Week 1: The Personal is Political

In one of the early chapters of Women and Popular Music, Sheila Whiteley discusses the interconnectedness between the broader patriarchy which stems across Western society with women’s personal lives: “in reproduction, sexual relationships, the household division of labour, popular cultures and the arts” (45). This interconnectedness was, and still continues to be, one of the major claims and ideas behind feminism. The 1960s, where rebellion against the traditional forms of authority and the status quo in general were being questioned, was also a time when feminism was becoming a major political, social and intellectual movement. Influential thinkers such as Friedan, Firestone and Millett wrote against the biological determinist ideas of Freud, and all argued the socially constructed nature of gender and sexuality (45). Radical feminism, separatist feminism and lesbian feminism seemed to be the best options for seriously undermining patriarchy.

Yet despite the counter-cultural haven the 1960s and 70s are often represented and remembered as, female sexuality still fit very much into the Madonna/whore dichotomy which continues to underlie the representation and construction of women. Does “free love” and having many sexual partners really undermine the “one love” syndrome feminists fought against? Within this whole context, Whiteley brings the discussion to musician Janis Joplin, a notoriously “free wheeling woman” (48) of this important time for feminism. Within the realm of music, are musicians such as Janis Joplin able to seriously undermine the Madonna/whore dichotomy?

***

Until this year, the motto “The personal is political” had never entered my life, let alone meant anything to me.

My educational career began four or five years ago, when upon graduating high school, I did what all the students with “good” grades were doing: applying and getting accepted to one of Canada’s top Universities. The University of Victoria was where I had my first encounter with both post secondary education and Women’s Studies. As a fairly naive, incredibly self-conscious and increasingly lonely 18-year-old student, I took the introductory women studies because it seemed like an easy elective. I don’t remember now if I had come across the phrase, “The personal is political.” I’m sure I must’ve—it’s such a significant phrase within feminist studies. Regardless, I essentially gained nothing from the course; not because of the professor or the course material themselves but mainly because at the time, I was completely caught up with being liked and “respected” by my peers.

Increasingly disillusioned by the post-secondary educational system, where many peers in my dormitory, who wouldn’t bother to get to know anybody who wasn’t a binge-drinking, party hardy, sports enthusiast, maintained higher grade point averages than me, I took solace in my large black headphones and sullen love songs of contemporary pseudo-punk. Without even realizing it, the music I was engrossing myself in was constructing my identity as a woman as defined through patriarchy. Romanticized love songs sung mainly by men, who painted women and relationships as idyllic and perfect.

In taking this course, I’ve learned so much about the power of music in challenging the definition of ‘women’ and structure of women’s lives. Who knew that ‘Sweet Dreams,’ a song I’ve always written off as another cheesy 80s tune, has major significance within feminist music studies? How come I always found the Sex Pistols to be heralded as the major pioneers in punk but not Patti Smith? Are the Spice Girls good role models?

Perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned to question the role of music within my life. Music, so tied up with identity politics, is one of the key ways women can truly discover the meaning of the phrase ‘The Personal is Political.’ It certainly was for me.

Week 2: Music and Identity

In his seminal article, Simon Frith questions the role of music in constructing our individual and social identities. Rather than looking at music as representing a certain identity, such as African-American music representing African-American people and their culture, Frith explores how music “produces” us, “how it creates and constructs an experience – a musical experience, an aesthetic experience – that we can only make sense of by taking on both a subjective and a collective identity” (109). In the view of postmodern cultural theorists such as Frith, identity is viewed as unstable, constructed and most importantly, an on-going process.


The infamous iPod ad...faceless figures for you to identify with

Ultimately, Frith argues how “music constructs our sense of identity through the direct experiences it offers of the body, time and sociability, experiences which enable us to imagine ourselves in imaginative cultural narrative” (124). We imagine ourselves as aligned with the performers of music, as well as other fans of the same song or musician. Through aligning ourselves through the enjoyment of music, we are constructing our identities. Frith argues how music is unique in this process of shaping and reshaping identity because of its role as “the cultural form best able to cross borders - sounds carry across fences and walls and oceans, across classes, races and nations” (125). Music is a part of most people's lives, making it a universal phenomenon for the construction of human identity.

***

The first band I really 'got into' is No Doubt. The ska/pop/rock band's 1995 album 'Tragic Kingdom,' was taped for me by my fifth grade best friend as a birthday present. Although - as I discuss later in my journal Gwen Stefani has gone from a strong female role model to somewhat of a 'sell out' - at the time, in fifth grade, No Doubt's lead vocalist was my hero. One of my favorite songs was 'I'm Just a Girl,' in which Stefani angrily confronts the constraints placed upon younger women:

I'm just a girl

I'm just a girl in the world...

That's all that you'll let me be!

I'm just a girl, living in captivity



My first brush with feminism was through these lyrics, which spoke to me as a realization that girls and women did not have the same freedoms and opportunities as boys and men. I admired Gwen Stefani's agency as the fronts-person of a successful pop band, and using her ability to communicate through music as a way of protest. At the age of eleven, when I was beginning to realize different constraints placed upon women, I strongly identified with Gwen Stefani and her music.

The other day my boss, making friendly conversation, asked me what my favorite kind of music was. I couldn't think of a clear, definitive answer - "Uh...rock I guess?"
Gwen Stefani is no longer my hero. But I think the reason why I no longer identify definitively with a certain artist or genre has got to do with my understanding of identity as socially and culturally constructed as opposed to something that evolves from within. Through my learning, I've also realized that women have been socially constructed as well, and it is essentially impossible to pin down 'woman' as a definitive, all-encompassing identity. Perhaps my uncertainty of musical tastes and my lack of a musical identity is indicative of the instability and uncertainties surrounding human identity.

Week 3: Shut up and Sing

After Dixie Chicks front-woman Natalie Maines infamously stated, “We’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas,” the highest-grossing female band in the United States faced a bombardment of criticism and condemnation from fans, media, and especially from the country music scene they once belonged to. Shut Up and Sing (2006) follows the band’s public controversy and personal lives during the three years following this notorious remark, portraying the Dixie Chicks’ struggles between their positions as major country/pop stars, their personal anti-war sentiments, their roles as mothers and wives, and their love of music. Positioning the women firstly and most prominently as a strong and resilient “sisterhood,” the documentary ultimately shows the Dixie Chicks public and musical comeback from being boycotted and labelled unpatriotic Saddam sympathizers through producing another best-selling record, which musically encompasses much of the aftermath of Maines’ initial comment.

***

I was never a Dixie Chicks fan, but I've gained a lot of respect for the country/pop group since watching Shut Up and Sing. The documentary was pretty corny and predictable, but I thought it did a great job of portraying the struggle the Dixie Chicks went through after expressing their anti-war and anti-Bush sentiments. It seems their position as the all-American country girl group was what the country music scene expected of them, and any movement straying away from that image was unwelcome. It was disappointing to see so much hostility aimed towards the women, simply because of their previous image as country singers with no previous instances of 'shocking' political statements.

The documentary, focusing around the female musicians and their struggle with those who painted them in an unfair light, was especially moving to me at the time of our screening. That week my ex-boyfriend and I had been arguing, and I was feeling especially crabby and blue. Our relationship, despite having romantically ended almost two years ago, has been riddled conflict and hostility. Still silently fuming over an angry e-mail he had sent me early that day, I sat down in our classroom to watch the second-half of the documentary. And despite the overly dramatized nature of the documentary, depicting a scene of Maines singing her heart out for the new album, the lyrics to the song she was singing, 'Not ready to make nice,' made me want to cry.

Forgive - sounds good
Forget - I'm not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I'm still waiting

Although the Dixie Chicks were obviously singing of their ordeal with the public outcry against them, I felt the song spoke to me, as portraying an ordeal many people go through with broken relationships, romantic or otherwise. Like Maines and her fellow Dixie Chicks, I was feeling frustrated and angry with hostilities and name-calling aimed towards me, simply because I had expressed how I felt. Instead of attempting to understand where I was coming from, or try and look at the situation from my shoes, my ex-partner wrote me off as an irrational bitch.

I really respected the Dixie Chicks' refusal to apologize for what they said or for feeling how they felt. Sure it seems corny to relate their experience with petty fights with my ex-boyfriend, but that's how the film and the music of the Dixie Chicks left their imprint on my life and identity.

Week 4: Wonderful World, Beautiful People

Despite the heavily romanticised, almost mourning-like nostalgia which surrounds much of the contemporary attitudes towards the counter-cultural 1960s, Whiteley argues how the time was still a stagnant time for feminism, especially in terms of popular music. Female musicians, despite many challenging and illustrious figures such as Mama Cass, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez and our very own Buffy St. Marie, still remained below their male counterparts (23). While the musical scene continued to be dominated by men, the songs and music that represented the sixties—rock and progressive rock in particular—also sang of women in limited roles, closely tied to the constraining Madonna/whore dichotomy.

Women were positioned within the music, as well as in the counter-cultural lifestyle, as “romanticised fantasy figures, subservient earth mothers or easy lays” (23). Male musicians who sang about love, such as the Beatles and Donavan, would position women as committed lovers and earth mothers, while cock rock performers such as the Rolling Tones or Jimi Hendrix would sing about sexually promiscuous women with many partners (25). While female musicians such as UK singer Dusty Springfield made great strides within the 1960s, with Springfield becoming “the first white soul singer to perform in Harlem” (24), Whiteley points out the pressures of female musicians to conform to limited forms of femininity. Springfield eventually left Britain, due to negative attitudes towards her bisexuality (24). Even sexual promiscuity, though liberating for women, was limiting in its reliance on a “romanticized construct of the young, single woman” (29). Whiteley ultimately questions the 1960s as a progressive moment for women and women in popular music: Was the women’s movement really able to “find a place even within a progressive counter culture” (29)?

***

I have often wished to go back to a time like the 60s, when radical events such as student uprisings against the post-secondary school system were taking place. Since reading Whiteley though, who takes a feminist approach to the music of the 1960s, I've begun to reconsider. I'm beginning to realize just how much of the music I've grown up around has been made by and for men. This probably has a lot to do with how I've grown up listening to my father's records from the 1960s and 70s.

It was interesting to learn that it was during the 1960s and 70s, Japan was opened up for touring American musicians, and American rock music in general. My father was born in the 70s, and spent much of his young adult life after high school collecting records of musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, The Allman Brothers Band and The Grateful Dead. He initially wanted to move to America, disillusioned with the strict confines of Japanese society. He did the next best thing, which was to move his small, budding family, to Canada in 1987. I was barely a year old.

My father's large record collection and his massive and still growing CD collection, have influenced my identity greatly. Taking long car rides with my father was where I'd have the most exposure to his music. Although I enjoyed some of the songs, I could never really connect to my father's music. I still feel the music is part of his realm, and maybe even part of a male world I feel an outsider to.

I complained to him about the lack of female musicians within his piles of CD's recently, and he pulled out Diana Krall CD for me to listen to. I haven't had a chance to hear the music yet, but I wonder if I will feel more aligned with the female jazz musician. I hope to dig out more female musicians from my dad's collection, and continue exploring the realm of women in music.

Week 5: Joni Mitchell

Canadian folk singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell was one of the early successful female solo artists within Western popular music. She is a powerful figure within women in popular music, precisely because “she exemplifies the singer songwriter who got there on her own efforts, and whose albums demonstrate an increasing level of artistic and technical control” (79). Not only was she a recognized and well-respected musician within the folk scene, her second album Clouds (1967) helped her achieve a grammy, signifying commercial success and critical acclaim as well. Her music is very personal, touching on aspects on her life such as her first marriage, the child she gave up for adoption and her struggle as a female musician within a male-dominated music industry. She sings of travelling and being true to herself, and realizing the limitations and unhappiness that men have brought to her life.

Her 1967 album Blue, explores these issues, with special emphasis on her personal struggle with living her life and her musical career on her own terms. The first track of the album, ‘All I Want,’ is indicative of this struggle. Within her very personal lyrics, she comes to the realization that her dependence on men and relationships come at the cost of herself—her dreams, ambitions, life and even happiness. The album describes the “conflict between love and pain, belong and freedom, the resultant emptiness that can accompany the ‘lonely road’” (90). Her intimate portrayal of her struggle through music is what makes her such a powerful female musician. “Her strength lies in her pragmatism” (90) argues Whiteley, noting Mitchell’s realistic, genuine and unromantic view of her life as both a woman and a female musician. Her honest exploration of her personal life through music is essentially what makes her an important female musician.

***

I was always a sucker for the romanticized, idyllic love songs that are so pervasive in popular music. Although the days when I spent hours listening to cheesy love songs are largely over, the raspy voice of Sam Bean from the indie band Iron and Wine continues to pull me into a romantic daydreams. Romantic notions of heterosexual love continue to be major themes within popular music; this practice does not seem to have died out since the heydey of The Beatles and Donavan.

It is interesting then to look at Joni Mitchell and her realistic, pragmatic viewpoint of love, relationships and life as what makes her such a prominent figure within music. Her haunting voice and the lonely sounds of her acoustic guitar help to bring a more down-to-earth tone to her music. Would more realistic versions of life for women within the lyrics of female musicians help to challenge traditional ideas surrounding women and femininity?

As compelling and challenging a musician Joni Mitchell is, I wonder if the image of a "realistic" woman also has it's constraints? Mitchell's reality, portrayed through her songs and lyrics, are just that: one woman's experience of 'reality.' Can we really expect one woman's notion of what "real" women deal with to encompass the experience of all women? Although I feel it is important to challenge overly romanticized versions of femininity and the lives of women, I also feel it is important to recognize the separate realities all women live.

Week 6: Daughters of Chaos

Within her analysis of two of the most prominent women within punk music—Patti Smith and Siouxsie Sioux—Whiteley employs the influential ideas of Bulgarian-French feminist thinker Julia Kristeva. In the genre where “emphasis [lies] on the delivery of the vocal, the shock tactics of the lyrics and an overall emphasis on an eccentricity of self-expression” (98), as opposed to musical talent and technicality, the importance of language in constructing identity is made most prevalent. Drawing on Lacanian theory, one of Kristeva’s key ideas revolves around “her distinction between the semiotic and symbolic order” (96). The symbolic order, the internalization of the dominant order, is limited for women, where the dominant order is essentially phallocentric patriarchy. The semiotic is described as the pre-symbolic, pre-Oedipal realm which is repressed for the internalization of the symbolic order. Kristeva argues the revolutionary implications of semiotic expression, which challenges and subverts the dominant order through its representation of the irrational, disorder and the abject.

Patti Smith, one of the founding punk artists regardless of her gender, and her music, heavily inspired by poetry and the avant-garde, encompass Kristeva’s ideas of the tensions between the symbolic order and the semiotic within language. Whiteley analyzes Patti Smith’s Gloria, the first track of her debut album Horses (1975), interpreting the use of a gospel choir as back-up vocals as representing religion and order, while Smith chaotic vocals, with added meaning due to the song’s male point of view, symbolize disorder and mayhem.

Both Patti Smith and Siouxsie Sioux, the leader of one of the more successful British punk bands during the early years of punk, are known for their use of androgyny in regards to their physical appearances. Whiteley notes the androgynous look Patti Smith takes on for the cover of her album Horses where “Smith comes across as both self-assured and sexually-ambiguous, challenging and contesting the boundaries of gender” (100). Siouxsie Sioux on the other hand was known not only for the archetypical anarchy and swastika shirts of early punk musicians, but challenging heteronormative sexuality through taking performative and stylistic influence from the Bromley gay scene, as well as notorious fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. Whiteley also notes how Sioux’s “coolly androgynous” was influenced by none other than Patti Smith. Both of these women, taking on the do-it-yourself musical style in which women were able to compete on even ground with male musicians, and presenting themselves in ways which challenged traditional notions of femininity and female sexuality, are highly influential figures within the history of Western pop music.

***

I find punk music to be very compelling, especially because of its initial role as subverting traditional norms. Today, however, punk seems to have lost its radical stance, particularly because of the commercialization of the punk image. It is unfortunate that not many contemporary female pop artists utilize punk, with its importance grounded largely in language, as a viable musical outlet.

It is interesting how punk music was so accessible and revolutionary for women because of its lack of emphasis on musical talent. I feel music is still very much based on skill and technical elements, as opposed to simply being an enjoyable form of human communication. One of my original career goals was to be a high school music teacher, inspired by the enjoyment I felt during my years as a young bass clarinet player. These aspirations ended when I realized the competitive nature of post-secondary musical education, as well as the major emphasis on technical musical skills.

My bass clarinet currently lies below my bed, collecting dust since my experiences of playing in high school and community concert bands have slowly diminished. I miss the happiness I felt playing alongside other musicians, working together to create fun and interesting sounds. I feel the emphasis on music as a realm reserved for professional musicians is limiting, and I'm glad Patti Smith and Siouxsie Sioux felt the same.

Week 7: Strange Fruit

“Everybody’s Protest Song: Music as Social Protest in the Performances of Marian Anderson and Billie Holiday”

In this article, Janell Hobson analyzes two important events in American music history, as well as the history of black female musicians and music performers. In 1939, despite major differences—from the style of their music to their intentions behind these musical events—both Marian Anderson, a contralto classical vocalist, and Billie Holiday, an infamous jazz singer, perform acts of social protest through song. Anderson was asked to perform an Easter Sunday concert at Lincoln Memorial “after the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow her performance at Constitution Hall” (Hobson), and Holiday recorded “Strange Fruit” at Commodore Records when her record company, Columbia Records, would not allow her to. Hobson asks whether these singers actually signify social protest through these songs and these performances, or if these events continue to reinforce “black women’s voicelessness in cultural discourses on American music heritage and, ironically, in political narratives.”

Black women’s singing, Hobson argues, is not only a site of struggle between “objectification and agency,” but a site of resistance. Although there is a danger of rendering black women’s protest songs as purely sentimental with no political message, the ironic edge of both Anderson and Holiday’s performances not only signify a political stance against racism but “what Holiday has called “personal protest” against the interlocking effects of racism and sexism” (Hobson). Anderson’s rendition of patriotic “America” is given a different perspective when sung in the context of racial protest. Holiday brought her own personal protest to Lewis Allen’s poem, by connecting the lynching scene depicted within the poem to her own experience of her father dying in a segregated hospital. Hobson ultimately argues both these women “placed black women’s singing in the political arena,” and opened up opportunity for other black women’s voices to be heard.

***

Learning about the acts of protest both Marian Anderson and Billie Holiday performed as black women at a time when racism was so prevalent within Western society was very inspirational. So inspirational, that it inspired a group of students, including myself, to mark the nearing of Anti-Racism day (Mar 21) with a sidewalk art demonstration on campus. 'Strange Fruit' was the major inspiration for us to 'hang' images of racism and of adversity against racism on the trees around the campus courtyard. Unfortunately the demonstration was met with criticism by an angry student who wrote an article to The Phoenix, UBCO's student newspaper. One of his grand claims was how "racism has largely been eliminated from North American society." He felt our demonstration was "opening up a healed wound" and was "disparagement for disparagement's sake."

It is always upsetting and disappointing to hear the denial and refusal to accept how racism continues to exist within Western society. It is precisely within popular culture where I see the continued perpetuation of negative stereotypes based on race. One of the images I hung on the trees was an image of pop singer Gwen Stefani, surrounding by her infamous 'Harajuku Girls.' While No Doubt, the band in which Stefani fronted during the 90s, was one of the first bands I fell in love with, Stefani has increasingly moved from a powerful female musician, who angrily protested the constrictions of femininity through songs such as 'I'm just a Girl,' to a popstar who has completely appropriated Japanese subcultures to sell records. I find her representation of these silent, exoticized Japanese back-up dancers to be racist, perpetuating negative stereotypes of Japanese women.

Gwen in her "I'm just a Girl" days...

Like how Holiday vividly portrayed racism through 'Strange Fruit,' I hope musicians such as Tracy Chapman, continue to portray the realities of racism, rather than continuing to perpetuate minorities through negative representations.

...Gwen today, appropriating Japanese culture

Week 8: Annie Lennox

In her discussion of Annie Lennox, Whiteley brings the ideas of influential Belgian feminist Luce Irigaray to the forefront of her analysis. Irigaray, alongside her fellow feminist theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Helene Cixous, argues for the exploration and discovery of a “feminine” language, to counteract the representations of women created and sustained through patriarchal language. Arguing against Freud and the idea of woman as representing the threat of castration and consequently shaped by her “lack” of a penis, Irigaray emphasizes female genitalia as “the site of pleasure” (Whiteley 120). Instead of being represented through a patriarchal, phallocentric language, Irigaray argues a language which can express the plurality of female sexual pleasure (multiple orgasms for example) “will encourage women to experience themselves as something more than excess within the dominant ideology” (121). For Irigaray, the stress is on the interconnectedness of language, sexuality and power. Challenges to the dominant ideology and patriarchal language can come in the form of exploring feminine sexuality (through lesbianism) but also through what Irigaray refers to as “miming the miming”—challenging patriarchal representation of women through taking on the stereotypical images of women in a confrontational manner.

Whiteley argues Lennox was one of the few female musicians who challenged traditional representations of femininity through taking advantage of the music industry’s new found emphasis on visual appearance brought on my the birth of MTV in the 1980s. Whiteley’s analysis of the Eurythmics video “Who’s that Girl,” convincingly demonstrates Lennox’s exploration of feminine pleasure outside phallocentric ideology. The title of the song itself seems to question feminine identity, especially when sung by Lennox who is performing the part of a glamorous night club songstress. The final scene of the video illustrates Irigaray’s ideas most clearly, when Lennox’s night club singer persona kisses Lennox’s Elvis-inspired male persona. By essentially kissing herself and “playing” with herself, Lennox demonstrates feminine pleasure without of the presence of a man. As Whiteley argues, Annie Lennox ironically confronts femininity as defined through patriarchy, and is one of the first female musicians of the music video era to subvert the static images of femininity through ironic and challenging videos.

***

Theorists like Irigaray and their incredibly innovative ideas are what make me so enthusiastic and interested in Women's Studies. Thinking of patriarchy as rooted primarily and significantly through sexuality and sex completely blows my mind.

As soon as I read this chapter of Whiteley, I looked up the Eurythmics' 'Who's that Girl' music video on Youtube, and proceeding to repeatedly watch for the next hour. In this video, Lennox completely takes androgyny to a whole new level, by presenting herself as seperate personas, one feminine and one masculine. Whiteley's analysis of this video and Annie Lennox, has helped me to realize the radical possibilities of alternative sexualities, and lesbianism in particular.

In terms of my own life, learning about sex and sexuality has been largely through popular culture. Coming from a traditional Japanese family, I have never even seen my parents kiss. Because of the very 'pretending-its-not-an-issue' attitude of my parents on sex and sexuality, much of my informal sexual education came through the forms of television, films and music. Most of the music I listened to during my teenage years were centered around love, and rarely around sex. The Spice Girls' song 'Naked' was one of my first experiences where music dealt with sex. I remember often fast-forwarding through the track when I'd listen to my coveted Spice Girls' Spice tape, feeling uncomfortable with the subject matter and sensual tone of the music.

Whiteley's discussion of Annie Lennox has not only opened my eyes to the importance of sexuality within feminism, but helped me realize how political the personal really is. The fact that music and female musicians have influenced me to think about the radical potential of feminine sexuality is very liberating.

Week 9: Madonna

Whereas the androgynous figures of Patti Smith, Annie Lennox and Siouxsie Sioux stray far from the seemingly oppressive, hyper-sexualized images of women, Madonna embraced it—much to the scorn of many feminist scholars. With Madonna’s ties to the soft-core porn industry and her often explicit exploration of sexuality within her videos and performances, it is easy to write her off as continuing a long tradition of demeaning women through pornography. But in contrast to much of the criticism surrounding Madonna, Whiteley points out that Madonna’s overt and overbearing use of a male-defined image of femininity can also be interpreted as a feminist-inspired method of ironically “destabilising traditional representations of sexuality and gender by playing on the inflections of feminised images” (137). With the use of irony and parody with her representation of femininity, Madonna is “miming the miming”—reflecting stereotypical, male-defined notions of femininity back to men as a form of subversion. Madonna’s exploration of sexuality is especially challenging, disrupting traditional normative heterosexuality.

Within her video for Justify my Love, Madonna explores a wide range of sexualities, portraying gay and “lesbianism, androgeneity, and an engagement with sexual fantasy and voyeurism” (149). Her portrayal of these alternative sexualities and often demonized sexual fantasies open up new possibilities in defining gender. However, as Whiteley mentions, “the ‘use’ of pornography cannot be separated from its history of female suppression” (149). Still, “there is little doubt that Madonna’s challenging stance confronted the romantic myths constructed around the feminine” (149).

***

A year or two ago, I saw a new music video Madonna had released for one of her most recent album. The now fifty-year-old musician was depicting in the video singing and dancing within a dance studio space, wearing a fairly revealing pink leotard. My reaction at the time was very much in line with what Annie Lennox says of Madonna: "Very, very whorish." It was shocking to see a woman older than my mother check out her butt cheeks in a constricting pink leotard. At fifty-years-old, still topping the North American top 40 charts, is Madonna still as challenging of a figure as she was in the 1980s?

Because I was born during the middle of the 80s, most of my perception of Madonna has been shaped by her position of a contemporary pop star. The music I associated with Madonna was songs such as 'Don't tell me' or 'Hey Mr. DJ,' which aren't nearly as challenging or shocking as 'Justify My Love.' I would hear her music occasionally on the radio, but she was never really an artist I felt I could connect with.

My early sense of feminism was fairly naive - I essentially wanted to challenge traditional notions of femininity through making myself as "unfeminine" as possible. Last year I shaved my head, and began to refuse wearing skirts. Music and popular culture wise, I still enjoyed the occasional girly pop hits and films deemed 'chick flicks' but they were labelled my 'guilty pleasure.' This limiting perspective of feminism and femininity probably played into why I didn't respect Madonna's choice to present herself in a highly-sexualized way.

For me personally, Madonna challenges my perspective on femininity. Is femininity necessarily limiting? Or does reclaiming it, as Madonna has, an act of feminism? Is the image of a sexualized woman demeaning? Learning about Madonna through her music and her representation has challenged my view of femininity and sexuality.

Week 10: The Piano

The Piano (1993) is an Academy Award winning film by Jane Campion, revolving around a woman who refuses to speak and only communicate through playing her piano. The woman, Ada, is an unwed mother, and is married off to a New Zealand frontiersman Alistair Stewart. Alongside her daughter, Flora, she is forced to move to the rough countryside of New Zealand, amongst white settlers and New Zealand’s aboriginal people, the Maori. While she basically wants nothing to do with her new husband, Ada eventually winds up having an affair with another settler Baines, another white settler who has chosen to integrate himself into the Maori people for many years. The two men, Stewart and Baines, both seem to represent opposite spectrums of Ada’s life: Stewart representing the repressive patriarchy which continues to control her life and Baines representing jouissance or female pleasure, and her path to freedom and fully exploring her passion for life. The beautiful film portrays Ada’s torment, struggle and passion for life through her haunting piano playing, and ultimately explores the one of the central themes of feminism and Women’s Studies—the struggle of women under the confines of patriarchy.

***

After taking a Feminism and Film course in the fall, I've gained a new appreciation for, not just simply movies from a feminist point of view, but even films with challenging female protagonists and female filmmakers. I felt this film was a really challenging film, especially with its focus of the life of Ada's character, who is essentially mute. She seems to represent the lack of voice women have within Western society with her voicelessness, yet presents herself as a very strong character. She doesn't let her husband control her life, and is even a fairly challenging figure sexually--she has had a child out of wedlock and has an affair with Baines despite her marital status. I really admired Ada's agency - despite the repressive conditions of her existence, she still manages to "have her voice heard," so to speak.

It was also fascinating to see the interconnection of music and film within The Piano. Music seems to play a very important role in feminist films. Orlando (1992) has become one of my favorite films since my first encounter with it during the Feminism and Film class. The film, based on a Virginia Woolf novel by the same name, follows a seemingly unaging and immortal character's transformation from being a man to becoming a woman, through the Victorian era to the present. Orlando was directed by Sally Potter, who also earns extra credit as a composer of many of the songs in the film. When thinking about music and gender, it must be important to these female filmmakers to have full control over the soundtrack of their films. Music obviously fills an important role within The Piano; it made me reflect back on my choice of music for my final project for Feminism and Film.

For a final project, we were required to experience filmmaking firsthand and create our own movie. Inspired by movies such as Metropolis (1927) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I filmed a scene which depicts a female rebel-leader who has been revived to work for a repressive King, against her initial cause. I used music from Classical Soviet composers Shostakovich and Prokofiev for the soundtrack, to attempt to depict the repressive regime of a tyrant king. It is really interesting to think of music as 'gendered' and how we associate different genres of music and different kinds of music to men and women. Ultimately these connotations are socially constructed - it is completely arbitrary how tyrannical Classical music would represent a tyrannical male figure better than music deemed 'feminine.' Should we continue relying on seperate forms of music in identifying female and male characters within film? I hope filmmakers continue to explore different kinds of music within their films, rather than relying on traditional forms of "gendered" music.

Week 11: Tracy Chapman

As Whiteley makes note of in her analysis of the successful black folk/pop singer, Tracy Chapman has often been criticized for her somewhat “tame” songs of political protest, which have been described as a simple “after-dinner conscience-comforter” (187) for a largely white and middle class audience. But Whiteley argues Chapman’s refusal to conform to the stereotypes which surround black women and black music is precisely what makes her a significant figure within black female musicians. Utilizing the originally white but revolutionary potential of folk music, Chapman sings of the powerful themes of marginality and being an outsider, and the lack of collective social support for those who experience hardships due to their race, gender, class or sexuality.

One of her key songs to reach popular, mainstream appeal is Fast Car, a very personal tune which deals with a woman’s inescapability of men caught up alcoholism; after leaving an alcoholic father, the protagonist of the song ends up with an alcoholic husband as well. Whiteley makes note of Chapman’s use of music to convey the powerful themes within her songs—in Fast Car, a sense of being “trapped” in this cycle of the often hopeless reality of alcoholism is created through a two-bar guitar riff which continues to repeat itself throughout the song. Her use of melisma and vibrato portray the emotions of helplessness and sadness felt by the victims and outsiders of her songs.

Ultimately, Chapman challenges the stereotypical portrayals of black women musicians and black music while adding to the diversity of black musicians within the tradition of musically expressing the issues “surrounding racialised exclusion, ‘Black identity,’ and social and cultural difference” (191). Her position as an educated woman and a politically and socially conscious individual, alongside her very personal music expressing issues of marginality make Chapman a powerful figure not only within black female musicians, but within the broader realm of women in popular music.

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I'm fairly ashamed to admit, until I began this course and the required readings, I had always thought Tracy Chapman was white. My first encounter with Fast Car was through a playlist my first-year dorm-mate and I had created on her laptop, which would play while we bustled about in our miniscule dormitory. I only knew of Tracy Chapman through that one track, and had never been exposed to actual images of the musician. I'm sure a large part of my false assumption of Chapman as a white pop musician was the style of the music. As Whiteley mentions in her article, folk music is generally associated with white culture. Athough I find Chapman's refusal to conform to the stereotypes of black female singers very powerful, I wonder how many people, like me, end up initially brushing her off as another white folk pop singer, and completely miss her revolutionary messages?

My perspective of Chapman has completely changed from when I was folding laundry to her most well-known song in a dusty dormitory. The fact that she consciously refuses to fit into stereotypes surrounding black women is admirable, and something that I feel I can relate to.
Born in Tokyo but raised in small-town in the Okanagan, I continually struggle with my identity as a first generation Japanese-Canadian. I vaguely remember being kind of the circus freak on my first full day of grade one; my mother had packed me a traditional Japanese lunch with rice balls, sweet scrambled eggs and chopsticks, which fascinated the other kids, who had their typical Wonderbread sandwiches and fruit-roll-up snacks. Embarrassed at my apparent difference to everybody else, I asked my mother for sandwich lunches from that day on.

Recently I've felt the struggle with my dual identity, especially with language. I speak Japanese fairly fluently, but probably only at the level of a middle school student. As I am shoving more theories into my head and expanding my academic knowledge, I feel my Japanese is slowly fading away. It's really frustrating to not be able to speak to my parents and the Japanese people in my life about my studies and everything I'm learning. I don't even know the word for 'feminism' in Japanese. Initially being embarrassed by my obvious differences from the largely white population of my small hometown has resulted in increasingly assimilating myself within North American culture. While I think its great how successful and influential a musician Chapman is without conforming to stereotypes, I wonder if she feels the loss I feel, when I think about how I've tried to stray as far as I could from limiting Japanese stereotypes.

In a desperate attempt to re-emerge myself back into Japanese culture, I took a stack of Slam Dunk manga (arguably one of the most influential Japanese comic books of all time) and some of my old Japanese pop CDs from my parent's home a few weeks ago. One of the CDs was a single by pop/folk artist Chitose Hajime, who rose to the top of Japanese music charts in 2004 with her single 'Wadatsumi no ki.' This song has always been one of my favorite songs, ever since I heard it during my trip back to Japan in 2004. Even though I can't understand every word in the song, or really even comprehend much of what she's actually singing about, I feel very emotional every time the song is played. And I feel that much of that emotion derives from my struggling yet strong identification with Japan. I hope to pick up some new albums when I visit Japan again, and find more music the Japanese side of my can identify with.