how and why i am in the wonderland

“I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is who in the world I am? Ah that’s the great puzzle!”

Alice, Alice adventures in Wonderland

Leweis Carroll

             As a child in Thailand I constantly watched a cartoon animation of Alice in Wonderland. It provoked my imagination, Alice was the main character, but unlike other fairy tales it did not have a dominant male ’hero’ nor an identifiable plot or ending. The visual characterisations of the White Rabbit, in particular one adaptation for television altered my interpretation of this story and influenced my art. The book itself has never been out of print, it has been produced as plays, films and radio broadcasts. Its characters have been depicted on playing cards, games, and chess pieces.  Lewis Carroll’s book which has often been analysed and critiqued from the point of view as a simple children’s story, social comment, satire on new Victorian mathematical theory and even more obscurely The War The Roses,  discourses on logic, language and philosophy (e.g. Gardner 2000; Irwin & Davis, 2009)..

             To summarise all the theories impossible even a consensus is beyond the scope of this essay. Rather a more general analysis of the major themes of the book has been used. In the story Alice finds herself in a new world with its own rules. The allegory of coming to terms to a new culture is clear, but the story and characters have provided interesting metaphors about perceptions of different cultures, issues of stereotyping and assertions of personal identity to explore in my art practice.

Britain was, and still is, perceived by many south-east Asians as a ‘wonderland’, in particular its values and social norms as characterised by the middle and upper classes, in particular their affluent life-style, through the medium of mass media combined with the import of western consumer goods. My own perceptions of the British ‘wonderland’ came from Disney’s 1951 (English version), cartoon animation of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ which was faithful to Carroll’s original story. Everything looked colourful, pretty, the characters though depicted as animals were friendly, conduct was formal and conversations were polite albeit spoken in American accents. Visually stimulating it became my personal perception of ‘Britain’ as a ‘wonderland’ In contrast the Jonathon Miller’s 1961 television adaptation depicted the characters as humans, English actors in Victorian dress. Whilst Carroll had written a children’s story for children, Miller’s adaption was a critique on British society. As an adult this fundamentally changed a fantasy story of my childhood to a metaphor for irony and comment on British culture which I have explored through my art practice

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            In a literary sense Lewis Carroll’s story whilst an imaginative fantastical story was totally different from the moralising content of 19^th century children’s books had characters which the Victorian reader could clearly identify. Alice is a Victorian heroine, who with her strength of character confronts and overcomes the challenges she encounters. Figuratively the ‘Mad Hatter’ may have characterised one of the many detrimental social impacts of industrialisation the Victorians encountered. The hat manufacturing industry used mercury in the curing process which poisoned the hatters giving them hallucinations and eventually sending them mad – hence the “Mad Hatter”. The image of the White Rabbit is a little more subtle.  Dressed in clothes with watch and chain, obsessed with time it characterised the adult world with its rules on punctuality (Borey, 2001).

However as an allegory it can be developed further. Where I live (Northwest England)  there are visual reminders of the cultural legacy of industrialised Victorian Britain. The repeated allusion to a watch and time could also be interpreted as referring to the socio-economic impact of industrialisation on Victorians concept of time. Dials and clocks regulated the daily manufacturing process in mills. Time as a commodity would have been the basis of the economic relationship between employers and workers. It defined the working day and wages being negotiated and paid per hour of labour. Clocks were a visual dominant architectural feature of Victorian mills and would have been visible to the workers communities clustered around the mills.

            The ‘Mad Hatter’, ‘March Hare’ and Doormouse are introduced as characters at a Tea Party, which in the Victorian age was a social event where conformity with the rules of decorum and social norms were critical to how and indeed whether an individual became part of higher society. Borey, (2001) interprets this as a parallel to society, rules and norms are important. In contrast there is nothing comparable to a formal tea-party in Thailand. Subject to the universal norms of courtesy, social interaction is more communal, privacy as a part of the dynamics of family and friendship relationships non-existent. I have used the tea-party in my art practice as a metaphor for the irony I perceive is created by the cultural social norm(s) of British social interaction. In contrast in Thailand the norm is for communal living whereas in Britain life is distinctly compartmentalised with more emphasis on privacy. In Britain it is the norm for members of the same family to live apart and have separate more private lives. The norm for Thai parties is to be infinitely more inclusive and open, the criteria being simply ‘people you know’ irrespective of how, why or where you interact with them. In Britain I perceive the opposite norm to be true, people invited to parties confined to, and defined by how, why and where social interaction takes place.         

            Carroll’s Mad Hatter’s Tea-Party may be an allegory for the importance of learning the rules of Victorian social interaction. However my art practice photograph shows Alice  entirely alone at a tea party (see photograph below). This is a metaphor for my perception of the reality of social interaction in Britain. Privacy and compartmentalised living creates situations where despite being in the company of others socialising is still a private almost personal existence.

            Coming as I do from a Thai cultural background to Britain, like Alice, new rules of social interaction and entertaining to learn?  

           

At the Tea Party the Doormouse, is characterised as quiet to be almost insignificant individual whose contribution to conversation are spoken over and ignored by the other characters. Interestingly the English language uses idioms like “quiet as a mouse” or ‘... a little mouse’, as a phrase in ordinary conversation to characterise someone who is shy, quiet, by nature chooses to remain in the background. Borey (2001) uses a Marxist interpretation to make a comparison is made between Carroll’s characterisation of the Doormouse and the working class of Victorian England whose senses were ‘dulled’ by the capitalist establishment, hence the famous quote ‘religion is the opium of the people’ but as Borey observes this quote is now more often used as ‘television is the opium of the people’.

                                                           

                                                      Ting –Tong- Mag -ga –Dong- Dong

According to author Sheridan Prasso (2005, 74-105) the “China Porcelain doll” stereotype and other variations of this submissive stereotype exist in American films. This includes the "Geisha Girl, Lotus Flower, China Doll: submissive, docile, obedient, reverential. The other more paradoxical stereotype of the south-east Asian woman is one of  ‘sexually available’ and reflect Hollywood’s films of U.S. military involvement in countries of Far East Asia in the twentieth century. Prasso concluded that mass media, especially television, influences our attitudes and beliefs of the world. Heavy television viewers, for instance, believe the world is more violent than it actually is. On British television the popular award winning series ‘Little Britain’ whilst aimed at over 15 year olds in a 2005 Radio Times survey of children as their second favourite television TV comedy has the characters of Dudley and his mail order Thai Bride, Ting Tong, which is perhaps the only representation of Thai people and British mixed relationships in British.  

 

             Whilst presented or intended as a satire on aspects of contemporary British culture criticism of the of Little Britain’s characterisation of a Thai woman or mail-order bride is that it has given a name  Ting Tong to the stereotype and an image to the caricature (Head,  2006). Whilst that criticism may not be entirely applicable to every strata of 21^st century British Society, it is arguably perhaps more relevant to those whose cultural horizons perhaps extend no further than the 36 inches of flickering light on a flat screen in the corner of their living rooms.

My personal experience underscores the Runnymede Trust ‘Community Studies’ report (Sims, 2008) of casual racism and sexism being a feature of daily life in the U.K. due to stereotypes of Thai women as either mail-ordered brides or prostitutes.  The public perception of  Thais in the labour market is limited and mainly based on stereotyped images – arising, for example, from the prevalence of Thai restaurants across the

country and the media portrayal of Thais in and outside of Thailand involved in sex work. (Sims 2008, 16). The word stereotype implies identification of one person by another, albeit in a simplified way, of a person,

           

“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied, very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”

 In contrast to ‘stereotyping’ personal identity is a major theme in Alice’s encounters in Wonderland.  On at least four occasions ‘Alice’ questions her own identity. In Chapter 5 for example the Caterpillar asks Alice who she is, and she cannot give a satisfactory answer, she has changed so many times in one day she can no longer answer the question. Throughout the book Alice's change in size also bring about a change in perspective, and she sees the world around her from a very different view. In the last trial scene, her growth into a giant reflects her interior growth, she becomes a much stronger, self-possessed person, able express herself and speak out.

             In my artwork practice I have shown a deliberately over-sized image of me, a Thai woman in the restaurant where I work (see photograph), to assert and show I have confidence in my own identity as an individual. There is more to me as an individual I am bigger than the environment you see me in. Like Alice at the end of her journey through wonderland, I am a strong self possessed female. I am not subservient; I have choices, and can express her own views and opinions. I am a person in my own right who should be seen and respected for what I am. Even though someone sees me in a restaurant it does not define who I am, they should see an individual, a person. I demand I am not stereotyped as some form of commodity, I am not Ting Tong nor am I a prostitute!

           

 The massive majority of Thai women and Thai girls are traditionally conservative and observe high standards of moral behaviour. Prostitution in Thailand has been illegal since 1960. However, in  1966 by a law which allowed for the creation of ‘entertainment establishments’, was made  to generate more income from the large numbers of US armed forces stationed in Thailand and Vietnam. Unlike Britain where prostitution is unacceptable this law, in effect tolerates prostitution and thousands of foreign men come every week to Thailand to meet prostitutes. It is not uncommon for foreign men to visit Thailand and fall in love with Thai bar girls. Many Thai bar girls, who are, in fact, prostitutes, do not conform to the stereotypical image of a prostitute that most westerners hold. The elderly and not so elderly westerner falling for the manipulative bar girl has become the butt of many jokes and a classic stereotype. It is also, in many cases true.

             In contrast to this, the growing popularity of Thai dating sites, the internet in general and social network sites has resulted in an explosion of contact between singles in Thailand and the UK. From 2001 to 2006, according the UK census statistics, the Thai born population in the UK nearly doubled. 72% of this population were Thai women naturalised as UK citizens as marriage migrant (Sims 2008, 4). This gender imbalance has contributed to the popular perception of a Thai woman in Britain as the wife of a British man. A study by Enteen (2005 cited Sims 2008,15) concludes that with the image of the Thai-bride or now the so-called ‘Thai-mail order bride’ comes the sexual stereotype of a Thai woman as being ‘exotic, young, alluring, yet potentially HIV-positive ‘hooker’, eager to please western clients, or dutiful, devoted wives of western men who dismiss western feminism for the financial and emotional generosity of their husbands.  In Thailand the financial ‘generosity’ of western husbands is a factor in cross-cultural marriages.  

            Buapan Promphakping, an associate professor in humanities at Khon Kaen University, estimates the actual number of cross-culture couples in Thailand’s north-eastern provinces about 100,000 ( Promphakping, 2009). According to Promphakping’s studies the influx of comparatively wealthy Westerners, is creating a huge income gap between cross- culture couples and villagers and fuelling more materialism and consumerism. For Western men, especially elderly ones retiring on modest pensions the local economy offers them a standard of living their incomes couldn't buy them in the West. However ‘Wonderland’ was  in a space somewhere between fantasy and reality it was not cyber-space and Alice did not arrive there as the ‘mail-order bride’ of the White Rabbit.

            Throughout the story it is the White Rabbit that Alice runs after and searches for throughout Wonderland, he is perhaps symbolic of Alice’s quest for knowledge.  I have used the visual image of the White Rabbit in my artwork as a metaphor to comment on the irony and paradox I see in one contemporary aspect of British and Thai cross-culture relationships.   Carroll’s rabbit was exactly that, Jonathon Miller’s characterisation of the rabbit was of a well dressed cultured self-assured young man. In my photograph (see below) the White Rabbit represents a well dressed, respectful, affluent, trustworthy, reliable adult, an older man. This is often the idealised stereotypical view of Thai women of the British man they would choose as a husband. This is perception may have been encouraged by increased globalisation and the increasing prevalence and attraction of western consumer-orientated culture.

           

In my art practice I have reversed the characters, the Thai woman on top straddles and dominates the man. This reversal of positions represents the idea that whilst he may believe he has bought and owns the ideal commodity - a compliant and submissive woman, her cultural deferential quiet soft spoken manner contributing to the allure of her being more feminine than western women. This fantasy come true will tend to his every material and sexual. In reality he has been trapped and ultimately controlled by consumerism. Deluded when he purchased this commodity to the reality it was he was commodity had being acquired by her – a ticket to a better world of materialism and culture. The wider truth is an irony -  neither of the them ‘owned’ the other,  both were owned and controlled by materialism and consumerism.       

         

              The story and characters of Alice in Wonderland have made  ask questions about life. The ways we interact with others,  do we only meet  others according to how they orbit around our lives.  Can it be that the reality of our lives is such that we  are at the same time ‘not alone’ - ’alone’? Just like the image of me as Alice alone at a tea-party. 

               Does the impact of globalisation, the age of internet communication, and our acquisitive consumer orientated  lives mean in reality is we are no longer seeing  each other another as individuals but are reducing  each other to the status of a  commodity, who exists solely for us to use for our own ends? What is the reality do we at the same time ‘exist’ but ’not exist’?  

              Just like Alice went on a journey through Wonderland I have been on a journey through Alice in Wonderland, Alice and my journey has not yet had an ending. Alice and the other characters of this English children’s story have been, ‘companions’ of mine ever since I first met them as visual images in a Disney video. At the beginning even though we were from different cultures and different times they made me think and try to understand them and their world. As I grew older these companions became metaphors to  think and analyse myself and the world around me and compare and cultures I experienced. Characters like the White Rabbit have helped me to analyse and express through my art practice some of the paradoxes and ironies of life I have encountered on that journey, but it is still essentially ‘work in progress’.  Out there on my journey of discovery are The Cheshire Cat and his grin, and the March Hare who are waiting to help me through my art practice to explore concepts of what is real, existing and not existing.     

  

                                                     

Bibliography

Buapan Promphakping (2009) ‘Foreign husbands flock to Thailand’s impoverished Issan - Feature’, http:// www. earthtimes.org/articles/news/29207,foreign-husbands-flock-to- thailands- impoverished-issan-feature.html, consulted 15/03/2011

Eddie Borey (2001) Alice in Wonderland Bibliography, http://www.gradesaver.com/alice-in-wonderland/study-guide/bibliography/ consulted 01/03/2011

Irwin W and Davis R B (2010) Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy, New Jersey, Wiley and Sons.

Jessica Mai Sims (2008) Empowering Individuals & Creating Communities – Thai Perspectives on  Life in Britain, London. Runnymede Trust Publications

Jonathan Head  (2006) ‘Perils fail to deter Thai Bride Boom’ BBC News Online (Sept 6), http://www. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5319072.stm, consulted 19/02/2011

Juliana B Enteen (2005) ‘Siam re-mapped: cyber interventions by Thai women’, New Media & Society, page 457-482

Lewis Carroll (1866) Alice Adventures in Wonderland, Macmillan & Co Ltd.

Lewis Carroll (1871) Through the Looking –Glass, and What Alice Found There, Macmillan & Co Ltd.

Martin Gardner (2000)  Annotated Alice, The Definitive Edition, London, Norton & Co.

Sheridan Prasso (2005) Asian Mystique, Cambridge MA, Public Affairs/Perseus Books

                                                                        Thank you

Mike Edwards

Heptonstall

How and why do female artists use their naked body in contemporary art

Introduction

At the beginning of the 20^th century, women artists were already reaping the benefits

that other women had fought for in the 19^th century. They were able to study at the

same art academies as men, apply for scholarships, participate in the life classes, enter

competitions and win prizes. Further more, they could present their work at

international exhibitions and sell it in galleries, they received commissions, and they

played an active part in the art scene.[i]

I think women have been involved in making art in most times and places, despite

difficulties in training and trading their work, and gaining recognition. However, in

the contemporary art scene, many famous female artists are known primarily for the

fact that they make use of their naked bodies in their art practice. Moreover, in many

of these contemporary images, the female artists use different angles and points of

view. This raises the question “How and why do female artists use their naked

body in contemporary art practice?

The Guerrilla Girls began in 1985, after a few members attended an exhibition titled

“An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture” held by the Museum of Modern

Art in New York and discovered that only 13 of the 169 featured artists were women.

The ratio of artists of color was even smaller, none of whom were women artists

either.

One of their most famous posters was plastered across New York City buses in 1989.

Its headline read, "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" The

Guerrilla Girls conducted a “weenie court” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of

Art, counting naked males and naked females in the artworks as well as numbers of

female artists in the collection. Less than 5% of the artists in the Met's modern art

sections were women, but 85% of the nudes were female. Their design was rejected

by The Public Art Fund as a billboard so the Guerrilla Girls ran it as an ad in the

public buses in New York City. This poster has been exhibited all over the world and

reproduced in many, many textbooks on all subjects from geography to art history to

women's studies. The GGs went back in 2005 to do a recount and found that there are

now fewer women artists shown at the Met, but more naked males in the artworks.

Members of the original group proclaim that no one knows their identities, except for

some of their mothers and/or partners. They never reveal the number of members of

the group, implying that there are many Guerrilla Girls, or at least Guerrilla Girl

supporters, all over the world.

The Guerrilla Girls chose their name “guerrilla” because they “…wanted to play with

the fear of guerrilla warfare, to make people afraid of who [they] might be and where

[they] might strike next”. They call themselves “girls” instead of “women” to reclaim

the belittling usage of the word and to shock and to upset people, particularly other

feminist groups. The idea of wearing gorilla masks came from a need to have a

disguise, and the story is that in an early meeting, an original member misspelled

“Guerrilla” as “Gorilla”.[ii]

I included this poster in the essay because it’s very interesting that In 1989, when the

GGs did the first version of this poster, less than 5% of the artists hanging in the

Modern and Contemporary Sections of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art

were women, but 85% of the nudes were female. In the Fall of 2004 the GGs went

back and recounted. SURPRISE. Not much had changed. In fact, there were a few

less women artists than fifteen years before!

Why is this still the case? This question is the starting point for my essay. I think a

large part of the answer relates to the theory of the “Male Gaze”.

Laura Mulvey is best known for her essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema",
written in 1973 and published in 1975 in the influential British film theory journal
Screen. It later appeared in a collection of her essays entitled Visual and Other
Pleasures, and numerous other anthologies. Her article was one of the first major
essays that helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytic
framework, influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Prior to
Mulvey, film theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry and Christian Metz had attempted
to use psychoanalytic ideas in their theoretical accounts of the cinema, but Mulvey's
contribution was to inaugurate the intersection of film theory, psychoanalysis, and
feminism.
Mulvey's article engaged in no empirical research on film audiences. She instead
stated that she intended to make a "political use" of Freud and Lacan, and then used
some of their concepts to argue that the cinematic apparatus of classical Hollywood
cinema inevitably put the spectator in a masculine subject position, with the figure of
the woman on screen as the object of desire. In the era of classical Hollywood cinema,
viewers were encouraged to identify with the protagonist of the film, who tended to
be a man. Meanwhile, Hollywood female characters of the 1950s and 60s were,
according to Mulvey, coded with "to-be-looked-at-ness."

We look at the women in these images (1, 2, 3, 4) and they cannot look back, cannot

block our ‘gaze’. Within the images men look at women as if they are there for their

visual pleasure, visual consumption. Image 2 (Nancy Gauze) plays around with the

idea of the ‘male gaze’, the image of the model is repeated endlessly and controlled

by the cameraman who delivers her for our consumption. In image 4 we see the

female model ‘take control’ by using the camera herself. This presents the model as

independent, in-control. However, she is still simply available to ‘us’ – the consumer

of the advertisement (positioned as male).

This essay emerged from my curiosity about female artists and the way they

represent themselves, their naked body, in 21^st century contemporary art.

There are a few female artists who use their body naked in contemporary art such as

Orlan,  Hannah Wilkie, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Saville, Nan Goldin

Natacha Merritt, Ghada Amer, Helen Chadwick, Yoko Ono, Tracye Emin, Helen

Chadwick.

Here, I would like to give examples of 2 female artists and their use of their own

naked bodies. Ghada Amer (Egyptian) and Natacha Merritt(New Yorker).

Merritt born in 1977, works with a digital camera, the Polaroid of the 90s, breaking

down the most intimate details into universally accessible bits of information. Eric

Kroll came across Natacha Merritt by chance on the internet, where she had put

several of her photographs. This was something that left the tradition of classical pin-

up and fetish photography, in which Kroll himself works, far behind.

Ghada Amer born 1963 in Cairo, Egypt is a contemporary artist living and working

in New York City. She emigrated from her birth country at age 11 and was educated

in Paris and Nice. Much of her work deals with issues of gender and sexuality,

particularly the representation of female nudes in art history as ideal objects rather

than human beings with a sexuality and eroticism of their own. She is represented by

Cheim & Read Gallery

Both artists deal with privacy, and they do this in very different ways.

Women artists attempt to take control of the way they are represented as women, by

using and re-imagining dominant cultural norms. For Amer, she is trying to take

control of the culture enforcing secrecy and seclusion. While the artist Merritt

was trying to take control of a culture enforcing exposure. No curtain, no veil.

Anyone who has seen her Digital Diaries has intimate knowledge of Natacha Merritt,

and of her friends, male and female, and her acquaintances as well. But Merritt's

favourite motif is herself: she poses almost every minute of the day for her camera,

taking photographs of herself in bed, in the shower, having sex with her friend,

masturbating with and without accessories, from every imaginable angle and with the

camera usually at arms length. But for Ghada Amer, she paints picture without using

brush and paint. Her tools are needle and thread, used to produce surfaces covered

with densely intertwined yarn, recalling the paintings of Brice Marden, Alberto

Giacometti, or Cy Twombly. Yet despite the superficial textural similarity, the images

actually represent lascivious, perhaps even pornographic female figures, which

gradually manifest themselves as we gaze at the tangled surface- painstakingly crafted

and razor-sharp in impact. An immaterial phenomenon that suddenly takes on

physical presence.

Face to face with Merritt's photographs one can reflect on intimacy and publicity in

the digital age, on narcissism even, or on radical self-exploration with the help of the

camera. But this all sounds better as Natacha Merritt herself once put it: in her view,

she has found a new mode of masturbating her way into the next millennium.

Ghada Amer’s figures are repeated across the canvas, doubled, tripled, quadrupled,

their legs spread, their public triangles represented in rainbow colours, as if a

“typically female” pastime was literally playing with herself. An endless chain of

masturbating women veiled by a mass of cotton and long, dangling threads, as if

attempting to evade the viewer’s voyeuristic gaze.

While she describes herself as a painter and has won international recognition for her

abstract canvases embroidered with erotic motifs, Ghada Amer is a multimedia artist

whose entire body of work is infused with the same ideological and aesthetic

concerns. Her oeuvre includes examples of painting, drawing, sculpture, performance,

and installation.

Amer's multiple geographic relocations are reflected in her work. Her painting is

influenced by the idea of shifting meanings and the appropriation of the languages of

abstraction and expressionism. Her prints, drawings, and sculptures question clichéd

roles imposed on women; her garden projects connect embroidery and gardening as

specifically "feminine" activities; and her recent installations address the current

tumultuous political climate. Despite the differences between her Islamic upbringing

and Western models of behavior, Amer's work addresses universal problems, such as

the oppression of women, which are prevalent in all cultures. She does this by r

epresenting the submission of women to the tyranny of domestic life, the celebration

of female sexuality and pleasure, the incomprehensibility of love, the foolishness of

war and violence, and an overall quest for formal beauty, constitute the territory that

she explores and expresses in her art.

The similarities and radical differences between Merritt and Amer can be seen in

the following images.

Whilst Merritt uses narcissistic display, Amer uses self absorbed

contemplation. When we look at both artist’s work we can find a traditional

pornographic style in Merrit’s work, which many will find outside or beyond fine

art. However Amer’s work sits within a fine art framework; if pornography was the

‘graphic depiction of whores’ Amer has created the ‘graphic depiction of privacy’.

She created the women and domestic space using domestic practice showing the

private life of women.

Another outstanding difference is the way Merritt uses what could be seen as ‘boys

toys’ – men are the main consumers of the medium she uses.  She uses technology,

such as the internet,  which is a  male arena, dominated by men. Whereas Amer uses

traditionally female domestic crafts, invoking a female, domestic arena.

This difference could also reflect on the cultural differences between the two women. 

Western culture, exemplified by the internet, celebrates public forums, freedom of

speech and the democratization of the press. But for Islamic culture public conduct

and public space is tightly controlled, like no kissing in public.

For me, Merritt’s images repeat and possibly re-enforce the dominant culture, re-enact

the power of the ‘male gaze’. She uses standard pornographic formula but the fact that

a woman is ‘in control’ of their production seems to make little difference to the end

product. The ‘male gaze’ is undisturbed.

Amer’s images also use standard pornographic formula; the way the figures are posed

is almost identical to Merritt’s figures. However, Amer seems to subvert of resist the

stereotype. Her images seem to retain an essence of privacy, shrouded in an interior,

domestic and feminine space. The images are not blatant, we have to engage with

them, even interrogate them – they still remain partially closed to the ‘male gaze’.

I come from Thailand, the land of sex as the European stereotype would suggest, but

Thailand is a Buddhist country with strict cultural rules about the role of  women and

how they should ac in public.So my own art work explores themes of display and

consumption in relation to my identity as a Thai woman observing British culture.

The Thai Restaurant, a frontline in European contact with Thai culture, provides a

backdrop to my explorations of sexuality and cultural consumption.

So why is it significant that myself and Ghada portray ourselves naked? I would

suggest that Ghada seeks to shock the viewer by presenting herself as an Egyptian

woman displaying herself naked in a public way. She comes from a culture where this

is extremely taboo.

However, as an artist she seems to be taking control of her own self-representation,

and challenging the cultural norms that try to suppress female sexuality. She presents

an image of women experiencing their own sexuality and pleasure in the absence of

men – asserting their independence and their right to self expression.

In my art work I use my naked body to gain the audience’s attention, making

them stop and engage with my story about Thai women and British social life.

I am using my body as an object, and this has three distinct meanings.

Firstly, to reclaim the stereotype of the Thai women, often seen as sexually available,

little more than a prostitute. This is often represented by jokes and casual comments

about Thai women  as objects of commercial exchange. 

Secondly, the ‘greeting’ statue from the Thai Restaurant. This symbolizes Thai

culture, Thai food. The statues have a blank expression. The audience can super

impose anything on them.

Thirdly, my emotions, gesture, and body language is often defensive, inward, denying

access to my inner self, attempting to block the ‘male gaze’.

The two women artists I have chosen to focus on use their naked bodies in very

different ways. Why they do this is a very difficult question to answer. Both seek to

shock: Merritt by explicit self display in a pornographic style. For a woman to adopt

this style still has shock value; but the end product (the images) are conventional,

mainstream pornography.

As I have already suggested, Amer’s shock value stems from her identity as an

Egyptian woman from an Islamic background. Female display and sexuality is strictly

controlled in Islamic culture. However, Amer’s work goes beyond simple shock

tactics. The female models in her work celebrate a private, domestic exploration of

female sexuality: a sensuality echoed in and linked to the rich textures of female craft

or domestic tasks.

Both artists say something about ownership:

I own myself, my body, and I can choose to exploit myself.

I own myself, my body, and I have the right to explore and keep you at a distance.

---

i Uta Grosenick, “Women Artist”, It’s a women’s world, Taschen, 2001 page 14

ii Guerrilla Girls, “Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls”. New York: HarperCollins, Inc., 1995 page 10

iii Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) Originally Published - Screen 16.3 Autumn 1975 page 7-8

Continuing from Laura Mulvey theory

The paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends on the image

of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world. An idea of woman

stands as lynch pin to the system: it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic

presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies. Recent

writing in Screen about psychoanalysis and the cinema has not sufficiently brought

out the importance of the representation of the female form in a symbolic order in

which, in the last resort, it speaks castration and nothing else. To summarize briefly:

the function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is two-fold. She first

symbolises the castration threat by her real absence of a penis, and second thereby

raises her child into the symbolic. Once this has been achieved, her meaning in the

process is at an end, it does not last into the world of law and language except as a

memory which oscillates between memory of maternal plenitude and memory of lack.

Both are posited on nature (or on anatomy in Freud's famous phrase). Woman's desire

is subjected to her image as bearer of the bleeding wound, she can exist only in

relation to castration and cannot transcend it. She turns her child into the signifier of

her own desire to possess a penis (the condition, she imagines, of entry into the

symbolic). Either she must gracefully give way to the word, the Name of the Father

and the Law, or else struggle to keep her child down with her in the half-light of the

imaginary. Woman then stands in patriarchal

culture as signifier for the male other,

bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions

through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied

to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.

There is an obvious interest in this analysis for feminists, a beauty in its exact

rendering of the frustration experienced under the phallocentric order. It gets us nearer

to the roots of our oppression, it brings an articulation of the problem closer, it faces

us with the ultimate challenge: how to fight the unconscious structured like a

language (formed critically at the moment of arrival of language) while still caught

within the language of the patriarchy. There is no way in which we can produce an

alternative out of the blue, but we can begin to make a break by examining patriarchy

with the tools it provides, of which psychoanalysis is not the only but an important

one. We are still separated by a great gap from important issues for the female

unconscious which are scarcely relevant to psychoanalytic theory: the sexing of the

female infant and her relationship to the symbolic, the sexually mature woman as non-

mother, maternity outside the signification of the phallus, the vagina.... But, at this

point, psychoanalytic theory as it now stands can at least advance our understanding

of the status quo, of the patriarchal order in which we are caught.iii

Appendix

During the research for this essay I encountered many words I did not understand, as English is my second language. Many of the terms and concepts used in art theory have no Thai equivalent. I have therefore had to compile a working dictionary of my own.

Gig’s Dictionary

Feminist movement
The feminist movement (also known as the Women's Movement, Women's Liberation, or simply, Women's Lib) is a series of campaigns on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, voting rights, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. The goals of the movement vary from country to country, e.g. opposition to female genital cutting in Sudan, or to the glass ceiling in Western countries.

Fetish
Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal brought on by any object, situation or body part not conventionally viewed as being sexual in nature. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g. in psychiatric medicine, as a disorder of sexual preference or as an enhancing element to a relationship causing a better sexual bond between the partners. The sexual acts involving fetishes are characteristically depersonalized and objectified, even when they involve a partner. Body parts may also be the subject of sexual fetishes (also known as partialism) in which the body part preferred by the fetishist takes a sexual precedence over the owner.

Heterosexuality consists of sexual behavior, practices, and identity predicated on preference or desire for the other sex. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, physical or romantic attractions primarily to persons of the opposite sex"; it also refers to "an individual’s sense of personal and social identity based on those attractions, behaviors expressing them, and membership in a community of others who share them". The term is usually applied to human beings, but it is also observed in all mammals.
The physical action of heterosexual fertilization is the only means of sexual reproductive capability among humans without the use of assisted reproductive technology. The associations with romantic love and identity in addition to its original, exclusively sexual, meaning dates back to early human societies and gender role separation. As such, gender role separation has been the subject of considerable scholarly commentary and study in human societies since the earliest written records. Heterosexuality has been more intensely studied by medicine and later biology disciplines, and more recently that of psychology. Heterosexuality, along with bisexuality and homosexuality together make up the heterosexual-homosexual continuum.

Male gaze
The 'Gaze' is a psycholanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques Lacan to describe a condition where the mature autonomous subject observes "the observation of himself" in a mirror. The psychological effect, Lacan argues, is that the subject has her autonymity brought into question by the projection of her 'identity' on to an exterior object. "tat tvam asi" (that which you are) This concept is bound with his theory of the mirror stage, where in childhood, conceives the formation of external identities, (Lacan posits a mirror but any object will do) Lacan suggests that the effect 'Gaze' of the mirror can similarly be produced by any conceivable object, i e. A chair or a television screen. The idea that a chair or a television screen can stare back at one is not read literally by Lacan or his adherents and this misconception is popularly stated by his detractors to attempt discredit him.
Michael Foucault also had a distinct conception of the gaze medical gaze in his social theories, although the common usage of the term is of the Lacanian one.
In cinema theory, Laura Mulvey identifies the Male Gaze, in sympathy with the Lacanian statement that "Woman is a symptom of man." what this means is that femininity is a social construct, and that the feminine object the object petit a, or the object of desire, is what constitutes the male lack, and thus his positive identity.
Bracha Ettinger extends this notion of the male gaze in the Matrixial Gaze where two figures looking at each other effectively constitute a double gaze. One where the "Male Gaze" is placed opposite to the "Female Gaze" and thus both positive entities constitute each other from a lack. This umbrella concept of the gaze is precisely what scholars such as Slavoj Zizek claim is the Lacanian definition of "The Gaze."

Patriarchy is a social system in which the father or eldest male is head of the household, having authority over women and children. Patriarchy also refers to a system of government by males, and to the dominance of men in social or cultural systems. It may also include title being traced through the male line.

Manifesto

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. However, manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as a creed. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.

Manifesto is derived from the Italian word manifesto, itself derived from the Latin manifestum, meaning clear or conspicuous. Its first recorded use in English is from 1620, in Nathaniel Brent's translation of Paolo Sarpi's History of the council of Trent: "To this citation he made answer by a Manifesto" (p 102). Similarly, "They were so farre surprized with his Manifesto, that they would never suffer it to be published"

Psychoanalytical film theory

The concepts of psychoanalysis have been applied to films in various ways. However, the 1970s and 1980s saw the development of theory that took concepts developed by the French psychoanalyst and writer Jacques Lacan and applied them to the experience of watching a film.

The film viewer is seen as the subject of a "gaze" that is largely "constructed" by the film itself, where what is on screen becomes the object of that subject's desire.

The viewing subject may be offered particular identifications (usually with a leading male character) from which to watch. The theory stresses the subject's longing for a completeness which the film may appear to offer through identification with an image; in fact, according to Lacanian theory, identification with the image is never anything but an illusion and the subject is always split simply by virtue of coming into existence.

Voyeurism

In clinical psychology, voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other activity usually considered to be of a private nature. In popular imagination the term is used in a more general sense to refer to someone who habitually observes others without their knowledge, with no necessary implication of sexual interest.

Voyeurism (from the French voyeur, "one who looks") can take several forms, but its principle characteristic is that the voyeur does not normally relate directly with the subject of their interest, who is often unaware of being observed. The voyeur may observe the subject from a distance, or use stealth to observe the subject with the use of peep-holes, two-way mirrors, hidden cameras, secret photography and other devices and strategies

Reference

Guerrilla Girls. Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls. New York: HarperCollins, Inc., 1995

John Berger, Ways of seeing, British Broadcasting Coporation and Penguin Books, 1977

Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)

Uta Grosenick, “Women Artist”, It’s a women’s world, Taschen, 2001