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“I make it, I know who I am” —

“I make it, I know who I am” —

作者: SeatonChoo | 来源:发表于2020-05-17 23:59 被阅读0次

    1. Introduction

    Last summer when the “Goddess” by Joyce was first heard, I just thought highly of its beautiful melody and perceived a little smell of feminism from lyrics. The class and readings make me gradually sensitive to gender-related topics, and this music video of the song, which I came across again, was recommended by Louisa on her WeChat. In this essay, I would analyze the video in two perspectives: One applies Stereotypes and Beauty Myth to discern the stereotyped female images in Chinese society in order to get out of the Beauty Myth trap; One uses Visual Pleasure and Feminist Counter-Cinema to demonstrate how to refuse male gaze.

    2. Face up to Stereotypes and Challenge the Beauty Myth

    All characters are females in the music video, while it can see that they are divided into 2 groups according to the manmade definition of “Beauty”. One group of 3 ladies at the very beginning (00:00:07, Fig. 1) are in conformity with the mainstream aesthetic criteria, however, others whose looks are judged too far away from the criteria would leave some undesirable impressions on the public, then the deeply-rooted stereotypes gradually produce. Below are some typical stereotypes the characters emerge in this music video, I suppose, that’s why Joyce invited them to participate in the performance where they are likely to be treated the same way as in their daily life.

    Fig.1 The 3 Ladies Closely Conformingto the Mainstream Aesthetic Standards. (Source: YouTube.com)

    2.1 Stereotypes

    2.1.1 Female A – “Bad girl” (Tattoos/Ear Gauges)

    In the Chinese society, the woman who has tattoos and wears ear stretching plugs are so unique that she is likely to be considered as an extremely rebellious “Bad girl” flouting conventional moral standards. She just cares about herself and does whatever she wants regardless of the consequences, ignoring others’ “well-meaning” suggestions of behaving like a“normal girl”. Such a stereotype of these kinds of females is likely to be called “bad girls”. They would be isolated by others because they are dangerous in others’ mind. They have bad love affairs and bad family issues and also bad social relationship. They deem to lead a reduced life without any opportunities and chances to enjoy happiness.

    The director gives the “bad girl” a close shot in the music video, so that it is apparently showed that her expressions are full of lackluster, gauntness and helplessness. The camera shoots the scene when she raises her arms heavily tattooed (that is named “花臂” in Chinese, which means the woman may be involved in gangsterdom, in some conventional mind) and confusedly scaring at them. (00:01:58, Fig. 2)

    Fig.2 The close-up shot of the “Bad Girl” (Source:YouTube.com)

    2.1.2 Female B – Chinese “Tomboy” (Masculine look)

    In effect, the masculine girl is represented in a close camera viewpoint, the first impression burst into my mind that “What a handsome boy!”. The girl wear her black hair slicked up and her clothing style seems to be identified with conventionally-defined men’s: Shirt matching with pants. When I realized that her gender might not be male, I cannot help myself with praising her “so cool and even more handsome than boys”. But yet, some people may discriminate her as “變態 (abnormal) and 不男不女 (not-male-not-female) etc.”. This happens in real life that one female Chinese singer star - 李宇春 (Li Yuchun), rising to fame due to winning the 2005 Super Girl Contest, a Chinese singing competition. I still remember many of the public insulted her for her neuter look and more masculine attitude, and even called her as “春哥 (BrotherChun)” on purpose then.

    Unlike self-assured Brother Chun on camera, the girl always bows her head, and there is a feature when she looks at the camera, the facial expression with a frown reveals a preoccupied her. She stands away from the other females. The close-up shot differentiates her from the two vague women distant from her, featuring her loneliness. (00:01:00, Fig. 3)

    Fig.3 The close-up shot of theChinese “Tomboy” (Source: YouTube.com)

    2.1.3 Female C – “Can Fei (殘廢The miscreated)” (Physicaldefect)

    It could be speculated that the woman uses gestures to express her emotion and opinions might be a dumb one. (00:00:56, Fig. 4) The society is not kind enough to the disabled, the pervasive example is that insulting languages involved in the disabled are always heard when curse “Normal” ones, like “腦殘 (mentally-handicapped), 殘廢(the miscreated), etc.” When the unrecognized feature comes into the female, the situation would become worse, especially a disabled plump woman. The close shot tells us that this kind of women are urgent to voice while they are unable to do it with a limited number and influence of platforms. The director avoids using the close-up shot to put too much press on her, since she expresses her soreness and hopeless.

    Fig.4 The close-up shot of the disabled plump woman (Source:YouTube.com)

    2.1.4 Female D – Chinese “Crone” (Aging)

    In the first half, the two elderly women are quite hard to notice, they are shot in caliginous light and seem obscure, totally blending into the background. (00:01:00, Fig. 3) Here, Guerilla Girls’ statements about stereotype of elderly females should be mentioned that “our (Caucasian) culture turns aging women into evil shrews instead of venerating them as wise women as in Africa, China, …”. (35) In my opinion, that’s not completely true. Although Chinese respect aged ladies more, there still exists many scrannel Chinese terms to point to them, such as “老太婆(old woman in Mandarin)”, “老太婆娘 (old woman in Wenzhouness)”. The patriarchal thoughts hiding in Chinese aresimilar with the Western that aging gradually undermines women’s value andelderly females’ voice are easily neglected in real life, particularly in ruralareas. (Guerilla Girls, 35)

    However, the stereotypes of the females can be their true self?

    2.2 Beauty Myth

    2.2.1 Goddesses in the eyes of the ordinary

    At the start of the music video (00:00:07, Fig. 1), the three women wear the gossamer clothing like goddess, accompanying the title of the song - “女神Goddess”. Theirslim and tall figures, full breasts and the booty meet the rigid and traditional aesthetic criteria, this could be watched in the MissHong Kong Contest. (00:00:00-00:00:11, Fig. 1) In many people’s eyes, they are considered“beautiful, glorious and graceful”, and other girlsfeel unconfident and depressed when encountering them, while they are stilljust close to the perfection but not the perfect. In fact, there is nothingabsolutely perfect in the world. As Wolf said, females are forced unconsciouslyto insist to throw themselves into reaching the standards designed not bythemselves but by “market forces and a multibillion-dollar advertisingindustry”, which cannot be achieved actually, and celebrities are also noexception. (2) Joyce take a close-up shot to expose their faces and bodies in moredetailed, even though the three models are within the acceptable name list,while their looking are different from each other and how to tell who is themost beautiful is very difficult. And the shot also describes the deep and realemotions behind the colorful and bright in-front-of-the-scenes images when theystart to look at, stay with and talk to themselves deeply, they feelpainstaking and one puts her head in hands, one cries silently, and one bendsher head. (00:01:41-00:01:42, Fig. 5)

    Fig.5 The close-up shot of the real aspect of one of the three models (Source:YouTube.com)

    2.2.2 Joyce Cheng is Her Own Goddess

    Joyce participates in the performance acting as the helper to assist the females who getting trapped in the male-dominant aesthetic standards. I suppose, Joyce’s experiences are known by many audience loving Hong Kong’s entrainments. She get through the hard time when she cannot acceptherself influenced by the conventionalized concept of Beauty - “Being slim isbeauty, being fat is ugliness!”. She tried her best to lose her weight, and succeed in endorsing the weight-loss products of Sau San Tong Holdings Limitedin 2003.(Wikipedia.org)However, her weight reboundvery soon and finally she failed to continue serving as the spokeswoman. Beingfat is always discriminated by the public which are guided by the industriesand the markets. Joyce herself is the distinct instance of being made use of. Afterthat, Joyce started to rethink herself. At present, we could see she hasresurrected and treated herself with confidence and talent gradually. Her songs-“無人完美(Nobody’s perfect)”(2011),“你瘦夠了嗎(Are You Skinny Enough?)” (2016) as well as this “女神 Goddess”(2016)witness Joycegrowing into a uniquely charming feminist.(Wikipedia.org)

    When Joyce appears in the screen, she is far away from the audience. The full shot shows the relationship between her and the surroundings where she is situated. She is quite insignificant, which might project the past mental state of herself, facing the flooding criticisms from the public because of her figure, her family background-being the daughter of stars seems to be “easy to be famous almost without a need to work hard. However, she is not afraid to evade but yet determinedly move forward and her image is becoming increasingly clear and then the close shot lets the audience see the adamancy, stubbornness and determination on her face that she does not want to surrender to the reality and the unreasonable tags.

    Males can but watch Females making it

    3.1 Passive Male Gaze

    Mulvey pointed out that “woman as image, man as bearer of the look” in traditional narrativecinema, (11) that is, the male audience are effortless to embody themselvesinto the male characters who can control the development of the plot andwithout any doubts get hold of the females to be watched. (Smelik, 491-2) The “voyeuristic-scopophilic gaze and narcissistic identification”produce the visual pleasure especially for males. (Mulvey, 8-9; Smelik, 491-2) Itis not hard to find that all characters in the music video are females andthere are even no half of one male, why male gaze should be mentioned here?

    The screen of the standing female models isconstructed on the stage which looks like a contesting stage for Hong Kong Misses Contest. In my mind, the beauty contest is one of the productions of patriarchy where commentators are constituted of males sometimes some females who are trained by the dogma designed by males. The intro music accompanies the theme song of The Miss Hong Kong Pageant make me further confirm it is on scene exposed to the audience in a male gaze awaiting males to judge who is beautiful and who is unable to be face directly. There is no doubt that the three models belong to the definition of “Beauty” in the male gaze and they show “the beautiful poses” which males think as “beautiful”-they are not themselves. When the shot turned to the “ugly” females, including girls with ear gauges and tattoos, old ladies, physically-defective female, Tomboy, etc.,all of them feel confused, helpless, frustrated and painful and take actions like lowering head, cocking head to the side, etc., preventing them from having direct eye contacts with the shot. Therefore, the male gaze produces not only the distances of the females among the stereotyped group-for instance, Tomboy stands far away from others, but also the “ugly” ones and the three models-they do not show up in one shot before Joyce’s coming.

    3.2 Active Female Gaze Counter with Distanciation

    So, there does not exist female gaze? No. Joyce invited all the female characters but no males,which is an action to counter traditional films. Compared with somemale-directed music video like Patty Berry -“Part of Me”, the plot should be the actress behave bravely or strongly after she is betrayed by a male or something like this. Although the male is described stupid, he is still vital in the female’s life. In this video, without males, there would not exist that males drive and manipulate the process and the evolvement of the story, that means they would lose the hold of the females, which gives females more freedom and rooms to change their fate and state status and choose who they want to be, while the males are only the passive audience unable to do nothing except for watching. In this music video, Joyce herself becomes into the central actress to help to break the plight and challenge the rigid rules. This arrangement is suitable since Joyce is the one girl who achieves to be the real herself not others. And the advent of Joyce with a box of DIY materials which is given a close-up shot, foreseeing a huge change would be forthcoming. (00:01:17, Fig. 6)

    Fig.6 The close-up shot of the DIY materials used to make crowns (Source:YouTube.com)

    From my view of point, all through the music video,the shot is taken almost exactly at eye level, no any low-angle shots and bird's-eye views. This shooting technics is taken by the director just to express that all females should be treated equally and respected no matter how their bodies and faces look, no matter how old they are, whether they are physically sound or not. Especially from the gaze of males, the pro-patriarchy male audience have little opportunities to look down upon the females who break the beauty myth. And another technique Joyce uses is that the color of the whole video is set in black and white. The photo of the actresses on scene, I saw, shows so colorful clothing they wear that someone attracts the audience’s attention immediately, while others are eclipsed. (mingpao.com, Fig. 7 &Fig. 8) On the other hand, the white and black imagery brings a solemn atmosphere and feeling, driving the viewers to contemplate how they behave in daily life when females being judged or whether they always criticize females with bias and stereotypes.

    Fig.7 The Real Colors of the scene (Source:mingpao.com) Fig.8 The comparisons between the colorful and the black-white scene (Source:mingpao.com)

    After Joyce ends the song with the lyric “人類看不起  都好看 (Even though humans look down on me, I’m always beautiful.)”, a summary sentence of the song, she turns back gracefully and walks forward without any hesitation disappearing from the screen. This could be another example using Bertolt Brecht’s notion of “Distanciation” in response to feminist counter-cinema, (Smelik, 492) and “freeing the look of the audience into dialectics and passionate detachment”. (Mulvey, 26) As beforementioned is analyzed, although males are passive watchers, they are gazing the actresses on stage through the screen. Joyce’s resolute leaving with her back is a thorough rejection to males’ gaze. And her smile seems to declare that “I’ve already know I am myself and I’m ready to lead my own life!” (00:04:01-00:04:14, Fig. 9 & Fig. 10)

    Fig.9 Joyce’s smile full of self-assurance (Source:YouTube.com) Fig.10 Joyce’s leaving with her back rejects male gaze (Source:YouTube.com)

    Conclusion

    Joyce’s self-directed-and-acted music video can be regarded as “feminist”. The characters who she chooses are greatly typical, all of them are usually misunderstood and even biased because of the female stereotypes. Joyce takes the video into two parts, and represents the appearance of herself as a watershed. In the first part, the close shot exposes in detail the negative expressions of females deemed “unbeautiful” in patriarchal recognition to the audience (the public), particularly males, while the three models conforming to the aesthetic standards just act in the “normal” way; however, Joyce takes “distanciation” technics, intervening to totally change the atmosphere and relationship among them: the models finally cannot control themselves to release the pressure of the endless pursuit of beauty myth, however, male gaze here is so passive that only watching the changes happen. Joyce also shoots the scene of girl-kisses-girl, girl-kisses-masculine-girl and leave-with-her-back to challenge the conventional patriarchal relationships. All through the music, Joyce utilizes the camera at eye level and black-and-white shot, emphasizing the equal treatment on all females, the three models included, asserting that “be self-confident is the most beautiful!”


    Reference

    1.Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”Screen (Oxford Journals), vol. 16, no. 3, 1975, pp.6–18.

    2.Smelik, Anneke. “Feminist Film Theory.”The Cinema Book. 3rded., editedby Pam Cook.BFI, London. 2007, pp. 491-504

    3.Wolf, Naomi. “The Beauty Myth”The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women.1991. Harper Perennial, 2002,pp. 1-19

    4.Guerilla, Girls. Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls' Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes. Penguin Books, 2003, pp. 7-38

    5.Bell, Hooks.Feminism is for everybody: passionate politics.South End Press, Cambridge. 2000, pp.vvii-12

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