Victorian Visual Culture

CONTENT WARNING: Sexual and emotional abuse, strong sexual content, themes of physical and psychological violence against women.

In class, we’ve spoken a lot, both directly and indirectly, about the male gaze, and how a variety of the women we have studied have made efforts to push back against it in order to take the power of perception away from men and restore it to the subjects of the photographs themselves. This struggle for women’s agency and control over the perception of their own bodies is, of course, nothing new. The Victorian era in particular is one in which these questions of women’s agency and sexuality were at the heart of the works of many novelists and visual artists alike. Today, however, I would like to examine a more recent novelist, whose approach marks an interesting shift in how this problem is addressed.

The person to whom I am referring is Kathy Acker. No stranger to controversy during her tragically short life, Acker is, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating literary figures of the past fifty years. For those unfamiliar with her or her work, Kathy Acker was a notable member of the punk scene in the 1970s, and pioneered a particularly visceral and iconoclastic brand of feminism. She also described her novels as “collages”, which were made up of poetry, prose, excerpts from other literary works, and her own sketches, which accompany the text as illustration.

The novel I want to focus on is probably her most famous work, Blood and Guts in High School, mostly because of the way the aforementioned sketches interact with the text. I won’t post any of them in this post, as most of them may be too distressing for some people, and I don’t want to catch anyone at unawares with an image that may make them uncomfortable. To be quite frank, though I am interested in Acker’s work and am a great admirer of her fictive and theoretical writings, I can never quite bring myself to enjoy her work.

In my opinion, this is entirely by design. Blood and Guts in High School is a novel that seems to want to make its reader uncomfortable, regardless of who they are. It’s excessive, it’s disgusting, and frankly, it’s almost unreadable (as with all of Acker’s novels, I had to put it down several times just because I was overwhelmed by it). But this mixture of revulsion and terror that the novel generates is exactly what makes it so effective at combating the same violent misogyny that it depicts. The story centers around Janey Smith, a young girl who has a sexual relationship with her father at a young age until later in the novel, where she moves to New York, is abducted, sold into sex slavery, escapes, enters into an increasingly abusive relationship with a notable French writer, is arrested, and subsequently dies without any sort of happy ending. Accompanying the text are rough sketches of the things being described by the narrative, which almost always take the form of nude bodies, specifically close-ups of male and female genitals. One could say that the human body is being objectified in this way, but Acker twists it into something grotesque, using a lack of detail to create nude images that serve to make most readers (at least those I have spoken to) more uncomfortable than anything. The implication is that the way we look at the body, particularly the female body, is in some way akin to the violence that Janey undergoes throughout her tragically short life.

One sketch, for instance, is called “Ode to a Grecian Urn”, and depicts a nude woman, legs together and hands up, with both her ankles and her wrists bound together. Taking this classical/romantic reference and distorting it (or, rather, unveiling it) into this image of a bound, physically and psychologically abused woman has a particularly disturbing effect on the viewer. The way Acker depicts the female body is the same way she depicts her protagonist: violently oppressed, subjected to the male gaze almost to the point of breaking. There is no attempt at liberation in the traditional sense: we see the pain induced by misogyny, but not its abolition, which makes this text all the more difficult to read (or indeed, even to look at).

The photos that stand out to me, however, are those of men’s bodies, which almost always depict the viewpoint of Janey herself as she looks at them. One that I found particularly unsettling is one called “You Are the Black Announcers of My Death” depicts a man’s penis from the point of view of a person (presumably Janey) staring it headlong, with her hands holding it (it is obvious from the image that she is about to engage in oral sex).

This image, and others like it, forces upon us a “female gaze” of sorts, wherein the male body is seen through the eyes of the women who are forcibly oppressed by and subjected to it. Unlike the traditional male gaze, wherein the subject is exploited and subjected to a kind of visual violence, here the reader is subjected to this same thing. Acker forces us to see the world through Janey’s eyes, and the results are painful to say the least. The novel forces empathy upon its reader. Not the traditional empathy that we so often use interchangeably with pity. This is a vengeful empathy that makes the reader (especially, I would assume, the male reader) undergo the same cruel visual torture that women undergo socially and physically. These images of men and women are not a disruption or resistance to the male-gaze, but an active attempt at a counterattack? Of course, nothing could ever truly replicate the psychosexual horrors that Janey undergoes, but through the images that accompany her story, Kathy Acker creates the illusion that it can.

This leads me to wonder: how is this accomplished? Why do we become so tied to Janey’s experiences against our will, but other feminist texts do not prompt this same reaction? I would say that this is a result of the novel’s status as a sort of collage-like texts, weaving together different fragments of texts and images to form something altogether new. The reader is constantly being bombarded by images and text, which, when combined, create a sensory overload that emotionally and intellectually dominates the viewer. We are never quite comfortable reading this text, as we never know what kind of literature, what kind of image, or even whose work (Kathy Acker openly admitted to occasionally plagiarizing the work of others in her text in order to best serve her own writing) we are going to encounter. The power of visual consumption is taken away from us, and we are placed at the mercy of the author.

Though I cannot show you the images contained within the text (those that aren’t obscene are actually quite difficult to find online), I would like to take a look at the most recent edition of the cover, which, while not designed by Acker, fits perfectly with her style. It is a photograph of Acker, taken by Michel Delsol, seemingly torn in half.

The simultaneous suggestion of nudity and fracturing of her face and body has a similar (albeit slightly less shocking) effect on the viewer. We are forced to ask: is Acker being torn in two, or patched together? Perhaps both. The effectiveness this image is in how it both destroys and rebuilds Acker’s image. In viewing this fragmented portrait, we somehow have less access to her. Note how the tear in the image runs right through the eye. Acker is not only tearing the image in half, but also interrupting the viewing experience. The destruction of Acker’s own image and body serves as a sort of reclamation of feminine identity and perception. Much like in her novel itself, Acker perpetuates the cycle of violent oppression and objectification of women, but takes control of this process herself, making the viewer (including any potential male readers) more of a bystander who is forced to watch this self-destruction in shame, without the ability to enforce it himself. The image above is one of many that contribute to the sensory overload that seeks to destroy the visual history of femininity that has been constructed by a male-driven literary culture, and in doing so allow women to reclaim control over how their bodies are perceived (or, failing to do that, level the playing field a bit), albeit in an incredibly visually violent manner

Acker is, however, not without her critics, both in and out of the feminist community. Many of these critics argue that women are never quite empowered in her novels, and that she is simply repeating an oppressive history of women without ever truly liberating her heroines. Still others say that Acker is more interested in playing out revenge fantasies than in actually engaging in conventional resistance to patriarchal culture (as we see in the works of Julia Margaret Cameron and some of her contemporaries). I certainly see some merit in these criticisms, as it is at times hard to claim that her novels quite empower women in the black and white terms that we have become used to discussing these themes in. However, there is also a reason for which Acker has become the rebellious feminist icon that she is considered to be today, with many contemporary writers having drawn inspiration from both her novels and her essays. Blood and Guts in High School is an experiment in visualization as a form of gender-based combat, one whose effectiveness may be called into question but that I think nevertheless needed to be conducted.

Frankly, however, I’m a bit out of my depth in regards to this discussion, so I’ll end it here. What do you think? Is there something to be said about images actively offending the viewer’s sensibilities rather than passively guarding themselves? Does this approach ultimately do more harm than good?

Having already written about Julia Margaret Cameron’s Sadness in my midterm essay, I took the time to explore her other photographs and was struck by one called May Day. In it, Sylvia Wolf describes:

…A tangle of leaves, twigs, and berries in the foreground and wilting flowers strung around the models’ necks, or tucked behind their ears, add an element of disorder and decay that is reminiscent of the vanities theme of a Dutch still-life painting—everything a bit ripe and overdone, as a reminder of mortality. (Julia Margaret Cameron’s Women)

Upon first glance, it’s hard not to be drawn to the central figure: a woman with long flowing hair wearing a flower crown and gazing directly at the viewer. When looking at the photograph and taking into consideration its title, I make an American connection and recall Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The May-Pole of Merry Mount” in which the people of Merry Mount gather to celebrate the wedding of the young Edith and Edgar until John Endicott and his Puritan followers come to whip everyone. Edith and Edgar are spared on the condition that they dress more conservatively and Edgar cuts his hair in the classic Puritan fashion. The story goes from joy to gloom quickly because of the power struggle between pleasure and religion. It is also notable that May Day was, for a time, banned by Puritans in the 17th century.

May Day is a holiday for celebrating the coming of spring and fertility. The most notable aspect of this holiday is the dancing around the maypole and Moho’s do in the spring and as Edith and Edgar did. Typically, a May Queen is also chosen. The May Queen is someone who personifies the tradition and wear a white gown garnered with flowers to symbolize purity and fertility and a crown.

Upon further research, Julia Margaret Cameron’s photograph has an alternative name: “For I’m to be Queen of the May Mother, I’m the Queen of May” and the central figure is her niece. In the photo, on a day expected to be filled with joy and celebration, there is a touch of sadness to. Each figure has a stillness while spring is supposed to be filled with life and movement. Flowers are supposed to be in bloom, but the ones in the photograph seem wilted and dark. The May Day theme doesn’t end with the flowers and crown, the very composition of the subjects are reminiscent of the maypole. The figures surrounding the May Queen seem to encircle her instead of just merely gathering with her. Though she is not lively, she acts as the maypole in a way.

Though “The May-Pole of Merry Mount” made for an exciting comparison, Cameron actually based the photograph off of Lord Tennyson’s poem, “The May Queen.” Written in two parts, the latter describes Alice’s expectation of life in the spring:

The honeysuckle round the porch has woven its wavy bowers,

And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers;

And the wild marsh-marigold shoes like fire in swamps in hollows gray;

And I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

To her subsequent death in the winter:

If you’re waking, call me early, call me early, mother dear;

For I would see the sun rise upon the glad new-year.

It is the last new-year that I shall ever see,—

Then you may lay me low i’ the mold, and think no more of me.

The poem is oddly reminiscent of the myth that the May Queen was to be sacrifice after May Day. However, Alice does live to see another spring. Though May Day is about supposed to be about new life, both the poem and photograph bring up themes of death and decay.

gAs technology has advanced, we as a society have constantly found new ways to visually capture the world around us. In class, we have been looking at photography as a medium that revolutionized visual culture. More recently, the advent of film and film culture at the end of the 19^th century has instigated a similar revolution, changing the way we think of the world around us visually and narratively. It is this medium and its impact that I hope to explore with this blog post. What began as a technological gimmick in the 19^th century has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry that has a massive effect on how we interpret the things we perceive in our everyday life. We have developed something of a cultural obsession with film, allowing it to seep into our consciousness in such a way that, at some level, we all seem to be under the impression that our lives in some way resemble the events of a film. This raises a number of questions. What separates film from other visual mediums of artistic expression? Perhaps more importantly, why do we see as a society view film as more accessible or stimulating in some way?

Before I take a stab at answering these questions, a brief disclaimer: I am not a film student, and have only a rudimentary understanding of the medium (thus, please take everything I write here with a grain of salt). I do, however, love going to the movies, and do so about once a week. Big studio or independent, domestic or foreign, old or new, regardless of subject or genre, I will watch just about anything as long as it can hold my interest.  One thing that fascinates me about this medium is how it takes pieces of something very familiar (visual art), and places it in a sequence, forming something altogether new that is somehow more than the sum of its parts.

The secret to this lies in the editing process. In the 1920s, Soviet filmmaker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein developed his famous theory of film as “montage”. Eisenstein argues, in his essay Film Form, that the effect film has on its audience is the result of two or more images being placed in opposition to one another. Each time a film cuts from one shot to another, the second shot is defined by its contrast to the shot immediately preceding it. Each shot that follows continues this trend, so that the audience’s opinion of the film and its accompanying narrative continues to change as each cut occurs.

When we look at a photograph, we are looking at one image representing one moment in time. Each shot in a film similarly shows us one thing over a particular period of time (the length of which depends on the length of the shot and the speed at which the events are being filmed). When the camera cuts, we see something else, and the first thing that stands out to us is the difference between the thing we are watching now and the thing we saw last. We also use both images to make assumptions about everything that occurs in between, both temporally and spatially. A photograph, on the other hand, is only one “shot” of a film. Thus, there is no “in between”. The main similarity between the two mediums is that in both cases, the viewer’s imagination supplies the majority of the narrative. Film, however, is unique in that it uses opposing images to place a limit on how far the imagination is allowed to go. No matter what we assume about an image, in film we are always expected to “arrive” at the next shot, all the way until the end.

Let’s look at two examples of film editing at work. The first one that comes to mind to me is the following scene from Lawrence of Arabia:

A brief recap of the scene: Lawrence is being assigned his mission (to contact a group of Bedouins to see how they fare in their war against the Turks), by Mr. Dryden, which will take him to the desert. Prior to this, most of the scenes are shot either in interior locations, or fairly close up, as if to emphasize the constricting, claustrophobic nature of life in the British military, a lifestyle that promotes the oppression and subjugation of foreign cultures (like that of the Arabs, as shown later in the film), and the suppression of the individualism of its members, such as Lawrence, whose homosexuality, desire for adventure, and admiration for the Bedouins is not allowed to surface until he ventures into the desert (in the case of his queerness, it is never fully able to surface at all). All of this is pre-empted in the conversation that Lawrence has with Dryden, with Lawrence insisting that “It’s going to be fun”, while Dryden remarks that “only two kinds of creatures have fun in the desert: Bedouins, and Gods, and you’re neither”, also saying that “It is well known that you have a funny sense of fun” (again highlighting Lawrence’s status as an outsider). Lawrence’s response is to hold up a match and blow it out. Immediately as he does this, the film cuts to a wide shot of a desert landscape, transporting us to the middle of Lawrence’s journey across its sands.

This simple transition tells us nearly everything we need to know about Lawrence as a character without showing us anything that happens in between the two scenes. Nearly everything about the shot of the desert, which up to this point has only ever been talked about, is strikingly different from the profile shot of Lawrence blowing out the match. Whereas before, a light is being extinguished, now a greater one (the sun) is showing itself. Before, the shot is close up and cramped. Now, Lawrence is a speck on the horizon, a small fish in a big pond. We see all of Lawrence’s hopes and aspirations expressed wordlessly, and are shown how insignificant he and all other “heroes” of this war are compared to the ancient deity that the desert becomes in this film. We also finally know why he romanticizes the desert so much, as it allows him to lose himself in it and rebuild himself with the obscurity that it provides him. Finally, we are shown some of the more problematic elements of the narrative (namely how the film’s sympathy for the victims of colonialism is expressed through a member of a colonial power’s relationship with the land). Here the desert becomes a character whose interactions with Lawrence will eventually define and consume him as an individual (as it is later shown that he does not belong in Arabia any more than he belongs in the British army). All of this is accomplished entirely with visuals. We are never told any of this, but are allowed to make these assumptions based off of the opposition between the two shots. The chaining together of these two images produces a much larger and complex narrative than either of them do individually.

The scene is remarkable for its simplicity, but what happens when two entire scenes are woven together in this way? This brings me to my second example, from The Godfather:

In the scene, Michael Corleone is attending the baptism of his new nephew and godson. He is repeatedly asked questions like “Do you renounce Satan?”, “And all his works?”, “And All His Promises?”, and “Will you be baptized?”. He replies in the affirmative to all of these questions, which are asked and answered while we look at either a close-up of Michael’s face or a shot of the child being baptized. After each question is answered, we cut to various scenes of Michael’s subordinates, acting on his orders, killing his enemies by means that are as gruesome as they are underhanded (none of the victims see the assassinations coming, and they die in increasingly visceral ways).

Once again, this scene is defined by contrast. We do not need much context, nor do we need to know exactly who Michael is killing and why (though anyone watching the film knows that they are the killers of his older brother, Sonny). If we saw the baptism on its own, we might believe that Michael is rejecting his family’s violent history, based on his solemn expression and the innocence of the image of the child. However, when we see the disturbing images of death that accompany the scene, we see it in a whole new light. Michael is not rejecting Satan, he is becoming him. The child is not being baptized; he is, and the contrast between the baptismal water and the blood of Michael’s enemies only serves to emphasize this. As before, we do not need to see every detail of the murders or of the baptism, nor do we need to be told that Michael has become corrupted. We are shown a series of images, with little dialogue in between, and forced to connect the disparate words and images, plug in the gaps, and arrive at this conclusion on our own.

There are plenty of other examples, but these two in particular have always stuck with me. What works about them both is how minimalistic they are. They use the technology of film to tell stories within the larger story that is the film’s narrative. We also see some of the limitations of photography revealed here. When viewing a photograph, the viewer must make assumptions about everything that is not explicitly shown in one image that depicts a fragment of a single event. Film, on the other hand, shows us several larger fragments of moments and allows the artist to manipulate the order in which these moving images are delivered to us. Everything that is shown to us we accept as factual (at least according to the world of the film), while everything in between the shots is what the viewer’s imagination controls. By bookending these portions “between the shots” (in other words, by showing us the before and after of what we imagine to take place), the filmmaker can guide the viewer throughout the film, manipulating our thoughts as we go. Every shot of the film thus functions as a “waypoint”, each of which yanks us back into the reality of the film and forces us to accept it as truth. This does not imply that either medium is “better” than the other, but that they have different ways of exercising control over their viewers.

These ideas ultimately only raise more questions. Is there a way in which photography performs the same function? What is it about this restriction of narrative control that makes film so appealing to us? I’m not sure I can answer these, but I would welcome any ideas that anyone else might have on the subject.