mmoa_writes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mmoa_writes) wrote2010-06-22 09:11 pm
mmoa_writes) wrote2010-06-22 09:11 pm
Entry tags:
Womanist Musings
One thing I am fascinated by is the intersection of gender, class, race and religion and how social advocates who specialise in or expertly deal with one area can often downplay of other areas or completely ignore the more complex interplay and thus assign certain trends or features of society incorrectly. I've often read - and occasionally commented on - posts where people think about and discuss the intersection of race and gender, particularly from a black perspective where black women are used to having their cause fought over by mostly well-meaning white feminists who might not understand the additional complexities race and culture - particularly that which has less commonality with the dominant one which is more important when it comes to the experience of the black woman as a member of an ethnic minority as well as the disadvantaged gender - and indeed have taken refuge in their ignorance, using it as a weapon to defend assertions on how black women should respond to gender inequalities within their cultures. One example is the stereotyping - in this day and age more subconscious - of the black man as the most heinous misogynist, which is often expressed in language that occasionally betrays the idea that this misogyny is somehow embellished by the uncivilised characteristics of the black male. It seems to have it's roots in a very white middle-class feminism, based in the more mistaken ideals of naive colonial/missionary wives, which can sometimes be seen as much of an arrogant imposition as the patriarchy it seeks to displace.
Another example is more class-based and as such is - oddly enough - an issue I don't feel I have much 'native' authority speaking on as I am a thoroughly middle class woman. It was an intersection that I felt was really challenging, after watching the first part in a documentary on Fatherhood throughout the century.
In 'A Century of Fatherhood: The Good Father', the various stereotypes of fathering throughout the century were brought up and effectively demolished. Now I have read previews of books dealing with this subject before. There was one in particular that I read years ago when I could still get the supplements for the Daily Telegraph for free (which are so much better than the Grauniad's often enough. I swear, my ideal paper would be the Guardian for news, the Independent for opinion and the Telegraph for supplements. And maybe the Times for the cartoons. Maybe) where I read the transcript of a letter written by a Victorian father to his wife who was away for some reason, very proudly recalling all the things he and the children had got up to and well everything was going in her absence. It also had some detail of recent research into the Medieval and Renaissance father which I should hopefully get more clued up on as I have some related reccs from the Medieval Review to read. When I was studying the classics for A level, there was a fascinating display about an excavation of a Roman (or Athenian) headstone which had a depiction of the shoemaker who it commemorated being 'helped out' by his two young daughters as he was working and an article discussing what we might be able to infer from such scant evidence about the emotional (rather than economic or political) reality of the father's role in his family. In short, there's plenty of stuff out there on this topic - the documentary has probably just scratched the surface.
The reason the theme of intersectionality came up in the first place was when the documentary dealt with the contemporary stereotyping of the working class father as a savage disciplinarian and a drunk brute the latter of which was particularly pushed by the Temperence movement and has unfortunately lodged itself into our cultural memory. From the little I remember reading about these Temperence movements - and please correct me if I'm wrong - they seemed to be an initially middle-class initiative, the sort came up by charitable women with time and money on their hands. Certainly this stereotype of the working class father was occasionally played on to emphasise the common sense of women's suffrage (in the sense that if you let the drunk, wife-beating miner vote, why not the well educated Chelsea housewife?). It seemed rather redolent of the sort of feminism many black feminists criticise but this time with latent - or not so much - classicism as opposed to racism at work. If the well educated, civilised white male is by nature a tool of the patriarchy, how much more so the non-educated, brutish, unrefined working class or black male. Working class women/women of ethnicity are there to be rescued (or ignored) by their enlightened middle-class/white sisters.
What's interesting is how these stereotypes made by those with societal privilege (in this case class based) and the emphasis placed on them can often end up perpetuating such behaviours until they really do become an issue for the privileged to assume a position of authority or enlightenment over the less privileged. In contemporary British 'black' culture, it is the issue of irresponsible fathers setting an example of prestige linked with violence. When it comes to what is left of the working class culture - or indeed, the under-class - it is fathers not setting an example of academic or economic involvement. I can't say that these are not problems for us to work on, but they are often thought of as problems endemic to the culture that's being considered, rather than a contemporary mutation, and that's worrying because it means such groups can no longer claim their own historical precedent from which to learn or gain some sort of example.
As for the program itself, as one critic has noted, I think it tried so hard to break the stereotype of distant tyrannical Edwardian fathers that it ended up being too sentimental for some and perhaps swung too far in the other direction, depicting a fairy tale age where the nuclear family was as perfect and desirable as it appeared. I didn't actually mind this (the former, not the latter which I don't really think the programme was guilty of but others might). On a personal note, I have a notoriously fractious relationship with my father but I think as we've grown, we've both come to appreciate that this is just the way we are - too similar for our own good. I think the reason I didn't mind the tone of the program was because it almost affirmed what I've always known about my father and me in the way that the best books or films on the subject do, regardless of the differences in experience.
Anyway, it was definitely worth watching and is currently still on BBC iplayer. Rude Britannia is still available as well which I urge everyone who can to watch. I have to say, for all the claims that we 'have never had it so rude', it struck me that British 'rude' is actually much tamer than it used to be. I personally think it comes down to the fact that the main targets of our satire who are no longer the ones in power, but the eccentric and the minority. It's one thing to talk about 'breaking the rules' and 'pushing the comedic limit' if all one is going to do is say offensive things about women and minorities in an ironic sort of voice, it's another when you're attacking the politicos, the intelligentsia, the people who are allowed to run things so shamefully and yet so quietly because we're too busy patting ourselves on the shoulder for taking shots at sitting ducks, I mean, being 'outraaageous'. Even the stuff in the 80s, so out there compared to what we have today seems infinitely well-behaved compared to Rowlandson and Gillray (whose only legitimate heir seems to be Gerald Scarfe, though I do have a soft spot for Mark Rowson). There's something so juvenile about today's popular 'rude' and that is not because comedians might still employ scatological or vomit related jokes or slapstick. It's juvenile in that it's targets are those who don't really matter at all.
I think the perfect example of this could be seen in the short documentary on Gerald Scarfe and his exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Princess Diana being buggered by a pig which represented the Media was one of the few that the curator refused - with perfectly good reasons. Just not, as ever, good enough - to show. The easy, chuckleworthy drawings that included Prince Charles as a GM weed and Princess Diana surrounded by, and getting just enough dirt on her white dress from, the porcine congregants of the Media went in - of course - without a moment's hesitation.
Another example is more class-based and as such is - oddly enough - an issue I don't feel I have much 'native' authority speaking on as I am a thoroughly middle class woman. It was an intersection that I felt was really challenging, after watching the first part in a documentary on Fatherhood throughout the century.
In 'A Century of Fatherhood: The Good Father', the various stereotypes of fathering throughout the century were brought up and effectively demolished. Now I have read previews of books dealing with this subject before. There was one in particular that I read years ago when I could still get the supplements for the Daily Telegraph for free (which are so much better than the Grauniad's often enough. I swear, my ideal paper would be the Guardian for news, the Independent for opinion and the Telegraph for supplements. And maybe the Times for the cartoons. Maybe) where I read the transcript of a letter written by a Victorian father to his wife who was away for some reason, very proudly recalling all the things he and the children had got up to and well everything was going in her absence. It also had some detail of recent research into the Medieval and Renaissance father which I should hopefully get more clued up on as I have some related reccs from the Medieval Review to read. When I was studying the classics for A level, there was a fascinating display about an excavation of a Roman (or Athenian) headstone which had a depiction of the shoemaker who it commemorated being 'helped out' by his two young daughters as he was working and an article discussing what we might be able to infer from such scant evidence about the emotional (rather than economic or political) reality of the father's role in his family. In short, there's plenty of stuff out there on this topic - the documentary has probably just scratched the surface.
The reason the theme of intersectionality came up in the first place was when the documentary dealt with the contemporary stereotyping of the working class father as a savage disciplinarian and a drunk brute the latter of which was particularly pushed by the Temperence movement and has unfortunately lodged itself into our cultural memory. From the little I remember reading about these Temperence movements - and please correct me if I'm wrong - they seemed to be an initially middle-class initiative, the sort came up by charitable women with time and money on their hands. Certainly this stereotype of the working class father was occasionally played on to emphasise the common sense of women's suffrage (in the sense that if you let the drunk, wife-beating miner vote, why not the well educated Chelsea housewife?). It seemed rather redolent of the sort of feminism many black feminists criticise but this time with latent - or not so much - classicism as opposed to racism at work. If the well educated, civilised white male is by nature a tool of the patriarchy, how much more so the non-educated, brutish, unrefined working class or black male. Working class women/women of ethnicity are there to be rescued (or ignored) by their enlightened middle-class/white sisters.
What's interesting is how these stereotypes made by those with societal privilege (in this case class based) and the emphasis placed on them can often end up perpetuating such behaviours until they really do become an issue for the privileged to assume a position of authority or enlightenment over the less privileged. In contemporary British 'black' culture, it is the issue of irresponsible fathers setting an example of prestige linked with violence. When it comes to what is left of the working class culture - or indeed, the under-class - it is fathers not setting an example of academic or economic involvement. I can't say that these are not problems for us to work on, but they are often thought of as problems endemic to the culture that's being considered, rather than a contemporary mutation, and that's worrying because it means such groups can no longer claim their own historical precedent from which to learn or gain some sort of example.
As for the program itself, as one critic has noted, I think it tried so hard to break the stereotype of distant tyrannical Edwardian fathers that it ended up being too sentimental for some and perhaps swung too far in the other direction, depicting a fairy tale age where the nuclear family was as perfect and desirable as it appeared. I didn't actually mind this (the former, not the latter which I don't really think the programme was guilty of but others might). On a personal note, I have a notoriously fractious relationship with my father but I think as we've grown, we've both come to appreciate that this is just the way we are - too similar for our own good. I think the reason I didn't mind the tone of the program was because it almost affirmed what I've always known about my father and me in the way that the best books or films on the subject do, regardless of the differences in experience.
Anyway, it was definitely worth watching and is currently still on BBC iplayer. Rude Britannia is still available as well which I urge everyone who can to watch. I have to say, for all the claims that we 'have never had it so rude', it struck me that British 'rude' is actually much tamer than it used to be. I personally think it comes down to the fact that the main targets of our satire who are no longer the ones in power, but the eccentric and the minority. It's one thing to talk about 'breaking the rules' and 'pushing the comedic limit' if all one is going to do is say offensive things about women and minorities in an ironic sort of voice, it's another when you're attacking the politicos, the intelligentsia, the people who are allowed to run things so shamefully and yet so quietly because we're too busy patting ourselves on the shoulder for taking shots at sitting ducks, I mean, being 'outraaageous'. Even the stuff in the 80s, so out there compared to what we have today seems infinitely well-behaved compared to Rowlandson and Gillray (whose only legitimate heir seems to be Gerald Scarfe, though I do have a soft spot for Mark Rowson). There's something so juvenile about today's popular 'rude' and that is not because comedians might still employ scatological or vomit related jokes or slapstick. It's juvenile in that it's targets are those who don't really matter at all.
I think the perfect example of this could be seen in the short documentary on Gerald Scarfe and his exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Princess Diana being buggered by a pig which represented the Media was one of the few that the curator refused - with perfectly good reasons. Just not, as ever, good enough - to show. The easy, chuckleworthy drawings that included Prince Charles as a GM weed and Princess Diana surrounded by, and getting just enough dirt on her white dress from, the porcine congregants of the Media went in - of course - without a moment's hesitation.