» Wolf on Jolie
Naomi Wolf has written an essay on Angelina Jolie for Harper’s Bazaar, which is ironic because that’s one of the magazines she criticizes in The Beauty Myth. I read the essay as a deconstruction of the Angelina brand (because surely the sign is very far from the real person), but Wolf has also been criticized as just having a crush. Either way, it includes some good summary of third-wave feminism; eg:
Consider how patriarchal civilization has managed to keep women in hand for all these millennia. Among other methods of social control, women are almost always given a series of either-or choices. The deal is usually that they may realize one aspect of their personality but at the expense of many others. And the deal is usually that if they choose “too much,” a terrible punishment one way or another awaits them.
…
The magic of Jolie’s self-presentation? She makes the claim, with her life and actions, that, indeed, you can get away with it. All of it.
I was reading about Gloria Emerson, the woman Jackie O. was jealous of, last night.
Our society forces all of us into either-or choices about our personalities. Claiming a gender bias is disingenuous.
That said, I don’t want to get caught up in typical lefty debates over terminology: I agree, let’s burn it all down.
Jack
16 Jun 09 at 1:57 pm
Ok Jack, I apologize a bit for going off on you here. But only a bit. However, I decided to play a game and find everything I could that was wrong with your comment:
1) Men sign up for the army. I don’t remember signing up for 2 X chromosomes. That’s like comparing abuse and BDSM.
2) And then the crushed men go home and batter their wives. There’s a reason spousal abuse is so rampant in the army. Men feel humbled, so they take it out on those lower than them: women. “if you want to hear about violence against men, read a history book; if you want to hear about violence against women, the best you can do is assume it’s happening between every line”
3) The comment about Jackie O confused me. Jackie O was not known as a feminist or for being particularly smart so what reason would she have for jealousy? The idea that women are catty and inherently jealous of what other woman have is, and yes I am going to say it, textbook patriarchal (see: “the reason Prop 8 didn’t pass is the blacks”). Especially as Jackie was envious of her because she viewed Emerson as an alternate Jackie who had made the opposite choice in the either/or conundrum of “career or marriage” that Wolf was talking about.
5) Naomi Wolf wasn’t talking about “I can either get a job or blow off work to have fun” choices like everyone deals with, it’s more like “you can be a good person or a likeable person.”; “You can be a girl men want to date, or a girl they want to marry then cheat on with the girl they want to date” or “if you enjoy your job you’re a bad mother” and then on top of that be told that if you want to be a success, you need to be all of the above at once. No one looks at a man heads up a successful small business and thinks “whoa, I bet he’s an asshole and his kids hate him” without further data. The only comparable male choice I can think of is the idea that you can either be a boy (fun and irresponsible) or a man (make hard decisions, take responsibility for things) and I’m not sure it has the same moral connotations as “career or motherhood”
6) Burn it all down, you say? Restarting society sounds good…for white, heterosexual, middle class men. From the “drink wine and die” laws of Greek Enlightenment to the horrifying domestic brutality of the Industrial Revolution, when progress occurs, women get shit on for a couple generations. I have a pretty good idea of what my role would be in an anarchist society, and it’s not a nice one.
P.S. Jared, I’ll post more later about Angelina, but I’ve written a wall of text already
P.P.S. This rant is Brynn’s fault. I’m supposed to be working, not reading blogs.
Kyla
16 Jun 09 at 4:13 pm
Ok, Jared. I am now not at school, and therefore will post more.
I’m not sure I agree with Naomi Wolf on this point. And I suspect it may be a bit of a generational gap.
I think she’s right in that Angelina’s somehow managed this crazy balancing act in which she avoids the either/or choices, which, on a theoretical and personal level is good for her. I think it also sets the Angelina/Jennifer Aniston thing in a different light: it’s the clash of two theories of womanhood. Jennifer is beautiful, sweet, and comes off very average personality-wise. She’s also failed in pretty much all of the categories of “how to be successful”. She got divorced, has a string of bad relationships, wants a kid she doesn’t have, her career sucks, and she doesn’t look like she’s having much fun. But she’s always sweet, and pretty, and bland. To reference your polygamy post, she “keeps sweet”. She’s the conservative dream of a good girl menaced by the evils of Hollywood, but all she wants to do is settle down with a kid. Angelina is the opposite: she has everything, but she’s aloof and cold and wants nothing to do with the public. She’s sexy and bizarre and seduces married men and gets away with it. But she’s still the perfect mother, and has a booming career and is saving the world, but still looks like she could party hard. She’s the left’s idea of the perfect woman: is everything, can do everything, and she’s so cool she probably wouldn’t hang out with you.
But see, I’m not sure I agree with Ms. Wolf that that’s any better. I think her generation was told “you have to choose” and chafed under that, so for them, Angelina’s success is inspirational. My generation grew up being told that not only could we do everything, we HAD to do everything. While we have to be thin, only shallow women diet, so you have to eat burgers and yet stay skinny. You have to have a wonderful, life-affirming career, but if you don’t breastfeed, attachment parent, and still make it to all your kids PTA meetings you’re a shitty mom. The average woman simply cannot do that.
The result is that now women get it from both sides: the Brand of Angelina tells us we CAN have it all, so we have no excuse not to, and when when we fail, the other side uses that as evidence that career women can’t be good parents because they feed their kids rice cereal and their dog Iams.
I’m not convinced Angelina should be held up as the model of womanhood Ms. Wolf seems to think she is.
Kyla
16 Jun 09 at 8:28 pm
@Kyla: The criticism of Wolf says that she’s saying Angelina is wonderful. I prefer to read the article as just pointing out what kind of symbol Angelia is. And yes, it turns out that she’s used for oppression, just like most symbols.
Jared
16 Jun 09 at 8:43 pm
It would have helped if I had read the criticism of Wolf first.
Also, Wolf comes off, to me, as trying to claim Angelina has transcended symbols. Or at least, if she’s a symbol, it’s a good one.
Kyla
16 Jun 09 at 8:47 pm
@Kyla: I was trying to find common ground in an inflammatory style — terrible mismatch, my bad. I’m not sure I have the rhetorical skill to disagree with you agreeably, but I think you’re half right. I’ll point out where I think you got me:
3) The “Jackie O” bit was prose designed to entice people to google Gloria. A jealous celebrity is an interesting reversal, and interesting writing is better writing. It wasn’t a comment on cattiness or jealousy among women in the slightest.
But the juxtaposition of the two women was faulty because of the context of Wolf’s article. I didn’t think that far and you increased my understanding, thanks.
6) The original phrase was “burn the patriarchy down”, but I generalized it and put it in bold to bring it closer to Anthony Anderson’s similar line in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, which I’m playing with to figure out.
“Burn it all down” is an absurd joke, but breaks one of the cardinal rules of humor writing: Specific is funnier than general (eg/ “too many waffles!” will usually be a funnier punch than “too much breakfast!”). Absurd and surreal humor should also be handled more carefully than (perhaps) I did, especially online.
Jack
17 Jun 09 at 12:28 am
Okay, I just RTFA.
It’s explicitly about life narrative with Wolf writing from the POV of the metanarrative, claiming Jolie is merging with, or engineering, archetypes — very, very bold. Archetypes are ancient, pre-civilization — ideas possibly related to the structure of our brains, and certainly related to, perhaps in control of, the structure of our societies. They’re old enough that it makes sense to talk about them wrt animal behavior.
Wolf uses the same logic I do to talk about Heath Ledger merging with the Godhead through the Trickster, but she takes it a step further. All I claim is that Ledger’s Joker adds to the ‘type. Saying Jolie is creating a new archetype is saying that she’s is changing us, as a conscious species, forever.
Bold is good: I hope she’s right.
This kind of thinking is close-in-structure to American poor who say the US shouldn’t become more socialist, because one day they might be super-rich and not have to pay taxes either. It’s an idea useful for population control and should be handled carefully, as I think Wolf does.
Vicarious pleasures are narcotics. One success is not complete success, and the dreamers must awaken.
Jack
18 Jun 09 at 12:50 pm