Gender in Society (4)

Pop culture and its influence.

In Judith Butler mentions the relationship between gender and sex by using a reference to Aretha Franklin.  She says, “When Aretha Franklin sings, ‘you make me feel like a natural woman,” she seems at first to suggest that some natural potential of her biological sex is actualized by her participation in the cultural position of ‘woman’as object of heterosexual recognition.  Something in her ‘sex’ is thus expressed by her ‘gender’, which is then fully known and consecrated within the heterosexual scene.  There is no breakage, no discontinuity between ‘sex’ as biological facticity and essence, or between gender and sexuality.”  Butler goes on the explain that there are other possibilities, and that Aretha Franklin could have other intentions when she sings those words.  I believe that the assumption that Butler originally describes is definitely propagated by social norms—the continuity of gender and sexuality that most people find comfortable.  Pop culture typically only enforces the so-called “essence” that each gender claims. 

 

Some art though, goes against the grain.  Butler’s reference to pop culture made me think about the images that songs and album covers put forward, and what it says about commonly held standards for the faces of pop culture.  Christian Marclay’s series “Body Mixes” shows various CD covers overlapping each other to create new people.  The album covers are from releases during the 1960s to the 1980s, and are from varying genres.  These photos create literal discontinuity.  I found it interesting that Christian Marclay chose to pair different genders together in ways that may make the viewer uncomfortable—such as a woman’s bikini bottom below a man’s torso.  If you were to glance quickly, you may not realize that it isn’t just an obscene picture of a man.  Though neither the woman’s legs nor the man’s torso would be of issue by itself, together it creates a conflict.  The thought of man and woman being one is often uncomfortable for the public eye, and is withheld from pop culture.  With the current obsession with immediate gratification that we face in the world today, discontinuity goes unappreciated, similar to the way that any disconnect between gender and sexuality is unappreciated.  I think these pictures beautifully represent the way that alternate arrangements of the body can be art forms, rather than something that pop culture pushes aside.   I wonder how it would change the beloved song if Aretha Franklin really is singing about some other instance that verifies her sexuality…