Gaga’s Effective Parody

Consider this video (also posted below). In this interview a reporter asks, in characteristically vapid fashion, what Gaga is looking for in a man. Coldly and without hesitation, Gaga replies, “a big dick.” The reporter, a bit baffled and taken aback, attempts to clarify and Gaga reasserts that what she said is precisely what she intended.

Alex Cho over at Flow provides a reading of this clip that is similar to my own. It’s worth quoting at length:

When a woman pop star with Lady Gaga’s visibility “has the balls” to declare in an interview that all she wants in a partner is “a big dick,” traditional discourses of gender and sexuality are shaken. On one level, she is taking a page out of a classic feminist playbook, turning the tables on men by reducing them to sex objects—indeed, even body parts—in the same way that women have been traditionally objectified. However, if we are to believe that Lady Gaga is consciously exposing the artifice of fame and celebrity through her own performativity, we can then also read this comment as targeted toward the same culture industry that catapults Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears to the top of the tabloid racks for mere genital obsession—indeed, the same culture industry that would demand the majority of Stephenson’s questions be about marriage and female reproduction.

What Cho perceptively identifies is how Gaga’s unique brand of feminism recalls earlier tactics of discursive power reversal as well as updates them in light of celebrity culture that often exploits sex positive feminism, twisting it into new forms of objectification. Gaga has made herself into a parody of the pop star, very adeptly maintaining a marketable facade of pop stereotype while exposing her persona’s limits by often making herself monstrous and threatening to the gender order.

Gaga, as with all good parody, uses imitation to gain access to audiences and then challenges them by calling into question political assumptions, values, and subject positions. What makes her particularly unique is the way in which her ire is directed acutely at patriarchal upheaval. As evidence by her big dick comment, she’s very invested in making men uncomfortable and attacking both literal and symbolic sites of patriarchal power.

Her feminist campaign has been so successful that an August 2009 concert sparked a vehement obsession with finding out the supposed hidden masculine truth of her sexual identity. Readers familiar with the foundational work of Laura Mulvey will recognize such obsession with mystery and truth as a classic symptom of castration anxiety and its attendant desire to control and suppress potential threats to the gender order.

In simpler terms, I see the continued rumors of Gaga’s hemaphrodism or transsexuality as a desperate technology of disbelief in the face of a kind of femininity that refuses to fit comfortably into its submissive role as object of pleasure. (Much to my disappointment, Gaga ended her subversively coy silence on the issue with a forceful display of her crotch in the video for “Telephone” in March, 2010.)

As a thinking and teaching tool Gaga is one of my favorite references, because, and I know this is tough for a critical academic to say, I think she gets things right. And I think Gaga’s feminism is a great example to use to work through the successes and failures of gamic representations of gender.

Bayonetta Studies, or, Whose Pleasure Is This?

In the interest then of using Gaga’s feminism as lens with which to examine games, let’s return to Bayonetta. Responding to Leigh Alexander’s defense of Bayonetta as “[taking] the video game sexy woman stereotype from object to subject” and Tae K. Kim’s affirmation of that defense, Tiff Chow argues that Bayonetta is “campy” and that “sexuality in the game is used most explicitly as decoration as opposed to celebration.” She also reminds us that the developers of the game are predominantly men and that the cinematic techniques employed quite literally slice up Bayonetta’s body into a porno-like spectacle.

I find my own position resides between these two poles. While playing Bayonetta, I was impressed by the assertiveness of the character and particularly her mocking relationship with the bumbling and submissive male protagonist, as well as her tense relationship with children. In my gaming experience, this is rare for a woman and, in the case of the parental discomfort Bayonetta displays, unprecedented. There’s no question that Bayonetta is a serious bad ass with a refreshingly devious moral code (she, very satisfyingly, is a charming demon that kills angels). From this perspective Bayonetta is quite similar to Gaga. She has the same charisma and control.

Yet there’s no question that the game industry, especially in terms of production, is masculinist and this is partly fueled by a lack of gender diversity in production. Most mass market videogames function under a regime of signification that appeals to a white hetereosexual masculine gaze. Bayonetta, as Chow points out, is undoubtedly involved in this regime of signification when examined closely. Her body is an ideal scopophilic object combining sexuality and violence into one perfect package of masculinist power fantasy. And as Chow describes, the objectification does not stop at the character model, but continues through an incessant use of close ups on Bayonetta’s breasts, buttocks, legs, and crotch exacerbated by movements and gestures inarguably derived from exotic dancing.

One could view the excess of Bayonetta’s sexuality as a kind of camp, sneaking critique in the backdoor. The problem with this position, and here we return to Gaga, is that I simply don’t see the critique. Where are the moments of resistance and discomfort? When is the gaze reversed on the player (beyond a playful wink at the camera)? When is patriarchy attacked? (And these are actual questions. Please comment if you have a perspective on this.) Without overt moments of resistance, or, intentional moments of masculinist anxiety or discomfort, both the power of Bayonetta and her campy nature simply fall back into masculine pleasure.

Chris Dahlen thinks there’s potential within this apparent objectification though. He sees Bayonetta as a kind of pop star that wouldn’t be so out place at an awards show and isn’t nearly as bad as some other game characters. In his view, men who are offended by Bayonetta and “condemn her” are “scared they’ll like her.” I certainly sympathize with Dahlen’s defense of Bayonetta because I think he’s concerned, although he doesn’t make mention of it, about the possibility of backlash over games like Bayonetta limiting artistic expression in games through a similar stigmatization of sex as has occurred with violence.

In support of his argument, Dahlen deploys a picture of Ziggy Stardust era Bowie as a political analog to Bayonetta. What’s wrong with this analogy though is that someone like Bowie is condemned not because he’s offending or challenging progressive/PC sensibilities, but because he’s violating regressive classifications; he’s refusing to play to type (so to speak) and creatively doing so under the watch of homophobes. Bowie is bending and toying with gender. He’s using his stardom and his persona as a delivery mechanism for gender alternatives. Bayonetta is not challenging any limitations because she fits perfectly into an already existing system of classification. Instead, she’s testing the tolerance of feminists. We’re not afraid we’ll like her; we haven’t liked her in her other incarnations.

Whereas Bowie embodies a boundary crossing, Bayonetta operates quite safely within acceptable patriarchal representational restrictions. If you doubt this browse message board or YouTube discussion about Bayonetta. Players are not complaining about having to play as a woman. Men often claim they prefer to play as women because of “the view,” i.e. they derive pleasure from looking at a female avatar. (Consider all of the similar examples of tough sexy women in other games, especially the fighting game genre.) The struggle is not to get men to play with women but to transform their relationship to women. Bayonetta’s sex-violence fantasy is an amalgamation of already existing oppressive styles of signification that privilege masculine desire and fantasy.

Against the Masculine Pleasure Principle in Games

Thus Bayonetta is not Bowie and it’s not Gaga. While Bayonetta does offer us a powerful and significant woman, the game does little to disrupt power structures or make men uncomfortable. It provides what little liberation it can (as noted above) while remaining most distinctly an object of pleasure for men. While Bayonetta may have gained more attitude and narrative power than a character like Lara Croft, the price is more severe sexual spectacle. It’s proportionate; the tougher a woman gets the sexier she gets. What we need is to violate this formula. We need “big dick” moments where a tough and sexually objectified woman sneaks into a game, enters a household, and then truly provokes the player. I want games that prove difficult for people in the same way a live performance art piece does. I want men’s men to shift in their seats, not to get turned on.

So while I ultimately disagree with Dahlen’s premise that critics of Bayonetta are worried about her “overpowering femininity” (since I don’t see her as offering that representation nor do I believe this is what people are upset about), I think Dahlen is getting at what a possible productive future of gender in games could be. The notion of pulling a Gaga and seducing gamers within a parody of tradition, and then turning the tables on them would make for a truly progressive gaming experience. The problem is so few games have successfully accomplished this. Why? Because of the tyranny of fun. To challenge gamers, or to introduce difficulty into gameplay, violates an implicit consumer contract between developer and gamer designed solely around pleasure and value. Gaga, whose performance extends from videos to concerts to interviews to music and beyond has more opportunities for subversion and more leeway, while games, limited to the singular digital object, have to be less risky.

Raiden as Resistance?

There are examples to turn to, however. Certainly Samus of Metroid fame, in her first incarnation, was a brilliant turn of transgender identification along with gender empowerment, and perhaps is the first example of this kind of identification in a game. But an even better example is found in the Metal Gear Solid series, one of my favorite references, and a series that admittedly has its own attendant issues of gender representation. I find the series compelling because each game challenges the player affectively and ideologically. One of the most famous controversies surrounding the series, the introduction of Raiden as the main character of Metal Gear Solid 2, is both an example of resistance to the pleasure principle of game design and progressive gender representation. Metal Gear Solid was a massive success on the PlayStation fashioning the main character, traditional masculine hero Solid Snake, into one of Sony’s franchise characters. Metal Gear Solid 2, the much anticipated PlayStation 2 follow-up, was expected to once again feature the beloved Solid Snake. Much to the fanbase’s surprise and subsequent horror, Solid Snake was relegated to a minor role in support of the new lead character Raiden, a comparatively feminine character. In a game narratively focused on power, control, and deception, and in a series which explicitly references the struggle between game designer and player, this choice is no accident. The brilliance of Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2 is how it forces the player, who previously reveled in the hyper-masculinity of Solid Snake, to identify with a very Bowie-like avatar (to use Dahlen’s excellent example).

Nothing like this is happening in Bayonetta, but it should be.

Thanks to Amanda Phillips for the inspiration (even if we disagree!).

In November 2009, I had the privilege of participating in a roundtable at the American Studies Association (ASA) conference with Anna Everett, Deborah Kimmey, Tara McPherson, Lisa Nakamura, and Kara Thompson on the Digital Humanities (DH). The panel was titled “Neoliberalism, Multiculturalism, and the Means of Digital Humanities Production.” Convened by Kara Thompson, the idea was to intervene in the prevailing discourses of DH and provide a critique of DH’s productive relations from the perspective of Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, American Studies, Women’s Studies, and so on. We covered a wide range of topics: labor and racism in games, code studies, activism, violating copyrights as praxis, undergrads at USC designing K-12 curriculum, archiving MMOs, the tyranny of the new in choosing objects of study, and much more. Many of the issues we discussed could be considered standard touchstones of DH but what made the discussion unique was our shared investment in a progressive cultural politics dedicated to interrogating and reworking established structures of power. It also doesn’t hurt that I was the only white dude on the panel.

Significantly, we didn’t just focus on the corporate university but the far more subtle ways technologies reproduce oppressive social relations in everyday life within and without academia. Although left unsaid, our guiding principle seemed to be that, as Carolyn Marvin has argued, technologies do not determine social relationships but enter into already established relations. They can either reinforce or transform them and it’s up to us to do something about it. Without a robust critical apparatus, DH has and will continue to unwittingly remake the world in its old image. (You know, the one that has a whole bunch of white guys sitting around a highly polished oak table comparing business cards.)

I didn’t write about the panel at the time because only now do I understand the significance of that experience to my formation as a scholar. It wasn’t simply that I was able to share an intellectual space with some of my academic idols, but that it articulated my grievances with DH as well as demonstrated to me that I wasn’t alone.

For the past few years I have had, at best, an ambivalent relationship with DH. Since I am primarily trained in Cultural Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Media Studies, I cannot help but take issue with what I see is a potentially technofetishistic obsession in DH with technological transformation via the creation and use of various digital tools/platforms/networks, etc. as agents of social change. These efforts are often performed under the guiding ethos of collaboration which often becomes an uncritical stand-in for an empty politics of access and equity. There are exceptions, but it seems, and I realize I am generalizing here, that issues of cultural politics are downplayed or, more commonly, considered a given within DH. There’s a disposition that the battles of race, gender, class and ecology have already been won, their lessons have been learned, and by espousing a rhetoric of equity everything will fall into place.

DH does have its strong suits:  e.g. the ethics of copyright, privacy and open source, but as an intellectual community its positions on race, gender, class, and the environment are undertheorized and underimplemented even if many practitioners think otherwise. My concern is that when everyone in DH finally builds his/her One Collaborative Widget to Rule Them All, the dust will settle around Mordor and it’ll still be mostly a bunch of white academics at relatively wealthy universities talking about open access and probably around a rather nice table with a few unlocked iPads on it.

To prevent this outcome, DH needs to cultivate an equal interest in critique as in creation. Our play needs a politics. Alongside the creative and practical, we need to have an attendant critical effort that has the license to step in and provoke revision, or, better yet, assist with production. And we need an intellectual community that welcomes this interventionist presence and acknowledges its current lack.

These thoughts were circulating in my mind last weekend during the 2010 THATCamp. Designed as unconference that embodies a more active and dialogic alternative to the traditional conference format, THATCamp is a successful and beloved event in DH which has spawned a host of regional and international offshoots. Hopelessly poor, I enviously lurked this year’s conference, as well as last year’s, and read with interest as some of my favorite Twitter acquaintances offered updates about the happenings. But as it wrapped up and I looked at the final schedule and browsed the Hacking Academia collaborative book project, I considered how fundamentally different the ASA roundtable was from THATCamp. Much of what I am interested in was left unsaid or assumed. There just didn’t seem to be work engaging explicitly with my concerns.

I tweeted a question, “Where’s the race/gender/power/ecology?”, to the #thatcamp and #hackacad communities and Dan Cohen, one of the organizers of THATCamp, told me to check the submissions to the Hacking Academia project. Since I had been following the conference closely I had already read the submissions, noticed the dearth of discussion of these issues, and meant the question to rhetorically expose the investments and exclusions of THATCamp. Admittedly, it was a rather lame and unsuccessful attempt at intervening into the dialogue about the conference, but I was still disappointed in the lack of engagement with what I feel is a legitimate issue with THATCamp and DH. My purpose was and is not to troll or be negative; rather, I would like THATCamp and all of DH to expand and clarify what it is we do and to embrace a vigorous politics of inclusion and provocation because, behind my curmudgeonly tone in this post, I like THATCamp and I like DH.

Most importantly, I believe that critique can do things too and it can do things  even better with the innovations of DH.

So let’s expand the focus of DH beyond what we do and how we do it to whom we do it with and whom we do it for. Let’s do what matters and let’s make that our battle cry.

Time to start work on my THATCamp 2011 proposal.