My Response to Blake Lively’s Booty

This week, Blake Lively invited outrage with an Instagram post. And because these kinds of debates fascinate me, I thought I’d work in a few quick comments. The Instagram post shows two views of Blake Lively on the red carpet--one from in front of her and one from behind, with the caption “L.A. face with an Oakland booty.”

Predictably, the result was outrage. This from MTV writer Ira Madison III:

“L.A. face” refers to the white, American beauty standard. Something you possess. It’s why the Daily Mail publishes your photo so many damn times you’d think you were about to pop out a royal baby. “Oakland booty” refers to a large derrière, an undesirable butt that Jane Fonda workout tape enthusiasts from L.A. wouldn’t be caught dead with. It’s the reason you take SoulCycle classes. It’s why you have Pressed Juicery on speed dial. It’s the type of ass that the Kardashians or white people turn into a circus attraction like Saartjie Baartman. You don’t have an Oakland booty. You have a Burbank booty.

The caption is actually a quote from “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot, who defended Lively to New York Daily News:

I don't get [the debate] at all. She's saying she's proud of her butt. I'm glad she embraced the look, because that's what I wanted [with the song].

I suppose now I’m supposed to tell you which side is right, but searching for the right side and the killer argument to end the argument is exactly what we have to stop doing. Most of these debates involve interpretation of facts rather than mere facts and as such have no absolute right or wrong or any resource to which we can turn to settle the debate. The right answer isn’t just difficult, it doesn’t exist.

This is hard to accept, but accept it we must.

Madison is the type of writer who should know that and restrain his hyperbole. It never ceases to amaze me how so many in the online outrage factory are highly educated and well-intentioned but have incorrigible writing style, hopelessly confused ideas, and no compunction about publicly branding people racist or sexist over their interpretation of a music video, movie poster or Instagram post.

I’m not saying we should all just get along. Important issues are at stake, and in the absence of absolute right and wrong, there are only arguments, many arguments, none ultimately potent, which sway us one way or another.

Is it all right for Gwyneth Paltrow to tweet the song title “Niggas in Paris”? Is it all right for Beyoncé to use Black Panther imagery in a Super Bowl halftime show? Is putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill a sign of real progress or is it mere tokenism? I’m sure I don’t know, not in any way I can prove for all time, but having these debates is not pointless. It changes hearts and minds, encourages action, and shapes our society.

Thus, the fight against social ills must be fought and fought hard--even when it comes to celebrity Instagram posts--but I insist it must be fought with some honor, by which I mean solid thinking and human decency in tactics. Spaz attacks like Madison's do more harm than good.

Related posts:

When I'm Outraged and When I'm Not

The Miley Cyrus Affair

Sex, Chairs and Photographs

Katy Perry and Feminism

Sky Ferreira and Textual Sins

Teen Titans #1 and Choosing a Narrative

Spielberg's Lincoln Is a Racist Mess

An Open Letter to Feminists

Nihilism and Batgirl #41

 

Love & Ideology In A Town Like Alice

Once you realize that ideology is everywhere, it’s hard to miss. Entire armies of bloggers--myself included--never tire of commenting on its manifestations, especially in popular culture. Most recently, I found Nevil Shute’s novel A Town Like Alice (1950) to be bursting with ideology.

The central protagonist of A Town Like Alice is Jean Paget, an Englishwoman forced into a death march on Malaya during occupation by the Japanese army in World War II. During that time, she meets Australian prisoner of war Joe Harman, who suffers crucifixion by the Japanese but survives. After the war, they reconnect in Australia and romance blooms. It’s all very heart-warming, especially as told in Shute’s simple prose, but like all art, like all language, it contains hidden agendas.

 

One agenda in A Town Like Alice is that of capitalism. In post-War Britain, Jean inherits enough money that she needn’t ever work for a living again. Nonetheless, she uses her inheritance in the Australian outback to start a shoe factory and ice cream parlor, among other ventures. Her capital, her ownership of the means of production, make her the very definition of a capitalist. Shute never portrays her entrepreneurial activities in any way but positive--she provides employment, stimulates the economy and turns a mere hole in the road into a boomtown--but will her employees always feel blessed to be mere proles? Are the Aborigines in the area pleased to see settlers continue to flood the land, subjugate nature, and enforce different values?

Which leads to more ideology: the colonialist mindset. Colonization, always a nasty affair, was also nasty in Australia. The Aborigines in A Town Like Alice are referred to derogatorily, they can’t share certain facilities with whites, and they aren’t trusted. In addition to playing European savior to the rustic whites of the Australian outback, Jean Paget plays white savior, first to the Malays and then to Aborigines. Toward the end, as her efforts bear fruit, the novel fairly reeks of those colonialist values of improvement, civilization and religion that Joseph Conrad derided in Heart of Darkness and W.E.B. Du Bois excoriated in “The Souls of White Folk” in Darkwater (previous post).

The ideological element that is most obvious is what philosopher Slavoj Zizek calls--in In Defense of Lost Causes and elsewhere--the production of the couple (video). Matchmaking is an objective in nearly every work of fiction in modern times. Everything from music videos to literary novels culminates in lovers joining, and A Town Like Alice is, after all, a romance. Shute’s novel takes this agenda further, though. When Jean employs girls in her businesses, it encourages more ringers to hang around, resulting in a growing number of couples, marriages and babies. In A Town Like Alice, the production of the couple combines with capitalism to actually produce couples through the mechanisms of the free market!

I find that a bit disconcerting.

However, the colonialist mindset in A Town Like Alice is mitigated. The first half of the book shows English women learning to live like Malays under Japanese imperial rule, while the second half deals with settlers of European background in land once only populated by Aborigines. Shute may have designed this reversal of roles to be instructive, but of what? He tells stories, but preaches little.  To what extent was he subconsciously reflecting the prejudices of his cultural background, and to what extent was he offering a conscious critique of that cultural background?

The latter is entirely possible. Shute’s novels (I’ve also read On the Beach.) indicate a man who was in many ways supremely moral and forward-thinking. For example, A Town Like Alice has no shortage of men looking down on women, but the women always prove them wrong. Far from frivolous, Jean is sober, perseverant and intelligent--and not after the cheap manner of the sexy, spunky heroines so favored in popular culture today. Shute has clearly designed his novel to contradict the demeaning stereotypes men in his time had of women and often still do today.

But feminism is ideology, too.

A Town Like Alice tells an enjoyable story, but like all stories, there is more beneath the surface--a worldview or worldviews the work encourages, for better or worse.

 

A Casual Review of Supergirl, Season 1

The previews for Supergirl had me afraid of the worst. However, I have a soft spot for the character, so I gave the pilot a try, and it was much better than I expected. I ended up watching the whole season and then began anxiously awaiting news of Supergirl’s cancellation or renewal.

 

But Supergirl wasn’t always good, so let’s get the bad out of the way. Episodes focusing on the Department of Extra-Normal Operations taking out a one-off baddie were formulaic, some special effects were awful (Red Tornado, anyone?), and a couple actors in minor recurring roles were torture to watch. Thankfully, however, the core cast and many others were excellent.

Which brings us to the good. The core cast always impressed, but no one was better than Melissa Benoist. As Kara Danvers, she’s dorky and lovable, and as Supergirl, she’s tough and inspiring. Somehow, Benoist (and her costume and makeup wizards) achieve a compelling distinction between the two. When J’onn J’onzz the Martian Manhunter shapeshifts into Kara (“For the Girl Who Has Everything”), Benoist does a good job mimicking the way he walks and talks. And when she turns into Bad Supergirl, she demonstrates fifty shades of wicked that’s pure joy to watch.

This last was in “Falling.” After a dose of Red Kryptonite, Supergirl develops a nasty attitude. She rebels against her boss, gets a co-worker fired, claws her sister’s emotions to shreds, and eventually goes full supervillain, torching a police car, laughing maniacally, and aspiring to godhood. The episode is an example of why I insist the superhero genre has more to offer than much supposedly highbrow art. When Kara finally returns to herself, she’s in tears over what her dark side has done. It’s heartbreaking and insightful. Anyone who has ever behaved horribly and regretted it later knows this shame.

 

Many other favorite moments are sprinkled throughout the season. I especially like it when Supergirl has a typical Superman moment but does it better. Kara has a background story nearly identical to Kal-El’s, rescues a crashing airplane, faces baddies from the Phantom Zone, works in mass media, is coworkers with Jimmy Olsen, talks to a hologram of a lost family member, loses her powers, adjusts her glasses nerdily, rips open her shirt to reveal the big S, and even has her own Bizarro. In fact, Supergirl does a lot that has been done by Superman, but the execution is such that it’s never as annoying as it tends to be for Superman and never feels anything less than wholly her own.

It helps that the Big Boy in Blue, while not far away in Metropolis, gets shunted aside every time he tries to step into the spotlight. He’s got a bad case of backlight in the intro, and when he does come to National City to save the day in “Myriad,” he’s still a distant blurry dot in the sky when a psychic attack incapacitates him and he divebombs into the city. He spends the rest of the season lying on a gurney with only his boots visible!

But who needs him anyway? Supergirl saves the world without him, and I enjoyed watching it happen as much as I’ve enjoyed the best of Superman on the big screen (Man of Steel, parts of Superman II) or the small screen (Lois & Clark), and a great deal more than the worst (Superman I-IV, Superman Returns). When director Zack Snyder can’t make a sure bet like Batman v Superman perform to industry expectations, maybe it’s time to give Superman a rest and let his cousin take over.

As I write this, however, the future of Supergirl is uncertain. As I understand it, the show did all right ratings-wise, but only all right. CBS has announced plans to renew all its freshman series but has been oddly unforthcoming on specific plans regarding Supergirl, so there is speculation it could move to the sister network The CW. I don’t care which network it’s on, I just hope Supergirl gets another season. It deserves it.