Against the Grain and All Over Again: Stereotypes, Unsettlement and Resttlement

In a recent article in The Guardian’s regular art blog, Jonathan Jones, the resident art critic draws attention to the work of contemporary web artists Dillon Boy and Alexsandro Palombo who use images of Disney princesses by subverting them and placing them in very different contexts. Boy claims to draw attention to the commercialization of sexualized culture by re-imagining Disney princesses in the mode of smut magazines. On the other hand Palombo is more concerned with the notions of idealized beauty that Disney propagates and declares war on these representations by depicting them with disabilities. While our in-class viewing of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (not Disney) mildly counters the Disney-princess representations of femininity, this is not the reason why I chose to begin with Jones’ article. Instead, what struck me about Jones’ piece and the works of the two mentioned artists is the reorientation of stereotypes to make a statement—whether these statements are political or hold emancipatory possibilities is yet another question.

In many ways Disney’s depiction of what Jones calls “ brainless slender-waisted mannequins that little girls all over the world are being offered as an ideal” reflects Angela McRobbie’s discomfort with consumer culture’s appropriation of what she terms “sites of girlhood.” However, what struck me about Boy’s “Dirtyland” series is its hollow overturning of stereotypes—the artist quotes, “Sex sells remember. I simply used the pure, untainted characters of Walt Disney to convey that message!” 

Although the artist reorients the setting of these characters, does he necessarily overturn any gender stereotypes? The Dirtlyland images after all are produced for commercial profit. Palombo’s work on the other hand makes a much more direct statement—“ Have you ever seen a disabled protagonist in a Disney movie? You sure don't because disability doesn't match Disney' s standards!” 

His images are much less stylized, flatter and less aesthetically seductive…but it is perhaps exactly because of this that the artist succeeds in making a much more politically charged critique of representation than Boy. Though Jones clubs the work of the two artists together in his article, they are perhaps operating at completely different levels. Does merely pointing towards the sexualization of seemingly “innocent” forms of representation do anything more than singing the old tunes to a new beat?

Perhaps a similar set of questions motivate my reception of the two screenings. Both Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the third episode of Orange is the New Black make some kind of point about gendered stereotyping. However, Cloudy merely makes a token mention of the issue in the figure of the “weathergirl,” Samantha Sparks. Cloudy’s mention of Samantha’s shame at her “geekiness” which is seen to be in direct opposition to her sense of girlhood is ultimately subsumed within “the pursuit of happiness” through consumption. In doing so, its treatment of the gender issue actually recalls Dyer’s idea of the establishment of hegemony through stereotypes. Samantha’s overturning of the gendered stereotype within the narrative is contained within the allowable limits of deviation from the mean. 

On the other hand, Orange’s use of stereotypes is much more unsettling due to its inclusion of a transgendered character, Sophia Burset. The fact that Burset’s character is played by Laverene Cox, an actual transgendered person perhaps lends a tinge of legitimacy to the representation. Elsewhere, Cox has been vocal about the possibility of addressing a major discrepancy in discussions about trans people in terms of everyday practices of discrimination through the show (“The preoccupation with transition and surgery objectifies trans people […] And then we don't get to really deal with the real lived experiences.”) 

I cannot comment on how much Orange does that in terms of the whole show (I have just seen this one episode) and maybe its representations remain problematic in many ways. But its treatment of the transgendered person within this episode at least, is more nuanced than Cloudy’s quiet resettlement of stereotypes. Ultimately, in Cloudy the stereotype is never unsettled—it is only replaced (Samantha mutters a few geeky words, ties up her hair, wears her glasses). Perhaps the lesson in this distinction is this—maybe it is not as important as what the songs of liberation are, but who is singing them and how they are sung.