Complaint
The Yes Men don’t directly connect well
to my project, but one of their performance pieces in the form of a talk at the
World Trade Organisation, revealed their “Management Leisure Suit.” It was described
in The Interventionists as “a golden leotard with a three-foot phallus.” This incorporates
the male ego that my project is trying to tackle, trying to separate words like
power, management, leader, educator, and charge away from any specific sex.
These characteristics are not a male-specific quality, but there is more social
mobility for men to flex their ego and fill these managerial positions before
women do, because in order to, women must shed their societal enforced skin
of demure, obedient, quiet, and pretty little thing before they’re taken seriously.
And even then, they’re demonised for not fulfilling the stereotype of what it
means to be a woman.
The Guerrilla Girls are much more in
tune with my complaint project, directly combating the pressures of the patriarchy by using unconventional ways to tackle social issues. Using social media isn't necessarily the unconventional aspect of my complaint, but it's in the women I'm bringing to attention that aren't the usual names offered in discussions about how women can change things. A lot of the women I plan to write about are 'firsts', specifically the first women. The act of simply doing something men have been doing, as women, being revolutionary, I feel almost takes away from their skill. It's easy to consider it patronising to congratulate them for this and a lot of narratives seem to get caught up in this. As women, the Guerrilla Girls are well in-tune to this slippery slope and can give credit not only for female skills, but also the struggles on top of their social status that make doing men's minimum harder for them.
One of their posters from their book Confessions Of The Guerrilla Girls encompasses this idea; women aren't on the same social standing as men, specifically in the art world but they have stemmed out into other areas. While I haven't touched on art in my complaint yet, criminology has had a similar setting with regards to women; needing to prove themselves further to counter the social pattern of dismissing women because of a preconceived notion of women being less equipped to deal with the situations men do professionally.
With my complaint, I hope to interrupt people's social media with a short paragraph about great women in amongst the fashion posts or relaxing paint mixing videos. Not to startle them or bring them down, but to bring to attention that a lot of the women are still alive, that this problem is still present. If people know this is still an issue, there is an opportunity for people to change their mentalities and address their own bias. People tend to dismiss social issues that have been "addressed" in the future. They may think Martin Luther King Jr. solved racism during the civil rights movement, they may think the suffragettes solved sexism when they won the vote. This is because so many people don't experience the realities of these issues. If they find out otherwise, that's the first step to change.
Quotes
"The largest victims of privatisation - certainly in terms of physical size - are cities and the once-radical spaces within them."
New York City is a perfect example of this. With rent freezes, some people can only afford to live in their homes because of the ever-so-gracious decision not to price them out of their buildings. Rent in almost every large city globally has continued to rise, without the rise of wages for workers, often the ones who made the city great to begin with. New York City has a complete underground, and now upper-ground of art worlds that intertwine with the casual visitor as well as the hardcore enthusiasts who've been there since the beginning. However, as the city can capitalise on once creative, free spaces, they're lost and stolen from the people who brought them into the world. New York's parks are being patrolled by servicemen under the guise of safety after the horrors of 9/11 but it only reduces the safety of homeless people who'd always taken refuge in these areas. This paragraph also discusses how culture and language is removed via privatisation and gentrification. I couldn't decide between these two quotes for this point, but later in the passage, it reads "Space produces meaning, and meaning produces a sense of history." These spaces are being ripped away from their designers, who were doing it for the love of it rather than solely the financial benefit, to be turned into a chain coffee shop or another faux authentic eatery. With original features ripped out, modern decor and the newest trends thrown in, a generational pizza place having existed from the 1910s has its history, and meaning, stripped.
"Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief."
People like familiar things; we're attracted to people who look like us, and uncomfortably enough, our parents, we associate colours with items that represent positive imagery, and we buy things that we've seen before. When someone goes to buy an item, particularly food, they will buy the one their parents might have used in their food at home, or they'll go for the one with the familiar label they'd seen on an advert. The vivid imagery of this quote, the word penetrate, really conveys how manipulative advertising can be. Some will be reluctant to believe it, saying that advertising doesn't work on them because they're aware of it, but things are so subliminal we sometimes can't differentiate between what is an ad and what isn't. There's online jokes about product placement in films and media which tends to be brutally honest, but Instagram now has to put official disclaimers on what is a paid partnership because the classic advert in between your tv show isn't the only form of advertising we're exposed to. A celebrity we like wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt may appeal to us, but that doesn't mean we're running out to buy Tommy Hilfiger items, we instead look twice at the Forever 21 sweater that has a similar cut, colour palette and fit to it. We may not even know that's why we like it, that's how subconscious the power of advertising can be.
