The Wo! Front

I was eagerly unwrapping my new Bob Dylan CD and DVD when I unwittingly got into debate with my friend “Boston Cowboy [1]“.

It all started with the Cowboy commenting on Dylan’s appearance in a US Victoria Secret commercial. I knee-jerkily expressed distaste. All I knew of Victoria’s Secret was its well-publicised catwalk shows of lingerie models marketed to a largely male audience, which reeked of justifying soft-porn in the guise of advertising on Prime time TV.

Cowboy stopped me right there arguing I had a very crude and simplistic idea of what “objectification” was and the Dylan commercial was actually very “tasteful”. I conceded I hadn’t watched the commercial and was acting on pre-conceived assumptions.

Surely the man who created “All I Really Want to do”-who celebrated the beauty, mystery, melancholy, and complexity of women and love in all its shades could not be party to such a cheap gimmick.

The Cowboy thought my response was symptomatic of the zealous puritanical strain of feminism that was too quick to scream “objectification” and saw no value in art, in complexity, in layers of meaning, in context.

The Cowboy didn’t believe “objectification” existed. He thought a text was inanimate and it is only we who ascribe meaning to it though our reading. It has no “objective” value in itself. It was my value judgment that was casting aspersions on Victoria’s secret. It was my own perception that was the problem.

(On a side note, Cowboy is also that species of that “straight-white-male”. This would normally exclude him from making any valid comment on the impact of cultural images against “those without power” but I benevolently decided to consider his arguments.)

Cowboy’s claims are common amongst the “post modern” set who would devalue feminist claims to advertising and popular culture images as joyless hackers of culture.

Cowboy would resist any censorship of anything regardless of its perceived “damage”. Even from a cultural perspective anything that is suppressed finds expression elsewhere. Its value lies in precisely in that it has been created, thought of and constructed. If an image is damaging- it reflects an anxiety or phenomenon that is in itself valuable for discussion. The image/art is then the symptom rather than the source of the “problem”

I agreed with this and I understood the problematic implications of advocating a kind of Censorship in the name of a perceived groups “wellbeing” or “vulnerability”. However my argument was that a feminist reading of art does not seek to devalue or censor culture but merely offer a reading that seeks to look at the possible impact of images on consciousness.

When the notorious P& O advertising was unearthed showing images of oiled bikini clad women lined up anonymously (head cropped) with the tag “SEAMEN WANTED” prior to the horrific murder and rape of Diane Brimble on a P& O Cruise liner in 2002, it rightly inspired outrage and debate about the link between images, perception and the damaging realities they create culturally.

Images are real. They- have an intent and purpose behind them. They also exist within a context and have a layered meaning which is not always subject to neat review. That we can have an honest debate about the messages they are sending and if we want to accept such messages is relevant. Advertising is not “art”- it exists to cater to and take advantage of base fantasies for a price. The price of women’s health and self-esteem is not worth it.

As Gareth Evans once commented on the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984 “You can’t legislate against human nature”. It is wishful thinking to think that you can change reality by legislating against it. Reality changes through perception. Perception changes through ideas.

My argument was not to advocate censorship. It was merely to allow such a critique not to be dismissed. It was taking back the language from the “pomos” to reclaim my narrative as valid and not meaningless.

This doesn’t mean that sensuality, play, humour and creativity are smouldered for a joyless P-C worldview. It means rather that these forces are enhanced and rescued- from the un-creative and reactionary that bore us with their clichéd stupidity and banality.