2: Personal Blog Reflection - Assignment Example

6 July Binary Systems of Gender in Art, Comics, and Advertising Art and advertising increasingly challenge binary systemsof gender through depicting subjects in clothing, actions, attitudes, and roles that defy gender norms and expectations. Barthel expresses that advertisements signifies social realities: “The people who have created modern advertising are…just producing an especially visible manifestation, good and bad, of the American way of life” (p. 186). As a result, many advertisements nowadays use women, who are sexually liberated, to express their gender empowerment, since many women actually use their sexuality to escape confining rules about femininity and virginity.

Some perfume and apparel advertisements, for instance, illustrate women in power, because they utilize their sexuality to attract or reject men. Other advertisements portray women in masculine roles, such as being a lawyer or doctor, thereby emphasizing their political and economic power. Although some feminists did not like this development on the sexualization of women, others believe that sexually liberal women are equals of sexually liberal men. In addition, art, especially modern and radical ones, specifically attack the binary system to undermine gender roles.

I remember seeing Mexican art from female Hispanic American artists that showed the “macho” Mexican dressed in woman’s clothing. His gesture is also feminine. These paintings subjugate the patriarchal system by defacing the ideal macho man.Comics tend to still focus on traditional gender roles, although modern ones present gay characters, in order to represent the “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender” (LGBT) community. Superheroes are still predominantly heterosexual men, such as Spiderman, Batman, and Superman.

Several comics, however, are including gay characters. Marvels Astonishing X-Men recently released the same-sex marriage between Northstar and Kyle. Its front page shows them in the act of kissing each other. This is an example of comics that promotes realities that are not yet the norm, since same-sex marriage is banned in many states in the U.S. Art, comic books, and advertising depict concepts of gender, race, and class through the relationships between characters and how they try to elicit certain gazes, whether it is a male or female gaze, or racial and sexual gaze.

These different formats and medium confirm the notions of sense of self, representation/portrayal, and material objects from Perry, Barthel, Messaris, and Boymel Kampen. For example, Berger was one of the first theorists to describe the idea of the gaze for pleasure and power. He identifies and investigates the ideal male gaze of power in juxtaposition with a female gaze of submission. Laura Mulvey (1975) discussed the gaze in film through her work “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” and asserts that gaze provides power to the looker and objectification for the target of the gaze.

Batoni’s Susannah and the Elders exhibit the power of the male gaze. The elders control Susannah’s future through consuming her as an object that they can manipulate. Ideas about gender that are sold in these different formats and mediums are sold through marketing the products and messages that give profit to the makers or serve certain interests. For instance, in the advertisement of Calvin Klein’s Obsession perfume, the message is seduction. The naked woman on the couch is the product.

It sends the message that once women use this product, they can easily entice men. My question is: Does sexual liberation truly empower women, when nowadays, the male gaze commodifies women through seeing them as sexual objects?Art influences gendered comic books and advertising by reflecting both traditional and non-traditional gender roles. Art that showcases women in power, without being naked, for instance, depict the feminine in a masculine mold. These are women in action, making and changing history along the way.

For instance, in the Japanese manga comics, Rose of Versailles, the main characters are a masculinized woman and a feminized man. Aside from these nontraditional characters, others reflect traditional heterosexual individuals. The story explores different gender roles and attitudes that break traditional gender norms. These are only some examples of how art can be a decisive force in eliminating gender discrimination and promoting tolerance, through affecting comics and advertising images and messages.