Katy Perry vs. the Social Consciousness Nazis

When Australian television presenter Karl Stefanovic asked Katy Perry if she is a feminist, her answer was fluff. And as usual, the Social Consciousness Nazis--bloggers and intellectuals as strict and demanding with regard to pet issues as the Soup Nazi is about his soup--can’t simply groan and click on something else. They have to bring all their wit and condemnation to bear on the supposed offender, and by their puerility discredit their cause in the eyes of many.

Perry’s answer (watch it here at 1:40):

"A feminist? Uh, yeah, actually. I used to not really understand what that word meant, and now that I do, it just means that I love myself as a female and I also love men."

The response on The Huffington Post (article) included this:

 

This diagram--drafted by Rebecca Searles, a Huffington Post editor--is representative of much that is wrong with dialogue in our internet-drenched, memed-to-death times. It reduces a complex issue into a simple, snarky visual that you would have to be stupid or evil to disagree with. The posted meme with its Like button and Comments section doesn’t allow for anything Plato would recognize as dialogue or even conversation.

The Huffington Post’s definition is all right, but feminism clearly does not only mean that. Words don’t have a single definition, they have families of definitions, they have uses, and clouds of connotations that can be hard to pin down. Feminism is no different.

Perry’s definition is pretty airy, but I take her to mean that she is a strong woman and wants this confidence for other women as well. Isn’t this an important part of feminism? I think it is, but it isn’t good enough for the Social Consciousness Nazis, who insist you see everything in exactly their terms. They will eat their own for straying from the approved script.

I suspect Perry and others are uncertain about feminism because to them the word suggests a certain style of feminism, one that many see as overwrought and unpleasant. Judging by the Huffington Post’s diagram, I have been a feminist for as long as I can remember, but I recently became more interested in it after blogging about the Greta Garbo film Queen Christina. Surfing the internet, I often find myself reading feminist content. While it is often good (I admire Laurie Penny), there is a surprising amount of pure man-hating posing as serious commentary.

No wonder girls like Perry hesitate to associate with that.

Statistics regularly show that women still do not enjoy equal opportunity in the U.S. and around the world, and the Republican War on Women is real, so I’m glad there are aggressive feminists (like attorney, activist and candidate for California State Senate Sandra Fluke) who fight hard for the cause. But ill-conceived ideology and snarky blurbs by the rank and file online will only turn away people who would otherwise be there fighting alongside them.

Is It Okay for a Socially Conscious Person to Enjoy Machete?

Outrage has become a staple of public dialogue and American consciousness. If Katy Perry gives a geisha-ish performance mixing elements of various traditional Asian cultures, this is labeled “cultural appropriation” and racist. As also illustrated by the furor over Miley Cyrus’s VMAs performance last year, nothing--neither a pop music performance nor the goofy costumes worn by its performers--is above a public grilling by cultural critics.

Personally, I’m fond of this kind of critique, although outrage isn’t my response to every offense (blog). Like many feminists, I thought the scene in Star Trek: Into Darkness featuring Dr. Carol Marcus in her skivvies was gratuitous (article), but the most I could work up was a chuckle at such a naked attempt to inject eye-candy into the movie.

I’m not, however, above turning away from something in disappointment. I recently started reading Paolo Bacigalupi’s Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel The Windup Girl. The first chapter was about Anderson Lake, a Western businessman running a factory in Thailand. The second was about the Chinese immigrant Hock Seng, a factory manager who aims to steal important designs from Lake. The third was about Emiko, a Japanese girl who was created through genetic engineering and works at a sex club.

At this point, I began to get a sinking feeling.

 

The stereotypes could not be any clearer: the dominant, straight-talking, brook-no-bullshit Westerner; the passive, sneaky, subservient Asian; and the sexpot Asian. In the case of Emiko, we must sit through a description of her rape by her employer and the club’s patrons--at some level, an enactment of a sadistic fantasy shared by the author and many in his audience. I kept reading, but when the big white Westerner rescued the helpless little Japanese girl, thereby winning her gratitude and setting the stage for eventually gaining her love and conquering her body, I decided I had better things to read.

Which brings me to Machete. In this age of active, sometimes overactive (blog), social and cultural sensitivity, what are we to make of a movie that blatantly breaks so many of the rules and is openly acknowledged by director Robert Rodriquez to be an homage to the exploitation flicks of less enlightened decades?

 

The text on the Japanese DVD case calls Machete the “complete filmization of a man’s dream,” and that it is--at least for many men. About a brawny, ugly Mexican who’s good at killing in grisly ways, it spills gallons of blood and shows miles of skin. Scenes of bodily fluids flying from gunshots, impalements and even weed-whackers are interspersed with scenes featuring svelte young women nude, topless, or in kinky costumes--sexy nurse outfits, a nun’s habit, black leather, and so on. While the plot deals with social justice--specifically illegal immigration--racial slurs and stereotypes abound.

Why is this okay, if it is indeed okay? Because it’s fiction? Because it’s all in fun? Because it’s a parody of exploitation flicks and not exactly one itself? Because the sexualized women are strong women? Because the epithets aren’t meant spitefully? Because all of these infringements actually serve to turn themselves on their head in order to make a point that is the opposite of what they might suggest on the surface?

No doubt the answer is all of the above, but at least some of the infractions are simply enjoyable without any need for an excuse. The racial aspects demand separate treatment, but with regard to the portrayal of women, which might in another film provoke cries of sexism or misogyny, perhaps we can say that sometimes it’s all right to put feminist narratives aside and just enjoy a ridiculous fantasy.

Sometimes it’s okay to just be a man or woman who thinks Michelle Rodriquez looks hot as Hell in black leather with matching eyepatch.