Journal #4: Popular culture: children's play and women's lives

You'd think with all this fuss that the issue is the creation of a child's plaything that embodies all the values activists are fighting for: the egalitarian doll, the Every-Doll, if you will: dread-locked, part Native American, part Asian, part Caucasian, part African-American, part Latino, cultured, educated, environmentalist and vegan, indeterminate sexuality included.

The issue of this week's lecture involved the examination of the role of popular culture in the cultivation of gender identity. There is no definite conclusion on what exactly contributes to a person's idea of gender in his/herself and in others. Rand stated in her articles that the retrospective process is highly suspect in being able to render an accurate account of the impact of childhood environs on gender roles. I think this confusion in the retrospective process is illustrative of the multitude of influences everyone encounters in the age of popular culture. Distillation of a single factor for close evaluation is currently impossible. However, it is generally acknowledged that a combination of social influence and inherent cognition interplay to create ideas of gender.

The point of contention in the readings for this week seem to focus on the devaluation of femininity - the Barbies in perpetuating stereotypes and the view of pregnancy in the mass media in treating the condition like an "illness". What is the hegemonic stance on the female gender? Well, they have to look good in a pre-defined way. And when they're preggers, they have to go to a doctor. We don't want kids, to grow up to accept these values as the only way of life but complete segregation from forms of gender stereotyping may result in a state of cluelessness Alicia Silverstone despises. Kids should get more credit for their ability to practice discretion when absorbing messages.

So there you go, women. You can be anything you want, but you have to look really, really good and this look has to follow a prescribed fashion. Is this good? Is this bad? Who knows? In the question of children's play and early gender development, it is best to play along with the interconnectedness of cognitive ability and social influence. Kids of today will inevitably be saturated with images and opinions on what gender means; the focus should be the development of their ability to practice discretion, as however advanced this ability may be in the child, it could always benefit from direction. Or we could just create the Every-Doll. I really want to do that.

Journal#3: Material culture - women as producers and consumers

Malaysia didn’t qualify as a “developing country” when I was growing up; we were subject to hours on rocky dirt roads, stopping to let the goat herds cross the street when they pleased. Cows did not cross the streets as much as goats did. The cows we had in the country were a monolithic shade of brown, black or white, and not of the whimsical black spotted, white coated nature that I read of in British children’s novels.

Circa eighteen years later, I was sitting in a women’s studies lecture somewhere in Ontario, learning of the roles of women as producers and consumers throughout Western history. Apparently, dairy production is the tragic story of women in Canada. Milking was initially a female-dominated domain, which was usurped by men when dairy became a profitable business.

Considering these experiences, let’s talk about the differences between cows across oceans.

We accept this as the general ambition of the independent Caucasian feminine stance: hands on her hips, standing confident at some road crossing, aware but outwardly unaware of her visual value, consuming…. but not producing. It is far beneath her to be a producer. I grew up in the capital city of Malaysia, absorbing the values regarded as ‘industrialized’: a agglomeration of cultural values as perceived by the Western world – this is what I grew up to understand as the goal of my future.

The role of the traditional producer (such as farm work and arduous household tasks) is reviled by post-modern views, except in revivalist movements. The hard-working woman of the house and field has become a novelty for the post-modernist woman. And why not? Industrialized countries such as Canada have the means to meet the material needs of her citizens, giving them the time and the will to submerge themselves in post-modernist values, including the idle dabbling in historical practices. Are these practices considered historical elsewhere in the world?

I am far from claiming that women in Canada these days go out to the barn and milk cows for the fun of it. It is to say that women in the developing regions of Asia are still relied upon as the primary caretakers of a household’s well-being. These duties include child-rearing, house maintenance and field maintenance, which could include cattle rearing. These duties clash with the values of industrialized countries, increasingly accessible by the globalization phenomenon.

With this clash comes a peculiar juxtaposition of priorities, which I was fortunate enough to bear witness to. My mother managed the house, venturing out in the day to sell curry by the streets to keep the money flowing. She tells me to this day that, as hard-strapped for cash as we were in those days, she bought baby formula to feed both my brother and I instead of breast-feeding. She says it in a way that infers the submission of my eternal gratitude. But why? Scientific evidence clearly states that breast-feeding is the superior form of infant nourishment.

My mother, as many women in developing nations, subscribes to the infant formula marketing campaign, which continues to emerge today. Many Third-World families use infant formula instead of breast-feeding under the premise that it is “better”. This situation parallels the devaluation of Canadian women in the dairy industry in the early 20^th century. Why is breast-feeding seen as an inferior alternative to this synthetic supplement?

It could be because early childhood development is now a valued thing in the world. Following from this, the modern parent is willing to spend whatever money it takes to provide their child with the best future imaginable, thus rendering him or herself a tool of an insidious marketing campaign. It could also be because breast-feeding in public in developing nations is an unacceptable practice.

Regardless of the motive, the promotion of infant formula in place of breast-feeding can be seen as a modern interpretation of the patriarchal dairy mutiny. The devaluation of women in the role of child-feeding is the ultimate separation of women and their domestic roles. We have to ask ourselves, how much of this that we are cutting away, how much of it is societally-imposed and how much of it is imperative to maintaining our natural roles in the culture of humanity.

Journal #1: Following the lecture on the background and theory of representation

The Chinese symbol for “good” is composed of the “female” and “male” logograms. It represents the culture’s long-held belief in the virtue of equilibrium between opposing forms. These reflections are evident throughout the many systems of representation throughout China’s history: opera, literary texts, art and, as said before, even in the construction of the language itself. The preceding example illustrates what came to mind during the first lecture: the gradual incorporation of concepts into systems of expression to the point where these concepts become ideology.

A telephone conversation with my mother on a later day brought along a reminder that there is no gender-specific pronoun in Chinese, resulting in a verbal tic where “he” or “she” is used in an unbiased manner. This hereditary verbal tic is a matter of amusement to my colleagues versed predominantly in the English language.

The disparities in language transition may be found humorous or even uncomfortable in their novelty. What is the relativity of reaction to transitions between languages and transitions between forms of media? According to the constructionist view, “it is the difference between Red and Green which signifies” (Hall 27). These language differences are immediately noticeable because it is our primary mode of communication. There is a phonemic relativity to the signs and symbols involved in language. What of the relativity between the signs and symbols of paintings and the signs and symbols of music? In general, we do not attempt to translate a White Stripes song into a sculpture on a daily basis, though we may cultivate a linguistic hobby of translating street signs and restaurant menus into French. What is the meaning contained in ‘difference’ in this context?

Gertrude Stein’s ‘Tender Buttons’ has been described as her translation of Cubist art into prose. Her departure from canonical form (unconventional even for literary aesthetic of the time) outraged a few and left many in a state of puzzled admiration. As she says in ‘Objects’, “…it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance so strangely…”. How would one appreciate the striking stroke of the brush when observing its textual rebirth? It is an unusual experience, precisely because this form of translation does not commonly surface in daily thought. My confirmation of Stein’s success when I encountered the following phrase:

“A purse was not green, it was not straw colour, it was hardly seen…”

A sentence, a picture and a rhyme. A truly beautiful construct.

The instinctive sense of peculiarity when first encountering this work could be caused by the expectation of some sort of idea presented in a narrative with a sense of time. The inevitable disjuncture we experience in translation is made obvious in this example of Stein’s work.

It is interesting to observe how we attempt to create connections between every form of expression available on the planet. The disjunctures themselves are rich for analysis that confirms the diversity of human culture and expression.

(p.s. what about a telepathic society…)