It's all about the Gaze

What a difference a context makes; I'm sure that the retailer selling the Big Issue in St. John's Wood, surrounded by expensive cars and clothing boutiques, was no scruffier than any other, but not even in Ascot have I seen someone hawking the Issue who looked so out of place. Either way, last week's cover star Dustin Hoffman certainly caught my attention, with a discussion of his preparation for Tootsie. Being the great Oscar-nominated method actor that he is, naturally he spent some time dressed up as a woman, just, kind of, wondering around. One evening he came home to his wife in tears, devastated to find himself constantly given a quick glance and then ignored by men who didn't find him particularly attractive, and evidently assumed that they wouldn't be interested in the "woman" in front of them for any other reason. He related in the article that his tears were tears of guilt at having been such a man for most of his life, though it's not impossible that the unusual experience of being routinely written off based solely on physical appearance had got to him a little.

[this next bit kind of turned into a bit of a "Male Gaze 101" (sorry), so if you don't want that then skip to the paragraph that begins, "But to the point!"]

Perhaps it's not surprising that it hit Dustin Hoffman so hard; no-one knows really knows what it's like to live as someone from a visibly different demographic until they've done it. There's an argument in feminist theory that many of the ways in which the world is presented, be it in advertising, film, or even my copy of the Big Issue, are shown through the lens of a conventional masculine outlook. For example, the slogan "sex sells" is widely used to explain the presence of overtly sexualised  images of women, which are completely uninteresting (sexually) to straight women, gay men, asexuals, and anyone else who doesn't find the socially conventional beauty model attractive. First outlined in the mid '70s by Laura Mulvey, this "male gaze" has been delightfully subverted recently by a group called The Hawkeye Initiative, whose m.o. is replacing sexualised images of women from the world of comics with pictures of Hawkeye in the same pose, highlighting how ridiculous the compositions are. I may have spent more time than is healthy on that tumblr....

The Avengers, but more fabulous - from Kevin Bolk

Sadly the male gaze is a powerful weapon out here in the real world too, as a way of quickly assessing a woman (or Dustin Hoffman) by her physical appearance. And it's not just men who do it; while I've heard my fair share of conversations between men who have clearly exercised their judgement through their eyes (and undoubtedly done it myself), women do it too. Aimed at strangers on public transport wearing "inappropriate" clothes for someone their shape, or in a professional environment to denigrate an unpopular colleague, the gaze has great power in its all-pervasiveness among both genders in casual conversation. Neither is it exclusively something directed at women, though in my experience that accounts for the overwhelming majority of cases. And it's hard to imagine the producers of the X-files considering not casting David Duchovny's character because the actor wasn't enough of a hunk.

But to the point! I think the male gaze has a counterpart - let's call it the female gaze for now and then explode the gender binary later. The female gaze is by default positive, affirming, a way of bonding with other people. It's when you comment on someone's outfit, the book they're reading, their gift shopping. Ok, so it doesn't have to be a force for good, it can be used to disparage and insult, but crucially it is targeted at something which reflects a decision, something that speaks to who that person has chosen to be, not their genetic quirks. And unlike the male gaze, it leads to discussion instead of division, and can be openly directed at friends. [Or strangers - I once saw a friend in floods of tears briefly pause to admire a stranger's tights; impressive gazing!]

Like the male gaze, it does have a gendered association with it. As a straight man I am often told not to try to join in discussions about the clothes someone is wearing, and have been called an honorary woman (or even "a lesbian in a man's body") when friends have found me not unpleasant to go shopping with. The question is how we could make this "female" gaze more universal, preferably at the expense of the "male" gaze. Maybe superheroes can be portrayed with the labels sticking out of their costumes, so we can admire their choice of fabrics? Or pay for covertly taken photos of celebs listening to Bon Jovi, or reading Jasper Fforde (the scandal!)? I don't know. But I'd like to live in a world where Dustin Hoffman was complimented on his earrings, and where I had first spotted how cheerful the Big Issue seller was keeping rather than judging his poverty.

One quick afterthought - conversations about the burqa's purpose often dwell on how it can alleviate the oppressiveness of the "male" gaze, but doesn't it do the same for the "female" gaze?

Love, Honour, and Dismay

It did not come as a surprise that the Church of England has rejected the government consultation on same-sex marriage. While the Church has always been a wide coalition of opposing viewpoints it is currently dominated centrally by a conservative outlook. And if we're not ready to permit women equality with men then giving any acknowledgement to non-heterosexuals is asking quite a lot. And yet, knowing all of this and thinking myself prepared for it, the Response itself has still given me fresh disappointment. 

In its opening paragraphs the document highlights the importance of, "the possibility of procreation" in marriage, an element which is optional to the marriage service and which places a value on the institution no higher than the fertility and compatibility of a couple's genitals. They go on to wheel out clichéd but nonsensical arguments; I have never had it explained to me in what way other people being married changes the nature of marriage for heterosexual couples, nor why the constant and never-ending shifting definition of words is suddenly to create a seismic event.

However, I was most shocked to discover the document defending its stance by arguing that allowing same sex couples to marry, "deliver[s] no obvious legal gains given the rights conferred by civil partnerships". Of all institutions, the Church should be able to acknowledge that the gulf between marriage and the legal trappings that accompany it is as wide as the difference between death and the handling of your estate. A religious marriage is about presenting your relationship to God and to your family and community (whatever shape the latter takes) and asking for their combined blessing and support in sustaining it. A civil ceremony may attempt, sometimes successfully, to capture some of these elements, but it cannot capture all of them, and for members of the Church the legal similarity of the two is completely irrelevant.

It is only since 2002 that the Church of England has officially sanctioned the re-marriage of divorcees (somewhat ironically given the Church's origins). The mechanisms of marriage available to ordinary people has changed a number of times over the centuries, without radically overhauling what that mechanism symbolised to the couple involved (though that has happened too). But all other things aside, for the Church of England to use the standard secular arguments to defend its position is utterly ridiculous. It completely misses the point of marriage, in a way which the Church of all organisations really ought not to. If it is an issue of theology, then say so. If it is an issue of doctrine, then say so. Don't hide behind weak irrelevancies and thinly-veiled prejudice.

The Church of England's website has a page discussing the background to the Church's position on marriage. On it, Rowan Williams says of same-sex marriage, "issues like stigma and marginalisation have to be addressed at the level of culture rather than law". For once, I could not disagree more. The government, community leaders, and yes especially the Church, have a duty to take the lead on such issues and set the tone for culture to follow. It is what we are called to do as Christians, and are in an unusually strong position to do so as an established Church. This Response is cowardly and embarrassing. And wrong.

I spy, with my critical eye, something beginning with fail....

The prompt for me to watch the first episode of the new series of Sherlock was seeing a proliferation of blog posts about it's rewriting of the end of the episode. I managed to avoid reading any of the posts before seeing the episode, so all I noticed at the time (not having read the original) was that the ending was a bit pants, and the lead female character, who had been brilliantly written for throughout, wound up looking pretty pathetic. Which was a shame.

A friend of mine who enjoys Harry Potter (and who also gave the most rousing and convincing defence of the Twilight series I've ever heard, for which they get kudos) told me that they are really disappointed, not only by the fact that outing Dumbledore post-publication appears to imply that non-heterosexual relationships are somehow more "adult" than heterosexual ones, but also by the fact that Ginny Weasley's sole raison d'etre is to marry Harry. Which, in spite of rhyming, is not cool.

Another friend (yes I have more than one) has expressed disappointment in discovering recently that a couple of their favourite authors (namely Lois McMaster Bujold and Jared Diamond) are in their own special ways more than a teensy bit racist. Damn.

I really enjoy Steven Moffat's writing. I really like his dialogue, his pacing, most of his characters. I love what he's done with Doctor Who, and I'm willing to sit through a certain amount of potentially dangerous over-simplification / benevolent sexism to enjoy it. I'm also willing to ignore a certain amount of homophobia from the lead characters in Sherlock because I think their relationship is well-written enough to overcome it (Korea disagrees). But is it enough simply to be aware of these problems? Given that I have very little way of addressing them (apart from getting whiney on The Internet), by continuing to enjoy and consume this material I am tacitly endorsing it, and every time I recommend it to a friend I'm potentially propagating it. Should I be giving a list of caveats every time I tell someone about something I like? Because given what a fan of Lord of the Rings I am that could seriously impact on my free time. (There's a deeper argument I quite like here, which sheds some interesting light on a discussion I had a while ago about the rape scene in the Watchmen film.)

In some ways I feel that it's a mark of quality - the fewer caveats I need on something the better it is. I'm currently avidly consuming Avatar: The Last Airbender (a children's cartoon made for the American mainstream market) because it is remarkably progressive regarding gender, race, ability and so on. The number of caveats required in the first series is roughly one half (it also has a 10-tonne, six-legged, flying bison in it, which may explain much of the rest of its appeal). While that's all very well in contemporary media, it doesn't work for much else. Wagner was anti-semitic but still wrote great music (well, arguably great anyway). Gandhi beat his wife, but surely that doesn't invalidate his approach to protest? And obviously we can't discount Stephen Hawking's contribution to physics because, according to the BBC, he spends most of the day thinking about women, who remain "a complete mystery" apparently (poor dear).

Maybe it's about lowering expectations. Nobody's perfect, and even friends' opinions are bound to disappoint at some point. I guess for the moment I'll just keep playing "spot the fail" and then getting whiney on The Internet.

Just a quick one.

Is it rude to stare at blind people?

Not people who are partially sighted, but people who literally can not see at all. I watched a man yesterday stop so close to another that had his cane swept back any later he would have walked into him (proving just how well he'd got the timing on that tuned to his walking speed!). But is the rudeness of staring in the fact that the other person might notice that you're staring, or that it draws attention to them for other people?

One. And it's NOT FUNNY!

Given how much I enjoy comedy it's not really surprising that it was Frankie Boyle's comments about Down Syndrome that coaxed me into this. Whatever follows, I am amazingly impressed by Sharon Smith, the woman who objected to the comments; the class with which she has handled this whole issue - no press interviews, no righteous anger, just a bald statement of the truth in a free-to-view public forum - leaves me hugely awed and humbled. I'd have behaved terribly in her shoes!

However, I don't feel that this issue is as cut-and-dried as a lot of the commentators I've read seem to. Boyle himself (reported by Marc Lee in the Telegraph) says that, "there's no line you can't cross" in comedy, though surely there is at the very least a line of legality, where comedy becomes incitement to hatred? A very thorough investigation of the issue by Brian Logan uses the word irony more times than the Alanis Morisette song, as an explanation for the apparent intolerance perpertrated by many modern comedians. The argument here goes that portraying stereotypes can be framed as laughing at the [eg racists] not the [eg racial stereotype], but what about people who don't see it that way? And wasn't that the excuse which that Fawlty Towers episode used, not to mention ITV sitcom "Love Thy Neighbour"? Do we still see them as ironic today?

An exception is often granted in the case of people mocking a group to which they belong, eg recent film release The Infidel, or Jo Brand making fat jokes. But doesn't this more strongly reinforce stereotypes than a person from outside the group sending them up? After all, if we can watch a fat woman telling us she eats a lot of cake, isn't that more convincing than Jimmy Carr saying it? Parts of Djalili's stand-up involves parodying Islamic extremists; but given that he himself is Baha'i isn't that at great risk of cementing the link in people's minds between anything from the Middle East and terrorists?

Paul MacInnes' article (which mainly focuses on taboo rather than tolerance - which one of us has missed the point?!) provides a set of guidelines for comics to stay within. For all he admits that they, "could prove...to be a little woolly", I'm not convinced that they're even a helpful starting point. Why are we allowed to laugh at dominant groups but not oppressed ones? Does laughing with Michael McIntyre at the white British male obsession with lofts enforce a sense of this group being, "default" and others being "other"? Is it patronising to imply that oppressed groups can't laugh at themselves, or that the mainstream is unable to distinguish between caricature and reality? McInnes also talks about choice, but a person's weight isn't the only grey area here; in this country at least accent is often altered to denote class aspiration, and don't people choose their religion? From the other side, John Holmes didn't choose to be short, so is the running joke about his height on Radio 4's The Now Show inappropriate if he doesn't mind?

If Russell Howard can get away with impressions of a Taiwanese person on his BBC show, and Ross Noble can be lauded for his Stephen Hawking skit by someone else with a similar voice synthesiser, how much of this is about context? When I first pointed friends to the Frankie Boyle news story I coupled it with this film trailer parody, which also features a person with an impairment in a not-altogether flattering manner (he's described as a "retard" at one point), and yet no-one complained at the apparent irony - why not? And why was complaint so slow in coming, when Boyle's standard comedic fare on Mock the Week included paedophilia, kidnap and rape, not always separately?

And finally, what does it say about me that the first time I saw the headline I thought of Susan Boyle...?