 Revolutionary Proletariat Unite!

1967.

WINTER 2013 | 21

Fig. 2 Xing Danwen, Born with the Cultural Revolution, 1995. Chromogenic print mounted on aluminum.

Fig. 3 Cui Xiuwen, One Day in 2004 No. 3-2, 2004. Photograph.

Fig. 4 Cui Xiuwen, Angel No.13, 2006. Photograph.

Fig. 5 Chen Lingyang, Twelve Flower Months, The Seventh Month Orchid, 1999-2000.

Photograph.

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Fig. 6 Cui Xiuwen, One Day in 2004 No. 3-2, 2004. Photograph.

Fig. 7 Cai Jin, Beauty Banana Series No. 14, 1992. Painting.

WINTER 2013 | 23

Identity, Political Will, and Empowerment Through Contemporary Haida Art Brenda Chang

T

he term “appropriation” is a precarious and weighted word, especially in the realm of Canadian Aboriginal literature and history. It can have both positive and pejorative connotations, with the latter linked to the dominant culture’s historical repression and possession of Aboriginal cultural forms. I will diverge from this negative definition, however, by focusing on two cases from the Northwest Coast, where contemporary Haida artists have taken up foreign art forms and blended them with their own artistic heritage to create distinct works of art. Particularly, I will look at how two Haida artists—Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas and Corey Bulpitt—take up the Japanese manga tradition and graffiti respectively, blending such aesthetics with distinctly Haida motifs. Ultimately, I would like to stress that both Yahgulanaas’ manga tome, Red (Fig. 1), and Bulpitt’s graffiti mural The Storm (Fig. 2) illustrate how Northwest Coast Aboriginals have mobilized foreign and unconventional artistic styles to create syncretic works of art that reconcile their identities as both inheritors of Haida culture and individuals who are innovating within a growing globalized and contemporary context. Moreover, the very nature of these “hybridized” forms of Haida art allows for political discourse and education among a larger populace.

Both Bulpitt and Yahgulanaas have established works of art that deviate from “traditional” Haida workmanship; instead, they have embraced contemporary artistic forms via graffiti and manga while also evoking customary Northwest Coast visual aesthetics. As a result, Bulpitt and Yahgulanaas’s works speak to the renewal and hybridized nature of contemporary Haida art today. Aboriginal artists are able to situate and negotiate their identities as one tied to the preservation of their culture but also one in which they are able to engage in an increasingly urbanized context.

For Yahgulanaas, the positive appropriation of Japanese print elements has been central to his work as a Haida manga artist, where he blends archetypal Haida design and modes of storytelling with the manga pictorial. In his 2009 cartoon novella, Red, Yahgulanaas expresses a traditional Haida narrative through the use of hand-painted, watercolour manga illustrations. Red recounts the Haida oral legend of a young man named Red (who, appropriately, has red hair) who seeks revenge against raiders that have attacked his village and abducted his sister, Jaada. Red, consumed by his quest, blindly leads his village into despair. Despite his demise at the end of the manga, there is hope for the future as Jaada gives birth to a baby boy (also with red hair). To illustrate the story, Yahgulanaas has adopted the Japanese manga form, highlighting how Haida artists today are creating cross-cultural dialogues with foreign societies. Manga is a deeply entrenched and ubiquitous artistic form in contemporary Japan and has now become a global phenomenon. Its aesthetic, focused on cartoons, is usually composed of little text. The characters’ speech bubbles become the mediator between the reader and the manga’s plot, and the print is often in black and white.1 This Japanese-inspired manga style can be seen on pages 18 and 19 in Red: the story unfolds in a comic-style form, with thick, black lines that cordon off and provide for tangible, non-geometric, and differently sized panels (Fig. 3). There is also no narration on the page; instead, the story is carried by the colourful images and dialogue between the characters. These characters are never static, but are instead depicted in exaggerated and thus comical ways: on the same page, a member of the tribe’s face freezes in hilarious mid-speech; Red sits, frowning in pensive thought; redhatted members of the tribe carry a long block of wood from trade. Yahgulanaas asserts, moreover, that he took up manga WINTER 2013 | 25

as an art form because he found an affinity between Haida and Japanese culture which distinguished itself from Dominant settlerstyle comics: “I found manga attractive because it is not part of the settler tradition of North America (like Archie or Marvel comics, for example) insofar as manga has roots in the North Pacific, as does Haida art.”2 Yet, the work is also unmistakably a piece of Haida art; not only does the premise of Red lie on a culturally significant oral narrative, it also incorporates many Haida motifs. The use of colour, for one, diverges from the traditional Japanese manga and is distinctly Haida, especially in its use of red, black, and blue-green as the dominant colours informing the work.3 The use of this conventional colour scheme is evident on page 28, as young Red runs from the traders who have taken his sister (Fig. 4). The panel lines are eerily black, since they seem to overtake the artwork itself.

Meanwhile, the dark blue watercolour evokes a mysterious and unnerving night as red-haired Red traverses into the woods for sanctuary. The thick, black lines marking the boundaries between each panel are also typical of the Haida aesthetics based on three design elements of the ovoid, form lines, and U-form. Form lines “are generally well defined, are flowing yet controlled and formal,” while ovoids are pervasive and used as “structural body parts.”4 The U-forms, moreover, are used generally in Haida art to create fins or tails that harmonize with the ovoid to create images of animals and humans.5 In general, the ovoids, form lines, and U-forms give Haida design a sense of uniformity and structure. In Red, form lines are used to link images together while also providing the narrative with a fluid, flowing style, moving away from the traditional settler comics that are rectangular in nature.

In fact, as Yahgulanaas notes, he sees Haida art as one of “compression and expansion 26 | CANVAS

that he equates to a waterline between tide & shore.”6 This liquid quality of the art can again be seen on page 28 in the comic: the characters interact with the form line boundaries and incorporate them into the narrative as trees that they climb. The curvilinear nature of these form lines also fuse and connect the panels together into one large narrative. Indeed, in a surprising twist, the entire work is revealed to come together into a large mural: the pages are connected by the use of the recurring form lines on each page (Fig. 5). Three animals are constructed out of the form lines on the mural, unifying the work in a distinct piece of Haida art. The fact that these form lines operate tangibly as the manga panel’s borders but also interact with the characters and integrate the work into one whole mural suggests how Red incorporates Haida motifs of unity and fluidity. As a result, the manga becomes a work combining two different aesthetic modes; more than that, this hybridization suggests how contemporary Haida artists are bridging cultural gaps and informing their identities as one tied to both cultural preservation and globalized art forms.

Just as Red is an example of how Haida artists communicate with contemporary modes of art to produce works that speak to their Haida heritage and identity, so too is the graffiti mural produced by the artist Corey Bulpitt (Haida) in conjunction with Larissa Healey (Ojibwa). The Storm, a spontaneous and collaborative artwork completed in 2011, is a 50 foot mural that features a wide array of human ancestors and spirits in a gray background. The central subject of the mural, however, is the white circle encapsulating the Haida rainbow crest, giving the work a pop of colour.

Within the circle, as Bulpitt describes, the rainbow is represented by both the red man in the circle holding the rainbow up and the rainbow itself, which “terminates into little

faces representing clouds.”7 The background “is the atmosphere with spirits who control the weather within, which represents also a grey skied Northwest coast day with the rainbow pushing through.”8 The work is indeed a fusion of contemporary artistic practices as well as a signifier of Haida artistic heritage. The medium of the work, specifically, is spray paint, which is often associated with urban graffiti. The spray paint provides vibrancy, articulated especially in the rainbow circle as multiple layers of spray paint were added to the work. The liveliness of the circle juxtaposes the monochromatic ancestral background, which, as both Bulpitt and Healey suggest, is supposed to evoke a cloudy and rainy day.9 Indeed, the density of the white spray paint on the circle contrasts against the dull grey of the concrete and the monochromatic ancestral background. This gives the white circle an ethereal glow and illusionistically raises it above the human spirits as if to illustrate its emergence in the midst of a cloudy day. Moreover, the work of art is situated in a space that is intrinsically tied to urban life: it occupies the space below the Granville Street Bridge in Vancouver and its canvas is that of the cement support of the bridge. Despite its urban medium and context, The Storm reflects a distinct Haida artwork laden with traditional motifs. Like Red, the mural uses the three main Haida artistic traits of form lines, U-forms, and ovoids to compose the work. The monochromatic form lines of the ancestral clouds propel the work, forming the sections of each part of the work as well as creating the outlines of the spirits. The undulating, curvy lines all work together to create blockades and separate spirit figures, yet also give the work a sense of consistency and unity. Ovoids and U-forms are enlisted to form the spirits’ body parts: the eyes and the faces of the spirits are all ovoid in shape, while U-forms persist below the spirit’s faces, creating patterns

for each ancestor. Because The Storm blends both contemporary artistic practices with traditional Haida motifs, it too exemplifies how Aboriginal artists enlist urban forms of art making to address their Aboriginal identities. In fact, both Bulpitt and Healey belong to a larger group of urban Native artists called Beat Nation, composed of “a generation of artists who juxtapose urban youth culture with Aboriginal identity in[…]innovative[…]ways. Using hip hop and other forms of popular culture, artists create surprising new cultural hybrids[…] that reflect the changing demographics of Aboriginal people today.”10 Thus, as I have suggested, The Storm is just one of many works by contemporary Northwest Coast artists that use urban and hybridized modes of art to preserve their cultural heritage and, by extension, inform their identities in contemporary, urban life.

Not only are these new forms of Haida art operating as signifiers of the multitudinous nature of contemporary Haida identity, they are also being mobilized to address politics pertinent to the artist. For Yahgulanaas, Red becomes a vehicle for the subtle criticism of contemporary politics. In an entry in Geist magazine, he notes, it is imperative that Haida manga incorporate contemporary social issues, that it speak to other people’s needs rather than merely to “mine.” Many of us are still stuck in the old game, the wooden Indian, the abandoned village, the romantic image of the vanishing people[…].

But we’re here, alive if not always market ready.11 Yahgulanaas asserts that these new forms of artistic practice should become mediums in which to speak about broader contemporary social issues, not only the ones that are focused solely on Aboriginal welfare.

Instead, Haida art can be used to address broader issues affecting a greater range of the population in a distinctly Haida form of rhetoric. Red is exemplary in illustrating WINTER 2013 | 27

how contemporary Haida artworks can be used to foster political awareness on issues with both non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal implications. Indeed, as Grant Shilling notes, Red was formulated during George W. Bush’s presidency and “served as a suitable allegory for Bush’s leadership style.”12 Red’s leadership style can be paralleled with that of Bush: his desire—bordering on the irrational—to seek revenge ultimately led to tragic consequences for him and his people.

Like Red, Bush led his people towards greater militaristic policies and justified them as defensive mechanisms against terrorists. Although well-meaning, these policies eventually laid the foundations for racial profiling and propelled America into a war that cost both lives and money. Equally, on page 42 and 43 of the manga, Red is blindly espousing his biased and ignorant claims to the people of his village, who start to question why they are buying so many weapons (Fig. 6). With a highly agitated expression, Red negates his fellow villagers’ beliefs that his sister might be content in another village; instead, he reduces the raiders to evil destroyers, and, by extension, also justifies the village’s investment in arms.

The work thus transforms a cautionary tale from the Haida oral tradition into a contemporary work with political intent.

Red ultimately illustrates how Aboriginal Haida artists are creating hybrid works of art that not only negotiate their identities within a greater globalized context but also use these artistic pieces as forms of political expression and criticism.

Similarly, Bulpitt and Healey’s mural is a piece of contemporary Aboriginal art that has a political streak; in their case, however, the focus falls on land reclamation. While playful and uplifting in nature, their work is a physical indication of land reclamation because it literally takes ownership of a public space by creating art on a public monument. Tagging (when an artist signs a 28 | CANVAS

mural artwork and thereby takes possession of it) is politically relevant because it distinctly “marks the land” as Aboriginal, providing a continuum from the historical tradition of “marking the land” with pictographs or petroglyphs by Aboriginal ancestors. In turn, these graffiti tags become contemporary “[metaphors] for Aboriginal relationships to the earth” and new “vessels for culture, stories, and language.”13 Furthermore, tagging becomes even more pertinent in British Columbia where many land claims remain in contention. As Tania Willard, curator for Beat Nation asserts, “branding the cityscape with spray-bombed indigenous culture resonates with the idea of territory and reclaiming space in a city whose indigenous roots are often hidden or disguised in a province of unceded indigenous territories.”14 The Storm thus illustrates the political significance of land reclamation via new forms of art-making. By producing a work that is explicitly Haida in motif within a public space where viewers— Aboriginal or not—can apprehend the work, Haida artists are peacefully and under government patronage signifying that this land, too, belongs to them. Like Yahgulanaas’ manga artwork, then, Bulpitt and Healey’s work illustrate that contemporary modes of Aboriginal art are being mobilized in the service of political endeavours.

While these hybridized art pieces carry political weight through their mainstream and vernacular mediums, they are also used to familiarize a new and younger population with and educate them about Haida cultural practices. These two functions of contemporary Haida art—political and didactic—ultimately influence each other.

Since they expose a greater amount of the population to Haida aesthetics and aim to preserve such customs by passing them down to future generations, the political meanings of these works can be more widely realized. In Red, the populist form

of art allows a greater audience to enjoy the work; moreover, the comic book format brings political messages to the forefront for pedestrian viewers, especially students. The artwork can be touched, owned, and read at the viewer’s leisure—it is emancipated from the private museum space that often only the privileged can enter. In a lecture hosted at the University of British Columbia, Yahgulanaas identifies the proactive relationship between reader and art. No longer does the viewer stand sedentary at a monumental work of art that merely leaves him or her in awe. Now, the accessible nature of Red—both in terms of its physical book format and the use of humourous, colourful comics—allows the viewer to participate in the work and become its “authority.”15 Red, while starting out as a monumentally sized 50-feet mural, has been cut down panel by panel so the viewer can apprehend the work one frame at a time. In the same lecture, Yahgulanaas also stated that he found the medium appealing for its accessibility; the comic book format allows for a dialogue among readers concerning the work and its political, moral, and cultural intent. The intimacy between manga and viewer can be illustrated in Yahgulanaas’ entreaty at the end of Red. He wants his readers to destroy the book and piece it back together so as to create a new mural or work of art. The new piece of artwork thus becomes even more personal for the viewer and contributes additional meaning to the innovative process. The distinctly Japanese medium, furthermore, allows foreign audience members to enjoy Haida works.

Indeed, Japanese and other Asian audience members are captivated by the novelty and hybridization of a traditional Japanese mode of art, illustrated by the vast amount of copies sold in countries such as Asian states such as Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.16 The hybridized and vernacular art form of Red therefore allows a more diversified,

wide-ranging group of people to encounter and educate themselves about contemporary Haida culture and art.

Bulpitt and Healey’s work also brings Haida artworks to a greater public primarily through its organic and urban medium. The Storm is just one example of a long lineage of graffiti artworks that are being used to educate a new generation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people about Haida culture. Artists such as Bulpitt and Healey are engaging with graffiti art, along with other forms of urban art such as hip hop, to empower Native youth. Graffiti, which often has negative connotations of vandalism, is therefore formed into a positive enterprise for youth, especially since it reconnects them with their Aboriginal identity. As Willard explains, Bulpitt now “works with urban youth in a graffiti mural program that mentors young people who have been busted for street art in the production of legitimate or legal graffiti murals as well as other aspects of their art careers.”17 In the summer of 2012, Bulpitt also led a series of student graffiti workshops with the Urban Native Youth Association (UNYA).18 The artist’s involvement with these workshops reflects how he and other contemporary Native artists have been propelling graffiti as a positive weapon of Aboriginal empowerment. The Storm therefore exemplifies the broad spectrum of contemporary Aboriginal art that is being made to inspire both Aboriginal and nonAboriginals today (especially teenagers).

Not only are these works of art easily apprehended by the public because of their obviously public nature, they also become a fresh and enticing enterprise for Aboriginal youth to adopt in order to reconnect with their culture. The fact that neither Red nor The Storm operate in a private, closed museum setting and function in public formats allows a wider group of audiences, especially youth, to appreciate and learn the political, cultural, WINTER 2013 | 29

and moral dimensions of Haida art.

Ultimately, these works of art contribute to the renewal of Aboriginal art and identity occurring in the contemporary period. As exemplified by Yahgulanaas and Bulpitt, Haida artists are not just creating “traditional” works of art such as totem poles and button blankets. Instead, they are taking control of their identity and situating themselves in the contemporary world by embracing a multiplicity of cultural traditions. Both Yahgulanaas’ Red and Bulpitt and Healey’s The Storm are two variants of such contemporary Haida artistic practices. Red is a hybridized and symbiotic form of Japanese and Haida art: Yahgulanaas has been influenced by other artistic mediums in divulging Haida oral narratives and political criticisms for a broader range of audience. The Storm is also exemplary of a work of art that captures Haida cultural traditions and blends them with contemporary and colloquial forms of art. This work, like Red, reflects how Haida artists are mobilizing contemporary modes of art to preserve and negotiate their identities in an increasingly urbanized world, to assert a quiet yet powerful political message to the broader public through an accessible art form, and to preserve culturally significant practices for younger generations. Ultimately, then, these two works represent the pulsing and thriving stream of Haida art today that serve political and didactic messages, which operate in a diverse field of forms such as hip hop music and comic books. In this way, Haida artists such as Yahgulanaas, Bulpitt, and Healey are constantly reshaping and shifting the definitions of Haida art.

Brenda Chang is a U2 Political Science and Art History Joint Honours major .

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NOTES 1. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “comic strip,” accessed November 15, 2012, http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/127589/comic-strip.

2. Ruby Theresa, “Red: A Haida Manga

by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas,” London Fuse, October 17, 2009, http:// londonfuse.ca/blog/red-haida-mangamichael-nicoll-yahgulanaas 3. Jim Gilbert and Karin Clark, Learning

by Designing Pacific Northwest Coast Native Indian Art, vol. 1 (Union Bay: Raven Publishing, 2003), 9.

4. Hilary Stewart, Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast , (North Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 1979), 104.

5. Janet C. Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art (Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998), 186.

6. Grant Shilling, “Haida art meets Japanese manga,” The Vancouver Sun, December 5, 2009, accessed November 14, 2012, http://www2. c anada.com/vancouversun/stor y. html?id=eb7dd168-d6d2-44b8-91f8d0fd5329f9d4.

7. Corey Bulpitt, e-mail message to author, November 12, 2012.

8. Ibid.

9. “The Storm,” November 6, 2011, video clip, accessed November 13, 2012, Youtube, http://www. youtube.com/watch?feature=player_ embedded&v=0kNiGQgc6ek#!

10. “BEAT NATION: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture,” Vancouver Art Gallery, accessed November 13, 2012, http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_ exhibitions/exhibit_beat_nation.html.

11. Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, “Notes on Haida Manga,” Geist 70 (2008): 54.

12. Shilling, “Haida Art meets Japanese Manga.”

13. David P. Ball, “‘Beat Nation’ Brings

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

Skateboard and Hip Hop Culture to the Vancouver Art Gallery.” Indian Country Today, May 26, 2012, http:// indiancountrytodaymedianetwork. com/2012/05/26/beat-nationbrings-skateboard-and-hip-hopculture-to-the-vancouver-art-gallery115120#ixzz2By5AdpMT. Tania Willard, “Curatorial Statements,” Beat Nation, accessed November 14, 2012, http://www.beatnation.org/ curatorial-statements.html.

“Michael Yahgulanaas – Red: A Haida Manga,” October 14, 2010, video clip, accessed November 13, 2012, Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=dBbLiEqUZ-g.

Ashley Ford, “Haida Artist Hits it Big in Asia,” accessed November 14, 2012, Rocking Raven, accessed November 14, 2012, http://www.rockingraven. com/2007-04-06-haida-artist-hits-itbig-in-asia.html.

Willard, “Curatorial Statements.”

“2012 Summer Program – Graffiti Project,” Native Youth Program, September 7, 2012, http:// n a t i v e yo u t h p r o g r a m . w o rd p re s s . com/2012/09/07/2012summer-

program-graffiti-project/.

REFERENCES Berlo, Janet C. and Ruth B. Phillips. Native North American Art. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1998.

Bulpitt, Corey. E-mail message to author.

November 12, 2012.

Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “comic strip,” accessed November 15, 2012, h t t p : / / w w w. b r i t a n n i c a . c o m / EBchecked/topic/127589/comic-strip.

Ford, Ashley. “Haida Artist Hits it Big in Asia.” Rocking Raven. Accessed November 14, 2012, http://www.rockingraven. com/2007-04-06-haida-artist-hits-itbig-in-asia.html.

Gilbert, Jim and Karin Clark. Learning by Designing Pacific Northwest Coast Native Indian Art, vol. 1. Union Bay: Raven Publishing, 2003.

Hill, Adrian. “Strokes of Genius – Red by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas.” Graphically Inclined.

Accessed November 14, 2012. https://graphicallyinclined. wordpress.com/tag/red-haida- manga/ Kornstein, Ben. “Haida Graffiti.”

Flickr.

Accessed November 14, 2012. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ boringben/7889807596/

Fig. 1 Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Red (cover), 2009.

Watercolour in print

WINTER 2013 | 31

Fig. 2 Corey Bulpitt and Larissa Healey, The Storm, 2011.

Graffiti mural.

Fig. 3 Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Red (p. 18-19), 2009.

Watercolour in print.

Fig. 4 Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Red (p. 28), 2009. Watercolour in print.

Fig. 5 Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Red, 2009. Watercolour in print.

Fig. 6 Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Red (p. 42-43), 2009.

Watercolour in print.

32 | CANVAS

Trans-fiction and the Cyborg: Sexing the Post-Human

Lyota Bonyeme

I

n amputation, transfixion is the process of passing the knife from side to side through tissues close to the bone and dividing muscles outward. It is exactly this type of operation that Bo’, the narrator of Brigitte Aubert’s Transfixions, seems to desire. The plot centers around Bo’, a maleto-female (MTF) transsexual and tells of his cruel and masochistic love for Johnny Belmonte, a violent and sadistic delinquent.

After his release from prison, where he served time after being convicted for murder, Bo’ learns of a recent series of killings taking place in Nice. Although these types of killings usually targeted biologically female prostitutes, the victims now include some of Bo’s friends – fellow MTF transsexual prostitutes. Pursued by the police, Bo’ starts to investigate the killings and question the true identity of his lover, Johnny.

Throughout the novel, the author contrasts the character of Bo’ with Axelle, one of his acquaintances. Axelle, described as a cyborg-fanatic, is often found in the cybercafé. With multiple piercings she has an appearance melding metal and flesh. This paper will argue that the novel offers two figures – the transsexual and the cyborg – as two figures that reflect Hayles’ definition of the post-human. First, I will illustrate how both the transsexual and the cyborg embody Hayles’ definition of the post-human figure. Second, I will argue that the novel emphasizes the idea that the post-human is a transitional or pivotal figure rather than a mutation of the human. To do so, I will show how the book subtly implies the transsexual and the cyborg to be skeuomorph designs. By considering sexuality, gender, and the posthuman, I will ultimately question whether the book implied the transsexual and the cyborg to be devoid of sexuality.

Part One: The Transsexual and the Cyborg In her text, Hayles argues that a defining characteristic of current cultural belief is 34 | CANVAS

that information can circulate unchanged among different material organisms. She suggests that this belief is reflected in three recurrent and interrelated narratives; first, it is reflected in the idea that information has lost its body and is now seen as a disembodied entity separate from the material forms in which it is thought to be embedded, which can flow between carbon-based organic components such as the human body as well as silicon-based electronic components such as computers; secondly, in our recent focus on the cyborg as a new technological artifact and cultural icon; and thirdly, in the belief that the human is giving way to a different construction called the post-human.

Of interest here is her definition of the post-human view. According to Hayles, the post-human view privileges informational patterns over material instantiation. In other words, the biological organism is seen as an accident or mistake rather than an inevitability of life. The post-human view thus considers consciousness as central to our being. Also, the post-human sees the biological envelope as the original prosthetic which can be further articulated with intelligent machines. Therefore, there are no absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation.

Concluding that “the post-human subject is an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material- informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction.”1 Hayles states that the post-human becomes an aggregate of different parts which are his own because they were purchased and not due to a natural pre-existing condition.

The Post Human as Cyborg: Axelle “Axelle a toujours un nouveau truc.

Elle a démarré par les multi-piercings et la barre en métal à travers la cloison nasale. Après, elle est passée aux colliers qui lui étirent le cou comme celui des «

femmes-girafes » et aux pièces de cinq cents lires incrustées dans les lobes des oreilles. […] Ensuite, elle a enchainé avec le tatouage en relief – un alpha sous l’œil droit, un oméga sous la gauche – et le branding, le marquage au fer rouge : le @ des adresses internet sur le menton.

Maintenant, ce sont les « implants ».

Diverses babioles qu’elle se fait rentrer sous la peau, « sous contrôle médical, évidemment ». Elle adore le médical, Axelle, elle ne s’envoie que des substances de synthèse.”2

In the novel, the character of Axelle is likened to Hayles’ post-human figure. Recall that Hayles describes the post-human as “a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction.”3 The previous passage describes Axelle’s body as being covered in metal, featuring piercings and five hundred liras as well as ink and additional implants, and illustration of how Axelle embodies the post-human as an amalgamation of purchased parts. Additionally, by noting that Axelle constantly has a “new thing”, Bo’ implies that she is continuously adding to or re-constructing her body.

Note that Axelle is said to have branded the @-symbol on her chin. Accordingly, her connection to internet culture is often emphasized in the book. Whenever Bo’ interacts with Axelle she is either connected to the internet in a cyber-café or in the middle of discussing something related to digital culture. Although not physically attached to a machine, Axelle constantly relies or even feeds on technology. Hayles similarly notes that “there are no essential differences […] between bodily existence and computer simulation, […] robot teology and human goals.”4 Hence, she further suggests that the cybernetic post-human figure sees the human body as the original prosthetic which can be further articulated

with intelligent machines.

Finally, according to Hayles, the posthuman figure emerges in the popular narrative of information as disembodied.

She suggests that the post-human privileges informational patterns over material instantiations. In other words, consciousness is seen as more important than embodiment.

In the reader’s introduction to Axelle’s character, Bo’ recounts a conversation he had with her where she is quoted as saying: “Pour moi, la modification corporelle, c’est une réappropriation de mon corps.”5 Here, Axelle rejects the idea of biological embodiment as an inevitability of life.

She is suggesting one’s self-agency in restructuring, designing or commodifying the human body to suit the conscious self The Transsexual as Post-Human: Bo’ “Travelo. Traveler en transit dans le Transsexuel-Express, émigré et immigré [tout] ensemble. Ici, on voyage en capsule de chair, de la planète homo erectus à la planète bella donna. Et je parle les deux langues tour à tour, de Babel à moi tout seul. Parfois j’ai l’impression que Beaudoin est le propriétaire de mon corps et Bo’ la locataire. Quand je me ferais opérer, Bo’ sera enfin la seule occupante des lieux. Oh! Et puis merde.”6

Before unpacking the previous passage, recall the last argument made in the previous section. Hayles’ post-human stresses the conscious over material instantiation; in turn, this can arguably be applied to Axelle’s cyborgian fantasies. However, it also applies to Bo’ transsexual identity. In response to Axelle’s claim that body modification was a means of repossessing her own body, Bo’ claimed that for him it was a means to escape his male body. Similarly, Bo’ emphasizes the limitations of his biological envelope. In her research, Surya Monro observed that her WINTER 2013 | 35

participants often discussed the varied ways in which their bodies affect and limit their expression of gender identity. She also found that several transsexual subjects identified with what she called the essential core or self. Noting that “essentialism is defined […] as the ‘presumption of an underlying reality behind appearances,’”7 Monro states that the transsexual subject emphasizes the conscious self as the core or center of their being rather than physical embodiment.

Additionally, note Bo’s choice of words to describe his situation in the previous passage. By stating “on voyage en capsule de chair” and his analogy of the transsexual as a ‘traveler’, Bo’ depicts the human body as a mere vessel for his conscious-self.

Biological substantiation is a tool that supports consciousness; for him, it serves a function whereas for Axelle it is primarily ornamentation – an object made to be possessed with little or no use. Therefore, if biological substantiation is a tool whose sole purpose is to transport the core, then the conscious can be detached from its material capsule, or the capsule itself can be transformed to match its core. This can be paralleled to Hayles’ claim that “information viewed as pattern and not tied to a particular instantiation is […] free to travel across time and space,”8 which ties in well with Bo’ travelling analogy. Bo’ also emphasizes that the use of technology – for example, in medical treatments – allows for this reconciliation of the essential-self and the material substrate: “Quand je me ferais opérer, Bo’ seras enfin la seule occupante des lieux.”9 In her text, Monro also notes that “along with cyborgs, cloning, and cyber subjectivity, transsexuality may offer unprecedented opportunities for the reconfiguration of identity […] via [the use of ] new information technologies.”10 In contrast to Hayles’ conception of the post-human’s relation to the human body as 36 | CANVAS

obsolete, Monro also considers Baudrillard’s argument that transsexuality fetishizes the human body in the sense that once it is altered – for example, post-operation – it assumes the locus of identity.

Part Two: The Post-Human as Transitional Figure The previous passage also raises the question as to whether the ‘human’ chronologically precedes the ‘post-human’.

In discussing Bo’ as a transsexual posthuman figure, it was noted that he relies on the analogy of travelling. He claims to be travelling in the ‘Transsexual-Express’, hovering between point A (planet homo erectus) and point B (planet bella donna).

Thus, Bo’ identifies himself as in transition; he is neither male nor female. Although this idea may be problematic in its reinforcement of entrenched ideas of the dichotomy of the sexes, it also posits whether the post-human figure is simply a transitional figure– neither human nor Other. Similarly, Halberstam & Livingston suggest that “the proliferation of academic “post-isms” marks the necessary yet regrettable failure to imagine what will follow next, and the recognition that it must always appear as ‘the yet as unnameable which is proclaiming itself and which can do so […] only under the species of the non-species’.”11 Looking back at Hayles’ text, she mentions the anthropological concept of the skeuomorph. She defines it as a design feature that is no longer functional in itself but that refers back to a feature that was functional at an earlier time. In other words, the skeuomorph is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original. Hayles likens the skeuomorph to anachronisms and the figure of Janus. In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Janus is the god of beginnings and transitions. He is often

represented, quite literally, as a two-faced god; one face looking to the past, while the other faces the future. According to her, the skeuomorph also looks to past and future, because it simultaneously reinforces and undermines both. More precisely, “it calls into a play a psychodynamic that finds the new more acceptable when it recalls the old that it is in the process of displacing and finds the traditional more comfortable when it is presented in a context that reminds us we can escape from it into the new.”12 She concludes by noting that skeuomorphs act as threshold devices smoothing the transition between one conceptual constellation and another In Transfixions (1998), it can be argued that the figures of the post-human is seen as a derivative of the human, coexisting with the human figure and retaining some of its design cues and structure. On one hand, Axelle does not consider herself human, however, apart from Bo’s accounts of people seeing and avoiding Axelle because of her appearance, she never proclaims herself to be Other. Here, I am suggesting that the cyborg, a melding of flesh and metal, is neither human nor robot. The cyborg, like the skeuomorph, may retain the ornamental design or structure of the original human; however, the figure is never fully robot either. Thus, the cyborgian figure hangs between human and machine – the past engraved in the biological and the future relying on technology. On the other hand, Bo’ reflects more clearly the idea of the skeuomorph.

“Un jour j’ai expliqué la légende de Janus à Stéphanie et elle a décidé que la fontaine serait notre mémorial secret […]13 Quand j’avais du fric, j’avais commencé l’épilation électrique. À la sortie de prison, sans travail, je n’ai pas pu continuer, et comme cette conne d’esthéticienne avait commencé par le côté droit, j’ai

une moitié du visage imberbe et l’autre velue. « Illustration de ma dualité », dirait le psy.”14 “[…] T’as l’air bizarre, reprend-elle en plissant les yeux pour mieux me voir.

C’est comme si t’étais mal ajustée, t’vois?

Les deux moitiés de la tête qui vont pas ensemble.”15

Consider the above passages. First, Aubert clearly references the figure of Janus. Later, she emphasizes that Bo’s appearance is somewhat split or dual in nature. Quite literally, Bo’ becomes the two- faced Janus. His face represents the male/female duality, both looking into the future (post-operation) and the past (preoperation). Similarly, although Bo’s body is male from the waist down, he has feminine features as well. Prior to his trip to prison, Bo’ regularly injected himself with estrogen in order to develop breasts. Thus, although he retains some of the original design of his gendered male body, his biological envelope has incorporated new design cures from the female body. Bo’s embodiment is representative of the skeuomorph because his body is a threshold allowing for the transition from one conceptual constellation (male “la planète homo erectus”) to another (the female “la planète bella donna.”)

Part Three: Post-Human and Sexuality Sexuality is a prominent theme explored throughout the book. All of the characters are involved in some way or another in the prostitution market of Nice. For instance, the serial killings target female prostitutes as well as MTF transsexual prostitute friends of Bo’. Similarly, the policemen characters are from the vice squad, while the character of Johnny sells his body and procures women for himself on occasion. Interestingly, most characters related to this environment are portrayed in a sexual context. They are often WINTER 2013 | 37

described as partaking in or recounting the occurrence of a sexual encounter. However, the two figures posited as post-human (the transsexual and the cyborg) are never seen in that light. Aubert’s book then suggests the post-human as barred of ‘human’ sexuality. In her text, Orbaugh mentions that questions surrounding the sexual life of post-human figures arise not only out of curiosity but out of our fundamental belief that “sex ‘harbours what is most true in ourselves’.”16 According to Orbaugh, it is no surprise that many explorations of the nature and potential of cyborg (or post-human) subjectivity involve a focus on sexuality in some sense as well – even if the focus is on the impossibility or irrelevance of some form of sexual behavor.

“Elle m’a avoué une fois qu’elle ne pouvait pas avoir de relations sexuelles parce que l’odeur de la peau humaine la dégoûte.

Quand on vendra des types emballés sous vide, pour elle ce sera une vraie libération.”17

In this passage, Bo’ is referring to Axelle.

Here, Aubert suggests that the cyborg disdains intercourse with its anterior design.

To put it differently, it is suggested that sexuality between the human and the posthuman is not desirable. This stance is held by the post-human: Axelle rejects sexual contact with humans because the smell ‘disgusts’ her. Recall that the post-human is a transitional figure, neither human nor Other. Thus similar to two species not mating due to nature’s construct, it is suggested that the post-human/cyborg cannot mate with its original antithesis. The second comment made by Bo’ in this passage also suggests that the post-human/cyborg sexuality is de-humanized. Axelle could only truly experience sex with an encased entity, deprived of touch. Thus, the sexuality of the post-human/cyborg is stripped of some of its sensory characteristics. The sexuality of the cyborg is neither wholly tactile nor, 38 | CANVAS

according to Axelle, olfactory. The cyborg would engage in visual and auditory sexuality breaking it down to the two essential senses of the machine: silicone-based entities such as the computer primarily omit sound and, arguably, visually interact with its users.

In contrast, the post-human/transsexual figure is not entirely stripped of human sexuality. This is because the transsexual is not Other, but in ‘transition’ from one gender to the next. In her book, Aubert’s serial killer and the police castigate the transsexual characters who engage in sexual activity with male bodies. Similarly, Johnny repeatedly abuses Bo’ in response to Bo’s affection. Bo’ also mentions having partaken in the BDSM subculture of the prostitution market. Ultimately, it is suggested that the post-human/transsexual sexuality reflects the violent duality or combat of its gendered embodiment and its gendered conscious self.

In conclusion, Transfixions (1998) offers two figures representative of Hayles’ posthuman figure: the transsexual and the cyborg. These figures also posit that the post-human figure is one of transition. Thus similar to a skeuomorph object, the posthuman designates a figure transitioning from one conceptual constellation to another. Finally, the book also explores the sexuality of the post-human. As cyborg, the post-human is stripped of sensory human sexuality, whereas as transsexual, it experiences sexuality as violence, reflective of its inner battle with sexual dichotomy.

Lyota Bonyeme is a U3 Sociology major, with a minor in Communication Studies.

NOTES 1. Katherine Hayles, “Chapter One,” in How We Became Post-Human: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 3.

2. Brigitte Aubert, Transfixions (Paris:

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Editions du Seuil, 1998), 32-33 Hayles, “Chapter One,” 3.

Ibid.

Aubert, Transfixions, 32.

Ibid, 18.

Surya Monro, “Beyond Male and Female: Post-structuralism and the Spectrum of Gender,” International Journal of Transgenderism 8 (2005): 8, doi: 10.1300/J485v08n01_02.

Hayles, “Chapter One,” 13.

Aubert, Transfixions, 18.

Monro, “Beyond Male and Female,” 7.

Judith M. Halberstam and Ira Livingston, eds., Posthuman Bodies, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 1995), 2-3.

Hayles, “Chapter One,” 17.

Aubert, Transfixions, 79.

Ibid, 69.

Ibid, 129.

Sharalyn Orbaugh, “Sex and the Single Cyborg: Japanese Popular Culture Experiments in Subjectivity,” Science Fiction Studies 29 (2002): 440, http://

www.jstor.org/stable/4241109.

17. Aubert, Transfixions, 33.

REFERENCES Aubert, Brigitte. Transfixions. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998.

Halberstam, Judith M., and Ira Livingston, eds. Posthuman Bodies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.

Hayles, Katherine. 1999. “Chapter One.” In How We Became Post-Human: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, 1-24. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Monro, Surya. “Beyond Male and Female: Post-structuralism and the Spectrum of Gender.” International Journal of Transgenderism 8 (2005): 3-22. doi: 10.1300/J485v08n01_02.

Orbaugh, Sharalyn. “Sex and the Single Cyborg: Japanese Popular Culture Experiments in Subjectivity.” Science Fiction Studies 29 (2002): 436-52. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/4241109.

WINTER 2013 | 39

Owing to the Dead:

Reciprocal Relationships Between the Living and the Dead in the Ancient Roman Cemetery of Isola Sacra Marianne Cole

S

ometime in the second century AD, Valeria Trophime added an enclosure to the façade of her house tomb at Isola Sacra necropolis and then sold off portions of it (Fig. 1 and 2). Not only did those who bought these spaces use them for their own burials, but they also gave and sold space within their tomb for other urns.

Of the four separate inner tombs within the main house tomb, three inscriptions survive; two were found inside the tomb while the third was found nearby (Fig. 3). They commemorate not only the individuals but also the transaction they made with Valeria Trophime: Gais Galgestus Helius, having bought a vacant burial-space from Valeria Trophime, made for himself and for members of his family a tomb-chamber joined to the wall on the right as one enters, in which are fourteen urns, apart from one urn, which Trophime gave to Galgestius Vitalis. He gave one of these urns to Pimponius Chrysopolis.

Trophimus, slave of our emperor, and Claudia Tyche built this tomb for Claudia Saturnina, their loving daughter, who lived fifteen years, six months, and thirteen days, and for their freedmen and freedwomen, and their descendants.

They bought as a burial-place a quarter of this monument from Valeria Trophime.

Euhodus, slave of our emperor, and Vennonia Apphis, having bought a burial-space from Valeria Trophime, built (this tomb) for themselves, their freedmen and freedwomen, and their descendants.1

Dividing tombs was not uncommon at Isola Sacra. Indeed, the nonelite citizens of this necropolis were acutely conscious of the fact that the living had the ultimate power to keep the memory of the dead alive. More people buried in a single house tomb meant

more living visitors, which in turn secured not only the maintenance of the tomb itself but also preserved the memory of those entombed. The transaction that Tomb 94’s epitaphs record, however, indicates that a tomb is something rather unique. On the one hand, a tomb can be termed a ‘terminal commodity,’ an object whose social life ends with the deceased, similar perhaps to Christian votive offerings.2 Yet, we know that at Isola Sacra, and indeed in cemeteries across the Roman Empire, tombs and burials were continually being reused and reprocessed. Tomb space was sold and given like Valeria Trophime’s tomb, but tombs were also used, redesigned, destroyed and vandalized illicitly, and once sacred epitaphs could easily end up as toilet seats a few generations later. And yet, neither are tombs and funerary monuments commodities.

Though they may pass through a process of what can be termed ‘commoditization,’ memorials act more like gifts than commodities.

In my essay, I will discuss death in Rome and focus on Isola Sacra necropolis, the ‘city of the dead’ located approximately thirty kilometers from Rome, on the main road connecting Portus, the Empire’s main harbour, to the once bustling town of Ostia.

Taking Tomb 94 as my primary case study, I argue that memorials are the ultimate gift in that they are (1) inextricable from the endless cycle of exchange between the living and the dead and they are (2) always self-interested. I base my definition of the gift and of gift exchange in Marcel Mauss’s.

For my purposes, I will use his theories for a broader definition rather than an accurate anthropological study. In The Gift, Mauss defines the gift as something that always demands recompense. Inalienable from the giver, the gift is inextricable from the cycle of exchange; gifts are given to repay a previous gift only to demand a counter-gift in exchange. The counter-gift memorials WINTER 2013 | 41

demand, however, is very particular and always the same: commemoration.

Commemoration could take many forms: from offerings of food and drink, objects such as pots, glassware, jewellery, and even sacrificial animals, to celebrations and feast days, like Parentalia, on which the family members visited their deceased relatives. Though they serve the dead, funerary monuments and tombs are made by and for the living. Whoever constructed, commissioned, bought, or used them, funerary monuments, like gifts, made (and indeed still make) tangible the intangible.

Tombs not only mediate the world of the living and the world of the dead, they also establish a dialogue of reciprocity between the living and the dead, in which the living owe the dead commemoration if they are to ask the same in death. A tomb may therefore be sold, but it can never become a true commodity, for it will always be the ultimate gift.

Rediscovered in archaeological excavations during the 1920s and ‘30s, Isola Sacra is one of the best-preserved Roman cemeteries and an excellent example of the reciprocity between living and deceased (Fig. 4). This unique necropolis was situated between the Tiber River and the sea and was made into an island when Emperor Trajan had an artificial canal constructed at its northern limits. It was abandoned along with Portus and Ostia when the Roman Empire fell. No longer even an island, Isola Sacra was itself partially entombed when silting caused the Tiber River to recede. J. M. C. Toynbee writes that “Excavations have revealed that tombs stretched along the west side of the Via Severiana-Flavia [the main road connecting Portus to Ostia] for approximately 1.5 kilometers … Today, however, only a limited number of these tombs are visible and available for study, namely, the one hundred funerary monuments occupying approximately 180 42 | CANVAS

meters of street length.”3 These remaining monuments vary significantly in type.

While house tombs, the largest, most costly and thus most elite monuments, front the road, smaller, more modest tombs and amphora burials are scattered behind and among them (Fig. 5 and 6). The diversity of monuments found at Isola Sacra reflect the mixed population of nonelite merchant classes that would have been buried there and would have passed through, worked and/or lived in Portus and Ostia. Such roadside arrangement was common to the Roman Empire. Roman law prohibited the burial of the dead within city walls, with few exceptions. A matter of sanitation as well as Etruscan customs meant that funerary monuments and tombs were fixtures of the Roman Empire’s major roads. The dead were thus entwined with the daily life and movement of Roman society. Roadside tombs and necropoles were the first things a visitor saw when entering a city. Merchants, soldiers and other travelers would pass through (or by) Isola Sacra on their way to and from the port and Ostia.4 The necropolis would therefore have received a significant influx of passers-by.

Such a layout on the roadside suggests the way in which the dead and the living were in constant dialogue. Monuments were made to attract the living viewer, to get them to stop and remember the dead and their own mortality. The dead had a certain influence on the living, and a rather powerful one at that. In his De lingua latina libri XXV (On the Latin Language),5 Varro, a Roman scholar from the 1st century BC, considers the derivation of the Latin words for ‘remember’ and ‘memory’: From the same is momere ‘to remind,’ since he who ‘reminds,’ is like a memory.

So also the monumenta ‘memorials’ which are on tombs, and in fact alongside the road, that they may admonere ‘admonish’

the passers-by that they themselves and the readers too were mortal. From this the other things written and done to preserve memoria ‘memory’ are called monumenta ‘monuments.’ (6.49)

Of course, memory is the driving force behind the creation, decoration and inscription of tombs and other types of funerary monuments. As Varro suggests the dead had the ability, through their memorials, to demand commemoration and admonish those who may have forgotten their own mortality. Mortality rates in ancient Rome were high; from wars and epidemics to childbirth and illness, rich and poor alike lived with the constant reminder of death. Death and the deceased had a powerful presence in the lives of the living.

Whatever form memorials took, each had a certain agency as well as a certain physical and spiritual identity and presence, whether or not they contained the actual remains of a body. Indeed, even the Latin use of ‘necropolis’ or ‘city of the dead’ instead of ‘cemetery,’ which derives from the Greek for ‘resting place,’ suggests the way in which Romans viewed and interacted with the dead: as still present entities that populated their own cities and lived alongside their living counterparts.

Yet, the living were (obviously) not dependent on the dead. Despite the power of memorials to demand commemoration and admonish disregard, the living could easily chose to ignore or disrespect the dead and their final resting places. The reuse and fragmentation of funerary monuments is evident in the nature of the remaining evidence. Countless funerary inscriptions and disparate portions of funerary monuments line museum walls. They remind us that such reuse and spoliation occurred, whether due to wars, economic hardships or disregard for the monuments themselves.

Roman law and religion, however, attempted

to circumvent this and assure honour to the deceased.6 Laws set the duration of mourning for widows and family members7 to prevent excessive grief as well as disrespect and disregard of the dead. Although it is difficult, if not impossible, to know how different communities and religious cults in the Roman Empire commemorated their dead, certain more prominent celebrations survive in literature from the era.8 The most known annual festival specifically dedicated for the commemoration of the dead was Parentalia, lasting from 13 to 21 of February.9 Parentalia was a time in which families honoured the graves of their deceased with offerings such as food and wine or small sacrificial animals. This was meant to appease the dead and bring them comfort and peace. Funerals were also a time of celebration, at least for wealthier individuals. Some would have their bodies processed through the city, perhaps at night with torches, from the individual’s home to the site of cremation.10 For the very rich, it was not uncommon to have rather theatrical funerary celebrations. Most other citizens – excluding slaves, prostitutes and gladiators who would have a common burial along with the city’s refuse – did receive some small gift, such as coins, pots, jewellery, and/ or food.11 The monuments themselves were made to encourage commemoration.12 From the larger house tombs to the anonymous amphora scattered among them, the memorials at Isola Sacra were built intentionally to facilitate commemoration.

House tombs, as their name suggests, were built with features that resembled domestic residences. The large doors and open, sometimes rather ornate, inner chambers with niches for urns not only made these house tombs more accessible, but also made them attractive so as to encourage living visitors to visit and pay their respects to the dead – a debt they paid through WINTER 2013 | 43

their commemoration. Though they have altogether plain exteriors, some of Isola Sacra’s house tombs feature mosaic flooring, wall painting and decorative sculptural work that recall house interiors (Fig. 7 and 8). Many of the tombs at Isola Sacra also feature flat terraced roofs for visitors (Fig. 9). A stairway, adjacent to Tomb 34, still leads up to one such terrace. Tomb 15 has benches near the door, which may have been used as seats during feast days (Fig. 10).

Other tombs have wells for drawing water, such as Tomb 34; Tomb 16 has a well as well as a structure that may have been used for heating food. Their appearance reminds us of the fact that the dead depended on the living to commemorate them, to come, visit, stop and remember those who were once living. Indeed, doors and openings often align to frame the larger inner niches of more wealthy individuals, thus drawing the eye and the attention of the living (Fig. 11). Even simple amphora, though a sign of poverty, have open necks that make libation easy.

To assure there would be visitors, however, was another problem. The citizens of Isola Sacra seemed to have been aware of this problem and to have gone about solving it by constructing large house tombs that could house many people. Scholars, such as Valerie M. Hope, Peter Stewart, Paul Zanker and Lauren H. Petersen, have examined the self-identity constructed through the monuments at Isola Sacra in the hopes of shedding light onto the identity of this sample of Roman society and the particular individuals buried there. Yet, as these scholars note, the house tombs, and even the smaller tombs and scattered amphora burials, give us an intriguing picture of a community more than they do an image of individual identity. I would add, however, that Isola Sacra’s monuments suggest how keenly – or rather intuitively – aware Isola Sacra’s society was of the ways in which reciprocity 44 | CANVAS

functioned between the living and the dead. The construction of house tombs was fundamentally based on reciprocity and not on economics. More people buried in one tomb secured more visitors, which in turn assured the maintenance of the tomb itself and the preservation of the memory of those entombed. Securing tomb maintenance meant assuring commemoration, and therefore not only kept the cycle of exchange in perpetual motion, but also made sure that the counter-gift of commemoration would be appropriately returned.

Such obligatory commemoration is made clear by the gifting of tomb space to freed slaves. Freed slaves often remained part of the family or, at least, the household.13 They often maintained not only the names but also the bonds of dependency of their former masters. Countless epitaphs and inscriptions use the formula liberties libertabusque posterisque eorum, meaning ‘for their freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants.’14 Gifting tomb space to freed slaves was of course a self-interested gesture on the part of the patriarchs of a household.

For even those wealthy enough to afford large house tombs could not necessarily depend upon their maintenance. Tombs could rapidly fall into disuse; if generations did not quickly die out, then fashion changed or descendents chose to alter or reconstruct older tombs or simply build new ones. Freed slaves likely had a greater need to use a burial space than freeborn sons, who could marry and build another tomb.

Marcus Cocceius Daphnus had intended his large house tomb for his family and two named male heirs.15 Yet, upon his death, one of these men built a dividing wall, separating Tomb 75 and 76 and making them individual tombs “complete with entrance and epitaph.”16 Unlike freeborn relatives, freed slaves were infinitely more dependable than family members, since they themselves depended on their former

masters and even in death often continued to subordinate themselves. Tomb 87, for instance, has an epitaph above the door in which the two freed slaves name themselves as the builders of the tomb with their names inscribed above that of their former master, for whom the tomb was built. Inside the tomb, however, the largest, central niche and place of honour opposite the door was given to their patron. Hence, even in death, these freed slaves subordinated themselves to their former owner. This is not merely indicative of the strong patrilineal ties between exslaves and their former owners but also of the powerful relationship of reciprocity at play. A tomb is never a gift freely given, nor is it ever extricable from the endless cycle of exchange.

Respecting and honouring the dead was not a choice, however. To give commemoration was to ask for it in return; to assure one respected the dead was to expect the same in return. Commemoration, whether this took the form of food offerings, sacrifices, festivals or simple visits, was a gift from the living to the dead. The living had to literally ‘pay’ their respects to the dead by gifting commemoration to them. Giving this gift was necessarily a demand from the living for the same counter-gift. Commemoration is therefore bound up in an endless cycle of reciprocity between the living and the dead; it is a cycle as finite as life and as fixed and unchanging as impending death. The tombs and memorials at Isola Sacra make this relationship tangible. In essence, the stone memorials materialize but also mediate intangible desires between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead.

Returning to Tomb 94 and the transactions made between Valeria Trophime and other individuals seems to trouble this definition of the tomb as the ultimate, cyclical, and self-interested gift. Does selling tomb space place make the tomb a commodity, to be bought and sold on an economic basis?

Unfortunately there is no information on Valeria Trophime or the other individuals buried in Tomb 94 aside from the remaining inscriptions. To have such a large house tomb and be in the position to sell spaces within it suggests that she was likely from relatively well-off members of the merchant classes. Valeria Trophime’s initial gesture of selling spaces in her house tomb places the tomb in the domain of the commodity, something that can be bought and sold. Karl Marx was the first to define commodity in a time when industrialism and capitalism threatened social structures and oppressed the lower classes. Marks writes that “A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside of us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another.”17 He goes on to discuss that a commodity is an alienable object exchanged between two transactors in a state of mutual independence. In a later essay, Igor Kopytoff builds on Marx to discuss commoditization as a process through which an object becomes a commodity, “a thing that has use value and that can be exchanged in a direct transaction for a counterpart, the very fact of exchange indicating that the counterpart has, in the immediate context, an equivalent value.”18 Commodities, for Kopytoff, are “a universal cultural phenomenon,”19 in that they are not only materially but also culturally produced.20 He writes: Their existence is a concomitant of the existence of transactions that involve the exchange of things (objects and services), exchange being a universal feature of human social life and, according to some theorists, at the very core of it. … Where societies differ is in the ways commoditization as a special expression of exchange is structured and related to the social system.21

With this in mind, then, Valeria Trophime’s tomb acts very much like a commodity, or WINTER 2013 | 45

at least a singular object that goes through a process of commoditization by being sold from one person to another. Tombs are objects of a sort; they can and were exchanged, and they are very much part of and essential to Roman society and culture.

Yet the tomb remains an inalienable thing that is exchanged between two reciprocally dependent transactors. A tomb may be exchanged, given, bought or sold, but it is tied to an endless cycle of reciprocity between the living and the dead. Like Mauss’s gift, a tomb is a “total prestation”22 in which giver (or buyer) and receiver are linked. Whether a tomb is given, allotted or sold, it transcends the divisions between the material and spiritual and links the living with the dead and the giver/seller with the receiver. As Mauss writes: “one gives away what is in reality part of one’s nature and substance, while to receive something is to receive a part of someone’s spiritual essence.”23 Nowhere is this clearer than in funerary monuments, which are not only the homes of the dead but also embody (and contain) the deceased, their wishes and demands.24 It follows that tombs, like Mauss’s gift, are charged with a sort of life; they speak for the deceased and call for our attention. Whether given or bought, tombs and monuments are therefore always essentially gifts in that they function within the cycle of reciprocity and negotiate the intangible; they are exchanged for and they also demand commemoration, honour and remembrance past the bounds of mortal life.

Mauss writes that “The form usually taken is that of the gift generously offered; but that the accompanying behaviour is formal pretence and social deception.”25 For Mauss, the gift is always self-interested, always predicated upon a counter-gift. Tomb 94 demonstrates that memorials take part in the social interactions of gift-exchange.

As gifts, the tomb spaces and funerary memorials within those spaces represent the 46 | CANVAS

reciprocal relationship the living forge with the dead, and the dead forge with the living.

Like the kula, which Mauss describes as an exchange of goods (beads and armbands) between Trobriand Island tribes for the creation and maintenance of communal bonds and social status, memorials in ancient Rome represented an endless cycle of reciprocity between people motivated by interpersonal bonds.26 Memorials and funerary monuments of all shapes and sizes were an integral part of community and social interactions of the living within given communities. Taking a life of their own, tombs and memorials embody the deceased as well as their implicit and demanded counter gift by negotiating the immaterial (memory and honour) and the material (the monuments themselves). Whether Valeria Trophime sold off tomb space for financial reasons or not, it is no doubt that doing so benefited her in an invaluable way, for it is through the epitaphs that we still know of her. By embracing the very cyclical nature of the tomb as a gift, Valeria Trophime assured that her memory would not end with her life. Indeed, the gift of the tomb has given her the ultimate, wished for counter-gift and ultimate commemoration: eternal life through memory.

Marianne Cole is a U3 Art History and Honours English major.

NOTES 1. J. M. C. Toynbee, Death and burial in the Roman world (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971), 77. For a slightly different translation see Valerie M. Hope, Death in Ancient Rome: A Source Book (London: Routledge, 2007), 138.

2. I borrow the term ‘terminal commodity’ and the theory of ‘commoditization’ and ‘singularization’ from Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things:

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of Things, Arjun Appadurai ed. (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1986 Toynbee, Death and burial in the Roman world, 186.

Toynbee notes that the road was not likely used as the main access rout for those headed for Rome. Rather, it seems to have mainly connected Portus and Ostia.

(Marcus Terentius) Varro, On the Latin language. Roland G. Kent Trans.

(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1938). Hope (2007) quotes this with a brief discussion on how “Roman public life drew heavily on memories of the past … A monument symbolized not just success, but also an enduring reputation. For the leading male citizens, of both Republic and Empire, reputations (fama) was of fundamental importance” (71).

See Catharine Edwards, Death in Ancient Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 13-15; she writes that Roman religion was “notoriously difficult to determine.

Traditional Roman cult included a number of festivals in which worshippers honoured and made offerings to the dead … But there seems to have been little emphasis on the fate of the individual after death. Prose texts rarely offer any kind of speculation of this topic” (13). For an excellent and in depth analysis of Roman religion and how to read it in Roman literature, see Denis Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome; Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Unlike almost every other aspect of Roman social life, mourning was a particularly feminine domain.

Mourning laws therefore focus of

8.

9.

10.

11.

women, especially widows, which, to insure there would be no confusion regarding a child’s paternity, stipulated a woman could not remarry until ten months after her husband’s death. For a brief overview of such laws see Hope, Roman Death: Dying and the Dead in Ancient Rome, 164-171.

Toynbee discusses several different celebrations for the dead such as Lemuria, and the difference between the warship of peaceful dead (manes) and hostile dead (lemures or larvæ) in Death and Burial in the Roman World, 43-73. For more on festivals of the dead, see W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic: an Introduction to the Study of the Religion of the Romans (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1969) and H. H. Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981). On Parentalia, Fowler: 306-310 and Scullard: 17-18, 74-76; on Lemuria, Fowler 106-111 and Scullard 17-18, 118-119.

Bernard Green, Christianity in ancient Rome: the first three centuries (London: T & T Clark, 2010), 176.

Hope, Death in Ancient Rome: A Source Book, 100-101. For a discussion about and excerpts of textual sources recounting on Roman funerary practices, see Hope, Death in Ancient Rome: A Source Book, 85-127; for a more lengthily and detailed examination of Roman funerary practices and cult rituals surrounding death, see Toynbee, Death and burial in the Roman World, 43-73.

As Green notes, evidence about funerary and commemorative rituals is sparse, not to mention rather unreliable.

Whether literary evidence, such as information recorded about Parentalia in Ovid’s Fasti, a work of fiction by a WINTER 2013 | 47

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

poet renown for inventing his own origins and etymologies, is really a reliable source of information is still under debate (and will likely remain so).

I owe much of the following discussion on Hope: 1997, 2007 and 2009.

For more on freed slaves in Roman art and in funerary monuments in particular, see Lauren H. Petersen, The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History.

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); for her discussion in relation to Isola Sacra see: 184-226; Stewart also discusses freedmen and self-identity: The Social History of Roman Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 62-76; also, Zanker, Roman Art (Los Angeles, Calif: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010), 145-161.

Hope, Roman Death: Dying and the Dead in Ancient Rome, 172.

Ibid, 172-3.

Ibid, 173.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engles, Collected Works: Capital, vol.1. (New York: International Publishers, 1996), 45.

Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” 68.

Ibid, 64.

Ibid, 68.

Ibid, 68.

Marcel Mauss, The gift: forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies (New York: Norton, 1967), 10.

Ibid, 10.

It is important to note that the spirituality that Mauss refers to is different than that of Roman society (i.e.

Christian versus Pagan). A discussion of these different views of spirituality, however, is outside the scope of this paper. For more on Roman Religion, see Mary Beard, John North, and S R.

48 | CANVAS

F. Price. Religions of Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

25. Ibid, 1.

26. The concept of Roman fides (‘fidelity’) is important here. In Rome, fides between family members (which was often articulated as ‘hyper fides,’ or pietas, ‘piety’), and friends (amacitia, ‘friendship’ or ‘amity’) guided interpersonal relationships and moral values. In the commemoration of the dead, part of the reciprocity entails fides on the part of the living to the deceased (at least during Parentalia, whereas superstition and fear of hostile spirits seems to guide Lemuria).

REFERENCES Edwards, Catharine. Death in Ancient Rome.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Feeney, Denis. Literature and Religion at Rome; Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Fowler, W. Warde. The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic: an Introduction to the Study of the Religion of the Romans.

Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1969.

Green, Bernard. Christianity in ancient Rome: the first three centuries. London: T & T Clark, 2010.

Hope, Valerie M. Roman Death: Dying and the Dead in Ancient Rome. London: Continuum, 2009.

––––––. Death in Ancient Rome: A Source Book. London: Routledge, 2007.

––––––. “Constructing Roman Identity: Funerary Monuments and Social Structure in the Roman World.”

Mortality, 2.2 (1997): 103-21.

Hopkins, Keith. Death and Renewal.

Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Kopytoff, Igor. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process.” In

The Social Life of Things. Arjun Appadurai Ed. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1986: 6390.

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engles. Collected Works: Capital, vol.1. New York: International Publishers, 1996.

Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: Norton, 1967.

Petersen, Lauren H. The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Scullard, H. H. Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981.

Stewart, Peter. The Social History of Roman Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Toynbee, J. M. C. Death and Burial in the Roman World. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971.

Varro, Marcus Terentius. On the Latin

Language. Roland G. Kent Trans.

Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1938.

Zanker, Paul. Roman Art. Los Angeles, Calif: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010.

Internet Sources on Isola Sacra: “Ostia: Harbour City of Ancient Rome,” Jan-Theo Bakker, accessed November 8, 2012, http://www.ostia-antica.org/index.html “Roman Mysteries: Isola Sacra Visit,” Caroline Lawrence, accessed November 8, 2012, http:// www.romanmysteries.com/isola-sacra-visit “Soprintendenza Speciale Per I Beni Archeologici di Roma: Necropoli did Porto,” accessed November 8, 2012, http:// archeoroma.beniculturali.it/en/node/187 “Tombs: Index,” accessed November 8, 2012, http://www.ostia-antica.org/valkvisuals/ index.htm

Fig. 1 Detail of the interior of Tomb 94; the inner niches.

Fig. 2 Interior of Tomb 94.

WINTER 2013 | 49

Fig. 3 An epitaph on Tomb 94 Fig. 4 Map detailing Isola Sacra’s location (central map) and its location on Trajan’s fabricated island (in the left hand corner on the road in the upper map).

Fig. 5 The largest, most ornate house tombs lined Via Severiana-Flavia, 2007.

Photograph by Cori Ryan.

Fig. 6 Smaller, more humble tombs are scattered amongst and behind the house tombs.

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Fig. 7 Details of the interior of some house tombs at Isola Sacra necropolis.

Fig. 8 Interior of a tomb at Isola Sacra necropolis, 2007.

Photograph by Cori Ryan.

Fig. 9 Smaller, more humble tombs are scattered amongst and behind the house tombs.

Fig. 11 Here is one example of one tomb in which the door aligns to frame a larger inner niche, with an epitaph above the door, to draw the eye and the attention of the living.

Fig. 10 Tomb 15 has benches near the door, which may have been used as seats during feast days.

WINTER 2013 | 51

Vir Heroicus Sublimis et le sublime

dans l’oeuvre de Barnett Newman Vincent Marquis

E

n 1948, Barnett Newman publiait « The Sublime is Now », le dernier de ses articles pour le magasine Tiger’s Eye. Entre 1950 et 1951, Barnett Newman peignait ce qui deviendrait sa plus grande toile jusqu’alors : Vir Heroicus Sublimis (ill. 1). L’objet de cet essai est d’inscrire ce tableau de Newman dans la logique d’un art sublime en suivant principalement les considérations apportées par Newman dans « The Sublime is Now ». Mon essai s’organise en deux parties. En interprétant l’article de Newman et en introduisant différents raisonnements connexes sur le sujet, je tenterai d’abord d’expliquer comment on peut concevoir Vir Heroicus Sublimis comme une œuvre sublime. Ensuite, par l’étude des paradoxes incarnés par la notion même de sublime et dans lesquels toute tentative de la représenter tombe inexorablement, je soutiendrai aussi que l’on peut tout autant concevoir Vir Heroicus Sublimis comme échouant à représenter le sublime. « The Sublime is Now » : le sublime selon Newman L’essai de Newman peut être conçu comme l’aboutissement d’une longue réflexion sur la notion de sublime et sur l’art en général. La thèse qui y est soutenue est le résultat d’idées qui animaient Newman depuis quelques années déjà. Ces dernières méritent d’être considérées si l’on veut mieux interpréter « The Sublime is Now ».

Dans le catalogue « The Ideographic Picture » de son exposition éponyme de 1947 à la Betty Parsons Gallery, Newman compare l’impulsion artistique américaine de ses contemporains et lui à celle des premiers hommes. Il affirme que les formes abstraites utilisées par l’homme primitif tendaient vers une compréhension métaphysique du monde, se distançaient de la réalité quotidienne, et véhiculaient les sentiments impressionnants [awesome

feelings] ressentis devant la terreur de l’inconnaissable [unknowable].1 Dans son article « The First Man was an Artist », publié la même année dans Tiger’s Eye, Newman compare à nouveau les impulsions artistiques primitives et celles de la culture américaine contemporaine. Il y soutient que les premières paroles de l’homme étaient adressées à l’inconnaissable et que son comportement avait ses origines dans sa nature artistique, affirmant que l’acte esthétique précède toujours l’acte social.2 Trois idées principales émergent de cette comparaison entre l’impulsion artistique de l’homme primitif et celle de Newman : (i) une prise de distance avec la réalité commune ou quotidienne; (ii) la confrontation entre les capacités rationnelles de l’homme et l’ « inconnaissable »; et (iii) l’expression des sentiments ressentis au moment d’un tel moment de conscience de soi. Les deux derniers points rejoignent sensiblement la théorie kantienne au sujet du sublime selon laquelle, face à un objet évoquant une absence de limite, l’individu ne peut qu’appréhender cette absence de limite, sans toutefois réussir à la comprendre.3 Ainsi, l’expérience sublime met en relief les limites rationnelles du spectateur, et c’est notamment ce moment de conscience de soi que Kant considère sublime. Dans « The Sublime is Now », Newman reprend et développe le premier point afin d’établir un parallèle entre les traditions artistiques européenne et américaine, tandis que les deux derniers sont traités plus directement dans la conception du sublime qu’il met de l’avant.

Dans « The Sublime is Now », Newman énonce sa conception de l’art sublime sous deux angles. Il fournit d’abord une explication négative du sublime en examinant sur quelles fondations repose la tradition artistique européenne. Newman soutient que l’art européen a échoué à atteindre le sublime parce qu’il était, d’une WINTER 2013 | 53

certaine manière, enlisé dans l’obsession de vouloir vivre dans la réalité objective et d’être construit dans l’idéal de beauté conçu par les Grecs.4 Autrement dit, ce serait parce que l’art européen n’a jamais distingué la notion de beauté de celle de sublime qu’il aurait justement échoué à représenter ce dernier.

Newman fournit ensuite une explication positive du sublime en contrastant l’art européen avec la nouvelle approche proposée par ses contemporains américains et luimême.5 Il affirme que l’art américain, libre du poids de la culture européenne, a réussi à nier que l’art ait quoi que ce soit à voir avec la notion de beauté et où elle se trouve.

Mais, comme il l’énonce lui-même, de ce déni émerge une question : comment créer un art sublime sans référant que l’on puisse appeler sublime et en refusant de vivre dans l’abstrait? À cette question, Newman répond que lui et ses contemporains créent un art à partir d’eux-mêmes, de leurs propres sentiments, en réaffirmant le désir naturel de l’homme pour l’exalté, pour sa préoccupation avec les relations absolues.6 Cette idée rejoint les thèses exposées dans « The Ideographic Picture » et dans « The First Man was an Artiste » selon laquelle l’art américain aurait renoué avec le désir primitif de l’homme d’explorer l’inconnu et de comprendre le monde. À cette intériorisation du sublime, Newman ajoute que l’art ainsi créé est « évident en lui-même », et que quiconque s’y trouve confronté peut le comprendre sans « les lunettes nostalgiques de l’histoire. »7 En résumé, Newman conçoit le sublime comme un (i) état d’être relevant des émotions ressenties en réalisant les limites de ses propres capacités rationnelles. Il considère aussi que la représentation d’un tel état de conscience de soi nécessite que l’artiste prenne une (ii) distance face aux sujets concernant la réalité objective historique ou quotidienne, et se préoccupe plutôt des relations métaphysiques que l’homme entretient avec ce qui le dépasse, avec ce qui 54 | CANVAS

déclenche justement cette conscience de soi.

Un art ainsi préoccupé s’inscrit donc dans une (iii) recherche de la transcendance en ce qu’il concerne notre relation avec l’absolu et l’universel et est, pour reprendre les termes de Newman, « évident en lui-même ». Je souhaite maintenant interpréter comment ces idées sont transmises dans Vir Heroicus Sublimis.

Vir Heroicus Sublimis vers l’atteinte du sublime Avant même de considérer les caractéristiques formelles de l’œuvre, son titre évoque déjà l’intériorisation du sublime ou son association avec l’homme et sa nature.8 Newman affirmait lui-même que les titres qu’il donnait à ses œuvres évoquaient les émotions qu’il ressentait en les peignant, et que Vir Heroicus Sublimis exprimait le fait que l’homme peut ou est sublime dans sa relation avec son sens d’être conscient.9 Le fait que l’homme ait une telle relation avec le sublime est exprimé en rattachant les mots « vir » et « sublimis ». Le qualificatif « heroicus », à mon avis, est davantage relié à ce « sens d’être conscient », à ce moment sublime pendant lequel l’homme est confronté à ce qui le dépasse. En prenant ainsi conscience des limites de ses capacités rationnelles, l’homme se sent basculer, mais il demeure « héroïque » en ne se laissant pas anéantir.10 Formellement, l’œuvre Vir Heroicus Sublimis mesure près de deux mètres et demie par près de cinq mètres et demie et est constituée de cinq bandes verticales disposées à différents endroits sur un colorfield rouge cadmium. Lors de la seconde exposition de l’artiste à la Betty Parsons Gallery en avril 1951, pendant laquelle le tableau est exposé, Newman joint une notice informant les visiteurs que, bien que l’on tende à observer les larges œuvres à partir d’une certaine distance, celles-ci

étaient plutôt conçues pour être vues de près.11 L’intention de Newman était donc d’inclure le spectateur dans l’œuvre et de lui faire vivre individuellement un moment particulier, ce qui rejoint sa préoccupation pour le soi. On peut en effet imaginer, étant donné la taille du tableau, le sentiment d’être englouti par lui en s’y tenant de près, ou encore l’effet optique déstabilisant de ne voir qu’une couleur si intense.12 Intuitivement, on peut concevoir les caractéristiques purement formelles du tableau – sa taille impressionnante et l’usage d’un ton unique en aplat, le color-field – comme pouvant représenter quelque chose de sublime. Mais si le sublime est quelque chose d’intérieur et donc d’informe, alors les caractéristiques formelles du tableau ne peuvent pas à elles seules représenter le sublime. En fait, dans une entrevue accordée à Emile de Antonio dans le cadre du documentaire Painters Painting en 1970, Newman affirmait luimême que, en fin de compte, la taille d’une œuvre n’importe pas.13 Il estimait plutôt que l’échelle humaine était ce qui importait et qu’elle n’était représentable que par le contenu de l’œuvre. C’est donc ce contenu que je souhaite maintenant aborder.

La thèse que Newman énonce dans son article repose entre autres sur une comparaison entre le contenu et l’objectif de l’art européen et ceux de l’art américain.

Rappelons que selon lui, presque tous les artistes européens, des Grecs aux modernistes, ont été préoccupés par la recherche et la nature de la beauté comme concept indifférencié du sublime.14 Quel est donc le sujet de l’art américain si, comme Newman semble le soutenir, il est fondé sur des principes complètement nouveaux, séparés des entraves de la mémoire, de l’association, de la nostalgie, de la légende, du mythe, qui ont constitué les sujets traditionnels de l’art européen occidental?15 Globalement, il s’agit, comme mentionné précédemment, d’exprimer le désir naturel

de l’homme pour l’exalté et sa préoccupation pour sa relation avec les émotions absolues,16 et de représenter l’échelle humaine, dans l’optique de créer un art évident en lui-même et de faire vivre l’expérience sublime. Dans l’œuvre de Newman, ce contenu repose sur un aspect idiosyncratique de sa démarche : l’usage de ce qu’il appelait « zip. »17 Dans Vir Heroicus Sublimis, il considérait même que c’était tout ce qui comptait.18 Le zip peut être conçu comme une analogie illustrant l’échelle humaine : tout comme le zip est défini et perçu par son opposition avec le color-field, de la même manière l’homme ne peut affirmer sa nature rationnelle qu’en opposition avec l’infini, l’inconnu et l’inconnaissable. En outre, Vir Heroicus Sublimis ne serait qu’un color-field si elle ne contenait pas de zips, tout comme l’infini, l’inconnu et l’inconnaissable prennent tout leur sens une fois opposés à l’homme et à sa nature rationnelle.19 Le zip traduit aussi l’intention de Newman, qui affirmait souhaiter que ses œuvres aient l’impact de donner au spectateur le sentiment de « sa propre totalité, de sa propre séparation [separateness], de sa propre individualité. »20 On peut relier le sentiment d’individualité à la conception du sublime comme état d’être intérieur et celui de totalité à la prise de conscience des limites de ses propres capacités rationnelles. Parallèlement, le fait que Vir Heroicus Sublimis (et, plus largement, toutes les œuvres incluant le zip) soit ainsi relié au soi et à notre nature intrinsèque émotionnelle et rationnelle, est peut-être, entre autres, ce qui fait affirmer Newman que son art est « évident en lui-même ».

Si les hommes entretiennent tous une certaine relation métaphysique avec ce qui les dépasse et si nous avons tous la capacité de ressentir le sublime dans ces moments de conscience de soi, on peut alors inscrire l’œuvre de Newman dans la recherche d’un art universel et transcendant.21 Parallèlement aux idées d’intériorisation WINTER 2013 | 55

et de transcendance, Newman semblait aussi préoccupé par la notion de temps et, plus précisément, par le « maintenant » et le « présent.»22 Dans une note écrite en 1949 intitulée « Prologue for a New Aesthetic », il déclarait insister sur la « sensation physique du temps » dans ses œuvres, plutôt que sur la notion d’espace.23 Jean-François Lyotard, constatant l’absence d’explications supplémentaires de Newman, s’interroge sur la définition que l’artiste donnait à ce temps, ce dernier ayant affirmé, dans « The Sublime is Now », ne pas être préoccupé par le temps associé à la nostalgie ou aux références historiques – les sujets dits « traditionnels » de la peinture.24 Lyotard affirme que l’inexprimable en termes de temps – ce à propos de quoi Newman était notamment préoccupé – réside dans le fait d’advenir.25 Autrement dit, la conception du tableau comme occurrence ou événement, indépendamment de l’objet lui-même, serait elle-même imprésentable. Lyotard affirme que, contrairement à la tradition selon laquelle on concevait l’inexprimable comme résidant dans un autre monde ou un autre temps, le fait qu’il y ait cette peinture plutôt que rien, que cette peinture advienne maintenant, est sublime.26 Parallèlement, dans une entrevue réalisée par Dorothy Gees Seckler, Newman confiait que, lors de sa seconde exposition à la Betty Parsons Gallery en 1951, un visiteur lui avait demandé combien de temps cela lui avait pris pour peindre Vir Heroicus Sublimis, et qu’à cette question il avait répondu que cela lui avait pris « une seconde, mais que cette seconde avait duré le temps d’une vie. »27 Bien que Lyotard associe ces considérations à l’aspect imprésentable du sublime, je considère aussi que cette préoccupation de Newman au sujet du temps peut être reliée à sa recherche de la transcendance. D’une part, il me semble que le seul fait que Newman soit préoccupé par la « sensation physique du temps » traduise sa recherche de quelque 56 | CANVAS

chose d’absolu, de quelque chose qui nous dépasse. D’autre part, le fait d’avoir peint Vir Heroicus Sublimis à la fois « en une seconde » et dans « le temps d’une vie » déforme la notion même de temps et témoigne du fait que Newman cherche à s’élever au-dessus de la réalité connaissable et à exprimer l’inconnaissable. Pour ces raisons, il me semble que sa préoccupation avec le temps inscrit en partie sa démarche dans une recherche de la transcendance.

Vir Heroicus Sublimis comme échec de la représentation du sublime Les paradoxes associés à la représentation du sublime semblent principalement issus du fait qu’il soit qualifié d’imprésentable et de transcendant. D’abord, si le sublime se réfère, comme Newman semble le concevoir, à un état d’être, n’est-il pas par le fait même imprésentable? L’état d’être conçu par Newman relève des émotions; c’est à partir d’elles que, selon lui, les artistes américains créent l’art qui leur est propre. En outre, ce sont aussi ces émotions que Newman cherche à faire vivre chez ses spectateurs, notamment en leur faisant voir ses œuvres de près. Il semble donc que l’œuvre agisse ici comme médium non seulement pour transmettre les émotions de l’artiste, mais aussi pour en créer chez le spectateur.

L’œuvre est ainsi un intermédiaire entre l’artiste et le spectateur; elle ne représente pas elle-même les émotions. Comment pourrait-elle avoir comme sujet quelque chose de fondamentalement dénué de forme?

Cette absence de forme est exprimée notamment par Kant, à laquelle il ajoute l’impression d’illimitation.28 Qu’il s’agisse d’une émotion, d’un état d’être ou d’un objet, comment représenter l’informe et l’illimité?

Ce paradoxe est rejoint par les considérations au sujet de notre nature rationnelle. Si le sublime met en relief les limites de nos

capacités rationnelles et dépasse donc notre capacité à le comprendre, comment peuton même concevoir qu’il soit possible de représenter le sublime? Autrement dit, comment représenter quelque chose qu’on ne peut toujours seulement qu’appréhender et qu’on ne peut jamais comprendre?

Enfin, si le sublime est ainsi une expérience purement subjective et qu’elle n’est vécue ni de la même manière, ni au même moment par tout le monde, on pourrait craindre que la recherche de la transcendance à travers Vir Heroicus Sublimis soit entièrement vaine. Par ailleurs, si l’on considère que la connaissance de l’intention et de la démarche artistique de Newman sont nécessaires à la compréhension globale de l’œuvre, on peut difficilement admettre qu’elle soit « évidente en elle-même », et encore moins transcendante. Il semble donc que, bien qu’on puisse énoncer une conception positive du sublime, cette notion elle-même repose sur une base paradoxale.

Si Vir Heroicus Sublimis constitue une tentative pour représenter le sublime, alors elle incarne nécessairement les paradoxes et difficultés énoncés ici et échoue donc à le représenter.29 *** Dans cet essai, j’ai proposé une interprétation de la notion de sublime telle qu’exprimée dans l’article de Barnett Newman « The Sublime is Now » : un état d’être intérieur issu des émotions ressenties lors d’un moment de conscience de soi, pendant lequel on réalise les limites de nos capacités rationnelles.30 Un tel état d’être, relevant de nos relations métaphysiques avec ce qui nous dépasse, l’inconnu et l’inconnaissable, nécessite une prise de distance face à la réalité objective historique ou quotidienne (ce qui inclut notamment la préoccupation pour la notion de beauté en général). On peut concevoir une œuvre cherchant à représenter une telle conception du sublime comme s’inscrivant dans une

recherche de la transcendance en ce qu’elle relève de l’absolu et de l’universel et de notre relation avec ces derniers. J’ai soutenu que l’œuvre Vir Heroicus Sublimis s’inscrit dans cette perspective en ce qu’elle cherche à (i) produire l’état d’être décrit plus haut chez son spectateur (ce qui est notamment apparent dans le titre et l’intention de Newman), qu’elle tente (ii) d’illustrer l’échelle humaine et notre relation avec l’absolu (à travers le contraste entre le zip et le color-field), et qu’elle s’inscrit ainsi dans une (iii) recherche de la transcendance (notamment à travers une préoccupation pour le temps et le fait que Newman considère l’œuvre comme « évidente en elle-même »). Cela dit, j’ai aussi soutenu que Vir Heroicus Sublimis s’inscrit tout autant dans la lignée des échecs à représenter le sublime en ce qu’elle incarne les paradoxes inhérents à une conception du sublime qualifié (i) d’imprésentable et de (ii) transcendant.

Vincent Marquis is a U3 Art History and Philosophy major.

NOTES 1. Barnett Newman, Barnett Newman, Selected Writings and Interviews, éd.

John P. O’Neill (New York: Knopf, 1990), 108 (ensuite cité SWI). Ici, il est intéressant de constater que Newman parle explicitement du sentiment de terreur devant l’inconnaissable, ce qui reprend les termes exprimés notamment par Kant (Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, éd. Nicholas Walker (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 90-91) et Burke (Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, éd. John Boulton (Londres : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), 136) au sujet du sublime.

2. Ibid., 158-159.

3. Kant, Critique of Judgement, 88-89.

WINTER 2013 | 57

4. Newman, SWI, 173.

5. Ce contraste entre les arts européen et américain est exprimé de façon similaire dans « The Object and the Image », un court texte écrit en mars 1948 et publié dans le troisième numéro de Tiger’s Eye. Newman y compare l’artiste américain à un barbare, affirmant que, libre de cette nostalgie des Européens envers la beauté et la tragédie grecques, l’artiste américain a l’opportunité d’approcher les « sources de l’émotion tragique » (Newman, SWI, 170).

6. Newman, SWI, 173.

7. Newman, SWI, 173.

8. Vir Heroicus Sublimis est généralement traduit du latin au français sous la forme Homme, Héroïque et Sublime.

9. Newman, SWI, 258.

10. Cet aspect rejoint l’impression d’engloutissement ou de terreur souvent associée au sublime; voir note 1. Il serait intéressant de développer l’interprétation du qualificatif « heroicus » en termes de genre et d’établir si un tel titre s’oppose ou peut être interprété en fonction du sublime dit « féminin », qui rejette l’idée d’ « affronter » ou de « combattre » le sublime et propose une attitude plus passive.

11. Newman, SWI, 178.

12. Lors de cette exposition, Vir Heroicus Sublimis était installée sur un mur particulier juste un peu plus grand que l’œuvre elle-même. On peut imaginer que ce positionnement ait créé une illusion d’optique rendant le tableau encore plus impressionnant. C’est un effet similaire qui est transmis à travers Voice of Fire (1967) (ill. 2), une autre toile de Newman, mesurant 5,4 mètres par 2,4 mètres. Le tableau est profondément déstabilisant, non seulement par sa taille, mais aussi par l’effet optique intense créé en contrastant deux bandes 58 | CANVAS

bleues avec une bande centrale rouge.

13. Newman, SWI, 307.

14. Dans son essai, Newman semble toutefois traiter la peinture baroque, l’architecture gothique et les œuvres de Michel-Ange comme des exceptions, considérant qu’elles étaient toutes préoccupées davantage par le sublime.

Pour une brève discussion sur la validité de telles exceptions et une remise en question de l’exclusion de l’art romantique dans le domaine de l’art sublime, voir Paul Crowther, « Barnett Newman and the Sublime », Oxford Art Journal 7, no.2 (1984), 54.

15. Newman, SWI, 173.

16. Ibid.

17. Dans Onement 1 (ill. 3), une huile sur toile peinte en 1948 et souvent considérée comme la première œuvre « mature » de l’artiste, Newman fait usage de ce zip pour la première fois. Pour une étude intéressante et très détaillée de deux autres œuvres contenant aussi le zip (Abraham, 1949; Galaxy, 1949), voir Yve-Alain Bois, « On Two Paintings by Barnett Newman », October 108 (Printemps 2004), pp.3-34.

18. Thomas B. Hess, Barnett Newman (New York : The Museum of Modern Art, 1971), 71.

19. Cette conception du zip comme personnification de l’homme est illustrée dans un cliché pris par le photographe allemand Hans Namuth en 1951 à la Betty Parsons Gallery (ill. 4). L’image montre le tableau Vir Heroicus Sublimis devant lequel la silhouette de Newman est placée à deux reprises devant les deux zips centraux de l’œuvre.

20. Newman, SWI, 257-258.

21. La notion de transcendance dans le sublime en termes de soi et de nature peut être comparée avec une discussion en termes d’image à proprement parler;

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

cf. David J. Glaser, « Transcendence in the Vision of Barnett Newman », The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40, no.4 (Été 1982), 416. Glaser conçoit la transcendance dans l’œuvre de Newman différemment en l’inscrivant dans une perspective phénoménologique. De cette manière, l’œuvre d’art est conçue comme objet se référant plus largement au domaine de la conceptualisation.

Autrement dit, l’œuvre d’art peut dépasser le statut d’exemple ou d’instance d’un concept pour devenir le concept lui-même. Glaser affirme que « la perception est ainsi conçue comme la base de la constitution de la conscience conceptuelle ». Inscrire l’œuvre de Newman dans cette perspective amène un regard différent sur sa recherche de la transcendance par l’art.

Cette préoccupation est notamment exprimée dans le titre « The Sublime is Now » et par celui qu’il donna à deux de ses œuvres, Now I (1965) et Now II (1967).

Newman, SWI, 175.

Ibid., 173.

Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman, Reflections on Time (Cambridge : Polity Press), 93.

Ibid.

Newman, SWI, 248.

Kant, Critique of Judgement, 75.

On peut aussi considérer cet échec dans une perspective indirectement liée au paradoxe de « représenter l’imprésentable »; cf. Crowther, « Barnett Newman and the Sublime », 57. La critique de Crowther concerne davantage la démarche de Newman que l’œuvre elle-même. Il estime qu’en employant la formule color-field/ zip aussi largement dans son œuvre, Newman réduit l’expression du sublime à une simple formule. Il affirme que la démarche de Newman est réductrice

parce qu’elle entrave l’expérience complète du sublime. La perspective amenée par Crowther est intéressante en ce qu’elle évalue la possibilité d’atteindre le sublime non pas en termes de représentation picturale, mais plutôt en termes de démarche artistique.

30. Pour inscrire cette recherche d’une altération des états d’être dans une perspective plus large et pour contraster la démarche de Newman avec celle d’autres artistes, cf. Simon Morley, « Altered States », dans The Sublime, éd.

Simon Morley (Cambridge : The MIT Press, 2010), 210-223.

REFERENCES Bois, Yve-Alain. « On Two Paintings by Barnett Newman. » October 108 (Spring 2004) : 3-34.

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. Édité par John Boulton.

Londres : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958.

Crowther, Paul. « Barnett Newman and The Sublime. » Oxford Art Journal 7, no.2 (1984) : 52-59.

Glaser, David J. « Transcendence in the Vision of Barnett Newman. » The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40, no.4 (Summer 1982) : 415-420.

Hess, Thomas B. Barnett Newman. New York : The Museum of Modern Art, 1971.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Édité par Nicholas Walker. New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Lyotard, Jean-François. The Inhuman, Reflections on Time. Cambridge : Polity Press, 1991.

Morley, Simon. The Sublime. Édité par Simon Morley. Cambridge : The MIT Press, 2010.

Newman, Barnett. Barnett Newman, Selected Writings and Interviews. Édité par John P. O’Neill. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.

WINTER 2013 | 59

Ill. 1 Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimis, 1950-51.

Oil on canvas. 242.2 x 541.7 cm.

Ill 2.

Barnett Newman, Voice of Fire, 1967.

Acrylic on canvas. 543.6 x 243.8 cm.

Ill. 4 Barnett Newman embedded in Vir Heroicus Sublimis, at the Betty Parsons Gallery, 1951.

Photograph by Hans Namuth.

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Ill. 3 Barnett Newman, Onement 1, 1948.

Oil on canvas and oil on masking tape on canvas. 69.2 x 41.2 cm.

From Jim Crow to Flava Flav: Manifestations of the Minstrel

Daisy Charles

T

he resonance of blackface minstrelsy in contemporary society is a perplexing phenomenon, given that it is such a shameful aspect of American cultural history. Nevertheless, its influence is widely discernible; whether explicitly in the music and dance moves of contemporary musicians, in the formal structure of standup comedy, or even the appropriation of the blackface mask itself. A particular genre in which minstrelsy lives on is reality television, generally understood to be a damaging form of popular culture and immediately comparable to its predecessor for this reason. Both blackface minstrelsy and reality television have more complex histories than one might expect, having begun as positive cultural forms used to raise awareness of racial prejudice and attempt to suggest a solution. After these progressive beginnings, both underwent a similar shift: developing from an articulation of racial issues that activated the spectator, into sensational presentations of race that encouraged the spectator to adopt a more passive and racist mode of viewing. To illustrate this shift I will examine the history of Jim Crow, the first blackface minstrel, in comparison with two reality television shows: The Real World, the first of its kind, and Flavor or Love, a more recent and problematic example.

Furthermore, I will demonstrate white America’s consistent preference for a passive mode of spectatorship when receiving representations of race, that this preference lies in the relative ease of adopting a racist stance in comparison to one that criticises race, and that it is promoted and perpetuated by the producers of contemporary culture due to their associated financial gain.

T. D. Rice, the legendary originator of blackface minstrelsy, first donned the black mask to perform a song about Jim Crow in May 1830.1 For Rice and his contemporary audience, Crow was a roguish figure that evoked the “mutual resentment at exclusion” 62 | CANVAS

felt by the black and white working class towards the oppressive leaders of society.2 Rice “jumped Jim Crow” up and down the East Coast over the next ten years to mixedrace audiences, joined by black, white and “yellow” performers who mocked their middle-class bosses behind the safety of the black mask.3 This mask was chosen due to a white attraction to former slaves and “the way they moved in the world,” seeing in their way of life clues as how to live in a hostile society not set up for a working class of any race.4 Blacks also embodied the careless, preindustrial and erotic style of life that white workers were forced to abandon due to their capitalist-induced poverty, demonstrating the combination of solidarity and escapism that these early performances evoked and that remains relevant in reality television today. By choosing the black mask as a means to evoke socioeconomic dissatisfaction, the white performers of early minstrelsy indicated awareness that blacks were the most oppressed members of society. Rice’s early performances explicitly expressed desire for the freedom, integration, and equality for black slaves, and thus Jim Crow entered the American consciousness as the “very opposite of the segregation he came to signify.”5 It took only fifteen years for popular understanding of Jim Crow and blackface minstrelsy to evolve into the performance of racist fantasies that we remember today.6 The huge popularity of the minstrel shows put on by Rice and his peers in working class dives was picked up by more sophisticated cultural producers, who manipulated the format of the minstrel show to illustrate a new, and contradictory message. The reasons for this are many, and intertwined. It became clear that a working class expression of commonality between the races was a danger to the social, political and economic dominance of the white middle class, and that a racial divide maintained through

the institution of racism would be more beneficial for the hegemonic minority. In addition, these richer and whiter audiences who began to frequent blackface minstrel shows in more high-class venues in the 1840s would, understandably, have been less than amused by a mockery of themselves and a criticism of their oppressive tendencies.

And so, the blackface mask remained and white men continued to “jump Jim Crow,” but to illustrate an increasingly cruel and racist narrative that depicted blacks as stupid, animalistic, and aggressively sexual.7 The representation of blackness through the use of blackface was consistent, but the mode of spectatorship of the minstrel show shifted. In 1830, the audience was activated to consider the injustices of racism and perhaps change their own actions accordingly. For the rest of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, this wider and whiter audience was encouraged to passively observe, and consume racism as natural and amusing.

The new signification attributed to the blackface minstrel did not remain contained within its more sophisticated manifestations, but trickled back into the low-class venues where it originated, to transform minstrelsy into an overwhelmingly racist symbol of white supremacy. It is here that the new purpose of the minstrel show developed, that of the construction of racial boundaries with the intention of their perpetuation.8 David Roediger suggests the simultaneous formation of the white working class and the concept of whiteness: white identity was fashioned according to a black/white binary, and being “not black” was “a sort of… psychological wage” for the impoverished white worker.9 Blackface minstrelsy and its reiteration of racial stereotypes paid this psychological wage, and the pleasure derived from it was obtained through one’s sense of comparative physical and intellectual superiority. It is this type of viewership

experienced in watching minstrelsy that I see as comparable to contemporary reality television. When watching the foolish escapades of willing participants in their shameless pursuit of fame, manipulated by editors and producers, we feel the same sense of physical and intellectual superiority.

We receive a psychological wage because we are thankful that we have not been driven to put ourselves in this position of ridicule, and we perceive this to be due to our being more sensible and intelligent.

The luxurious, all-inclusive sets upon which many reality television shows take place, where participants are provided with food and alcohol and are required to engage in little or no physical activity, also evoke the careless, preindustrial and erotic lifestyle that minstrelsy performances often suggested blacks to enjoy.

The editorial manipulation and ridicule of the participant, that is so similar to the treatment of the black subject by later minstrelsy, is not how reality television began. The Real World, generally understood to be the first reality television show, premiered in May 1992 and explored the issue of racial prejudice with “something resembling care.”10 The show was produced by the self-proclaimed “hip liberal” channel MTV, which had undergone criticism during the 1980s for refusing to show black music videos.11 Along with the creation of black music programs like MTV Raps, the airing of politically controversial music videos, such as those by Public Enemy, and supporting a Free James Brown campaign when the singer was jailed on drug charges, The Real World was part of MTV’s campaign to counter earlier racist implications.12 Inspired by the 1973 documentary series An American Family, the show aimed at depicting issues of controversy that affected young adults, the channel’s core audience.

Issues such as prejudice, sexuality, AIDS and substance abuse were explored through WINTER 2013 | 63

a diverse cast.13 The show brought seven strangers together to live in a luxurious New York City loft for thirteen weeks, free to continue their lives as desired while under the scrutiny of MTV’s cameras. Right from the start it was clear that a major focus of The Real World was race, articulated through the two African American members of the cast, Heather and Kevin, and their interactions with the other five.

“Why do you have a beeper? Do you sell drugs?” the nineteen-year-old white southerner Julie asked Heather, in the first few minutes of the premiere of the first season. In case the audience had neglected to see racial prejudice imbedded in this comment, the camera pans to freeze on Julie’s face while dramatic music plays, ‘The Real World’ logo is emblazoned across the screen, and an advertisement break introduced to give the audience time to consider what has just happened. After the break, members of the cast discuss Julie’s statement and Kevin hopes that racial prejudice will not be an issue over the next thirteen weeks, and particularly that there will not be ‘a series of comments like “Kevin do you play basketball?”’14 Later in the same episode Julie, Heather and Kevin go out to dinner and discuss racism in American society. The scene begins with Kevin’s statement “racism is alive and well,” and when Julie retorts that he is “bitter towards white people’” he says he has “a right to be very angry” because “a large part of my history was denied from me.”15 The discussion ends with a shot of Julie alone, confessing her fear that she is going to be “the big screw-up of the lot.”16 In the first episode alone, The Real World articulates racism as a contemporary issue, discusses how and why racism takes place, and attempts to resolve the problem on a micro level through the relationships of individual Americans. Julie’s fear that she will be the ‘big screw-up’ highlights that it would be her naturalized racism, rather 64 | CANVAS

than Heather and Kevin’s blackness, that would make her the ridiculed cast member.

The white spectator is forced to agree that ‘racism is alive and well’ through a blatant display of prejudice, and is activated to critique contemporary society and perhaps even question their own behaviour.

Jon Kraszewski argues that The Real World mediates race through discursive tensions between liberal and conservative politics, suggesting racism is a phenomenon located in rural conservative America.17 This idea is supported by Julie, who is from Alabama, and can also be applied to early minstrelsy, where the critique of white supremacy was also a critique of conservative politics. One could suggest that the cultural forms of blackface minstrelsy and reality television both owe their downfall to their adoption by a conservative cause. Although there may be some truth in this, I would argue that it was more importantly their adoption by a capitalist cause that needed a passive mode of spectatorship in order to attract more viewers. For reality television and The Real World in particular, it took less than a decade for the cultural medium’s articulation and attempted resolution of racial issues to develop into a sensationalisation of race itself. The show’s popularity demonstrated that controversy attracted viewers, but controversy that produced a critique and could potentially offend was seen as less palpable to the average viewer than if it was used to simply create drama and shock value. The Real World continues to present contemporary issues through a diverse cast, but no attempt is made to resolve them. As with later blackface minstrelsy, these issues are presented as amusing and natural rather than problematic.

Despite the pursuit by reality television’s producers for an ever-more outrageous formula through which to entice their viewers, which African Americans were believed to enhance, this group remains

proportionately unrepresented in this particular genre, as in western film and television as a whole.18 One exception to this rule is Flavor of Love, produced by VH1 and first aired in 2006, in which the largely black cast appears to deviate from the norm of marginalizing or typecasting black participants. This is, in fact, not the case, as Flavor of Love enthusiastically and shamelessly revives negative racial stereotypes, ironically hidden behind the modern black mask of the black subject.

Like The Real World, Flavor of Love immediately articulates itself as a show about race. In the opening scene of the series’ premiere, the show’s star, Flavor Flav, screams out of a limousine window “I am the Black-chelorrrrrrrrr…”19 in reference to The Bachelor, the largely white-cast show upon which Flavor of Love is based. Like its predecessor, the show resolves around a lonely bachelor who is hoping to find love. Twenty girls volunteer to live in Flav’s mansion and perform various demeaning tasks that will help him assess their suitability.

These tasks are designed to produce as much degrading footage as possible, which allows the show’s editors to portray the girls as “promiscuous, vulgar train-wrecks” and the heirs to minstrelsy’s infamy.20 Their minstrel ancestry is explicitly indicated through the nicknames they are given in the first episode of each season: epithets such as ‘Smiley,’ ‘Hottie,’ and ‘Dimplez’ denote a physical characteristic that Flav found notable, and their use evokes the historic denial of the black subject’s identity by the institution of slavery.

In his influential essay on blackface minstrelsy as a manifestation of the American unconscious, Eric Lott describes minstrel characters as “trash bin projections of white fantasy, vague fleshy signifiers that allowed whites to indulge at a distance all that they found repulsive and fearsome.”21 This description also defines the white

spectator’s attraction to Flavor of Love, where the ‘flavorettes’ are depicted as violent, uncivilised and hypersexual through editing, a depiction greatly aided by the producer’s casting of porn stars, glamour models and even a hypnotist. Tasks to be performed tend to channel the girls towards two particular minstrelsy stereotypes, the mammy, a black woman who serves white people, and the siren, a hypersexual black female. The former is suggested when the flavorettes visit an old people’s home and one girl is asked by the film crew to take out an elderly woman’s dentures; when they are asked to host and then clean up after a child’s birthday party; and when they compete to cook the best fried chicken. The siren stereotype perpetuates through the series as a whole, aided by the girls’ general state of undress, competitions such as ‘booty-shaking,’ and the frequent performance of sexual favours upon Flav’s request. Lott’s observation of minstrelsy, that “the whole scene has the air of a collective masturbation fantasy… [dependant on] the suggestion of black male misdemeanour,” can also be applied here.22 Flavor Flav himself is a new millennium minstrel. Like Jim Crow, when he first entered American consciousness he was an emblem for freedom, integration, and unity through his membership in the socially conscious rap group Public Enemy, which criticised systematic racism and white supremacy. Now, again like Crow, Flav has become a tool for the perpetuation of stereotypes and the ridiculing of the black subject. In answer to the widely voiced criticism of Flavor of Love, its producer Mark Cronin said that the show was not demeaning because Flav “just behaves the way he wants to behave.”23 Jennifer Pozner points out that this is no excuse, as this particular man was chosen by VH1 because they knew he would “reliably act the fool.”24 And reliable he is: Flav wears a viking helmet in all his personal studio shots WINTER 2013 | 65

and an oversized clock around his neck to top off an outrageous clown-like outfit at all other times. In the opening scene of the premiere he wears a bright pink suit, a top hat, and layers of bling; each element merits its own close up, including the white gloves that explicitly evoke his minstrel ancestry.25 The cinematic and narrative presentation of Flav and his flavorettes suggest they are objects to be consumed rather than real people; they are characters that we passively observe, formed through the creative editing of the show’s producers.

Like the characters of blackface minstrelsy, they are stereotypes that are so recognisable and frequently perpetuated that the white American audience enjoys them without fully knowing why. Even if we recognise them as stereotypes, they still serve to pay our psychological wage, appeasing our personal dissatisfactions by reminding us of our own comparative superiority.

Both blackface minstrelsy and reality television claim to represent the ‘real’ but actually present a highly mediated and exaggerated version of reality. In their earlier manifestations, this claim was more justifiable, and the ‘reality’ represented was that of racial prejudice and oppression.

White audiences of both cultural forms found this critical content impalpable, and the producers of minstrel shows and reality television administered a shift from racially aware to explicitly racist content.

This shift allowed the spectator to assume a passive mode of spectatorship that did not threaten to offend his or her lifestyle, instead confirming it as superior, and racism as amusing and natural. The consistent use of racist tropes in such a similar way despite the one hundred and fifty year time gap is disturbing, as is the immense popularity of shows like Flavor of Love and its generation of numerous spin-off shows such as I Love Money and From G’s to Gents that function on an equally racist structure. The benefits 66 | CANVAS

for the white institutions that produce them are huge, as reality television is extremely economically viable in comparison to its dramatic precursor, the soap opera. The increased financial gain for the producers of the later forms of both reality television and blackface minstrelsy partly explains their persistence and associated popularity in American society. I believe, however, that it is the relative pleasure of adopting a passive attitude towards racial identity politics that is most to blame, given white America’s tendency to ignore the issue of racial discrimination as a whole.

Daisy Charles is a U3 Art History major with a minor in French Language and Literature.

NOTES 1. W. T. Lhamon, “Turning Around Jim Crow,” in Burnt Cork: Traditions and Legacies of Blackface Minstrelsy, ed. Stephen Johnson (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 20.

2. Lhamon, “Turning Around Jim Crow,” 27.

3. W. T. Lhamon, Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 187.

4. Timothy Lensmire, “How I Became White While Punching de Tar Baby” Curriculum Inquiry 38 (2008): 312.

5. Lhamon, “Turning Around Jim Crow,” 26.

6. Lhamon, “Turning Around Jim Crow,” 39.

7. Dale Cockrell, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and their World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 169.

8. Eric Lott, “Love and Theft: The Racial Unconscious of Blackface Minstrelsy,” Representations 39 (1992): 23.

9. David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991), 32.

10. Jennifer L Pozner, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV (Berkley, CA: Seal Press, 2010), 12.

11. Jon Kraszewski, “Country Hicks and Urban Cliques: Mediating Race, Reality and Liberalism on MTV’s The Real World,” in Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, eds. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette, (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 183-4.

12. Kraszewski, “Country Hicks and urban Cliques,” 183.

13. Pozner, Reality Bites Back, 12.

14. The Real World: New York, “This is the True Story…”, The Real World: New York television episode, May 21 1992.

MTV, USA. 15. “This is the True Story…”, The Real World: New York, May 21 1992.

16. “This is the True Story…”, The Real World: New York, May 21 1992 17. Kraszewski, “Country Hicks and Urban Cliques,” 184.

18. Pozner, Reality Bites Back, 162.

19. Flavor of Love, “Fifteen Beds and a Bucket of Puke,” Flavor of Love: Season 1, January 1, 2006. VH1, USA. 20. Pozner, Reality Bites Back, 180.

21. Lott, “The Racial Unconscious of Blackface Minstrelsy,” 36.

22. Ibid, 27.

23. Pozner, Reality Bites Back, 184.

24. Ibid, 185.

25. Minstrels often wore white gloves as a part of their extravagant and garish outfits.

REFERENCES Cockrell, Dale. Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and their World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Kraszewski, Jon. “Country Hicks and Urban Cliques: Mediating Race, Reality and Liberalism on MTV’s The Real World.”

In Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, eds. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette, 179-197. New York: New York University Press, 2004.

Lensmire, Timothy. “How I Became White While Punching de Tar Baby.” In Curriculum Inquiry 38 (2008): 299322.

Lhamon, W. T. Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Lhamon, W. T. “Turning Around Jim Crow.”

In Burnt Cork: Traditions and Legacies of Blackface Minstrelsy, ed. Stephen Johnson, 18-51. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010.

Lott, Eric. “Love and Theft: The Racial Unconscious of Blackface Minstrelsy.”

Representations 39 (1992): 23-50.

Pozner, Jennifer L. Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV. Berkley, CA: Seal Press, 2010.

Roediger, David. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London: Verso, 1991.

WINTER 2013 | 67

Kristen Stewart and the Sexualized Discourse of Celebrity Production Culture Jenny Knoll

K

risten Stewart is a massive figure in today’s celebrity tabloid culture, and her fame revolves around neither her talents as an actress nor even, for the most part, her glamorous lifestyle and relationships. After her leading role in the first Twilight movie, released November 18, 2008, Stewart experienced an onslaught of attention from fans and the media, to which she responded negatively. By February 2009, the surprise and discomfort she expressed toward her newfound celebrity had become the basis of her star image and a major contributor to the public discourse on the appropriate way to perceive and receive fame.

I will argue that the scandal that arose from Stewart’s rejection of stardom stems from a cultural understanding of femininity that emphasizes receptiveness and submission, and that this perception is deeply connected to the economic imperatives of Western consumer culture.

The fervour with which fans debate Kristen Stewart’s unwillingness to take on her celebrity indicates that understandings of fame and success have an important place in contemporary cultural values. According to Stephen Hinerman: If we take as our starting place that the media scandal is a narrative of disruption, where a particular set of acts is seen to violate the moral boundaries of a culture, then stars, with their uniquely telling cultural signifiers, are likely candidates for morality tales. Such tales tell us about a culture’s moral constraints and its moral values.1

Hinerman stresses that tabloid media is especially important in enacting this public negotiation of moral codes. Comments by anonymous writers on online tabloids and celebrity blogs tend to be especially vicious in their condemnation of acts construed as moral discrepancies, and these will form the bulk of my analysis. I will follow Hinerman’s

framework of moving from theoretical analysis of the star image into a case study of the media scandal, analyzing coverage of the event to glean information about the cultural significance of the scandal narrative.

Stewart as a Transgressive Female: Setting the Stage for Scandal Richard Dyer understands systems of circulating images and discourses that make up a “star image” as derived from social types.

A social type is “a shared, recognisable, easilygrasped image of how people are in society (with collective approval or disapproval built into it).”2 Early on in the trajectory of her stardom, the tabloid media cast Kristen Stewart as what Dyer refers to as an “anomic type,” or one that expresses discontent with dominant values.3 Prior to Twilight’s release in November 2008, and in the ensuing months, media coverage of Stewart largely focused on her acting experience and her role opposite the coveted Robert Pattinson.4 Stewart’s first appearance on celebrity gossip website perezhilton.com on Feburary 24, 2009 marks the initiation of a media discourse that stresses her discomfort in the spotlight as a moral transgression. Under the headline “Twilight Twat Star Kristen Stewart is a Whiner,” Hilton criticizes her comments in Nylon magazine.5 In contrast to the Nylon interview, which frames her statements as astute commentary on the trials of fame and image performance in the face of the “deafening” paparazzi,6 Hilton prefaces her comments with “complains” or “unknowingly admits.”7 He employs the expressly negative and sexualized metaphors “douchey” and “twat” to polarize understandings of Stewart as a transgressive female type, which have persisted in media representations of her until the present.

On the surface it seems unusual that, amongst celebrity scandals of adultery and drug abuse, an actress’ discontent with WINTER 2013 | 69

her fame could arouse moral outrage. This may be explained in part by the fact that Stewart’s anomic persona is understood as a failed performance of the female celebrity’s economic function as an “idol of consumption.” Dyer cites Leo Lowenthal in arguing that Western society has undergone a shift from idolizing heroes of production (people who contribute productively to a society) to those of consumption. He says, “The idols express in ideological form the economic imperatives of society,” which, in a capitalist economic system, include the creation of a lavish consumer culture to absorb products created in excess of market demand.8 Stewart however, has remarked that she “could live, like, a really modest existence.”9 She also admits to a simple fashion sense and says, “I’m not the type of person who has a million things in my closet to put together.”10 This type of commentary is seen as especially transgressive in light of the female role in conspicuous consumption.

Dyer explains: “Women are crucial in this process – a man may have to work but his wife must not. It is she who carries in her consumption patterns the signs of his wealth.”11 As the whistleblowers of moral indiscretions, tabloids have been quick to criticize Stewart’s inadequacy in this respect. A common criticism can be found in the blog post “Kristen Stewart Hates Being Famous”: “Her days are filled with excruciating agony as she jets between exotic locales with her piles of cash while periodically making out with Robert Pattinson to the jealousy of millions of delusional women. […] Kristen Stewart?? The slouching, mumble-mouthed bore from Twilight?

Gimme a break! Take the money and run, you worthless cum rag!”12

This excerpt demonstrates how the refusal of a “star” lifestyle positions Stewarts as a transgressive female, and how the suggested 70 | CANVAS

resolution to this is framed in traditional notions of femininity – if she improved her posture, stopped speaking out and contented herself with a desirable boyfriend and “piles of cash,” perhaps she would gain some worth.

The cultural significance of this exchange thus emerges as a moral conversation about what it is to be a socially acceptable woman.

The fact that Stewart has been decidedly labeled otherwise opens the floodgates for commentary on her femininity. These range from allegations of homosexuality (“Were she not gay, she’d have Patz’s dick in her mouth and she wouldn’t be able to spout off like this!”13) to doubts about her cooking skills (in a post about a co-star’s compliments on her tortilla soup, Hilton comments “Never pictured Kristen being a huge fan of domesticity.”14 Additionally, she is frequently compared to other young actresses who are seen to be more “welladjusted” than she is, such as Twilight costar Dakota Fanning.15 An article in the Los Angeles Times rates her (in light of her role in Universal Studios’ Snow White and the Huntsman) against another actress playing the same role in Relativity Media’s version.

“Kristen Stewart vs. Lily Collins: Who’s the fairest of them all?” evaluates the actresses in seven categories, including Tonsoriality (hair styling), Pedigree, and Attractiveness.

Collins “wins” in all the femininity-related categories and serves as a role model for the “unprincessy” Stewart: “Stewart doesn’t do smiling well. Collins, on the other hand, is a beaming presence who practically gushed to HitFix when she got the role.”

“Stewart’s [hair] can be lustrous, as in the photo above, but it can also be gothy, stringy, unprincessy. Plus she’s always tugging at it. […] Collins’ is long, flowing, Rapunzel-like.”16

This type of commentary serves to reinforce cultural understandings of proper femininity along lines of heterosexuality, domesticity, and, above all, looks, while simultaneously alienating Stewart from these classifications.

Publicity Scandal: The “Rape” Comment

By June 2010 Kristen Stewart’s star image had solidified as an anomic type, transgressive to some but still adored by others. In her academic article “From Bad Girl to Mad Girl,” Emma Bell identifies a trend in the conflicting representations of female celebrities in which autobiographies showcase the “real” person, usually as “a woman with agency and self control, who is psychologically self-actualized and likeable,” while the “celebrity persona remains the product of an ongoing and vicious battle with the […] tabloid and gossip media.”17 There is a similar divide in Stewart’s media coverage, as magazine interviews portray her as independent and self-aware, while tabloid blogs twist her comments such that she comes off as a whiny, untalented “twat” who is ungrateful for the opportunities she has been given. This dynamic became particularly apparent when Stewart was featured on the cover of the July 2010 issue of ElleUK, in which she said: “What you don’t see are the cameras shoved in my face and the bizarre intrusive questions being asked, or the people falling over themselves, screaming and taunting to get a reaction. The photos are so... I feel like I’m looking at someone being raped. A lot of the time I can’t handle it. It’s f**ed. I never expected that this would be my life.”18

Within days the tabloid press turned the interview into a major scandal, frequently using provocative headlines that rephrase the comment entirely, such as “Kristen

Stewart: Being famous is just like rape.”19 Accounts generally de-contextualize the comment and one even includes upskirt photographs of Stewart tripping.20 After prompting from a media outlet (it is unclear which in the vague copy-andpasted reports), rape support groups made statements condemning Stewart’s wording: “Kristen Stewart’s comments are regrettable. Portraying a rape survivor in the film ‘Speak’ should have led her to use a more appropriate metaphor to describe the intrusive nature of the paparazzi.

Rape is more than an intrusion, it’s a violent crime, that causes serious long term mental health effects for victims.”

– Katherine Hull, spokesperson for RAINN. “Rape is a violation in which one has no choice. A star seeking publicity has choices […] Although rape involves loss of privacy, loss of privacy does not constitute rape. Let’s use a little logical thinking here.”

– Margaret Lazarus, Executive Director of Rapels.org 21

Interestingly, the rape sentence was not included in the interview excerpts available on ElleUK’s website at the time, and it has since been removed completely.22 An accompanying video to its web page features interviews in which Stewart praises the magazine for giving her say in the photoshoot and not subjecting her to uncomfortable clothes or poses.23 While tabloids set out to sensationalize the story by arousing moral outrage, the older, higherclass target audiences of fashion magazines are perhaps more compelled by promotion of Stewart as a well-spoken female with agency and talent.

The tabloid media’s predatory attention WINTER 2013 | 71

to the interview, however, illuminates a disturbing dynamic in the way that the comments of a young woman describing a traumatic experience are twisted against her.

Having played a rape victim in the film Speak and as a contributor to halfway houses and women’s charities, Stewart is someone who should certainly understands the gravity of the metaphor. Yet, instead of focusing on the unsettling nature of the comments – Stewart said that looking at pictures taken of herself without her consent, in which she looks defensive and uncomfortable, make her feel like she is looking at somebody being raped – these bloggers and journalists focus on the hyperbole of her wording.

The proposed moral resolution is the use of the term “violated” instead, though it denotes a similar intrusion. This shows a displacement of interest from the starlet’s actual experience to the appropriate ways of speaking in public forums.

While Hinerman defines scandal as a moral discrepancy between a private action and the celebrity’s public image system,24 Stewart’s scandal exists entirely in the public realm. Though the comment was consistent with her “type,” this type was seen as transgressive in the first place. A response towards Robert Pattinson’s comment blaming the scandal on the hateful discourse employed by Internet journalists who “have no responsibility to anyone,” is illustrative of this: “Hmm; we suppose that Rob gets points for gallantry for sticking by his lady, but as long as he’s talking accountability, doesn’t he think that the primary responsibility resides with K-Stew for making the comparison in the first place?”25

The blogger understands the scandal only in terms of a publicity blip, and not as a broader issue concerning the nature of celebrity media production and the lengths 72 | CANVAS

paparazzi will go to supply it. As a result, the scandal was largely seen to have been resolved when Stewart issued an apology for her choice of words, stating that “’Violated’ definitely would have been a better way of expressing the thought.” She also said “People thinking that I’m insensitive about this subject rips my guts out. I made a big mistake.”26 The fact that tabloids were content with this apology, and that none acknowledged her use of a second violent hyperbole, demonstrates sensitivity around the idea of rape that belies more than the desire to protect its victims from insensitive statements. In a society undergoing a sometimes-radical misogynist backlash to feminist movements gender roles remain in a state of negotiation, placing gendered violence in a more contentious realm than other forms of violence.

The Sexualized Language of the Celebrity Production Culture Dyer’s assertion that women are crucial to conspicuous consumption because they do not participate in labour, takes on additional meanings in feminist psychoanalytic theory.

In exploring how “tabloids and online gossip sites participate in and perpetuate a gendered notion of meritless fame,” Margaret Schwartz argues that the public image of the vagina (an organ traditionally understood as lacking in relation to the phallus) “works to underline the vacuity, artificiality, and nihilism of modern mediated celebrity.”27 Though not so visually as the quintessential “crotch shot” Schwartz describes, this phenomenon manifests in discourses about Kristen Stewart when Hilton calls her “Stewie Puss”28 and “Twilight Twat.”29 Schwartz also points out, via David Samuels, that the language of paparazzi production culture is highly sexualized:

“Working with the paparazzi to create memorable shots is called “giving it up.” A sexualized metaphor that neatly captures the masculine-feminine romantic dynamic of need and reluctance that characterizes the relationship between celebrity photographers and their subjects.”30

Thus the rhetoric of celebrity production culture emerges as a sexualized discourse in which the female celebrity, as a receptacle of fame and attention, is understood metaphorically as a female body receiving the phallus. Within this discourse, is there room for pleasure or consent?

Schwartz notes that as women’s bodies and subjectivities are defined in relation to the phallus, they become “strangers to their own pleasure and ventriloquists of a discourse that is now their own.”31 The only pleasure that a celebrity can derive, in the words of Jackie Stacey, is “that of masochism in her identification with her place as object in the patriarchal order.”32 This is a dynamic, apparent in the way that celebrities like Paris Hilton play into their own (sexualized) degradation and trashiness. As someone who appears to understand this situation all too well, Stewart’s unwillingness to participate in the masochism of perpetuating her own discomfort seems quite appropriate.

If one were to extend the metaphor, the condemnatory discourses surrounding Stewart’s unwillingness to receive her fame are quite disturbing. Indeed, they take on a startling similarity to the myths commonly employed in media coverage of rape. In her book “Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes,” Helen Benedict argues that the public’s deep-seated gender roles emerge in reactions to sex crimes “because they involve aggressive, sexual interaction between men and women, and call into play age-old myths and assumptions about rape and sex.”33 A number of these myths are apparent in the commentary surrounding

Stewart’s refusal of fame, fueled by the scandalous slant of the tabloids but also clearly felt in public opinion, as evidenced by readers’ comments. Out of the rape myths that Benedict describes, four are pertinent in tabloid commentary on Stewart’s refusal of fame.

The first is that “Rape is sex” – it doesn’t hurt the victim. Benedict argues that this is the most powerful myth underlying all the others, and that it evinces the suggestion “If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.”34 Similarly, this type of commentary is the most prevalent in criticism of Stewart.

For example, the “Kristen Stewart Hates Being Famous” author concludes his article: “Just enjoy your lucky life and shut the fuck up, okay? We clear?”35 The top rated comment on another post titled “Is She Serious? Kristen Stewart Compares Fame to ‘Rape’” is an image of a mug with the text “PULL UP YOUR BIG GIRL PANTIES AND DEAL WITH IT.”36 This type of commentary positions the victim as whiny or vindictive, and reduces the impact of her claims. A second myth apparent in tabloid commentary is that “Women provoke rape” with their looks and sexuality.37 An article titled “Kristen Stewart Is Not Amused, Remains Hot” on popholic.com (a website devoted entirely to celebrity sex appeal) comments: “I have no idea why she would be upset over her photo being taken, because she looks even hotter than usual prancing around in a pair of skin-tight jeans, and in a flimsy little shirt that is actually showing off some of her tiny cleavage.”38

A third, related myth is that “Women deserve rape,” which suggests that they are to blame for putting themselves in certain situations.39 This becomes apparent in posts like “Kristen Stewart Moans About Fame…

Again!” which tell her “You’re the one who signed yourself up for Twilight love.”40 The WINTER 2013 | 73

commentary is filled with remarks such as “She should have known that twilight [sic] would catapult her into fame!!”41 demonstrating widespread affirmation of this criticism. A final myth is that “Only Loose Women Are Victimized,” or in other words “only overtly sluttish women are raped.”42 Benedict argues that the loosewoman idea is also part of a larger, age-old myth that bad things do not happen to good people. Though Stewart is not generally portrayed as “overtly sluttish,” her position as a transgressive female inserts her into this framework (or as Benedict calls it, “a cyclical trap”)43 where she is seen as a bad person for complaining about fame, and her complaints are seen as invalid because of her status as such.

Conclusion While I do not wish to condone Stewart’s use of this wording or diminish the true violence of rape situations, I do argue that within the current discourse of celebrity production culture, her statement was in fact very astute. Though other, more typical scandals pertaining to Kristen Stewart have emerged in the time since 2011, they have been underwritten by the discourses and moral condemnations produced by this incident, the impact of which remains salient today. The sexualized language of the paparazzi seems to be internalized in Western cultural beliefs, with certain moral notions permanently affixed to it.

These belie an understanding of females and female sexuality that demands both receptiveness and masochistic engagement in their own objectification. The cultural impact of this situation is that female submission is understood to be imperative to the maintenance of a male-dominated Western consumer culture, in which women act as idols of consumption and objects to be consumed.

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Jenny Knoll is a U3 Anthropology major with minors in Communication Studies and International Development Studies.

NOTES 1. Stephen Hinerman, “(Don’t) Leave Me Alone: Tabloid narrative and the Michael Jackson child-abuse scandal,” The Celebrity Culture Reader, ed. P. David Marshall. (New York: Routledge, 2006), 456.

2. Richard Dyer, “Stars As Images,” The Celebrity Culture Reader, ed. P. David Marshall. (New York: Routledge, 2006), 162.

3. Dyer, “Stars as Images,” 167.

4. Janet Mock, “Kristen Stewart: Why Robert Pattinson is the Sexiest Vampire Alive,” People Magazine, November 20, 2008, accessed March 21, 2013, http:// www.people.com/people/package/ article/0,,20237714_20241557,00. html.

5. Perez Hilton, February 24, 2009, “Twilight Twat Star Kristen Stewart is a Whiner,” PerezHilton.com, accessed March 21, 2013, http://perezhilton. com/2009-02-24-t wilight-t watstar-kristen-stewart-is-a-whiner#.

UUu5ClvwL-I. 6. “Tough Love,” Nylon Magazine, February 23, 2009, accessed March 21, 2013, http://www.nylonmag.com/?pari d=2664&section=article.

7. Hilton, “Twilight Twat.”

8. Dyer, “Stars as Images,” 156.

9. “Kristen Stewart’s Money Dilemma.”

Associated Press. YouTube. June 30, 2010, accessed March 23, 2013, http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=B4JjVXUcRnI. 10. “Kristen Stewart – “Teen Vogue” December 2008.” Just Jared Jr. November 12, 2008, accessed March 23, 2013, http://www.justjaredjr. com/2008/11/12/kristen-stewart-teenvogue-december-2008/.

11. Dyer, “Stars as Images,” 155.

12. Ray DeRousse, “Kristen Stewart Hates Being Famous,” Therecshow.com, 2010, accessed April 7, 2011, [domain has expired].

13. The Dude!, comment on Hilton, “KStew Hates Twilight?!,” PerezHilton. com, October 13, 2010, accessed March 23, 2013, http://perezhilton.com/201010-13-kristen-stewart-hates-twilightmovies#.UUu90FvwL-I. 14. Perez Hilton, “Kristen Stewart Cooks For Her Hunky Co-Star,” PerezHilton. com, January 10, 2011, accessed March 23, 2013, http://perezhilton.com/201101-10-kristen-stewart-cooked-forgarrett-hedlund-on-the-road-set.

15. Perez Hilton, “Dakota Fanning Missed Eclipse Screening to Take the ACT!,” PerezHilton.com, June 14, 2010, accessed March 23, 2013, http:// perezhilton.com/2010-06-14-dakotafanning-missed-eclipse-screening-totake-the-act.

16. Steven Zeitchik, “Kristen Stewart vs.

Lily Collins: Who’s the fairest of them all?,” Los Angeles Times Entertainment, April 2, 2011, accessed March 23, 2013, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/ movies/2011/04/kristen-stewart-lilycollins-snow-white.html.

17. Emma Bell, “From Bad Girl to Mad Girl: British Female Celebrity, Reality Products, and the Pathologization of Pop-Feminism,” Genders 48 (2008), http://www.genders.org/g48/g48_bell. html.

18. “Kristen Stewart In ElleUK: Fame is Like Rape” The Huffington Post, June 2, 2010, accessed March 23, 2013, http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/02/ kristen-stewart-in-elle-u_n_597681. html.

19. “Fame is Like Rape.”

20. “Fame is Like Rape.”

21. Deidre Behar, “Rape Crisis Groups

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

Not Happy With Kristen Stewart’s ‘Rape’ Comment,” Fox News, June 2, 2010, accessed March 23, 2013, http://www.foxnews.com/ entertainment/2010/06/02/rape-crisisgroups-happy-kristen-stewarts-rapecomment/.

Claire Matthiae, “A Twilight Love Story,” ElleUK, 2010, [no longer available].

“BEHIND THE COVER – KRISTEN STEWART,” ElleUK, May 28 2010, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=GlW-Kn3Ge5M. Hinerman, “Tabloid narrative,” 457.

“Robert Pattinson Blames Kristen Stewart’s Rape-Controversy on the Media.” celebuzz.com June 23 2010, accessed March 23, 2013, http://www. celebuzz.com/2010-06-23/robertpattinson-blames-kristen-stewartsrape-comment-controversy-on-themedia/.

Blaine Zuckerman, “Kristen Stewart: ‘I Made an Enormous Mistake’,” People Magazine, June 4, 2010, accessed March 23, 2010, http:// www.people.com/people/package/ article/0,,20316279_20391187,00. html.

Schwartz, Margaret. “The Horror of Something to See: Celebrity ‘Vaginas’ as Prostheses.” Genders 48 (2008):6, accessed March 23, 2013, http://www. docstoc.com/docs/65615407/Thehorror-of-something-to-see-celebrityvaginas-as-prostheses(Essay).

Hilton, “Dakota Fanning.”

Hilton, “Twilight Twat.”

Schwartz, “Something to See,” 9.

Jackie Stacey, “Feminine Fascinations: A question of identification?,” The Celebrity Culture Reader, ed. P. David Marshall. (New York: Routledge, 2006): 254.

Stacey, “Feminine Fascinations,” 258.

WINTER 2013 | 75

33. Helen Benedict, Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes, (Oxford University Press, 2005), 6.

34. Benedict, “Virgin or Vamp,” 14.

35. DeRousse, comment on “Stewart Hates.”

36. BattleBunnys, June 3 2010, comment on SodaHead Celebs, “Is She Serious?

Kristen Stewart Compares Fame to ‘Rape’,” SodaHead.com, June 3 2013, accessed March 23, 2013, http://www. sodahead.com/entertainment/is-sheserious-kristen-stewart-comparesfame-to-rape/question-1044009/.

37. Benedict, Virgin or Vamp, 15.

38. “Kristen Stewart Is Not Amused, Remains Hot,” Popoholic.com, August 18, 2010, accessed March 23, 2013, http://www.popoholic. com/2010/08/18/kristen-stewart-isnot-amused-remains-hot/.

39. Benedict, Virgin or Vamp, 16.

40. JadeSlimShady, February 2011, comment on Loz88, “KRISTEN STEWART MOANS ABOUT FAME… AGAIN!,” Sugarscape.com, January 20, 2011, accessed March 23, 2013, http://www.sugarscape. com/main-topics/celebrities/595704/ kristen-stewart-moans-aboutfameagain.

41. JadeSlimShady, comment on Loz88, “Stewart Moans.”

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42. Benedict, Virgin or Vamp, 16.

43. Benedict, Virgin or Vamp, 16.

REFERENCES Bell, Emma. “From Bad Girl to Mad Girl: British Female Celebrity, Reality Products, and the Pathologization of Pop-Feminism.” Genders 48 (2008).

Benedict, Helen. Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes. Oxford University Press, 2005.

Dyer, Richard. “Stars As Images.” In The Celebrity Culture Reader, edited by P. David Marshall, 153-176. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Hinerman, Stephen. “(Don’t) Leave Me Alone: Tabloid narrative and the Michael Jackson child-abuse scandal.” In The Celebrity Culture Reader, edited by P. David Marshall, 454-469. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Schwartz, Margaret. “The Horror of Something to See: Celebrity ‘Vaginas’ as Prostheses.” Genders 48 (2008).

Stacey, Jackie. “Feminine Fascinations: A question of identification?.” In The Celebrity Culture Reader, edited by P. David Marshall, 252-285. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Please refer to notes for information on primary sources.

Virtual Arenas of Exchange:

Complicating Relational Aesthetics Through Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s

Under Scan: Relational Architecture 11

Caroline Dutka

I. Art as a state of encounter Artworks that are qualified as relational according to curator Nicolas Bourriaud’s theory of relational aesthetics (in Relational Aesthetics, 1998) are those that operate and interact within the sphere of intersubjective relations. The theory was intended to account for the artworks of the 1990s that prioritized social exchange and a phenomenological experience over representation, visuality, and commodification. This way of reassessing the art “object” as a social form, necessarily taking place in durational time, is rooted in the ideological and participatory theory of Fluxus, Happenings and Minimal Art, such as the anthropomorphic experience of minimalist sculpture’s “theatricality” articulated by art critic Michael Fried in his article “Art and Objecthood” (1967). The aim of relational artists is to create a relationship between individuals or groups of individuals (determined by the degree of participation required) by means of a shared experience prompted by the interactive quality of the work of art. Simulated coexistence is the work’s ultimate aim as an end in itself. As such, relational works are not autonomous as they require the active involvement of the spectator, without whom the work cannot be complete. Bourriaud identifies the outcome of this temporary coexistence as creating an “arena of exchange” where unpredictable intersubjective relationships are created (be these literal or potential), producing dialogue, empathy, or simply mutual understanding between participants who have transformed into a community.

The constructed arena of exchange poses as a veritable micro-society - or “microtopia” as Claire Bishops points out - and is judged based on its symbolic gravity, affect on human relations, and coherence of form.1 A relational work is not an autonomous art object; each work necessitates human participation in order to achieve 78 | CANVAS

actualization as an art work. The experience is the art work in and of itself. Oftentimes, the work operates as a performance or an environmental installation taking place in the sphere of human relationships and as consequence negates (or at least undermines) representation and the place of visuality. Relational aesthetics, therefore, must be defined as an alternative theory of form rather than a theory of art. Bourriaud states that the configuration of form is traditionally considered as “an outline contrasting with a content,”2 but this no longer stands true.The form of contemporary artwork is evolving beyond materiality.3 Comparatively he defines relational form as “a lasting encounter”4: an inherently intangible and unspecific qualification that seemingly shatters the “window onto the world” impression (delivered by representation) in favour of creating the world itself.5 This unique definition of form certainly shapes Bourriaud’s understanding of art in its entirety, as he locates the only value or potential of art in its capacity to create affecting social interactions: “an activity consisting in producing relationships with the world with the help of signs, forms, actions and objects.”6 Bourriaud references Emile Durkheim in justifying his rather revolutionary yet wholly romantic claim. Durkheim considered the “‘social fact’ as a ‘thing,’”7 thus the somewhat ephemeral idea of community and intersubjective association can be of substantial actual quality. Unity, as a group of persons connected as a whole in time or in space, is the factor that turns the (abstract) social bond into an object, “a world”.8 These very worlds are what Bourriaud emphasizes in his classification of “arenas of [relational] exchange”.

Relational arenas of exchange are acutely observed and intentionally developed in new media and installation artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive multi-

media outdoor installation, Under Scan: Relational Architecture 11. The installation was first developed in 2005 and 2006 within five cities of the East Midlands region in England. Lozano-Hemmer’s project was commissioned by the government-funded East Midlands Development Agency for the purpose of bringing art tourism to the area in fulfilling the Agency’s mandate to foster economic development and regeneration.9 The installation later travelled to the Venice Biennale (Mexican Pavilion) in 2007 and to London’s Trafalgar Square in 2008. In each location, the installation acted as a large-scale architectural intervention within populated squares and pedestrian thoroughfares, comprising over two thousand-square metres of public space. Among the English installations, participants were made up of the general public, most of whom would regularly enter the space as part of their daily routine; others would come to the space specifically to experience and witness the installation. Lozano-Hemmer defines this strategy for collective participation as “taking turns”: “You have one or two sensors and people take turns to use them, and the rest are spectators...but there are also emerging collective patterns of selforganization, as people may choose to interact with one another, with the building or with the portraits.”10 Two distinct arenas of exchange are experienced by participants in Under Scan; each with their own personal, social, and political ramifications. Firstly, the work sets up an immediate relationship between the pedestrian (Lozano-Hemmer’s term for the participant-viewer) and a virtual projection of another individual cast onto the ground (a pre-recorded video of a volunteer from the respective community). This engagement between the virtual and the actual is made possible thanks to Lozano-Hemmer’s advanced surveillance technology and computer engineering, created with the

help of his long-time collaborator Will Bauer.11 However, the shared experience that qualifies this arena of exchange is a mere illusion, for the giving and receiving of information between persons is disconnected from time and space, and therefore refutes any possibility for intersubjective communication. This problem is further confounded by Bourriaud’s staunch rejection of representation as relational, which is demonstrated here as the projection of the Other as merely a pre-recorded “videoportrait”. Despite these significant factors inhibiting the fulfillment of relationality (as understood by Bourriaud), the relationship between the pedestrian and the digital Other can be qualified as relational nonetheless for its capacity to inspire an intense experiential or affective (emotional, physical) reaction in the pedestrian, precisely because it is an artificial interaction. The pedestrian could not attain this unique frame of mind and modified sense of self, affecting their sociability, without the technologicallyprescribed interaction, which is, in effect, a fabricated arena of exchange.

Secondly, the pedestrians who interact with the virtual installation find themselves operating within a technologicallymediated micro-community with its own micro-politic. The familiar public space (the architecture) is transformed and rearticulated through the implementation of human location software, digital projections, and bright artificial light.

Lozano-Hemmer focuses on architectural space’s capacity to organize sociality, rather than its utilitarian sculptural presence. This nuanced prioritization of architecture is aligned with architectural theorist Sylvia Lanvin’s treatment of “surfaces” in Kissing Architecture (2011). She describes surfaces as soft, hard, outside, inside [Lozano-Hemmer would add “tangible,” “intangible”]: “Surfaces are where architecture gets close to turning into something else and therefore WINTER 2013 | 79

exactly where it becomes vulnerable and full of potential.”12 As consequence of LozanoHemmer’s immersive and spectacular intervention, citizens are forced to reorient themselves in the newly unfamiliar space.

Through this reorientation they are able to ascertain an alternative understanding of the space’s social and political functions and identity.

Lozano-Hemmer is careful not to give importance to his works’ site-specificity: “there is no inherent connection between the site and the installation.”13 The only crucial quality of the pre-existing architecture is that it is a public outdoor space. The reevaluation of historical context and the understanding of site-specific memory is not important.

Rather, the focus is on the assessment of public participation: the pedestrians’ behaviour and consequential socio-political awareness in reaction to the installation.

“For me the emphasis is not on the fetish of the structure, on what is top and what is down, it’s more in the interconnection, the relationship between two things, the relationship between our experience and the outside world of constructed, consensual, sensory experience, if it exists at all.”14 Therefore moving the installation from one city to another does not disturb the intention or outcome of the work, for the response to each intervention garners a wide-range of unpredictable responses.

Ultimately, the social and political response garnered from the architecturally-imposed arena of exchange is intended as a symbolic and psychic reclamation of public space for the citizen; “a takeover of the city by its inhabitants,” that contests the dominance of capitalism and its overarching commercial, political and military regimes that have displaced the autonomy of the civilian in democratic public spaces.15 By placing the pedestrians under revealed surveillance, Under Scan attempts to impose upon them the potential to realize and question these 80 | CANVAS

existing structures of control, heightening consciousness of their surroundings and of their own presence and thus reconfiguring notions of embodiment and public space, and of the public itself. The effect is not unlike the Brechtian “noticing of knots”, which renders the artifice (the concealed) obvious.16 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s “Relational Architecture” projects17 serve the purpose of unhinging the status quo through rousing the public from within an arena of exchange. In his introductory communiqué for Relational Architecture 2: Displaced Emperors (1997), Lozano-Hemmer outlines the “General Concept” of relational architecture, a term that he developed.

The real motivation behind relational architecture is the modification of behaviour: the artist creates a situation where the building, the urban context and the participants relate in new “alien” ways. The piece can be considered successful if the artist’s intervention modifies the point of equilibrium between the public’s actions and the building’s [read: architecture; here public pedestrian space] reactions, and vice versa.18

Lozano-Hemmer devised relational architecture independently from Bourriaud’s definition of relational aesthetics, which followed in 1998. Instead, he utilizes the term “relational” as it was employed in the 1960s to describe user-activated objects and installations (Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica) and cross-references databases.19 He prefers the term relational over other words such as ‘virtual’ or ‘interactive’ as he believes that these terms have acquired too many potential meanings. Specifically, he distinguishes relational architectures from virtual architectures. He defines the latter as artificial data constructs that strive for realism, that ask the participant to “suspend

disbelief ’ in entering a simulation while dematerializing the body.20 Comparatively, relational architectures take existing physical architectures and modify them, imposing upon the architecture a temporary alternative function, “asking participants to probe, interact and experiment with the false construct,” which effectively dematerializes the environment.21 Here, participation is absolutely crucial and contains strong political potential in itself.

Through participation, special effects (such as audio-visual, light, or digital projections) become something that is more dialogical, that creates an exchange as opposed to operating simply as a spectacle. As such, these special effects evolve into “special causes-and-effects” (Lozano-Hemmer’s term) that promote critical thought.22 II. Confrontation with the virtual The space enveloped by Under Scan: Relational Architecture 11 is dominated by two large steel towers containing fourteen robotically-motorized pan-tilt digital projectors, extraordinarily bright white lights, and a computerized custommade surveillance system (Fig 1). As the pedestrian enters the (formerly familiar) space, the penetrating light reigning over them casts their shadow, creating stark contrast with the illuminated pavement.

Further movements made by the pedestrian triggers the tracking system that relays information to the main computer, which traces their location and anticipates their trajectories. Not until the pedestrian comes to a pause within the lit space are they “met” by the system. At that moment a digital image of another person, a stranger, appears within their shadow, mathematically scaled down to fit within the contour of each pedestrian’s reflection (Fig 2).23 The digitally manifest person—the “video portrait”— appears active, alive. The portrait is selected

at random by the computer from the collection of one thousand videos taken by local video artists. The subjects of the videoportraits are consenting volunteers from each respective community; ordinary locals of diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds who you would be likely to encounter in such a public space.24 The video-portraits reveal a prerecorded experience, transmitted to the pedestrian from an unknown context and location and from an undetermined past.

The animated shadow, as a technologicallyconstructed two-dimensional “interface”, denies the physical and temporal presence of the individual within the video-portrait (the Other). As a surface effect, the interface represents a conduit for interactivity, “which can achieve an agency within the informationally energized space of the installation solely because and insofar as it disembodies the individuated body.”25 The interface is an ephemeral mediation that functions as a channel between the time/space disconnection of the subjects; a window to another world (comparable to an arena of exchange). The passage between time and space collapses as soon as the pedestrian walks away, destabilizing the shadow’s fixity that allows for the interface to appear. Therefore, the Other exists only for the duration to which the pedestrian allows, appearing insofar as the pedestrian maintains their station. The power of control that the pedestrian assumes over the video-portrait (the ability to make it appear or disappear) creates the impression that the interface is a mere ineffective representation.

Bourriaud would deny that it has relational potential at all, reified by the physical absence of the Other who is unable to defend his or herself. A relationship based on active intersubjectivity is outwardly impossible because the video-portrait is incapable of engaging the pedestrian due to its compromised autonomy, thus demonstrating a formal WINTER 2013 | 81

power imbalance.

However, despite their vulnerability to rejection and detachment, the videoportraits as representations are nonetheless able to affectively connect to the pedestrian as part of a trans-virtual and relational confrontation. The interface is endowed with artificial autonomy, simulated through computer programming and how the actors are directed to appear in their video-portrait. As previously mentioned, the pedestrian must come to a standstill within the illuminated public square in order to be located by the scanner, allowing for the interface to appear. In pausing, the pedestrian has actively decided to allow the video-portrait to reveal itself, sanctioning the portrait’s desire to make contact. Metaphorically, it is as though a pedestrian has been stopped on the street by a stranger and they proceed to engage in conversation. Lozano-Hemmer peculiarizes this metaphor-made-literal by moulding a human/non-human connection in his cultivated “arena of exchange.” Unlike a pedestrian being solicited on the street by another, these video-portraits are not trying to sell any commodity or information. No explicit economy or capital is inscribed and they are without an agenda. They are simply asking for the pedestrian’s attention. As the pedestrian pauses within the installation and the interface appears, the individual within the video-portrait is shown lying down on their side, taking up the length of the shadow, unaware of the viewer’s presence. This is a requirement of all videoportraits: the individual must first appear in “sleep” position.26 Then, slowly, the videoportrait will turn to face the viewer and make direct eye contact with them. This illusion of locked eyes between the interface and the pedestrian is achieved while the actor/actress is being filmed for the videoportrait. The individual looks directly into the camera that is positioned above them 82 | CANVAS

while lying down. The individual makes eye contact with the camera, and thus the pedestrian, for the duration of their performance. Therefore, by stopping, it seems as though the pedestrian is in fact beckoning the virtual Other to engage, disturbing their peaceful and anonymous slumber, which makes the pedestrian feel as though the digital portraits are not “waiting” for the viewer to activate them. Just like in the public sphere, the subjects enter a strange interaction, and to both subjects it appears as though the Other had called.

While filming the digital portraits, the actors were allowed to behave however they desired. Individuals slept, danced, blew kisses, mimicked, threatened or acted as if they were trying to touch the viewers. Others tried to confront the imaginary pedestrian by mouthing words, pointing at them, undressing, or motioning towards the viewer to join them.27 Each short performance was between five seconds to seven minutes long, timed at the discretion of each participant.

As such, the filmed individual (seen to the pedestrian as the digital Other) had the potential to terminate the interaction before the pedestrian, indicating clear agency over the relationship that would upset the imbalance between time and space, and undermine the ostensible powerlessness of the interface. For instance, if the video performance was ten seconds long, it would be repeated until the pedestrian decided (bored, downcast) to step away. Furthermore, if the pedestrian decided to disengage contact before the Other’s performance was over, the surveillance sensors (anticipating the pedestrian’s walking away) would alert the interface. Consequently, the portrait would break eye contact with the pedestrian by returning to “sleep” position before the pedestrian could take their first step away.

Again, the illusion is created that the digital portrait has immediate agency, deciding to end the engagement with the pedestrian by

their own volition. Ultimately, the interface simulates presence and life-like subjective reactivity by responding to the pedestrian’s bodily movements.

The power of the interface is further emphasized by the pedestrian’s passivity and lack of decision. Pedestrians have no ability to choose whose video portrait they wish to see, for the portraits appear at random. The pedestrian is then rendered helpless; forced to witness the personalized exhibitionism of an Other while they are unable to act in return.28 The pedestrian’s sole method of engagement is to acknowledge or refuse the interface by standing still or walking away. Both options deny pedestrians the opportunity to express themselves personally.

Seemingly, the video-portrait is endowed with more affective power, even from an alternative temporal location, compared to the pedestrian’s imposed passive role, despite that the pedestrian is the only true corporeal actor. Uniquely, unlike television or film where the individuals displayed on-screen are unresponsive objects of the viewer’s gaze, the interface’s video-portrait allegedly responds to the pedestrian’s presence and communicates through expressive and self-governing body language.29 Therefore, the virtual-actual connection between one human and one digital representation, disconnected from time and space, can be maintained through the mediation of the interface as it is informed by surveillance and computer technology, seamlessly simulating the potential for thoughtful action on behalf of the Other.

In defense of the interface’s intersubjective potential, despite its quality as representation, contemporary philosopher Brian Massumi proposes that rather than belonging to a specific medium (distinct from humanity), the virtual exists within the realm of possibility that is inseparable from embodiment.30 He conceptualizes the human body—in relation to orientation—

as a two-dimensional “topological” figure characterized by connectedness and continuity; a fluid membrane open to the outside.31 In Massumi’s opinion, this means that humans do not operate in threedimensional space, but rather, in between dimensions—where the virtual (two dimensional representation) and corporeal persons (three dimensional actual) can intersect.32 Thus, the interface as projected in Under Scan, does not present a completely inaccessible dimension from reality.

Similarly, Gilles Deleuze addresses a “power of the false” in relation to video.

This concept (crudely condensed) is based on the observation of the “dynamic surge of time” from the perspective of participants in the event.33 In Under Scan, this perspective is prescribed to the pedestrian who has the privileged view of watching the videoportrait as it plays out as an empirical sequence, watching the practical succession of (virtual) moments as they unfold. This is especially true as each video-portrait has the capacity to differ from the rest due to the variability of time that each pedestrian spends with the portrait. Within this surge, “before” and “after” (or here and there) are not distinct moments but the two faces of a single puissance (a single becoming) that transcends time.34 Therefore despite being a mere representation, the interface has the potential to affectively alter one’s understanding of the environment, time, and the pedestrian’s relation to Others within the space. The interface, then, is a technologically-facilitated method of relationality that creates an arena of exchange without immediate humanhuman contact.

Notwithstanding the relational potential between the pedestrian and the virtual Other, it continues to remain clear that the interaction is not inter-subjectively genuine. Contrary to what is (deceivingly) constructed to resemble, the virtual Other WINTER 2013 | 83

cannot actually see or feel the pedestrian looking down at them, and the pedestrian cannot lean down and give the interface a kiss. Even when video portraits wave, dance or mouth words to their imagined spectator, their address is just as artificial as the response they receive in return (Fig. 3). Communication is based on no actual feedback. Lozano-Hemmer has effectively turned the public space into a virtual theatre, where video-portraits function as merely “a conscious staging of self-expression for visual consumption.”35 It is this realistic yet false impression of confrontation, contact, and engagement that disturbed pedestrians the most, blurring the difference between visibility and vision and the real and the unreal, while questioning the priority of presence.36 This disturbance of stable subjectivity fixates on psychic disorientation, creating what many pedestrians describe as an uncanny experience.37 The relationship between the virtual and actual in Under Scan has an even greater capacity for a relational impact based on the pedestrian’s consequential visceral reaction induced by the uncanny. Sigmund Freud expounds his theory of the uncanny in his 1919 essay, “Das Unheimliche” (trans: The Uncanny), where he associates the feeling of horror, dread, discomfort, uncertainty, and strangeness with the German word ‘unheimlich,’ which, when translated directly, means ‘unhomely’.38 Unheimlich can only be defined in relation to its antonym, heimlich (homely): “belonging to the house, not strange, familiar, tame, intimate, friendly...arousing a sense of agreeable restfulness and security as in one within the four walls of his house.”39 Therefore, the uncanny is a disturbance derived from an interference with, or the return of, a familiar phenomenon (image, person, event).40 Ergo, it is frightening or anxiety-inducing precisely because it is not known and familiar, or the familiar is revived 84 | CANVAS

as strange due to repression. As such, an unusual setting is created: a place, situation, or encounter that one does not know one’s way about in, rendering the subject anxious.

Within this new framework, one’s awareness is altered, their sense of security is threatened, and previously-held beliefs are drawn into question. Hal Foster outlines three primary triggers of the uncanny: ‘(1) an indistinction between the real and the imagined; (2) a confusion between the animate and the inanimate; (3) an usurpation of the referent by the sign or of physical reality by psychic reality.’41 An intense psychological reaction follows an encounter with the uncanny, one of severe repulsion and disquiet. Or, paradoxically, one may garner a feeling of pleasure associated with the sublime shock and unpalatable tension invoked by the uncanny.42 Specifically, in Under Scan, the pedestrian undergoes an “ego-disturbance” when one is provoked to defend his or herself against destabilizing phenomenon that cannot be rationalized.43 This occurs as the pedestrian tries to negotiate whether the apparently animate being (video-portrait) is in fact animate or inanimate, consequently testing his or her conceptions of reality, presence, and subjectivity. This intrapersonal egodisturbance is compounded as a result of the interface being framed within the pedestrian’s own shadow, which, according to Plato represents “a metaphor for being.”44 The shadow demarcates the exact reflection, and expectation, of one’s self-image. The double, on the other hand, represents “a once protective figure transformed by repression into a ghastly harbinger of death.”45 Invaded by the presence of an Other, one’s selflocation and understanding is completely defamiliarized, rendered threatening and alien: “the subject identifies himself with someone else, so that he is in doubt as to which his self is, or substitutes the extraneous self for his own. In other words, there is a

doubling, dividing and interchanging of the self. ... the urge towards defense which has caused the ego to project that material outward as something foreign to itself...”46 Cognitive dissonance, as such, often leads the affected individual towards an outright refusal of the situation, for one would rather reject than rationalize the unjustifiable. ...an uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as when something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality or when a symbol takes over the full functions of the thing it symbolizes, and so on. It is this factor which contributes not a little to the uncanny effect attached to magic practices.47

Of course, walking in a public square is a familiar activity, and encountering a stranger is commonplace. However, communicating directly with a complete stranger (whom you feel oddly obligated to engage with) upsets the anonymity expected in public as contemporary city-goers generally ignore one another.48 Utterly beyond the spectator’s scope of experience, and exceeding their capacity to understand, is the projection of the video-portrait of a stranger within their very shadow. This invasion is inherently unfamiliar, unusual, and frightening. Fear and discomfort are intensified upon knowing that the virtual engagement is not immediate but meticulously fabricated - simulated by surveillance technology to anticipate your movements, to then project a prerecorded video at your feet. Likely reactions to this overwhelming sensation may be to flee, shut down, or to become aggressive: “real anxiety [as opposed to neurotic anxiety] is a reaction to the perception of danger, coming from the outside world or reality ... an expression of the drive to self-preservation.”49 At times, anger was observed among Under

Scan’s pedestrians. Instead of responding respectfully to the video portraits by walking around them or by trying to communicate with them, certain individuals would jump on the images (their own shadow) or insult the interface, reacting through outright terror and loathing (Fig 4).50 The arena of exchange become absolutely real once anxiety was felt by the pedestrian.

III. Surveillance and the social Every seven minutes, Under Scan’s computer system must reset. The interfaces projected onto the pavement suddenly disappear and the digital tracking system that appoints the interface to the pedestrian’s shadow is revealed. The entire surveillance grid is projected onto the surface of the installation’s area, revealing fourteen different matrices by which the pedestrians trajectories are mapped (Fig 5). Before converging in one large grid (matrix), the matrices swirl around in a spectacular dance of fluorescent light. But nevertheless, the magical façade of the interface is debunked.

The pedestrian’s shadow and the digitalportrait are replaced with a white line that indicates that the pedestrian has been located, while also denoting the direction where the computer predicts they are headed.51 This sudden disruption of engagement between the pedestrian and the virtual Other reveals that the Other was never really there, but was all along an illusion produced by an apparitional shadowing device informed by surveillance.52 At this time, a small monitor demonstrates the operations behind Under Scan’s tracing system (Fig 6). The pedestrian sees him or herself framed within this map, not as a human but as a de-personalized mathematical mark, an index, a vector.53 The virtual-actual encounter, and the anxiety associated with it, is not only broken, but displaced. Am I the one watching, or am I being watched? Fear is now ascribed to the WINTER 2013 | 85

equally sinking feeling: caught in the act of being studied, followed, and deceived.

The pedestrian is forced to reorient herself/ himself in all-new way; to reconsider the neutrality of public space that is threatened by the prevalence of surveillance.

Through the light show produced by the swirling matrices, Lozano-Hemmer challenges the passive spectatorship and passive citizenship of each pedestrian, drawing unavoidable attention to the present and the presence of surveillance. The matrix alerts the pedestrians and spectators to the existing mechanisms of hidden surveillance in the public sphere, giving visibility to the violence - violation of autonomy, freedom— inflicted by their watch.54 In Foucault’s investigation of the behavioral affects and social ramifications of surveillance, he posits that the recording and archiving of human actions and interactions can be utilized to create an insurmountable model of discipline and punishment, based on Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the Panopticon (1791).55 The Panopticon is a centralized method of control used to manipulate the behaviour of societies and individuals by the threat of a non-localizable source of power and discipline. Contemporary surveillant technology such as Global Positioning Systems, facial recognition software, and ever-present security cameras are rooted in the potential of the Panopticon, as a ceaseless yet invisible warning to the citizen: we’re watching you. Surveillance is designed to identify crimes, prevent criminal action, encourage suspicion, and to regulate public behaviour.56 This utterly effective method of concealed citizen control has long since been adopted by the modern security state to the extent that the presence of cameras in public and private spaces has become normalized and their governing effects rendered subconscious. Today, one may have unknowingly encountered up to three hundred surveillance cameras.57 86 | CANVAS

The imperviousness of the present-day citizen to the impact of surveillance is acutely observed by the average pedestrian’s reaction to Under Scan. Positive response was largely received from pedestrians after they had been inundated by the colourful matrix of light that highlighted the surveillance grid. Some likened this “exciting” experience to being in a video game, or a sci-fi fantasy film such as The Matrix.58 Others favoured this component of Under Scan more in comparison to the anxiety induced by the unsettlingly intimate virtual-actual engagement with the interface. Counterintuitively, the matrix, despite ostensibly revealing the mechanism of surveillance at work that one would assumedly associate with vulnerability and distress, made the pedestrian feel comforted. They felt as though they were a part of a random grouping of movements: “feeling oneself as part of a network,” as opposed to feeling identified and located by the interface through its projection of an Other.59 Under Scan’s light matrix administers a psychic and corporeal reaction from the pedestrian, similar to the effects forwarded by government-sponsored surveillance based on the Panopticon. The pedestrian’s ability to act and interact authentically, without inhibition, is thwarted upon realizing that they are “under scan.” As result, pedestrians became acutely aware of their audiences (the tracking devices and other pedestrians in the space) and consequently grew increasingly conscious of their own physicality. Lozano-Hemmer was aware of the likelihood of the public’s hesitation to participate in an installation that demanded their outward involvement; a hesitation that was certainly informed by the overarching culture of surveillance.

Most people, with the exception of children, will opt to not participate in an installation in public space—which

may seem strange considering that we live in the age of reality TV and the society of the spectacle. This is due in part to shyness and living in a culture of rules like “do not touch.” ... People are skeptical about the neutrality of public space.60

Under Scan does not seek to liberate the pedestrian from the prevailing framework of social control that it demonstrates. It does, however, attempt to remind the pedestrian that these visible and invisible architectures of surveillance are already in place. The installation imparts this knowledge through the phenomenological experience of the matrix, as the pedestrians, collectively, are bewildered before the sudden and overwhelming sea of lights that take over the field of public space. In his essay “Eye and the Mind” (1961) philosopher Maurice Merlot-Ponty described the body as an interface between the perceiving mind and the physical world; the only means available for the task of “reaching out to understand the world.”61 As there is an observable cleavage in society between recognizing and reacting to the prevalence of surveillance, perhaps citizens require an experiential simulation of surveillance in order to fully understand the curiosity of its presence.62 Yet, as observed among Under Scan’s pedestrians, many individuals appear to retain an ambivalent or even optimistic attitude towards the reality of surveillance.

Art historian Rosalyn Deutsche warns against relying on the indeterminable power within democratic public spaces.

The problem, she identifies, lies in the fact that democratic power stems from the people but belongs to nobody.63 The French political philosopher Claude Lefort similarly anticipates: “the public space is the social space where, in the absence of a foundation, the meaning and unity of the social is negotiated - at once constituted and

put at risk.”64 No one is designated with sole responsibility for the rules or outcomes of the public sphere, instead, power is referred to “society.” Lefort allocates “the image of an empty place” as the site from which power derives its legitimacy.65 This empty space is, in effect, a void. This void opens the potential for a second party to enter the public space and impose its own power, such as surveillant technology. As a nonhuman parallel to the society’s negation of responsibility, surveillance does not seem to be perceived as singular threat since cameras can be distributed widely and hidden from the public eye. As such, “society” is unsure whether or not to question its presence.

Deutsche defends the theory of political scholars Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe66 who argue that the conception of society as a closed entity is impossible, for no element within society unifies it and determines its development.67 In democracy, then, society’s self-governing is conditional on something else. If left alone, “democracy can be mobilized to compel acquiescence in new forms of subordination.”68 Therefore, trusting society’s ability to manage itself is potentially dangerous. Negativity is necessarily a part of society’s identity, represented by the term “antagonism,” which according to Laclau and Mouffe, is the experience of the limit of the social.69 Art historian Claire Bishop, in her criticism of Bourriaud’s theory of relational aesthetics, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (2004), adopts Laclau and Mouffe’s antagonism, as does Deutsche.

She too necessitates antagonism in the democratic arena, in highlighting what she believes is Bourriaud’s erroneous understanding of democracy based on an idealized understanding of subjectivity and of community as a harmonious bond.70 ...a democratic society is one in which relations of conflict are sustained, not

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erased. Without antagonism there is only the imposed consensus of authoritarian order - a total suppression of debate and discussion, which is inimical to democracy. ...The task is to balance the tension between imaginary ideal and pragmatic management of a social positivity without lapsing into the totalitarian.71

Bishop additionally qualifies antagonism as the relationship that emerges between two incomplete entities, associated with Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of subjectivity.

They state that individuals are inherently incomplete, for one is neither entirely decentered (which would imply psychosis) nor entirely unified (an absolute subject).72 As a result, identities are malleable, insofar as the presence of the Other impedes one’s ability to act as their own authentic self: “the presence of what is not me renders my identity precarious and vulnerable.”73 Provided the inherent flaws of human subjectivity, Bishop draws into question Bourriaud’s “arenas of exchange”—a constructed temporary community whose members identify with one another due to a collectively shared experience - and their potential for harmonious communication and inter-subjectivity. She criticizes arenas of exchange as a fanciful notion, operating as idealized “microtopias”, and identifies them as relational aesthetics’ core political signification.74 Through the lens of antagonism, Bishop seeks to debunk the idealization of arenas of exchange as necessarily harmonious, in order to address an even greater political potential for relational aesthetics.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s intent for Under Scan draws heavily on Bishop’s interpretation of antagonism, “predicated not on social harmony, but on exposing that which is repressed in sustaining the semblance of this harmony.”75 He stresses the importance of minimizing exclusions 88 | CANVAS

among pedestrian-participants (socioeconomic status, age, race, gender, level of education) by installing Under Scan within outdoor public spaces. The installation was available and accessible to all citizens who wished to partake or observe, while generating a genuine arena of exchange that reflected society’s true social identity.

Furthermore, there was no façade veiling either of Lozano-Hemmer’s utterly effective arenas of exchange in an attempt to create an intentionally harmonious interpersonal connection. That would have been contrary to his intention to startle pedestrians into awareness, to realize through experience the existing hidden frameworks of collective control. Tensions and impassioned reactions among pedestrians were not only widely observed, they were desired; linking the community together through dialogue conveyed by expression and self-display.

And by demonstrating tensions openly, public attention is drawn to the loci of society’s hidden anxieties and unresolved problems: predominantly surveillance, but also the fear of interpersonal interaction between strangers in the community.

Communication and inter-subjectivity, when unified, has endless political potential, especially when concentrated in the hands of citizens as they reclaim control of their democratic society.

Caroline Dutka is a U3 Art History and Honours History major.

NOTES 1. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon, France: Les Presses du réel, 2002), 18.

2. Ibid., 21.

3. Ibid., 20.

4. Alex Adriaansens and Joke Brouwer, “Alien Relationships from Public Space: A Winding Dialogue with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer,” in TransUrbanism,

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

ed. Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder (Rotterdam, Netherlands: NAI Publishers, 2002), accessed March 2, 2012, http://www.lozano-hemmer. com/texts/bibliography/ar tic les_ panorama/07_TransUrbanism.pdf.

Adriaansens and Brouwer, “Alien Relationships from Public Space.”6 Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 107.

Ibid., 20.

Ibid., 20.

2005: Brayford University Campus, Lincoln, United Kingdom; 2006: Nottingham, Northampton, Leicester, Derby.

Adriaansens and Brouwer, “Alien Relationships from Public Space.”

Ibid.

Sylvia Lavin, Kissing Architecture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 26.

Adriaansens and Brouwer, “Alien Relationships from Public Space.”

Ibid.

Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, “Shadowed by Images: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and the Art of Surveillance,” Representations 111, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 124.

Adriaansens and Brouwer, “Alien Relationships from Public Space.”

Eighteen in total, from 1997-2011.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, “Displaced Emperors, Relational Architecture #2,” in FelshFactor exhibition catalogue (Ars Electronica: Linz, Austria, 1997): 2, accessed March 5, 2012, http:// www.lo z ano-hemmer.com/texts/ bibliography/ar tic les_displaced_ emperors/01_FleshFactor.pdf.

Adriaansens and Brouwer, “Alien Relationships from Public Space.”

Lozano-Hemmer, “Displaced Emperors, Relational Architecture #2,” 1.

Ibid., 1.

Heimo Ranzenbacher, “Interview

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer,” In Ars Electronica Catalogue (Ars Electronica: Linz, Austria, 2001).

Ravetto-Biagioli, “Shadowed by Images,” 126.

Ibid., 124.

Ibid., 138.

Ibid., 124.

Ibid., 126.

Ibid., 128.

Ibid., 129.

M. Fernández, “Illuminating Embodiment: Rafael LozanoHemmer’s Relational Architectures,” Architectural Design 77 (2007): 79.

Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 202.

Fernández, “Illuminating Embodiment,” 83.

Ronald Bogue, Deleuze on Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2003), 149.

Ibid., 149.

Ravetto-Biagioli, “Shadowed by Images,” 139.

Ibid., 127.

Ibid., 126.

Sigmund Freud, “Das Unheimiliche,” Imago 5 (1919): 297-324, trans. Eastern Michigan University, “The Uncanny” accessed March 2, 2012, http://people. emich.edu/acoykenda/uncanny1.htm.

Ibid.

Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 7.

Ibid., 7.

Anneleen Masschelein, The Unconcept: The Freudian Uncanny in LateTwentieth-Century Theory (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2011), 42.

Freud, “The Uncanny.”

Adriaansens and Brouwer, “Alien Relationships from Public Space.”

Foster, Compulsive Beauty, 9.

Freud, “The Uncanny.”

Masschelein, The Unconcept, 22.

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48. Ravetto-Biagioli, “Shadowed by Images,” 128.

49. Masschelein, The Unconcept, 43.

50. Ravetto-Biagioli, “Shadowed by Images,” 136.

51. Ibid., 129.

52. Ibid., 129.

53. Ibid., 130.

54. Ibid., 135.

55. Ibid., 131.

56. Ibid., 132.

57. Ibid., 132.

58. Ibid., 131.

59. Fernández, “Illuminating Embodiment,” 84.

60. Adriaansens and Brouwer, “Alien Relationships from Public Space.”

61. Jonathan A. Hale, Building Ideas: An Introduction to Architectural Theory (Chichester, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2000), 107.

62. Ravetto-Biagioli, “Shadowed by Images,” 138.

63. Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 272.

64. Ibid., 272.

65. Ibid., 273.

66. See: Ernesto Lacau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London, UK: Verso, 1985).

67. Deutsche, Evictions, 273.

68. Ibid., 273.

69. Ibid., 273.

70. Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” October 110 (Autumn, 2004): 67.

71. Ibid., 66.

72. Ibid., 66.

73. Ibid., 67.

74. Ibid., 67.

75. Ibid., 79.

REFERENCES Adriaansens, Alex. and Joke Brouwer. “Alien 90 | CANVAS

Relationships from Public Space.” In TransUrbanism. Rotterdam, Netherlands: NAI Publishers, 2002.

Bishop, Claire. “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.” October 110 (Autumn, 2004): 51-79. Available online: http://www. jstor.org/stable/3397557.

Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze on Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics.

Dijon, France: Les Presses du réel, 2002.

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time Image.

London: Continuum, 2005.

Deutsche, Rosalyn. Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Fernández, M. “Illuminating Embodiment: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Relational Architectures.” Architectural Design 77 (2007): 78–87. Available online: http:// onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ ad.490/pdf.

Foster, Hal. Compulsive Beauty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” (1919).

Eastern Michigan University Website.

Accessed March 2, 2012. http://people. emich.edu/acoykenda/uncanny1.htm.

Hale, Jonathan A. Building Ideas: An Introduction to Architectural Theory.

Chichester, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2000.

Lavin, Sylvia. Kissing Architecture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Lozano-Hemmer, Rafael. “Displaced Emperors, Relational Architecture #2.”

In FelshFactor, Ars Electronica: Linz, Austria, 1997.

Manovich, Lev. The Poetics of Augmented Space. 2002. Available online: http:/ www.manovich.net/TEXTS_07.HTM. Masschelein, Anneleen. The Unconcept: The Freudian Uncanny in Late-TwentiethCentury Theory. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2011.

Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual:

Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.

Ranzenbacher, Heimo. “Interview with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.” In Ars Electronica Catalogue. Ars Electronica: Linz, Austria, 2001.

Ravetto-Biagioli, Kriss. “Shadowed by Images: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and

the Art of Sur veillance.”

Representations 111, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 121-143. Available online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ rep.2010.111.1.121.

Suderburg, Erika. Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,

Fig. 1 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Under Scan, Relational Architecture 11, 2006. Market Square, Derby, UK. Mixed Media.

Photo by: Antimodular Research.

Fig. 2 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Under Scan, Relational Architecture 11, 2006. Castle Wharf, Nottingham, UK. Photo by: Antimodular Research.

Fig. 3 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Under Scan, Relational Architecture 11, 2006. Market Square, Northampton, UK. Mixed Media.

Photo by: Antimodular Research.

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Fig. 4 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Under Scan, Relational Architecture 11, 2006. Market Square, Derby, UK. Mixed Media. Photo by: Antimodular Research.

Fig. 5 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Under Scan, Relational Architecture 11, 2005. Brayford University Campus, Lincoln, UK. Mixed Media.

Photo by: Antimodular Research.

Fig. 6 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Under Scan, Relational Architecture 11, 2006. Humberstone Gate West, Leicester, UK. Mixed Media.

Photo by: Antimodular Research.

92 | CANVAS

Thirty-Eight Witnesses:

The Kitty Genovese Murder and its Creation of Moral Panic in Urban America Kierra Young

T

hirty-eight who saw murder didn’t call the police,” reads a headline in The New York Times.1 “For more than half an hour,” the article begins, “thirty-eight respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.”2 This is how the majority of individuals have come to know the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese.3 The details of the murder are as follows: during the early hours of March 13, 1964, twenty-eight-year-old Kitty Genovese from Queens, New York, was walking home following her shift at a local bar that she managed.4 After parking her car a short distance from her apartment building, she began walking towards her home, but was approached Winston Moseley, before she arrived.5 Moseley, an African-American business machine operator and “family man,” chased Genovese down, stabbing her twice in the back.6 Moseley ran off after one witness, Robert Mozer, yelled at him to leave Genovese alone.7 However, ten minutes later, Moseley found Genovese in a hallway, and processed to attack her, stabbing her several more times, sexually assaulting her, robbing her, and finally leaving her to die.8. Andrew Potter notes in his novel, The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves, that “police and ambulance personnel arrived a few minutes later, but Genovese died before reaching the hospital.”9 Despite the fact that some of the witnesses who heard or saw Genovese being attacked did attempt to intervene in some way, the dominant narrative of the murder remains that “none of Genovese’s neighbours called the police or otherwise helped.”10 The theory surrounding the Genovese murder case has contributed to what has been labeled as the Bystander Effect. The term has been used to describe findings by John Darlet and Bibb Latane that indicate that 94 | CANVAS

someone is “less likely to intervene into a potential emergency when they perceive that more than one person is also proximate to the situation.”11 Despite the immense brutality of the killing, it appears evident that the murder of Kitty Genovese has been constructed, not as a story of “a victim and [her] perpetrator,” but as a tale of the place where the crime occurred, and “the imagined interior psychology of its White middle-class urban residents.”12 In this paper, I will explore the construction of the Kitty Genovese case through its media representations and how such depictions have contributed to a “moral panic” surrounding the public apathy of citizens in urban America. Moreover, through the production of this moral panic, I will show how the city becomes coded as a dangerous place of ‘the other,’ demonstrating how the politics of space are reinforced with this portrayal of the city.

Stanley Cohen, the author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, is credited with coining the term “moral panic.” He states that a moral panic occurs when “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to society values and interests.”13 Moreover, in Simon Watney’s text, “Moral Panics,” he describes the nature of a moral panic as “presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media,” where “[s]ometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten [and] at other times…has more serious and long-lasting repercussions.”14 In Watney’s work, he focuses largely on the media representations of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and argues that this media coverage allows the public to gain a societal prejudice against those labeled as ‘sexual deviants’ in society.15 Furthermore, Watney discusses how a moral panic is never an isolated phenomenon, but instead can be seen as a site of greater “ideological struggles.”16 In the moral panic

surrounding AIDS created by the mass media, this fear goes beyond the disease itself, and can be seen as rooted in society’s fear that ‘the family’ may be jeopardized in some way due to the existence of these socalled ‘sexual deviants.’17 He notes that: “[w] e are not, in fact, living through a distinct, coherent and progressing ‘moral panic’ about AIDS. Rather, we are witnessing the latest variation in the spectacle of the defensive ideological rearguard action which has been mounted on behalf of ‘the family’ for more than a century.”18 Like the moral panic surrounding AIDS, the Genovese murder case goes beyond an isolated incident of “failed witness[ing],” and can be seen as representing “a growing sickness of public apathy” in 1960s urban America.19 Carrie Rentschler notes in an interview with Dylan Mulvin that, “the dominant message of the story was that everyday people will not be bothered, and will not expose themselves to any perceived risk, on behalf of another person.”20 This perception was largely constructed through the media representations of the case. In newspaper articles disseminated following the murder, one interview stated that one of the witnesses “didn’t want to get involved.”21 Furthermore, two other witnesses said that they were unsure why they did not intervene, while another woman said she thought it was merely a fight between two lovers.22 It is interesting to note that despite the continued media portrayal of the case as ‘thirty-eight witnesses failing to intervene,’ in reality, there were at least seven neighbours that took part in some sort of intervention in the assault.23 Furthermore, to this day, the Genovese murder case continues to be featured in introductory sociology textbooks as a representation of the bystander inaction of thirty-eight individuals.24 So, why then, if such a portrayal of the assault is so inaccurate, does it continue to circulate this way through the mass media? “One answer,”

Rentschler describes, “is that the murder story was a convenient political fiction—it is simply too useful in its dominant form to be changed.”25 The Genovese murder case continues to be used by the mass media to function as “a warning signal” to the public about the current “state of society and social order.”26 What is this world coming to? the press implies. While once upon a time neighbours treated each other with dignity and respect, now more than three dozen can watch as one of these friendly faces is brutally murdered, as if they were watching a scene from a horror movie. Moreover, the case has even been used as a metaphor to compare the nonintervention of the United States into the war in Bosnia in the 1990s to “Genovese’s apathetic neighbours.”27 It is evident that the Genovese murder case is not an isolated occurrence, but, through the mass media, is represented as an illustration of public apathy in urban America.

The media presents the incident in an exaggerated form, which has created lasting ramifications on Western citizens’ notion of the social order. This has contributed to a moral panic in the Western world that has continued well past the 1960s.

Through the production of this moral panic, the city becomes coded as a dangerous place of ‘the other.’ In order to understand why the witnesses of the Genovese murder did not intervene, news accounts often focused on the way the street must have been perceived at the place of the crime by these witnesses.28 Rentschler notes that “[t]he crime’s commission and the construction of witnesses’ lack of intervention could become understandable by learning to study the exterior physical environment of the crime, as portrayed by the photos’ architectural imagination.”29 The press often showed photos and diagrams of the place of assault, demonstrating that these thirty-eight witnesses likely did not intervene due to their perceived fear of the city streets.30 Moseley’s WINTER 2013 | 95

attack on Genovese became seen as an intrusion of an African-American into the largely white, middle-class neighbourhood of Kew Gardens, which was shown through numerous diagrams of “Moseley’s attack and Genovese’s movements” on the early morning of March 13, 1964. 31 Psychologists Stanley Milgram and Paul Hollander describe ‘the street’ in a 1964 article on the Genovese murder case, and how the perception of the street likely contributed to the lack of intervention by the witnesses of Genovese’s attack.32 They note that: The street is the anti-thesis of privacy, security and the support one derives from contemplating and living amidst prized personal possessions. The street represents the world of shoving crowds, potentially hostile strangers, sweat, dust and noise. Those who spend much time on the street have nothing better to do and nowhere else better to go: the poor, the foot-loose, the drifters, juvenile delinquents. Therefore, the middle-class person seeks almost automatically to disengage himself from the life of the street; he is on it only from necessity, rarely for pleasure. Such considerations help explain the genesis of attitudes that prevented the witness from making the crucial phone call.”33

Milgram and Hollander touch on the groups in society that tend to spend the most time on the streets, evidently leaving out White, middle-class, law-abiding citizens in this description. By evaluating why the witnesses of Genovese’s attack did not care to assist her, the city streets become seen as a dangerous place for the residents in Kew Gardens where witnesses are viewed as failing to intervene because of this fear of the city streets.

Moreover, through the use of Kitty Genovese’s mug shot in her public 96 | CANVAS

depiction, the crime becomes portrayed not as an innocent victim being brutally assaulted, but as an incident occurring between two criminals—a situation in which no law-abiding citizen should intervene. As Rentschler notes in “An Urban Physiognomy of the 1964 Kitty Genovese Murder,” in this photo, rather than being portrayed as an innocent victim of murder, Genovese instead appears as a lawbreaker.”34 Through the portrayal of Genovese as a criminal (due to her minor arrest on gambling charges), the city streets thus become coded as a dangerous place of ‘the other’—in this case representing a space for criminal activity to occur.

This negative portrayal of the city as a dangerous place of ‘the other’ can be viewed in comparison with Steve Macek’s work, The Cinema of Suburban Paranoia.

Macek describes how a trend can be seen in films produced in the 1980s and 1990s that depicts the city as a space of darkness, dirtiness, and danger.35 He notes that “these representations catered and amplified the panic of a mostly suburbanized, mostly white middle class over the mayhem supposedly raging in America’s largely black and central cities.”36 Moreover, Macek notes that this anti-urban sentiment portrayed in such negative terms is not limited to one film genre, but can instead be seen in various genres from action films to horror films.37 One common story line can be viewed in films such as Judgment Night (1993), Falling Down (1993), and Grand Canyon (1991), in which “middle-class white men…find themselves lost in the wilderness/jungle of the postindustrial metropolis and are forced to fight their way out.”38 While Macek focuses strongly on film noir in his piece, he believes that, like Hollywood, the mass media also plays a significant part in portraying “a shrill anti-urbanism” that produce certain “ideological myths” about the city.39 While the Kitty Genovese murder occurred before

the time in which Macek is writing about, the case can be seen as a prime example in which the media portrayals of the incident come to depict the city in racialized terms, similar to “the menacing cities on display in mainstream movies during the 80s and 90s.”40 Therefore, through the creation of a moral panic surrounding the apathetic citizens in urban America, the street becomes coded as a dangerous place of ‘the other.’ To understand why witnesses failed to assist Genovese at the time of the attack, photos and diagrams have been disseminated by the press in order to portray the city as a place of danger. Through this depiction of the city portrayed by the mass media, ‘the other’ takes on a criminalized and racialized form in a primarily White, middle-class neighbourhood. This negative portrayal of the city can be compared to Macek’s thesis, in which the media, including Hollywood cinema, is seen as playing a primary role in depicting negative perceptions about the city.

Lastly, through this portrayal of the city created by the moral panic surrounding the apathy of urban America, the politics of space are strongly reinforced. The space of the city demonstrates the way “power is inscribed and embedded in geographic places”—specifically when compared to other urban areas, such as suburban neighbourhoods.41 Edward Soja discusses the politics of space in his work, “History: Geography: Modernity.” In this piece, he argues that “academic study has, in the modern era, privileged time and history over space and geography.”42 He believes that, by placing a stronger focus on what will happen in the future, we lose sight of the meanings surrounding geography and location.43 He notes that: So undeniably hegemonic has been this historicism of theoretical

consciousness that it has tended to occlude a comparable critical sensibility to the spatiality of social life, a practical theoretical consciousness that sees the lifeworld of being creatively located not only in the making of history but also in the construction of human geographies, the social production of space and the restless formation and reformation of geographical landscapes.44

Soja evidently points to the ways in which “the spatiality of social life” has been limiting in academic discourse, and comments on the active nature of space that is constantly “form[ed] and reform[ed].”45 When examining the Kitty Genovese murder case, the power dynamics regarding the space of the city becomes alarming.

Through the racialized and classed representations of the city in the mass media following the murder, the space of the city can be seen as emphasizing the discrimination against African-Americans and the lower-class citizens of urban America. “Instead of a story of a rape-murder victim and her killer,” Rentschler notes, “the dominant narrative of the Genovese case is ‘how such a thing could have happened in a middle-class neighbourhood.’”46 Moreover, she notes that “[Genovese’s] murder became a story of urban anomie and crime fear cast against an emergent racialized threat construction that, by the late 1960s, federally deployed discourses that defined criminality as ‘Black’ and ‘of the street.’”47 By marking blacks and lower-class citizens as a threat, this allowed for “a series of ideological justifications for the punitive attitude toward the ghetto poor.”48 Occurring only four years before the United States declared a war on crime, the Kitty Genovese murder provided a convenient narrative to justify this declaration.49 The narrative surrounding the murder points to the power dynamic at play, in which African-Americans and the lower-class becomes associated with street WINTER 2013 | 97

crime in urban America. Thus, the politics of space are seen as being emphasized. In contrast, other city spaces such as suburban neighbourhoods, may be seen as a safe place for the middle-class—a place that is not threatened by ‘the other.’ Where the population is often lower than the dense inter-core regions of the city, suburban neighbourhoods imply a nonviolent alternative to the ‘danger city core.’

In Human Geography: People, Place, and Culture, it is noted that “how people shape and create places varies across time and space and that time, space, and places shape people, both individually and in groups.”50 In the case of the Genovese murder, the perception of the street, as well as those inhabiting it, becomes shaped by the press surrounding the case. Moreover, the press can also be seen as being shaped by the perception of the street, demonstrating that the relationship between humans and space does not only go in one direction. Culture is therefore shown to be active and dynamic, and is challenged and altered within larger social and political contexts.

In conclusion, by examining the media representations from the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, the case can be seen as contributing to a ‘moral panic’—“a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to society values and interests.”51 This moral panic is based on the public apathy of citizens in urban America, where individuals are shown to be ambivalent towards helping out a neighbour in the time of an emergency. Through largely exaggerated depictions of the case shown through the mass media, this has created lasting effects on Western’s citizens’ idea of the social order in urban areas. Furthermore, this moral panic has allowed the city to become coded as a dangerous place of ‘the other.’ Media accounts continually depicted images and diagrams of the site of the murder in order 98 | CANVAS

to better understand why the witnesses did not assist Genovese at the time of the assault. These images constructed the notion that intervention did not occur due to the perceived danger of the city by the White, middle-class residents watching the attack from their windows. Moseley’s attack thus becomes seen as an invasion of an AfricanAmerican into the white, middle-class neighbourhood of Kew Gardens. When examining this moral panic as contributing to a specific portrayal of the city, it is essential to look at Steve Macek’s piece, The Cinema of Suburban Paranoia, in which the murder case can be compared to the portrayals of city streets in films produced in the 1980s and 1990s. Both the representations of cities in these films, as well as Kew Gardens in Queens, New York, become coded as a dangerous place for White, middle-class citizens in America. Finally, through the portrayal of the city created by this moral panic, the politics of space are reinforced.

The racialized and classes depictions of urban America following Genovese’s death highlight the discrimination against blacks and the lower-class in the United States, leading to justifications for various punishments against these populations.

The space of the city in America evidently exhibits the ways in which power is inscribed geographic locations.

The Kitty Genovese murder of 1964 continues to spark interest from academics and cultural theorists alike. Who was Kitty Genovese and how many people did witness her brutal killing? Despite never being able to know all the details of that March morning in 1964, what is essential when examining this case is not necessarily the number who saw the attack, or who did or did not call the police. What remains significant is the strong cultural meaning the Genovese murder case has taken on, and the social and political implications that continue to resonate to this day.

Kierra Young is a U3 Sociology major, with minors in Communication Studies and International Development Studies.

NOTES 1. Andrew Potter. The Authenticity Hoax: How we Get Lost Finding Ourselves.

(Toronto, Ontario: McClelland & Steward Ltd, 2010), 216.

2. Ibid, 216.

3. Carrie Rentschler. “An Urban Physiognomy of the 1964 Kitty Genovese Murder,” Space & Culture (14:3 2011), 316.

4. Potter. The Authenticity Hoax, 214.

5. Ibid.

6. Rentschler, Space & Culture, 310.

7. Ibid, 311.

8. Potter, The Authenticity Hoax, 214.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Dylan Mulvin. “Kitty Genovese: 1964” Interview with Carrie A. Rentschler.

Seachange (2011), 194.

12. Rentschler, Space & Culture, 312.

13. Stanley Cohen. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1972), 9.

14. Simon Watney. “Moral Panics,” in The Media Studies Reader, (St Martin’s Press, New York, 1997), 126.

15. Ibid, 125.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid, 130.

19. Rentschler, Space & Culture, 313.

20. Mulvin, “Kitty Genovese: 1964”, 191.

21. Rentschler, Space &Culture, 313.

22. Ibid.

23. Rentschler, Space & Culture, 316.

24. Potter, The Authenticity Hoax, 215.

25. Mulvin, “Kitty Genovese: 1964”, 191.

26. Rentschler, Space & Culture, 321.

27. Rentschler, Space & Culture, 313.

28. Ibid.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51.

Ibid, 317.

Ibid, 316.

Ibid.

Ibid, 323.

Ibid.

Ibid, 314.

Steve Macek. “Chapter 5: The Cinema of Suburban Paranoia,” in Urban Nightmares: The Media, The Right, and The Moral Panic Over the City, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 201.

Ibid.

Ibid, 202.

Ibid, 204.

Ibid, 202.

Ibid, 202.

Dwayne Avery . Class Lecture. Media in Cultural Life. McGill University, Montreal QC. March 7, 2012.

Edward Soja, “History: Geography: Modernity,” The Cultural Studies Reader, (2nd Edition, Routledge, New York, 2001), 113.

Ibid.

Ibid, 114.

Ibid.

Rentschler, Space &Culture, 324.

Ibid, 325.

Macek, “The Cinema of Suburban Paranoia,” 204.

Rentschler, Space & Culture, 325.

Erin Hogan Fouberg and Jan Blij Harm and Alexander B. Murphy.

Human Geography: People, Place, and Culture. (9th ed. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley, 2009), 150.

Cohen. Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 9.

WINTER 2013 | 99

REFERENCES Avery, Dwayne. Class Lecture. Media in Cultural Life. McGill University, Montreal QC. March 7, 2012.

Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1972.

Fouberg, Erin Hogan, Harm Jan Blij, and Alexander B. Murphy. Human Geography: People, Place, and Culture. 9th ed. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley, 2009.

Macek, Steve. “Chapter 5: The Cinema of Suburban Paranoia.” Urban Nightmares: The Media, The Right, and The Moral Panic Over the City, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

100 | CANVAS

Mulvin, Dylan. “Kitty Genovese: 1964” Interview with Carrie A. Rentschler.

Seachange (2011) Potter, Andrew. The Authenticity Hoax: How we Get Lost Finding Ourselves. Toronto, Ontario: McClelland & Steward Ltd., 2010. Print.

Rentschler, Carrie. “An Urban Physiognomy of the 1964 Kitty Genovese Murder,” Space & Culture 14 (2011): 310-329.

Soja, Edward, “History: Geography: Modernity.” In The Cultural Studies Reader, 2nd Edition. Routledge, New York, 2001.

Watney, Simon. “Moral Panics.” In The Media Studies Reader, 124-132. St Martin’s Press, New York, 1997.