FACULDADE DE LETRAS UNI V E RS I DA DE DO P ORT O
Diana Mihai
2º Ciclo de Estudos em Estudos Anglo-Americanos, Variante Estudos sobre Mulheres
Literary Renderings of Visual Culture: Intermedial
Practices and Definitions of Feminine Identity in
Margaret Atwood’ s Lady Oracle, Cat’s Eye and
Surfacing
2012Orientador: Professor Rui Carvalho Homem
Classificação: Ciclo de estudos:
Dissertação/ relatório/ Projeto/ IPP:
Abstract
This thesis looks at Margaret Atwood´ s Lady Oracle, Cat´s Eye and Surfacing in relation to various concepts of femininity. It draws upon theories of visual culture while it emphasizes conventional patterns in the construction of the female image. The thesis’s goal is to demonstrate the impact of visual culture on the development of female selfhood from the perspective of the three novels by Margaret Atwood that are mentioned above. The author’s use of intermediality entails a more in-depth analysis of gender identity and the secondary sources that I have chosen deal with the construction of gender identity, the visual media representations of femininity and the word-image relationship. The idea that transpires throughout the thesis is that the way we process visual information is conditioned by the surrounding cultural and social conventions. I conclude that the chosen novels call for the production of new cultural codes and, by extension, new visual representations, so that different understandings and concepts of femininity could be incorporated.
Resumo
Esta tese analisa as obras de Margaret Atwood intituladas Lady Oracle, Cat’s Eye e Surfacing em relação aos vários conceitos de feminilidade. É inspirada pelas teorias de cultura visual e salienta os modelos convencionais na construção da imagem da mulher. O objetivo da tese é demonstrar o impacto da cultura visual no desenvolvimento da individualidade feminina na perspetiva dos três romances de Margaret Atwood que foram mencionados anteriormente. A utilização da intermedialidade nestas obras requer uma análise aprofundada da identidade do género e as fontes secundárias abordam a construção da identidade do género, as representações da feminilidade nos medias visuais e a relação entre palavra e imagem. A ideia que se revela na tese é que o modo como nos processamos a informação visual é condicionado pelas convenções culturais e sociais que nos rodeiam. Em conclusão, os romances propõem a produção de novos códigos culturais e, por extensão, de novas representações visuais, de modo que diferentes entendimentos e conceitos da feminilidade possam ser incorporados.
Table of Contents
1.Introduction……….... .3 1.1. Margaret Atwood’s Fiction and Socio-Cultural Context……….7 1.2. Intermediality and Word-Image Relationship in Margaret Atwood’ s Works: A Few Notes on Visuality in Western Culture………...17 2. Culturally Coded Images of Femininity in Margaret Atwood’ s Lady Oracle……….27 3. Visual Culture and Memory in Margaret Atwood’ s Cat’s Eye………38 4. Challenging Cultural Conditioning and Visual Images of Femininity in Margaret Atwood’s
Surfacing………...52
5. Conclusion………66 6. Works Cited………..70
1. Introduction
This thesis explores Margaret Atwood’ s literary perspective on visual culture’s construction of female identity, particularly in Lady Oracle(p. 1976), Cat’s Eye (p. 1988) and
Surfacing (p. 1972). The primary aim is to show the visual culture’s representations which are
detrimental to women’s personal development. In doing so, I argue that the three mentioned novels are literary reflections of this idea. Through their musings and desires, the main characters of the novels call for innovation and change within their society. By analyzing Atwood’s Lady
Oracle, Cat’s Eye and Surfacing I am looking to shed light on the mechanisms behind the visual
representations of women both in mass culture and classical paintings. I will argue that images are culturally coded and by doing so, I will point out their formative potential.
My reason for undertaking this research on Margaret Atwood’s novels was to be able to provide a significant analysis on the formation of female selfhood through the patterns made available by the surrounding visual culture to which Western society has become increasingly responsive. Her mix of visual art and language gave me the necessary tools with which I could attain my objectives. In an interview, she notes that “we are great categorizers and pigeonholers in our society, and one reason is to put them[people] safely into pigeonholes and then dismiss them, thinking we have summed them up” (Atwood qtd. in Bouson 1993: 3). Taking the imagery of the pigeonhole as a starting point, one can notice the most conformist characters of her novels willingly inhabiting small compartments designed to make everybody fit(ting) within their delineations while the main characters who want to take a step away from them go through exhausting processes of censorship. Renouncing the habit of looking solely within frames, Atwood’s novels reflect a widened perspective on gender identity. Secondly, the reason for which I have chosen Lady Oracle, Cat’s Eye and Surfacing is that they are involved with childhood memories which intervene in the narration with the purpose of making the main characters and narrators aware of the various sources which brought about their state of mental turmoil.
In order to answer the question on how do images have a substantial effect on the development of female identity one must establish the answer as to why they are allowed this authority. The introductory part of the first chapter traces the commonly accepted notions of
femininity which lie within the bounds of Western culture. I focus at this incipient stage of the dissertation on the period between the sixties and seventies to provide the context within which Atwood wrote her earlier works. To do so, I will mention the Second Wave of Feminism, concentrating on the objectives of the movement and their relation with Atwood’s literary ideas. I mention her early works and outline some of her main themes and ideas which underlie her fiction. From the overall presentation of the social and cultural context which informed Atwood’ works, I move forward to discuss the theories on visual culture and to reveal how they fit within Atwood’ s later works.
In the second part of the first chapter I argue that visual representations are, in fact, visual extensions of the Western system of knowledge which contains and spreads the conventional views on gender identity which were explored in the introductory part of the first chapter.
Having within them normative patterns for representing gender identity, their authority increases in the eyes of a public which feeds on conventions. In order to exemplify this idea, I use the visual reproduction of a Pre-Raphaelite painting (Millais’ Ophelia) and a visual example of representations of femininity from a number of Vogue magazine. Placing them together, I will pinpoint to some of the key the conventional features of femininity which are spread via visual culture.
I offer an overview of the theoretical contributions on intermediality and by doing so, I examine the relationship between word and image so as to provide the main theoretical framework within which I will work in the following chapters. I draw on the instructive
examples given by WJT Mitchell in Iconology and Susan Sontag’s On Photography. I advance in my examination of these theories to give a historical account of the development of
ocularcentrism in Western culture in order to indicate that the power of images lies not only in the concepts that are imprinted on them but also in the Western tendency to focus on visuality. In relation to visual culture, one of the main collections of short fiction that present the reader with the mechanisms of contemporary visual culture is Wilderness Tips. It shows how the people involved in publicity image-making use the techniques of photography to manipulate the picture. It is underlined that in people’s minds such a picture is seen as an accurate representation of reality. The publicity industry uses both text and image to create desires. The aim is to make the viewing subject feel that what he/she is or has is not enough, which brings us to the idea that
publicity images generate anxiety. Through such images their creators rely on conventional mindsets to make their visual products seem legitimate.
In the second and third chapter I will take a look at how the main characters and narrators of Lady Oracle, Cat’s Eye and Surfacing weigh up the presence of mass culture’s images. Joan, Elaine and the nameless character of Surfacing are prompted to incorporate and assimilate the unwritten rules of behavior which their society promotes. In these novels, mass culture will be seen as a mechanism for the proliferation of patriarchal concepts on gender identity.
The widely accepted vision of womanhood and the traditional views on gender identity are analyzed through the lens of Atwood’s Lady Oracle, Cat’s Eye and Surfacing. In these novels, the cultural fabrication of gender identity comes to the surface. The main characters take journeys into their childhood and by means of them, they challenge the society and culture that laid the basis of their identities. In Surfacing and Cat’s Eye the characters’ journeys are more empirical than in Lady Oracle, for the reason that Elaine and Surfacing’s nameless character take an actual journey to their hometowns whereas Joan merely goes through her childhood
memories. Regardless of this, the act of remembering has a strong effect in every novel.
The characters of Atwood’ s novels develop within the cultural and social arrangements of a Western society. For historical reasons to which I will be referring only briefly, Western societies are prone to display features which are patriarchal and ocularcentrist. Through an analysis of visual culture one can see how these two features are intertwined to eventually construct gender identity. There are two main areas within visual culture which are given a special interest in Atwood’ s novels and by extension in my dissertation : advertising/publicity images and photographs which are found especially in magazines and paintings. Within the area of advertising, photography is the medium that most efficiently gives the illusion of authenticity to a picture.
One of the main tendencies with which Lady Oracle, Cat’s Eye and Surfacing are concerned is the internalization of mass culture’s representations, especially when the construction of female identity is brought into discussion. This concept explains the social behavior of women as it has two main sources: the need to avoid social isolation and the social training that is at work in Western society to identify oneself with the images of mass culture.
The point which I underline in these chapters is that these memories reveal the marks of popular culture on female identity. Dissecting their childhood memories help the characters
understand the source of their feelings of melancholia. Their main course of action is analyzing how visual culture triggered their feelings, molded their appearance and steered their behavior. In addition to this observation, I will show that the female selfhood which was constructed by means of visual culture retains features of a patriarchal order.
These novels contain memory narratives where the narrators and main characters look back on their past, on their relationships and on the society of their childhood. In Lady Oracle the social atmosphere from the main character’s childhood is presented as bleak and unforgiving, in the same manner as in Cat’s Eye. The female characters are subject to intense scrutinity and judgment, each ill-fated attitude towards them being justified only by codes and norms. The characters of Lady Oracle and Cat’s Eye often find themselves examining their appearance. Joan makes efforts to grow slimmer and Elaine is being shaped by the representations of a
Pre-Raphaelite painting. However, the nameless main character in Surfacing ponders on her friend’s Anna vanity which is revealed by her obsessive looking into the mirror.
Lady Oracle describes the embodied experience of its main female character and narrator.
Body image is tightly connected to social expectations and the manner in which one views oneself is steered by the society’s expectations. Being an overweight child that wanted to wear the pink suits and leggings which are typical of ballet dancers, she was perceived as grotesque and inappropriate. In turn, such images and concepts related to gender identity are used and re-used in visual culture.
The public’s obsession with certain images and representations is in accordance with conventional understandings of gender identity. In Lady Oracle the female body must fit within strict boundaries, the desirable images of femininity involve allure in Elaine’s case and the sexualization of female body is manifested in Anna, one of the characters of Surfacing.
In these novels we are presented with a culture that curbs freedom of expression, as the characters’ social environment gives them a limited array of possibilities to form their identity. In the world of publicity images, the idea that is extensively promoted is that happiness comes with the willingness to comply with its visual norms.
Among the three main characters Joan has the weakest sense of self as she was more pressured to embody the representations of popular culture. As such, she has a series of doubts related to the validity of her actions and thoughts. In comparison, Elaine presents a strength of self which she started developing after she broke the connections with the three friends who were
in the habit of controlling her behavior. In the novel, her psychological journey involves a search for the source of her melancholia being already equipped with a sound knowledge of who she is and why she acts in the manner in which she acts. At the beginning of Surfacing, the main character and narrator is already leaving behind the(visual) conventions of her society as she expresses her dissatisfaction with her present condition and she starts the trip back to her hometown with a willingness to change her perspective on life, and the reader sees her succeeding.
Finally, Surfacing will show that one needs to take a more critical stance towards the representations which are contained by one’s culture. I will end my thesis with this novel because aside from gathering observations on (visual) culture it puts forward the idea that other meanings must be produced, and the understanding that one has of the gender relations and the role of the individual within society has to be re-assessed and changed and the cliché of fresh perspective gains a different aspect, one which is more revealing.
1.2. Margaret Atwood’s Fiction and Socio-Cultural Context
Atwood´s early fiction coincides with the rise of the second wave of feminism. Although her inspiration was not drawn from the movement, the author´s concerns resemble those of the second-wave feminists. In order to connect Atwood´s early fiction to the second wave of feminism, it is necessary to mention what prompted the movement in the first place. Beginning with the second wave of feminism, female scholars and activists have found that the problem of society concerning women resided in the mainstream definitions of femininity. Women´s social condition in the sixties and the period that led up to this decade was defined by various political and cultural factors. From a political point of view, Kate Millett shed light on patriarchy as a political characteristic and at the same time “as a profound organizational principle that affected all of culture and society (Gerhard 2001: 92). It was perceived by Millett and by feminists of her caliber as interior colonization. In her 1979 book Reinventing
Womanhood Carolyn Heilbrun characterized the tendency of women in Western society to abide
by disadvantageous rules of social practice and to internalize them, as an effort to avoid isolation:
Women try to evade the psychological isolation of the outsider not by bonding with each other but rather by taking on the status of their husbands, if they are housewives, or by accepting the status of honorary male if they succeed in penetrating the professional or business world (1979: 39).
The ramifications of these widely accepted definitions of femininity were mostly seen when women reached the point in their lives when they needed to get married. Marriage represented the stage when they officially had to take upon a self-effacing role. Furthermore, motherhood along with marriage were seen as a fulfillment of femininity. As such, there was a problem of identity as in white middle-class circles people did not expect women to develop a strong sense of selfhood. Betty Friedan called it the “malaise” of the white middle-class woman that was caused by a “denial of human potential” which was inherent in the popularly accepted definitions of femininity (Gerhard 2001: 88).
Given the situation, female scholars asked for a re-definition of the concepts of
womanhood. In her study on feminine identity, Carolyn Heilbrun sets forth the idea that “women ´s position in society, or at least their traditional view of their position, puts them under social and psychological pressures that continually undermine their ability to bond” (1979: 39). The study continues with an emphasis on the necessity for women to bond and form a coherent movement that would counteract women´s unsatisfactory position. As she argues, this was a purpose that met with a high amount of resistance because of the deep-rooted mindset which they actually intended to counteract.
The need to redefine womanhood has been crystallized in this movement, but still the cause did not receive the support which was needed because of aggressive attempts at keeping the conventional statute of women. In such a context, second-wave feminists put across the idea that more women had to be first of all, aware of the lack of privileges which were characteristic of the period between the sixties and the seventies’ social organization. Women still believed that they could attain womanhood through marriage, birth and child raising and imposed those views on the younger generation. As Heilbrun noted, the women who attained high positions were taking pride in the features of manhood that were ascribed to their personality.
In other words, the main objective of second-wave feminists was to make the public aware of the cultural fabrication of gender identities. The concept of femininity was especially
examined and deconstructed by them because it was “a cultural construct permeated with social values that had little basis in biology or genuine female experience”(Gerhard 2001: 88). In the late seventies and early eighties feminists sought to give a new form to mainstream culture as they realized that changing the culture and changing mentalities was one of the basic courses of action.
From her first novel, Atwood reiterates the idea that there is no boundary between the public and the personal as the public aggressively influences every aspect of human identity. Some of her female characters act in such a manner that places them in line with popular expectations, only to find themselves feeling uncertain about their decisions, questioning throughout the plot the morals of the very society that aims to mold their character. When her early works were published, Atwood gave a series of counter arguments to the idea that her novels were the product of the second wave of feminism. With regard to Edible Woman she argued that she doesn’t “consider it feminism”, she “simply consider[s] it social realism. That part of it is simply social reporting” (Atwood qtd. in Tolan 2007: 3). Atwood was also invoking the chronological argument that, for example, Edible Woman which was published in 1969 was conceived in 1965, at a time when the Women’s Liberation Movement had not been officially set in motion. She enlists among her influences Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan’s works which in turn were the ground works on which the liberation movement of the late sixties and early seventies was built: “I myself see the book as protofeminist rather than feminist: there was no women’s movement in sight when I was composing the book in 1965, and I’m not gifted with clairvoyance, though like many at the time I’d read Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir behind locked doors” (Atwood qtd. in Tolan 2007: 9). Atwood’s stance towards the second wave of feminism was not dismissive as one can deduce, from the passages above, that rather than taking upon an ideological path, she responded to the problems which the women were dealing with in her period. However, what particularly connects Atwood to the second wave of feminism in her first novel Edible Woman is the inspiration she drew from her period´s context, the
rendering of the effects which the social organization of the sixties had on a woman´s psyche. In order to avoid generalizations, it is important to note that the effects were not the same for every woman. As we have seen before there were women who were content in their role as supporters of their male partners and at the same time, there was a handful of women who entered a male-dominated area of work only to end up looking down on other women. Nevertheless, Atwood
keeps in mind the women that feel the need to not comply and to question the role they have been given. Thus, in Edible Woman, the reader is introduced to the psychological journey of the woman who detects the flaws in the way society is treating her gender and by extension herself as an individual but who has no resources to fight against them.
In the first chapter of the novel, the inner workings of corporations are closely examined. After all, they developed the mediums through which the long-contested ideas of femininity were disseminated. In this regard, Atwood focuses on male privilege in the Western patriarchal society while she directs her criticism at consumerism. Through her main character’s profession she gives a detailed account of consumer behavior. Before she gets married, Marian’ s job is to test the market by conducting interviews on how a product is being received by its consumers. In the period which she spends at the company she describes the distribution of power: her company was divided into three layers where the upper layer was composed mostly of men: “On the floor above are the executives and the psychologists – referred to as the men upstairs, since they are all men” (1998: 45).
These passages of the novel indicate the mechanisms through which power is ascribed to various groups of people. Pilar Somacarrera draws a comparison between Atwood’s and
Foucault’s views on power as she states that for both of them power does not come from one core source and it is not located in one place it is suffused through all social relations. Thus, it is hard to pinpoint where power comes from : “power after all is not real, not really there: people give it to each other” (Atwood qtd. in Somacarrera 2006: 45). Although the feminist slogan “Personal Is Political” was not among Atwood’s influences, it is, nevertheless, a view which she shared with the feminists of the sixties and seventies. The suffusion of politics into personal lives is exemplified in Edible Woman, in the passages where Marian’s friend Ainsley experiences second thoughts about her abilities to raise a male child alone. Upon her visit to the doctor’s office she is informed that a boy must have a strong male role model because the child will likely grow up to be a homosexual. One notices from these passages that family planning and the accepted image of harmonious family life was controlled by political factors: “And I was so happy, and I was doing my knitting and everything during the first speaker – he talked about the Advantages of Breastfeeding. They even have an Association for it now” (1998: 245).
In the sixties, Atwood represented relationships as a social practice within which the man was given the power to expand his influence over the life of his wife. In Edible Woman the
narrator says about her fiancé that he monopolizes her, which hints that such a relationship begins to have corporatist features. By mentioning Power Politics, Nischik holds that Atwood is fighting against
Binary gender relations that leave even the most intimate love affairs exposed to political power structures. The code of idealized romantic love is crossed by the code of political (gender) equality, making the reality of love part of political activity(2009: 40).
In the case of Edible Woman Ainsley’ s determination and self-confidence is deterred by external influences from her social environment. If, at the beginning, she felt confident in bringing up a child by herself towards the end her independent self does not seem enough. In referring to her short stories, Nischik puts forward the idea that Atwood’s short fiction is full of characters who dangle between two opposite states (i.e. passivity/activity, action/reactions, initiative/blockage)(Nischik 2009: 75). Although Edible Woman is a novel, the behavior of the two main female characters exhibits the same schism. While Ainsley takes a more assertive stance in planning her life but finds opposition to her views, Marian is aware of her own passivity and at the same time she reacts against it. The structure of the novel brings to surface the split in her personality: the first and third chapter are written in the first person and the second one is presented in a third-person narrative.
As she provides the reader with Marian and Ainsley’s experience in the early sixties’ society, Atwood paints a clearer image of the imbalance in gender relations which was prevalent in that period. The unevenness of the ways in which men and women were expected to perform their roles in society represents the focus of Power Politics as well. A poem which belongs to the Power Politics collection, “She considers evading him” begins by emphasizing the
complying acts to which the lyrical I has to resort and the pressure of a relationship that demands only compromise from her: “I can change my-/self more easily/than I can change you” (Atwood 1978: 143). The poem suggests that the expectations for the female partner to renounce aspects of her personality is deeply-rooted in the way one views relationships as it emphasizes the difficulty with which the man is ready to strike a balance.
Furthermore, Atwood’s character’s lives are marked by ambivalence which is caused particularly by the aggressiveness of their social environment which asks from them to take upon
roles that come against their need for freedom of thought and action. The reason for these confusing outlooks on life is the internalization of features which are of political, cultural or social nature. This idea echoes Millett’ s description of the practice of internalizing only the features which are demanded by society as interior colonization, a term which was used in the first passages of the thesis. In relation to this, Atwood emphasizes that “to acknowledge the victim position but to explain it as an act of God, the dictates of Biology (in the case of women for instance), the necessity decreed by History, or Economics, or the Unconscious, or any other large general powerful idea” is one of the basic victim positions (Somacarrera 2006: 44). In this description, Atwood brings together the whole range of arguments which were used to justify the inferior position which women(especially the ones who were part of the white middle-class) were pushed by their society to take. Firstly, she brings forward the common explanation for women’s confinement to the private space as a divine duty. The dictates of biology brings forward for consideration the popular conviction that motherhood is another factor in a woman’s life that keeps her tied to home life.
In her short stories, Atwood reveals that such experiences through which her characters have to go through are affected by the social context which she depicts as being “sick”1. According to Nischik, these experiences ultimately have effects on the individual’s psyche (2009: 74). In this overbearing atmosphere, readers are led to understand the importance of women bonding, something that Carol Heilbrun proposed as well. As a result, female characters have to focus their attention on other female characters to find out more about their personality and about the way in which they have viewed the concept of femininity throughout their lives.
Her collections of short stories, Bluebeard’s Egg and Wilderness Tips present characters in moments of revelation when they understand that they have been seeing the world around them through the lens of conventions and popular convictions. The narrator of “Betty”
remembers the unfairness with which she judged her neighbor, the title-character of the story, and the misperception she had of Betty’s husband as an outstanding man. Seeing Betty through the lens of what she was supposed to be was detrimental because as one finds out from the ending of the story, no one could have known if all the internal struggles that the narrator presented to the readers were factual as no one around her gave it a second thought. In this short 1 Nischik uses this term in her book on Atwood’s fiction, Engendering Genre, in order to explain the pressures which her female characters experience in a Western social context and which push them into “a more acceptable
story, views on marriage and femininity are closely examined. The narrator’s father considered that when husbands left women it was because of their foolishness. Here it is revealed that, in conventional terms, the woman’ s duty was to do her best in keeping her married status and the private sphere was hers to handle.
"Betty's a fool," my father said. "She always was." Later, when husbands and wives leaving each other became more common, he often said this, but no matter which one had left it was always the woman he called the fool. His highest compliment to my mother was that she was no fool (Atwood 1998: 59).
During her childhood the narrator’s opinion of her neighbor did not differ from that of her father’s as Betty was the person whose life was of slight importance. Fred was the focus of her attention as well as of her sister’s. He had the privilege of leading a more complex life while Betty remained at home. By extension, her only interests were the activities which she had to carry on in the house. As such, Atwood reveals that Betty’s assumed triviality was the product of the society that asked women to dedicate their lives to their homes. The narrator does not consider this until she gets to an adult stage. Moreover, at this stage, she understands that her memories about Betty were more influential in the development of her personality than she knew.
Childhood memories are frequently depicted in Atwood’s short fiction and novels. The characters go through various of moments from the period when they were most impressionable. The reader notices that, as the adult versions of the main characters dig deeper into their
childhood, they begin to find more explanations about their present condition.
In her short fiction the importance of remembrance and the search of her characters for discovering what formed their identity is conceived in different ways from Dancing Girls to
Wilderness Tips. As opposed to her first collection of short stories entitled Dancing Girls or her
first novel where the female characters are drawn into endless despair and where the plot is dominated by confusion, Bluebeard’s Egg reveals characters who have more potential for success:
In contrast to Dancing Girls, however, where stories on these themes are suffused with desperation and hopelessness, the stories of Bluebeard’s Egg hold out a glimmer of hope, alternative realities, which provide a source of comfort for the
(usually female) protagonists in their times of crisis – not solving their problems, but at least rendering them more tolerable (Nischik 2009: 149).
With the publication of Wilderness Tips, the characters of Atwood’s short fiction pass to a higher level where they can look at their condition with humor and resourcefulness. They hold more answers with regard to their own identity than the ones from previous collections. The characters from Wilderness Tips “have a greater ability to transcend catastrophies in their lives, achieving at least the suggestion of a ‘fresh beginning’” (Nischik 2009: 150).
A number of stories in Wilderness Tips are narrated retrospectively,
demonstrating on the one hand how experiences from the past are reinterpreted in retrospect, and on the other how formative they can be ( Nischik 2009: 151). I argue that the realization of the formative potential which the evaluation of the past has, is found in Bluebeard’s Egg as well. Wrapped in a veil of mystery by society’ s dismissal of women’s identities, dead characters remain stuck in the minds of the narrators and of the main characters and emerge as the plot evolves. Usually the characters belong to the narrators’ childhood, a period marked by lack of discernment. Betty is such a character, particularly after her sudden death. Such characters are haunting, their images surface and there is a sense of awakening in their quest for answers. In this respect, Betty emerges in the narrator’s life as the person who was misunderstood. In the past, Betty was perceived as a plain character and in her adult years the narrator acknowledges the meaningful presence she was especially in the
formation of her personality: In the end, she tells us that the faith of this woman(she died from a brain tumor) kept her from making the “demanded choices.”
In “True Trash” which belongs to the Wilderness Tips collection, the female character that takes much of the main character’s thoughts is not dead but her memory is still haunting. The short story focuses on the experience of a group of girls who work as waitresses at a camp. The fate of the girl from the camp who got pregnant after having a relationship with a younger boy raises some questions in the main character’s mind: “And what has become of Ronette after all left behind in the past, dappled by its chiaroscuro, stained and haloed by it, stuck with other people’s adjectives?” (1998: 30).
The link between past and present, or more specifically between past mindsets and present ones is detailed in “True Trash” (Wilderness Tips) and “Betty” (Bluebeard’s Egg). Ronette was the haunting presence of “True Trash” ’s main character. In the past, the act of having intercourse with a younger boy was seen as unacceptable but in the character’s present times it was part of the general direction in which the society evolved:
A fourteen year old boy. Ludicrous.[…] Ludicrous then, possible now. You can do anything now and it won’t cause a shock. Just a shrug. Everything is cool. A line has been drawn and on the other side of it is the past, both darker and more brightly intense than the present (1998: 29)
The pass from a more innocent outlook on life to an awakened state of mind is recurrent in both Atwood’s short fiction and novels. “Death by Landscape “tells the story of two girls Lois and Lucy who were very close during the period in which they were campers. Lucy disappears during a trip in the woods and her body never comes into sight, leaving Lois with gaps and bewilderment. When she is pressured by Cappie, the camp leader, to take the blame for her friend’s disappearance the character feels hurt but as she matures the reasons behind Cappie’s attitude unravel: “Later, when she was grown up, Lois was able to understand what this
interview had been about. She could see Cappie’s desperation, her need for a story, a real story with a reason in it; anything but a senseless vacancy Lucy had left for her to deal with […]Lois worked all this out, twenty years later.. But it was far too late” (1998: 116). Fiona Tolan brings into discussion Freud’s analysis of the unconscious by relating it to Atwood’s fiction and which says that : “the mind which appears so chaotic, contradictory, beyond causation, is ruled by inexorable laws. Mental events are like pearls on an invisible chain, a chain largely invisible precisely because many of the links are unconscious” (Freud qtd. in Tolan 2007: 191). As I will argue in the second chapter of the dissertation, the main character and narrator of Cat’s Eye experiences such memories which she analyzes by visual means.
The poor self- image that women in Atwood’s novels have is constructed through popular culture media. Women learn to act unassertively because a lot of power is assigned to those representations of popular culture which rely on patriarchal conventions. Nischik informs us that in Atwood’s 1969 collection of short stories Dancing Girls her characters “confuse their
concept that was given shape by the mechanisms of mass media. In Power Politics the lyrical I complains that “you take my hand and I’m suddenly in a bad movie” (1978: 142) suggesting that there is a thin line between what one sees on the screen and what has been transferred into day to day reality. This also proves the unevenness in gender relations. Because the form that love took in the sixties was mostly to the disadvantage of women and to emphasize this point Nischik provides the reader with a German philosopher Fichte description of women and men’s manner of loving:
The uncorrupted woman possesses no sexual instinct; none manifests itself in her. Rather she is filled with love and this love is the natural instinct of a woman to satisfy a man (2009: 39).
Moreover, love is idealized through popular culture practices and such representations have in foreground a mysticised feminine identity like the one that was developed by Fichte. The idealization of such features was done more effectively through visual media. Focusing on the unevenness of gender relations and on finding answers about what impels individuals to act in a certain manner, Atwood brings into discussion the visual culture which, as I will demonstrate further on in my work, has the highest potential for forming one’s character.
She brings forward, in a majority of her novels, the patterns of behavior and appearance that are distributed by both popular culture and paintings. Repetitive plot patterns are introduced in the life of the lyrical I from the collection of poems Power Politics and in these circumstances the I expresses awareness of her addiction to them (Nischik 2009: 132). Gender relationship and the existence of power games in a contemporary social milieu constitute issues that are
thoroughly explored in Atwoodian fiction. A lot of these issues are represented in relation to visual culture. She draws inspiration from so-called high and low art, from photographic material to pictorial styles. In the following passages, I will explain why visual culture is significant to Atwood’s fiction.
In many of her works Atwood provides her readers with descriptions of magazines, especially those that are marketed for a female readership. Her collection of short stories entitled “Wilderness Tips” involves journalistic practices and popular culture references. In “Hack Wednesday”, Marcia, the main character, buys on her way to work a magazine entitled True
magazine might have: “she thumbs through the holiday fashions and the diet of the month, licking chocolate from her fingers. Then she settles into a piece entitled, with misplaced assurance, ‘What Men Really Think ’” (1998: 213). The characters of these short stories often make associations with popular culture examples which they apply to their own lives. By drawing from a tampon ad the characters from “The Age of Lead” defined their desire of unconstrained living: “As he dipped Jane backwards he whispered into her ears: “No belts, no pins, no pads, no chafing.”[…] It was what they both wanted: freedom from the world of mothers, from the world of precautions […] they wanted a life without consequences” (1998: 134).
1.2. Intermediality and the Word-Image Relationship in Margaret Atwood’ s
Works: A Few Notes on Visuality
Intermediality is an interdisciplinary field of study which is involved with the analysis of the works of art which, in one way or another, spring from the incorporation of one artistic form into another. Peter Wagner describes intermediality as “the intertextual use of one medium [which for example, can be a painting] into another medium (prose fiction)” (17). The question from which critics depart is what makes intermediality (examining the relation between a visual artistic mode of spreading certain values, of passing over knowledge, and a verbal one) a
valuable research project? As we will find out before images have potential for shaping the manner in which reality is being viewed. In relation to this, Umberto Eco stated that the image,
Possesses an irresistible force. It produces and effect of reality, even when it is false. It cannot say by itself that it does not exist or that it is false, whereas the text can do that. Without text, the image lies or gives way to a multitude of
interpretations (Eco qtd. in Wagner 1996: 30).
The text acts in Umberto Eco’s view as an addition to the image, as a manner of
responding to a necessity for the image to be interpreted. In this case, the text can either impose on the image, attaching to it various interpretations, or provide a good medium for the readers
and viewers to unearth an aspect of certain visual materials which, perhaps, they have not considered. To exemplify, Atwood represents the present strategies of creating a picture as usually having a negative influence on the psyche of her characters. Language cooperates with image because through language she has the opportunity of examining the way in which one views a picture and the way in which the picture is being (mis)perceived. In her novels, the routine of gazing at an image has been shaped by representational conventions: lighting makes the subject look differently than in real life or the posture which the artist picks for his/her model alludes to certain features which do not necessarily belong to the nature of the individual.
On the one hand we are promised a discursive science of images, a mastering of the icon by the logos; on the other hand (as Wood notes), certain persistent images and likenesses insinuate themselves into that discourse, leading it into totalizing “world-pictures” and “world-views” (Mitchell 1986: 24).
This expansion of images has been examined in different fields of study, from sociology to anthropology. Fashion magazines provide substantial material for study because of their combination between image and word through which they succeed in influencing the way in which their consumers view gender identity.
Since the late nineteenth century, word and image have increasingly propagated style. Images of desire are constantly in circulation; increasingly it has been the image as well as the artefact that the individual has purchased. Fashion is a magical system, and what we see as we leaf through glossy magazines is ‘the look’(Wilson qtd. in White 2000: 29).
Through the lens of iconological investigations, one notices that traditional
understandings of femininity live on within visual culture. In Mitchell’ s view, “what we are matching against pictorial representations is not any sort of naked reality but a world already clothed in our systems of representation” (1986: 38). In addition, he underlines that knowledge is “a social product, a matter of dialogue between different versions of the world, including
different languages, ideologies and modes of representations” (1986: 38). In this light, one deducts that vision is a social and cultural construct, as we are trained through our system of representations to understand the world in a certain given/pre-established way.
Mitchell places emphasis on Wittgenstein’s view that in present-day society, a considerable effort must be put into examining “the ways in which we put images ‘into our heads’” (1986: 15).I argue that another important question is why we give authority to some images, a question which will be clarified in the next chapters. To provide another critical support for Atwood’s writings is Susan Sontag’s theory that in photographic practices “ideology determines what constitutes an event” (2005: 14).One chooses what to show, what to include in an image. With this in mind, Mitchell’s statement that: “we can never understand a picture unless we grasp the ways in which it shows what cannot be seen” (1986: 39) shows us that one should give up the belief that, for example, what we see in a photograph is a through and through representation of reality.
Historical accounts of the increasing power of images pinpoint the fact that, in the Western world, from the period in time when images started to proliferate at a faster rate, the visual took a step towards a higher level. Consequently, “forms of knowledge” started to depend on a “scopic regime that equated seeing with knowledge”, a shift of values which is called ocularcentrism and which refers to the “ apparent centrality of the vision in contemporary Western life” (Rose 2007: 7). There are opinions which state that the focus on knowledge through vision began with the invention of the camera obscura.2 In fact, ocular epistemology was given a high amount of importance before the invention of camera obscura and as Lalvani argues, there was a “general ocular concern for accuracy, evinced by a rising bourgeois merchant class” (8). To support his view, Lalvani quotes Sartre who said in relation to visuality in
Renaissance period that “ Europeans came more and more to believe that things planned or seen from a central viewpoint had greater monumentality and moral authority than those which were not” (Sartre qtd. in Lalvani 1996: 8). Lalvani continues his argument by mentioning Renaissance commercial practices and by quoting Edgerton who noted that “Florentine businessmen were in all likelihood ´disposed to a visual order that would accord with the tidy principles of
mathematical order that they applied to their bank ledgers” (Edgerton qtd. in Lalvani 1996: 8). As mechanical reproductions bloomed and entered the market in the form of commodities, ocularcentrism began to be more powerful starting from the period between the late 19th century-early 20th century which included the first steps which were taken towards the development of
camera as we now know it. The role of images in the social context was strengthened by commercial practices.
In Atwood’s fiction, the inclination towards the visual in Western culture is literarily illustrated when she explains the choice of one of her characters from “Wilderness Tips” to pick a certain type of popular culture material so that he could improve his English: “Perhaps it was another sort of tip, as in the “ Handy Tips for Happy Homemakers” columns in the women’s magazines he had taken to reading in order to improve his English- the vocabularies were fairly simple and there were pictures which was a big help” (1998: 191). In this context of ruling visual representations, images are signs that need to be decoded in order to understand social practices. The individual has to learn what constructed his/her identity. In this regard, Margaret Atwood’s characters seek to find answers to a particular question that, as the story goes on, consumes them, more specifically the question of who they “really” are. The reasons for their failure to gather answers for this question are the external pressures, unwritten rules of behavior, mass-produced images and mass-produced ways of viewing the world. Nevertheless, they strive. Concerning media’s role within our society, Sontag argues that “the real is increasingly inaccessible because of the intrusiveness of media in our lives” and there are reasonable arguments to say that “reality is a construct subject to the interests of those with power and influence” (2005: 4). In “Hairball” the author finds in magazines the potential to shape public opinion and to make individuals lose track of what it means to have a “true’ self(if there is still one to begin with):
It’s simple, Kat told them. You bombard them with images of what they ought to be, and you make them feel grotty for being the way they are. You’re working with the gap between reality and perception. That’s why you have to hit them with something new, something they never seen before, something they aren’t. Nothing sells like anxiety (1998: 41).
As these sentences show, the practice behind the creation of fashion magazines causes a perpetual state of confusion as one is pressured into being a person that a magazine virtually creates. The reason why decoding images holds an important place in finding out what makes us who we are is the fact that nowadays visual pieces are mass produced. After such a process art and visual images become commodities. When art becomes a commodity, mass-produced artistic creations will be vulnerable to conform to the demands of the market. The mirror self that
Wendy Steiner mentions in her Introduction to The Real Real Thing will reflect less of that real thing which artists have been searching for. Considering that viewers emulate what they see in a visual piece, the viewing experience must take center stage in the analysis of visual culture and its effects on individuals. Gen Doy argues in her book Picturing the Self: Changing Views of the
Subject in Visual Culture that, in order to realize how selfhood relates to visual images,
we need to consider the viewing subject, her/his positioning and the way in which the visual image or artwork may address a particular spectator. Meanings are not simply encoded into the image by its maker, but arise from the encounter of individuals or groups of viewers with the work, whether this is an original fine art painting in a gallery, or a film, viewed in a cinema under rather different
conditions, and devoid of its ‘aura’ of uniqueness in time, place and origin, as Walter Benjamin pointed out in his influential essay from the late 1930s, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (2005: 7).
The dynamic between audience, artwork and artist shows that what is at work in our society is the shared social and cultural understanding of different concepts. The mass media which produce the images which influence our thinking because of the social and cultural codes which they hold within them has this formative power, but, at the same time, it can be molded by the audience. In my thesis, I argue that when characters challenge and re-assess the
representations of femininity conveyed by mass media they reveal a yearning for change:
To use an old postmodern metaphor, the media is like a virus. It infects everything it touches, but it is also, in turn, changed by what it comes into contact with—it mutates (Lumby qtd. in Alvermann 1999: 143).
As a result, one understands that the concept of the “real”(self) is far from our reach. For Susan Sontag, “To live is to pose” (Sontag qtd. in Steiner 2010: 2). In this respect “Hairball” character Gerald is seen by the narrator as a person who needs to look at himself from the outside as he needs to constantly check how he is perceived: he likes mirrors and “he kisses […] as if he thinks someone else is watching him, judging the image they make together” (35). This attitude finds its explanation also in the fact that “banal gestures” and a “hunger to impress” make up a great part of Gerald’s personality. He typifies the tendency to conduct his life according to mass
culture’s visual representations. Ernst van Alphen refers to art “as the realm where ideas and values, the building stones of culture, are actively created, constituted and mobilized (xiii)”. In Stuart Hall’s words “culture is concerned with the giving and taking of meaning” and it “depends on its participants interpreting meaningfully what is around them, making sense of the world in broadly similar ways (Hall qtd. in Rose 2007: 5)”. In other words, we reproduce what art displays to us because it is among the elements that constructed our culture as we know it.
However, Margaret Atwood’s speech at Stratford University in 1997 puts forward another important view that the artist depicts in his/her art what he/she is conditioned to see. To illustrate this matter, Atwood talks about Susanna Moodie, an author who was contemporary with Grace Marks, the main character of her historical novel , Alias Grace. The “tainted glasses” through which Susanna Moodie was looking when she created the literary image of Grace Marks as a mad woman are a metaphor for the role of social and cultural conditioning in the creation of an artwork, be it literary or visual:
the real-life Susanna Moodie, who saw the real-life Grace Marks in the Toronto Lunatic Asylum during her visit there in 1851, was looking at her through tinted glasses. She saw the kind of madwoman she had been conditioned to see, and presented her accordingly; since Grace had been involved in a murder, she leans towards the Lady MacBeth end of things. Her account of Grace in the asylum appears in her 1853 book, Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush, and right after it she prints her own poem, “The Maniac,” which, although written in the same jolly verse form as “The Night Before Christmas,” has the virtue of hitting all of the expected Victorian notes (Atwood qtd. in talkingpeople.net).
Wendy Steiner maintains that as “a realm of mirrors, of fantasy and feint, the arts have always presented a conundrum in terms of their real-world efficacy” and as such, “art makes
something happen- ethical events that are not just represented in artworks, but happen in
life”(2010: 3). Artistic reflections on different concepts or states of mind are thus a subject for consideration. In the above-mentioned speech, Atwood chose to tackle the artistic depictions of madness in relation to her character Grace Marks and to Shakespeare’s Ophelia. In the case of Ophelia, the scenic details which are rendered in the play become relevant to the analysis when they are taken from a gender point of view; she notes that in various literary works the flower
arrangement indicated the death of a female character and these elements are mostly associated with femininity rather than masculinity:
This floral motif, though it probably didn’t originate with Ophelia, was given such a push by her that it became almost de rigeur for nineteenth-century literary madwomen; though mad persons of the male gender don’t go in for plant and flower arrangements much in the nineteenth century(Atwood qtd. in
talkingpeople.net).
This manner of dying translated into a stereotype, and with regard to such processes of stereotyping Atwood argues that “people who haven’t known any real mad people think [ that this is the behavior] madwomen ought to have”(Atwood qtd. in talkingpeople.net). The flower motifs were taken on by the Pre-Raphaelites, Millais’ painting Ophelia being related to this particular stereotype of the idealized mad woman. His Ophelia flows on the water with her mouth half opened ( a commonly encountered style of presenting the female character in Pre-Raphaelite paintings) encircled by flowers wearing a dress that blends with the surroundings. The practice of captivating the public with images of femininity which romanticizes vulnerable postures of women is also noticeable in mass culture’s visual products. The pictures below show Millais’ painting and a photo of Vogue magazine, where the model is lying with the same posture as Millais’ Ophelia and in the same setting.
Fig. 1.2. Visual Representation of Femininity in Mass-Media. Vogue.
Seeing that unraveling the visual mechanisms that construct Western culture is a significant process, the focus needs to be directed towards visual representations that form gender identity. Feminist criticism is an important tool in this process. Dress has been regarded by feminist scholars as a visual medium that has a strong effect on how women are viewed and how they view themselves. Dress invests us with certain features which belong (in conventional terms) to our respective genders. In the past it conferred status and it conveyed ideas of power. . As Virginia Woolf famously writes in her essay “Three Guineas” (where she looks at
photographs of famous men in order to make connections between masculinity and war),
“Obviously the connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those that you wear as soldiers. Since the red and the gold, the brass and the feathers are discarded upon active service, it is plain that their expensive and not, one might suppose, hygienic splendor is invented partly to invest the beholder with the majesty of the military office” (2000: 27). Atwood shares with Woolf the view that there is much more to clothes than we give them credit for. In her ekphrastic poem “Manet’s Olympia” she lays a certain amount of emphasis on Olympia’s nude posture and then she writes that “Above the head of the (clothed) maid/ is an invisible voice balloon: Slut” (1995: 24). The poetic subject suggests that Olympia’s nakedness has been represented in an unconventional manner. As the character’s pose is being described she mentions the maid in the room underlining the fact that she is clothed.
All things considered, if getting to the core of the “real” self is an unattainable goal, Atwood pleads instead for keeping a mind unconstrained by conventional mindsets, to shift from being a follower of norms to being an observer of society. To do so, she argues that one needs to have a deeper understanding of gender notions. When an interviewer asked her to comment on some critics’ disapproval of using a feminist viewpoint in her works, which from where they were standing indicated a form of propaganda, she answered that to be an observer of society means dealing with feminist views: “ Am I a propagandist? Am I an observer of society? Yes! And no one who observes society can fail to make observations which are feminist” (Atwood qtd. in Kuhn 2005: 43). From what Atwood puts forward, we can deduce that a feminist approach in analyzing visual culture is, by extension, significant. Thus, Atwood starts off from the same idea as Mieke Bal who maintains that pictures are “ rhetoric or encoded signs that must and can be ‘read’ with the tools provided by narratology and poststructural theories including feminism” (Bal qtd. in Wagner 1993: 3).
In her writings that tackle visual culture issues, photography is another artistic practice that more effectively illustrates the human need to hold on to ideas of undeniable representations of reality. Atwood’s poem collection contains a series of works in which she talks about
photography and the subjects of a photographic image. Contemporary scholars point to a commonplace idea in today’s culture of regarding photographs as an accurate representation of reality. In relation to this, Sontag emphasizes that photographs should not be seen merely as facts as they encompass both a “transcription of reality” (Sontag 2004: 23) and “an interpretation of it” (Sontag 2004: 23). In addition, depending on style, a photograph is a transcription of reality in mathematical terms. Because of these features which photographs retain, the same
ocularcentristic pattern of thought which was prevalent in Western society since the beginnings of modernity, persists in our present times as well. What is being overlooked is the fact that something happens behind the camera as the photographer can arrange his/her representation of the world in a manner that would convey what he/she wants. Susan Sontag notes that a
photograph seems to have a more innocent and therefore a more accurate relation to the visible reality than other mimetic objects do because, as she argues,
a narrowly selective interpretation, a photograph can be treated as a narrowly selective transparency. But despite the presumption of veracity that gives all photographs authority, interest, seductiveness, the work that photographers do is
no generic exception to the usually shady commerce between art and truth (2005: 5).
In “Girl and Horse, 1928” Atwood reveals to her readers the fact that there is a version of reality behind the makings of a photograph which the viewer is not aware of. The poetic subject is involved in a discussion with the subject of the photograph asking her about the reason why she smiles and revealing that her happiness does not correspond to the surrounding atmosphere. She suggests that what the viewer sees in the photo is illusory:
Why do you smile? Can't you
see the apple blossoms falling around you, snow, sun, snow, listen, the tree dries and is being burnt, the wind […] is bending, your body, your face
ripples like water where did you go (Atwood 1978: 119)
With the aim of bringing down the scopic regime, Atwood presents visuality as
unreliable. In “Hairball” she uses terms like “frozen” and the “choosing eye” to exhibit the two most important aspects of a pose: its objectification of time and space and the authority of the photographer to manipulate it into looking authentic. She also underlines the habit of an audience/ viewers to associate concepts like beauty and desire with a certain visual object. In doing so, she presents the easiness with which an image can be fabricated and still retain the sense of reality:
What they could never get through their heads was that it was done entirely with cameras. Frozen light, frozen time. Given the angle she could make any woman look ugly. Any man as well. She could make anyone look beautiful, or at least interesting. It was all photography, it was all iconography. It was all in the choosing eye (1998: 37)
For the reasons listed above, the main characters of the three novels on which I will focus in the next chapters, are preoccupied with looking beyond appearance and the framed image in order to put themselves in relation with the complex social and cultural structures in which the
surrounding visual materials of their society were produced. The alienation of the main characters implies their need of change in their social contexts. However, as I will show, such needs will be subjected to censure.
2. Culturally Coded Images of Femininity in Margaret Atwood’ s Lady Oracle
The next three chapters are concerned with the role of images in the development of selfhood as the novels chosen focus on formative events of their female character’s childhood. They underline the importance of memory as the act of remembering both unearths the visual pieces which were applied to each individual case and is triggered by various visual media. I begin by exploring the systems of meaning behind the visual representations of women which are employed in mass culture as they are presented in Lady Oracle. I point out that the mass culture recurrent images are saturated with cultural codes and for the purpose of this work, I refer to the external powers which form identity and selfhood by focusing on popular culture and its visual representations. In comparison to Cat’ s Eye, Lady Oracle explores to a larger extent the role and consequences of the present state of commercial photography on the individual’s life and for this reason, the analysis will concern mainly, mass culture.
One of the messages which the novel passes on to its readers is that mass culture is apt to pervade the collective imaginary. First of all, it proliferates images that are designed, or at least, that have the potential to bear upon the development of gender identity. Seeing as, from the 19th century and onwards, ocularcentrism progressed rapidly and established itself in the Western society, mass culture’ s use of visual media to promote certain attitudes, appearances and desires over others makes its influence on the way the individual perceives the world more effective. Secondly, as it is reflected in Lady Oracle, the artificiality of visual representations lies, in the public’s eyes, behind a veil of realness as an entire movie industry works to make its images look authentic. As Atwood suggests in the novel, the artificiality of mass-produced images becomes at a closer and more observant look visible. Moreover, the novel points to various cultural codes that were used in the development of the recurrent images which are intrinsic to mass cultural productions (movies, magazines and advertisements).
The manner in which fashion influences the cognitive process of both men and women proves Millet’s theory of internal colonization as the concepts and images which can be found on the pages of women’s magazines and which are detrimental in the development of female identity are taken in and incorporated:
Like advertising, women’s magazines have moved from the didactic to the hallucinatory. Originally their purpose was informational, but what we see today in both popular journalism and advertising is the mirage of a way of being, and what we engage in is no longer only the relatively simple process of direct
imitation, but the less conscious one of identification (Wilson qtd. in White 2000: 29).
Fashion is one of the examples that show that the ‘real’ is molded to a high degree by the
visual representations that are proper to popular culture. The pictures leave their strong imprint on people’ s imaginary along with the ideas which they stand for. In relation to this, Mitchell informs us about Wittgenstein’s view on the misunderstanding of mental imagery. Wittgenstein insisted that mental images should not be looked upon as “private, metaphysical, immaterial entities any more than real images are” (Wittgenstein qtd. in Mitchell 1986: 15). Joan’s mother’s desire to bring into her physical life images of femininity which were taken from popular culture material, proves the effect that a picture (one that does not necessarily have direct connection with nature) can alter the material world. Thus, such images fit into “the same logical space (Mitchell 1986: 18)”. The boundaries between imaginary representations and real life material objects or subjects begin to be blurred. Mass culture’ s ongoing power in forming Western perception of reality finds its exemplification in Hollywood’ s mechanisms for promoting its visual representations. The features of a star are believed to be authentic and natural and the fact that a celebrity is a product of an industry is being overlooked. Gamson uses the phrase
“assembly line” to describe Hollywood’ s practice of turning its celebrities’ features marketable. A celebrity is, in basic terms, a person who has gained the awe and attention of the masses. According to Gamson, a critic who recorded the development of Hollywood industry starting with the forties, the consumers of mass culture became “ simultaneous voyeurs of and
In this case, it is not only the prevailing societal norms and cultural codes that give the recurrent images in Hollywood movies an appearance of genuineness, it is also the mechanism behind the production of such images. Ellis Cashmore refers to Gamson’ s explanation of Hollywood’ s manufacturing process and notes that the studios relied on their ability to obscure their own rationale and to hide the artifice behind the making of their stars because otherwise “the entire narrative would have been collapsed” ( Cashmore 2006: 65). Nevertheless, the images proliferated through this industry hold within them a set of cultural codes which the public is prone to apply to its own life. Through publicity images, advertising constructs ideas of what it means to lead an “improved” life. Berger uses the term “spectator-buyer” to refer to the
consumer who buys objects which are visually constructed to support a certain life style. Behind the makings of visual images for mass consumption lies the drive of “publicity to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life” (Berger 2008: 142). As a female character who is unsatisfied with her present condition ( dissatisfaction which occurs every time she realizes that her appearance breaks certain patterns), Joan says that she “was a sucker for ads, especially those that promised happiness” (Atwood 2009: 28). The objectives of advertising are thusly met because the consumer is ready to change features of his/her personality to find the promoted happiness. Such images impel one to feel dissatisfied with oneself and at the same time, they claim to offer a better alternative to one’s own self. The spectator-buyer takes issue,
Not with the way of life of the society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an
improved alternative to what he is (Berger 2008: 141).
In relation to the female viewer, the images within publicity contain visual guidelines which impel her to want to change what she has. In the following quote, the narrator puts before the reader a visual pattern of femininity which is typical of comic books, with a special emphasis on the ones marketed for women. The passage shows the particularities of representations of femininity along with the visions of female identity which their producers diffuse in their efforts to steer and control behavior. As it is shown below, in trying to visually represent femininity, the neatness of the physical aspect is the most salient feature:
I never learned to cry with style, silently, the pearl-shaped tears rolling down my cheeks from wide luminous eyes, as on the cover of True Love comics, leaving no
smears or streaks. I wish I had; then I could have done it in front of people (2009: 6).
Additionally, Joan questions the icon of the goddess, which left its deep mark on Western society’ s collective imaginary. In Lady Oracle, Atwood draws attention to what she called the “absolute obsession in Western’ s society with the shape of women’ s bodies in terms of fatness and thinness” (Atwood qtd. in Kuhn 2005: 38). Slimness is a feature of the goddess figure which is also extensively employed in popular culture representations. When the Polish Count, Joan’s boyfriend, tells her that she looks like a goddess, she asks herself:
But which goddess did he mean? There was more than one, I knew. The one on the Venus pencil package, with no arms and all covered with cracks. Some goddesses didn’t have bodies at all[…]Many were shaped like vases, many like stones. (Atwood 2009: 153)
As popular culture is inspired to a large extent by commonplace ideas of gender identity, the widely accepted ideal of feminine beauty functions as the hub of its visual representations of gender features. For instance, from the point of view of physical aspect the thinness of the female body is a general expectation which is based on cultural codes. Joan’s mother, Fran was in a constant effort for being “in shape” which entailed a slender figure and symmetrical features. Her efforts grew more overbearing as she desired to be “an attractive woman, even into her late thirties” (Atwood 2009: 67). Popular culture’ s effect on an individual’ s actions and behavior is reflected by the form one’s body takes when one is forced by one’s society to control body image by (un)written dictates which are found in mass culture material. In relation to this, Winkel informs us that “fashion disciplines the body and subjects it to the reign of signs while promising a better, upgraded life – a process that is described as
‘imprisonment-through-liberation’”(Winkel qtd in Zarzycka 2009: 156). The use of fashion for putting across ideas for a good lifestyle entails the employment of a number of cultural discourses on the self. In the same chapter, Zarzycka argues that the increasing fragmentation of the body in contemporary
commercial photography causes the female body to be “packaged and commodified” and “fashion in itself is the primal space where men look at women and women watch themselves being looked at” (2009: 155). A reflection of this status quo is Fran’s photograph from her youth,
