Cuteness

In response to this week’s discussion on the Gurlesque, I think it is necessary to discuss the concept of “cuteness,” of being cute. I take issue a bit with the definition of “cuteness” that Glenum gives us in her introduction. I had questions about this when I read it and was surprised/interested when Danielle Pafunda chose to focus on this in class. Glenum writes:

“Cuteness, then, far from being a harmless aesthetic category, reveals a state of acute deformity.” (p 16)

Glenum and Pafunda seem to agree that cuteness reflects the deformity and (insecurity, incompletion, grotesque) of the girl. I think there is something more to cuteness. I am surprised how quickly Glenum dismisses cuteness—she makes it sound like something to shun, to be ashamed of—because to me, “cuteness” contains as much potential for feminist activism as the girl.

On one level, cuteness is a “harmless aesthetic category.” As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, to be “cute” is to be:

“Attractive in a pretty or endearing way: a cute kitten.”

To me, this means that that cute means nothing at all, that it is entirely subjective. Like “girl, “cute” is that which is both extremely stereotyped—think baby animals, baby humans, dolls, pink things, little things—and completely undefined. Girls are cute. Boys are cute. Cupcakes are cute. Grandmothers are cute. Restaurants are cute.



Wikipedia defines cuteness as that which is associated with youth. I have heard this definition before: that people are naturally drawn toward the infantile—that we think puppies are cute because they remind us of babies. This definition may draw closer to Glenum’s definition of the deformity –or, at the very least, the helplessness and innocence—associated with cuteness.


My question: What is “cute”? Do you agree with Glenum and Pafunda that to be cute or to “love” cuteness is to reveal “a state of acute deformity” of the self? Are Glenum and Pafunda shunning the cute? Is the girlish love of cute things only a revelation of insecurity or, even, the grotesque. Is cuteness limited to the girl? Can cuteness be inverted and used to liberate women, to fight patriarchy? Or by trying to be cute or drawing towards cuteness, do we contribute to that which confirms our supposed or constructed subordination?

Performing Woman

Going along with the themes of performance and using the body as a source of liberation for women, I wanted to take a look at the role of performance art in feminism.

Feminist performance art came about in the 1970s because "it was personal, immediate, and highly effective in communicating an alternative vision of women and their power in the world."

Cheri Gualke, an L.A. performance artist said: "Performance is not a difficult concept to us [women]. We're on stage every moment of our lives. Acting like women. Performance is a declaration of self--of who one is...and in performance we found an art form that was young without the tradition of painting or sculpture. Without the traditions governed by men. The shoe fit, and so, like Cinderella, we ran with it."

Here are a few examples of what she means.

This piece done by Eleanor Antin is called "Carving: A Traditional Sculpture" (1972). Antin put herself on a strict diet and literally carved herself into a sculpture in order to critique "the social pressure women feel to make their bodies conform to an aesthetic or cultural ideal."

In "The Mythic Being," Adrian Piper put on a drag performance in the streets and subways of New York City. She meant to "incite public reaction to issues of race, gender and class."

How does performance art differ from poetry in conveying feminist theory? How do the two work together? If everything is a performance (according to Butler and the Gurlesque poets), what makes this art? Overall, is performance art successful--does using the female body in this way liberate women or exploit her and detract from the feminist agenda?

(Citations drawn from: http://www.walkerart.org/archive/C/B473811508113F0F6169.htm)

what is a self

As we have slid, quite reasonably, from questions of "women" and sexism to questions of subjectivity and struggles against all forms of oppression (especially those related to class), I post this. Not about the second matter, but about the first.

http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/this-extended-mind-again-we-dont-know-what-a-human-being-is/#more-5594

By the way, for those philosophically minded, the larval subjects blog is the next best thing to Lisa Robertson as far as joyous exploration of crucial matters goes (to me).

Keep your blogging up and unless there is a weather disaster, be ready to discuss and ask questions about the Gurlesque tomorrow.

J

ORLAN

in response to the below post, i thought i'd mention Sant-Orlan. certainly one of the most incredible performance artists ever. basically her art is getting plastic surgery so she looks like the 'ideal woman'. some people say that she is anti-feminist, some people say she's the perfect feminist for exposing the construction of beauty.

this brings the same kind of questions i posted about earlier: which is which?

http://www.orlan.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlan

http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ecook/courses/eng114em/whoisorlan.htm

I choose to share some of Cindy Sherman's photography, one of the artists listed as an influence to the visual artists included in the Gurlesque anthology. The website I've included gives a description of her life and work and provides dozens of her images. I enjoy the fact that she uses herself as a model throughout her work, and find this provokes questions concerning identity. Some of the images have a definite grotesque quality and it's easy to see how she's an influence on the artists in the anthology.

Toward the bottom of the webpage a commentator writes:

"Here is an artist who obsessively photographs herself yet does not celebrate herself. In fact, she goes out of her way to obliterate signs of herself and creates in her performances and her images women who reveal no sense of self, women who seem objectified and stereotypical.

It is the lack of narrative and the lack of the unique and particular that deadens empathy and objectifies the women. Sherman in each image uses herself as an object, like a chair or a room that is constantly reworked by aspiring decorators. In each image of her performances, she creates a still life - in which the major element is a distressed woman instead of the usual bowl of fruit or white porcelain water jog.

So much of Sherman's attitude is antiphotography. To begin with, there is the fact that she does not consider herself a photographer or her work photography. Secondly, she does not always take the photograph herself. Then there is the heroic scale of the larger pieces, 6 1/2 by 4 feet - more reminiscent of wall art than of art photography. Also, by purposely making her pictures visually uninteresting, she is telling us that the fact of her photographic documentation is more important than what is in the image. By calling each of her images "Untitled" and by divesting each woman of any characteristic details, Sherman keeps the information to a minimum, and dismisses photography as the art of the specific and unique. The same lack of detail restrains the viewer's memory and limits the nostalgia that the viewer typically brings to photography.

On the other hand, by creating performance pieces that only exist for the camera and only last as long as the exposure, she has appropriated one of the photography's oldest functions - documentation. Looking at the images of Cindy Sherman, one has to wonder if its author's phenomenal success has to do with the misogynistic objectification of women that this documentation embodies."

Her style, as the commentator suggests, does seem to emphasize the act of documentation over the specific content of the images. To me, all of the images have a strange placid quality, even when the scene may suggest a moment of distress. After looking through several of Sherman's portraits, I found myself paying less and less attention to the scenes she's portraying, trying, I suppose, to find Sherman herself--or at least to wonder at the who more than the what. In that regard, her work seems to use the traditional way images objectify women to prompt the viewer to consider the humanity that might be embedded in the objectified.

How about everyone else? Any thoughts, feelings, or impressions on Sherman's work? How it may relate to some of the visual artists in the anthology, or the poetry?

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/photography/Cindy-Sherman.html

horizontal/vertical.

first, some articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/nyregion/occupy-wall-street-protest-reaches-a-crossroads.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1&hp

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/david-graeber-the-antileader-of-occupy-wall-street-10262011.html

the first link is for an nytimes article about the current state of occupy and its history. the second link is for a sort of bio of david graeber, who the times article refers to. he's an anarchist and is credited with initiating the horizontal structure of the protesters. don't read all of the article on him unless you really want to. skim it for stuff about occupy, etc. all you really need to get from these is the way horizonticality and verticality are contrasted.

i think we're at a point in theory similar to the state of the protests. we've undergone a sort of massive deconstruction (of the vertical) to the point where the theories are entirely horizontal. that is, feminist theory has gone from anti-gender to anti-hierarchy in general.

it's a postmodern paradigm. we are everywhere, we are nowhere, we are the 99%. an unorganized mob without specific goals, all of that. my question is: is the occupy movement (charged with being ineffective due to it's horizontality) really ineffective? is it actually the sort of rhizomatic, horizontal movement in a perfect state: spreading without a heart or a head, without an axiom, i.e. a weak spot. is it actually subsuming the structures that it opposes?

shameless self-promotion

Okay well, since Stephen used the blog to call for Walkabout submissions, I'm going to do it for Honors Journal.

I hate to yell here, but YOU SHOULD ALL SUBMIT TO HONORS JOURNAL.

We are a student-run interdisciplinary journal that publishes outstanding, original work done by undergrads at CU. ALL undergrads are eligible to submit work and we accept work from all disciplines. No really, if you are an undergrad, literally anything you do is eligible. In the past we have published poetry, fiction, research (natural & social sciences), creative nonfiction, architecture/engineering projects, essays (humanities, political science, economics), music, film, math proofs, etc. We even publish foreign-language pieces.

The deadline is next Friday, 11/11/11. (We may extend our deadline, but if we reach our goal for submissions we won't.)