For Thursday, MEET AT THE STEPS OF THE ART INSTITUTE AT 6:30 PM!! ADMISSION IS FREE! (Do not go to the classroom first — go directly to the AI).
Also, assignments follow: please do the response assignment below AND write a few sentences describing what you intend to review for the first major review assignment, the details of which can be found here. Please make sure these are posted by the beginning of Thurday’s class.
Reading/Viewing for Thursday’s class:
-
Emlinger Roberts, Rebecca. (2005) The Stripper: Victim Art and the Art of Suffering, Antioch Review, Winter, Vol. 63 Issue 1, p23-39 (sign into library with your username and password to get access).
Questions for consideration:
- Considering some of the points that Emlinger brings up in her article, where is the boundary line between what can be considered art, erotic art, and/or porn?
- At what point, if any, does a particular piece of art move into “victim art”? Is there such a thing as victim art? Under what circumstances might someone become a victim under the auspice of art? Back up your discussion with textual evidence.
- Emerlinger suggests at one point early on that it can be near impossible separating art from morality; what does she mean by that? And how does that play out in the context of this particular performance?
- How does Emlinger represent the stripper in her article? As a pioneering transgressive artist? a victim? something in between? Do you think she would agree or disagree with Croce and why?
- Reflecting upon Emlinger’s article, how might social context change the meaning of art? And must we know or understand a performance or art piece’s background, history, and other implications in order to appreciate it as art? How might we understand the stripper performance in Emlinger’s article before versus after she speaks to the dancer and learns of her HIV status?
Feel free to write about any other issue, concern, or interesting point that you noticed; just be sure to connect it to the readings.
25 responses so far ↓
Saraphina // June 12, 2008 at 8:51 am |
I’m one of those women that believes the female body is a beautiful creation. That it itself is a marvels and that even an older women with the faults given to her later in life by God (big butt, saggy boobs and cellulite) are the natural passes of life that should be embraced whole heartedly. To respond with the advice from last weeks response to be more blunt in stating my opinion about whether or not I enjoyed the article. I did. Ms. Robert’s had a kind delivery and a just response to the event at Bowling Green. Do I agree that the stripper was performing victim art, no. Do I agree with the strip tease being a form of “art”…yes. I feel that in this present day and age, the woman no matter how old, or tired or what disease she may have, made the initial decision to perform I believe outside her suffering and just perform. Her having HIV, in this case differs greatly from Bill T Jones, as her having a horrific disease is not advertised. The debate I found buried within the article was the true intention that Ms. Robert perhaps was just uncomfortable with as she put it, the “nakedness” of the artist.
I have been to many museums and have noticed that the ultimate in advanced art is mastering the female body, a nude or a possibly an erotic embrace, example Rodin, who was famous for framing the female form. It is hard to determine in this politically correct society if the “Strip tease” performed by the women was tastefully done and what was emphasized in the performance. In this case, of voluntarily stripping for an audience, rather then the stripper being obliged to strip to put food on the table, this stripping is just “art”. The woman is choosing to display her body and has turned her body into a pallet rather then a toy to be gawked at. As discussed on page 14, that the audience is removed from the regular ambience of the dive strip bar and is put in nice seats with possibly a program. This makes the “stripping” have more proper presentation, that it is the choice of the artist to present their body to a complete audience, that is attentive in hopes not just to the erotica, but hopefully the dance and the female form. I enjoyed the mention of high and lower cultures that almost dictates the opinions of people jumping to the conclusion that stripping is well lowest of the lows. In Amsterdam for example, prostitution (slightly different from stripping granted) is legal. Prostitutes actually have a union and receive benefits from the government, such as health care. So this puts prostitution legitimately within the society. Wait. There’s a catch, you go home with a prostitute or are seen speaking to one, you are the low low of society. So this can turn the debate into a more complicated anomaly. If we as audience members enjoy for example the “art” of the strip tease, are we a low of society for receiving pleasure in watching a women strip? Is that the intention of a “strip tease” for the sake of art? Are we supposed to enjoy it. Yes. Why else would it be presented as art. As discussed in the text, of course our physical responses are going to strong in responding to watching something such as strip teasing which may make our intellectual minds drift and or need help in adjusting to what society usually expects from us, however I believe it possible to look past the overall nakedness and look deeper into the intention. I find it somewhat humorous that the author felt it necessary to mention how the dance was about sex. No shit. Its about the overall sexuality of women, that can either be seen as perverse or beautiful . I guess that I am confused about what is so intriguing about sex and what makes it wrong. I don’t see the difference I suppose from this women dancing naked seductively to a women on MTV dancing just as seductively wearing a bathing suit during spring.
Saraphina // June 12, 2008 at 8:55 am |
Blog for what I’m hopefully going to writing my review on::
I am going to Kansas (yes really) this weekend and I have a friend that produces a Christian Rock Band. I’m going to go see them in the studio. I’m not exactly a fan of this type of Music, However I feel I can produce a pretty decent review and note the issues within the music pretty explicitly. Any opinions?
Toi // June 12, 2008 at 11:59 am |
In my opinion, I don’t believe in a particular piece of art that can be moved or considered as “Victim Art”. Emlinger suggested that, “The performance was plagiarized because the subjects were aware of Jone’s intent from the first, and it had no real control over the ways in which art would distort and transmogrify.” I felt that some artist produce art with a certain purpose that it straightforward. I don’t fell that Jone’s should be critisised because his art was well thought out. He had a certain message that he wanted to get through to his viewers. He wanted to make other more aware. Just because you have an emotion provoked as a human then you are considered a “Victim” to his art. I wonder would the same shoe fit if this particular piece of art works, if it hit close to Emlinger personally. Some art is in your face and right from the Jump you know as a viewer it will trigger certain emotion that will connect you in the piece but because of that, I don’t think that you should be instantly labeled as a victim because the artist art did it’s job. For an example, weather you agreed with the idea of a former striper, whom has HIV performing as an art form, this alone triggered you as the viewer interest. Some viewers after the show went beyond their believes and wanted to know more and those whom were afraid to allow themselves to go there just huddled around in the shadows of the crowd to at least hear her and her story out. I felt that the artist did a lot of planning of with the show that many give credit for. I felt that art/performance didn’t stop when the curtains rolled down but when the performers got a chance to see the meet an greet it’s viewers in person and ask question and ECT. This was the most powerful event overall because as the viewer, it gave a chance to see how average the performer was. An “EVERYDAY” type of person that you would past on the street or sit next to on the train a would never know. This artist was aware that as humans we are so involved with our everyday lives that we don’t think that HIV or CANCER could happen to us in our lifetime. What I can’t understand is why anyone would want label himself or herself as a “Victim” to “ART” when art is truly the freedom of speech in many ways. I want art to challenge, provoke, trigger, and release me into a more aware human because I feel that, that’s how we grow and connect to who we truly are as individuals.
I am going to my review on the film “Knocked Up”. I plan to discuss if this movie is far from reality or right on target and if or how this film can connect with it’s viewers on a common level.
Rachel Galicia // June 12, 2008 at 1:14 pm |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfj34Ag6wxI&watch_response
I found a global warming commercial on you tube called ”Global Warming” by WWF that caught my eye. I think I will do this or I was thinking of doing another commercial on global warming at this sit called “Neglected Sky”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9tCenQh3Rw&feature=related
I actually really want to review a commercial called “Mr.W”. It’s about investing in wind energy for the environment, but I’m not sure if that was the issue-oriented thing you were looking for. It does deal with the issue of environment protection so I guess I can do it. If it’s okay with you. It’s at this site.
Rachel Galicia // June 12, 2008 at 2:03 pm |
I think Emlinger represents the stripper as a victim or maybe something in between. She states all these points that Croce makes and she kind of elaborates more on what exactly Croce meant by giving examples of what she saw in “Still/Here” and Bowling Green.
She states that the stripper did get that “concerted gaze” that performing artists need but she got it as manipulation whereas performing artists get it as emanation. She also calls her out too when she states that at first when you are watching the dance you never know about her HIV status but you do learn it at some point which, inevitably, doesn’t allow the audience to judge it correctly.(making her a victim) I thought it was wise of her to state that “…its presence (of real suffering) robs the aesthetic of its value.” That actual suffering burdens us to the point that the audience becomes plain passive.
So she does represent the stripper as a victim but also as something in between because she also does state that she does (with help of the altered context) have some things similar to what a performing artist has such as the gaze and also that she had an intellectually driven audience instead of a sexually driven one.
I think she would definitely agree with Croce because of all the points she makes that the stripper is the actual one who is suffering and that it makes the audience unable to judge. “There is confusion, rather than clarity.”
Nate // June 12, 2008 at 2:47 pm |
I’m not really too sure what Emlinger was trying to say about the stripper and the relation to “victim art”. A striptease (at least on the outside) is a way for young single mothers to raise cold-hard cash for their family and themselves. If you were to take the striptease out of the strip club then all you would have is some kind of sexy dance. My guess is that the only difference between a striptease, victim art, and transgressive art is the knowledge of the ailment of the dancer (in Emlinger’s case) or the display of self-mutilation for the masses (in Jones‘ case.) What I’m trying to get at is that we don’t put specific tags on art unless we have some kind of extra information on the piece, which I think is silly. I could play a heavy metal record for you and weather or not you like heavy metal will probably sway your opinion on the record, then I could tell you that this band was a Christian heavy metal band and again your opinion would change on the subject. I could take you to a strip club and buy you a lap dance, which may or may not make you uncomfortable, and then I could tell you that she’s going to school to be a lawyer, which may or may not make you even more uncomfortable. What I’m getting at is that we should look at everything (I mean everything) as art: the buildings we live in, the toilets that we use, the food that we eat, and the games that we play. Everything we see has been thought out and designed perfectly; it may be just a toilet but damn is it a beautiful thing, a work of art, after spending a week without one! We see displays of African masks in museums, to us they’re pieces of art, but to the tribes that used the masks for ceremonies, they’re something else completely. In case you forgot what I had said before, art is all around us, we categorize the art after we know more about it.
Nate // June 12, 2008 at 2:55 pm |
I don’t really know what I’m going to review in lue of our first review assignment. I typed in “issue oriented art” into google and found this article about some girl from Yale who was artificially inseminating herself and then preforming an abortion on herself, many many times!
http://www.fayettevilleflyer.com/tag/aliza-shvarts/
Thoughts? Directions?
April // June 12, 2008 at 3:26 pm |
For our review assignment, I am going to write a review on the documentary “Deliver us From Evil”. It is a documentary that came out in 2006 about the child molestation going on in the Catholic church. It is the first time that they documented some of the priests actually admitting to doing this.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814075/
April // June 12, 2008 at 3:48 pm |
This article by Emlinger was one of my favorite things that we have read in class so far. When she was describing the act of watching the performance, you could actually feel how the audience must have looked. She noted the uncomfortable nervous shifts and the quiet confused whispering that you would almost always expect to see when put into a situation like that.
Another point that she brought up in the article that I found interesting was that she said, “the educators would be receptive to a striptease act as long as it was called a performance and not show…” I guess the reaction might have been completely different if the auditorium was transformed for a striptease “show” and not a “performance”. The fact that no one knew that the dancer was HIV positive during the act was a really good move on the performer’s part. If she would have walked onstage and announced to everyone that she had HIV, the audience would have probably watched the whole performance through different eyes. They would have probably viewed the performance as victim art. But afterwards when most of the audience found out that she had HIV, they would probably look back on the performance only thinking about the fact that she was “sick” while doing the perfomance. I don’t really know which way would have been the better way to handle this performance, but the problem is, that instead of looking back on her dance and remembering the beautiful movements she was making, people would look back on the dance and just think about her HIV.
Isabel // June 12, 2008 at 4:14 pm |
I was consistently upset throughout “The Stripper”. For Emlinger, true suffering has no place in art. She draws a very sharp boundary between the world of art and the “real” world. Art—she says—is beautiful, entertaining, fictional. In the real world, there are physical bodies, real suffering, and pain. Apparently, the only way we can comprehend the real world within the context of art is if the pain is dressed up and veiled by aesthetic.
With this imposing delineation I think she greatly underestimates both the faculties of the audience and of the art itself. She even goes as far as to say that some art (particularly Still/Here and the stripper’s performance) are “asking too much of us.” It would be a sad world if art coddled us so.
She seems to call for an art that is clean, easy, and focused, that doesn’t cause conflict within the viewer. Who says art has to be so coherent? She approves of artists like Arbus, Twombly, and Warhol who deal with the subject of suffering by freezing it in time, burying it under an aesthetic—or by some other means—pinning it down and rendering it still for our consideration.
She draws to a conclusion by stating “what art can do, and has for centuries done, is to bring to us experience that is uncontaminated by the real.” Is she serious? Emlinger tells us that when reality intrudes too much into art our connection with the art is broken. I think it is the total opposite. Art intrudes into our daily lives to awaken us to reality.
Like Croce, she does make an interesting argument, however repellant to me personally. I don’t disagree with her entirely. Simply taking a stripper and putting her in a different context indeed might be a little “lame” and obvious. And Still/Here might be crudely executed and offensive. But I refuse to believe that art would always topple so easily in the face of reality.
Rachael Harter // June 12, 2008 at 4:38 pm |
I have always compared myself to a pendgalem. Though I can be extreme in my thoughts and actions it seems the slightest movement can start the momentum of the pingelam but I must keep swinging until I find that middle place where the pendulum seems to be at peace. I say seems to be at peace because the next slightest movement of idea, philosophy or theory can cause the drastic momentum to start again. The last reading gave me a since of balance and comfort as my pendulum started to slow down in focus in on something. This reading, however, has thrown the pendulum into a furry once again of extreme different emotions and thoughts. The article itself was extremely interesting on a personal level that most of my family has graduated from Bowling Green University. This “closeness to home” sparked my interest when I first started to read.
Is striptease art and in what context. One hand I had the feeling that maybe it depends on the expectations of the audience. How many people go to a strip tease to go see “art”? However, we’ve ruled out that the audience’s perspective of other art forms as a final deciding factor to what art is or is not. So where does that leave us with strip tease. And is this performance different than going to see a stripper in a different context. Maybe it depends on the ‘artist’ being examined. I agreed with Rebecca when she stated, “Simply to put forth the problem of victim art as exploitive or as sentimental, to dismiss victim art as failed without examining the ways in which the suffering interferes with the art, is to miss the formal dislocation that excessive subjectivity and havoc of judgment bring to
the aesthetic.” In the interactions with this particular artist at Bowling Green she did not seem to really be in touch with what she was doing. This left a bad taste in my mouth yet I am forming my opinion from someone else’s interactions. Even so, that does not help me solidify any conclusion on the actual subject matter any way, as it was one show. So once again I am left hanging, or rather my thoughts are left swinging. Though I am still wondering if the pendulum of my thoughts and opinions will ever come to rest on the subjects concerning art I am wondering if it is necessary for it to. Maybe if I were honest with my self I would realize I rather enjoy the swinging.
torreyanna // June 12, 2008 at 4:47 pm |
I have never been to a strip club, but I have, and still sometimes do fantasize about becoming a stripper. The easy money would be the goal, but the more I think about it, every time I do, I realize it would be far from easy for me. It would confirm my degradation rather than my power. This is what it would do to me, not what it must do to all strippers. I have known strippers who seem well rounded, intelligent and of course, rich. This doesn’t mean that when they are viewed in the club it is not in a sleazy way, it just means they can separate themselves from it. I don’t believe I could do that.
I don’t think that people who have HIV suffer any more than people who don’t. I don’t think suffering is the point of the strip tease, or the HIV admittance as much as stigma. These two performances were seeking response rather than experience through the making. I’m not gonna do the disclaimer this time. I think the most important aspect of art is the creating of it, not the response to it. This is not to say that I don’t appreciate and value the responses I get for the art that I do, and indeed probably continue to make art mostly because of those responses. I’m trying to say that it is my life experience through the making of my art that is the most important thing. To quote the article, “It can offer a truth-telling space that allows us to gaze past suffering…allows us to gain the intimacy necessary for enlightenment.”
As humans we all suffer, every day. “Illness and suffering are imprinted on our very genes.” We all see other people suffering every day, especially in the city. We are sometimes obsessed with our suffering. At work we talk about what we hate about the job, our boss, other co-workers…at school we complain about the length, time, amount of work the class requires of us, at home we talk about what bothered us during the day or what’s making us crazy, or how we are in pain. I’m not trying to say that we are all sad complainers, but most of us are. Art has the blessed opportunity to take us past the suffering on to the next step, whatever that may be. It could take us to that place of discomfort, of realizing we are in control of our feelings, reactions and experiences to a large degree, of holding ourselves accountable for our lives rather than our bosses, teachers, friends, enemies, government etc. Art can have that power, but often it falls short.
The article by Rebecca Emlinger Roberts entitled “The Stripper: Victim Art and the Art of Suffering “ was well written and brought up many points about art and human suffering that I could and do agree with. She says “if we are to regard the performance as art, we must privaledge the aesthetic above anything else, including our capacity to feel.” I think it could’ve been enough for Jones to simply choreograph the movements to his dance for “Still/Here” from the movements of the “sick” people. I think he perhaps took it too far in an attempt at a response apart from the dance. It is his right, but that doesn’t make it good art. He didn’t effectively translate his own pain, and perhaps the pain of the “harvested” people in a way that satisfies our desire for the enlightenment that art can provide. He didn’t take it to the next step. Neither did the stripper at the conference. Just displacing the strip tease isn’t enough. I think she would’ve had to CHANGE it, not just the location and audience, to speak about what SHE was feeling. When we honestly and fearlessly put our selves out there, people feel it. It is undeniable. When we do the art for their reaction alone, it is empty. In effect “… we live on the ashes of art.”
Danny A // June 12, 2008 at 5:10 pm |
Is a 45 minute striptease in a university gymnasium art? Short answer, yes; but that doesn’t mean it’s good. In my view, when you attempt to look for the lines of distinction between art, eroticism, and porn, you are engaging in a futile and unnecessary exercise. No matter what rules and/or separations you find, they would be too subjective to claim as universal truths.
That’s not to say I don’t have my own opinion on how to classify them. As ‘I’ see it:
Art provokes emotion and engages the viewer in a dialog at an intellectual and internal level.
Eroticism, or erotic art, focuses on invoking the emotions of sensuality and intimacy while still allowing the dialog room to harbor.
Porn is objectively focused on invoking the feelings of arousal and disregards any pretense of engaging the viewer on any other level, even though it still can.
There, those are my lines of distinction; debatable, easy to misinterpret, and unarguably subjective.
Art is an all encompassing medium, with a seemingly unlimited ability to be sub-categorized and re-sub-categorized and so on. And while many people may not like to believe it, two of those categories are eroticism and porn. There is good art and bad art, as well as good porn (Playmate of the Apes: Jokes? In a porn? And they’re actually really funny?!) and bad porn (I pray you all never have the luxury of seeing 2 girls, 1 cup -squirm-); all of which are creative creations that have the ability to invoke emotion and intellectual discourse.
Danny A // June 12, 2008 at 5:16 pm |
For the first review assignment, I’m still not sure what I would like to focus on. The idea I have is about a painting a girl made when I was in high school that showed an exposed breast. The art teacher liked it and put it up in the main hallway of the school, and it was soon after taken down by the dean because he thought it was inappropriate. The action resulted in a student protest, was picked up in the news, and MTV did a “High School Stories” piece about it.
Laura // June 12, 2008 at 5:28 pm |
I feel that Rebecca Roberts in writing The Stripper: Victim Art and the Art of Suffering performed a task that she may have been unaware of. Regardless of her awareness to it, she perfectly exemplified the critical-thought approach to art that has been consistently required of the receiver in postmodernism. I’ve just realized that observing and reviewing the art that has been presented to us in this class has all been filtered in my mind through the screen of postmodernism (I say use screen as a descript for filtration, not as an implication of slanted or imposed subjectivity). I have grown up, and developed art-perspective-wise in an era of postmodernism, where modern and postmodern art are the norm, and in that my immediate defense of any (post)modern art highly affects my response to any sort of evaluation or review of any art at all. Not only has my view on art been altered by the postmodern state, but also my frame of thought and my approach to interpretation. Everything I receive is forced through a colander of scrutiny, where social and political implications are taken very seriously under the context of our society. In other words, because of the conditioning of my mind in such a way, it is practically impossible for me to separate the content from the form, while still understanding the importance of form in art. In the postmodern state of existence, one not only questions the meaning of any given art in a contextually aware manner, but then goes on to question and dissect the process that was required to obtain said meaning.
This, is what I feel Roberts portrayed swimmingly. In her very response to the “victim art” in question, she is using a postmodern eye to explore the value of postmodernist ideology in art. That is the beauty of the postmodern mind, the fact that it not only deconstructs and measures the world around us but in addition questions and deconstructs itself in the process. Roberts is examining the value and pertinence of “victim art”, which is art that, by mode of suffering subjects and personal narratives, requires the viewer to question the context of the culture under which the tragedy exists. Therefore, “victim art” engages our minds in critical thinking, and forces us to work through our feelings toward it with a thoughtful process. By responding to this art, Roberts is participating in the very process that postmodern art implores of us. The argument involving the validity of victim art is arbitrary, as Roberts has already validated it by taking the time to understand her feelings about it and how those feelings relate to the culture in which she lives.
Laura // June 12, 2008 at 5:30 pm |
As for my review proposal, I plan on reviewing a film. Currently the film that I’m planning to review is a spanish film called “the method”. However, I’m keeping my eyes and ears open for anything else that I might find more suitable.
Samantha H // June 12, 2008 at 5:33 pm |
Roberts certainly asks some compelling questions in relation to “victim” art. I believe, like Roberts, that the issue is far more complex, and cannot just be narrowed down to issues of exploitation and voyeurism, as important as those two subjects are. One important point that Roberts points to is that no matter how “real” the suffering is presented as, if it is part of a performance piece, the suffering cannot be truly “real.” It is staged. For instance, Jones’ performers were aware that the workshops were part of a performance piece, thus due to their own subjectivity, and possibly more factors, such as Jones’ vision and potential construction, their words, actions, and movements have to a degree been “tainted.” There are elements of performance in them. This, of course, means that the artist in some way, in she/he has conceived of a piece that reveals “real suffering,” will actually be unable to really allow her/his audience to be confronted with the authentic—but merely a representation of the authentic. I believe that this is what separates “victim art” and the real.
Roberts, of course, dives deeper into what seems to be the critics’ ability to judge “victim art.” The direct representation of suffering marks a dramatic change in art: not only is the subject of the piece suffering, but so is the aesthetic. Roberts appears to conclude that in this way, “victim art” compromises the aesthetic—it cannot be judged by this any longer, and in many ways, victim art loses profundity. The power of the piece is rather, the passivity of the audience. In the face of suffering, the audience sits silent, complicit with the violence, made perhaps to feel guilt or shame, as they simultaneously other the suffering and consume the other in themselves. To me, the artists’ conception of the artist and the audience’s motivation are the most interesting subjects that Robert raises. What emotion do artists intend to mold among her/his viewers? What exactly does “victim art” seek to say? What emotional/artistic need does it set out to fill? In the case of the stripper, Robert’s asks if the performance sought to do nothing more than shock? I tend to think it could go a bit deeper. Perhaps the stripper’s awkwardness near the end of her piece was purposeful; suppose the discomfort was part of the piece, as well as her disease. What if they were used as a means to provoke?
On the other end, what is the morality of this? Why are contemporary audiences more and more attracted to “victim art”? Why does it seem that an entire generation indulges in suffering as if it were a narcotic? What is the psychologically behind the gruesome display and eager consumption of bleeding humanity?
I am torn and still forming an opinion on this. On the one hand, I believe that, particularly in highly technological imperialist countries, where a majority of people are comfortable and fairly untouched by suffering on the level of people in more devastated areas of the world; perhaps there is a role for visceral displays of the reality of suffering. Perhaps it can raise consciousness; perhaps individuals can get a better sense of the actual world in which they live, and can become compelled into doing something to change it. However, I find it fairly obscure that it is exactly those people who indulge in “victim art” as if it is a savory way to ease their hunger for “reality” and feeling. The question to me is where does this desire come from, what does it reflect about our society…and even more: does “victim art” really fulfill this need? And should it?
Samantha H // June 12, 2008 at 5:35 pm |
For my review, I think I am going to focus on a film. I have a couple in mind but am still trying to see which are available to watch (or rewatch) this weekend. The two most likely are Zizek- a documentary on Slavoj Zizek, a Marxist psychoanalyst philosopher, or Mandalay- the sequel to Dogville, which I hear deals with slavery/exploitation and resistance to that.
Ashley // June 12, 2008 at 5:40 pm |
So here we have an article on strippers, and a question asking what is the line between art, erotic art and porn. Well Emlinger seems to have the same response as many of the other reviewers we have read, art for her is something that creates emotion. In case of the stripper she had emotions but it seemed to only have come from learning that the stripper had HIV. So she then categorized it as victim art not only because of the dancers HIV but also the nature of the dance which was a striptease, which she says is a performance already full of victimization, basically she said that strippers are victims that they have unfortunate lifestyles and are sexually violated, humiliated and taken advantaged of. I understand why she feels this way many people look at strippers as lost young women who have hard lives and no where to go. And women in particular seem to look at strippers and feel uneasy just like Emlinger did. But this striptease is different then most because it was presented as an art piece, because of the nature of the dance the question comes up is it art, erotic art or porn. And here is where I have a problem. First I have a problem with the whole victim art label on exotic dancers and adult film stars. I have a lot of friends who are in the porn industry, I myself interned for Lucas Entertainment. I have talked to everyone from Ron Jeremy to Tera Patrick and these people are passionate about what they do and do not see themselves as victims but as powerful people who are helping shape society. We are a true family full of ideas and hope for a better industry. Now I am not saying all adult film stars feel this way sure there are women and men who do get sucked into the industry and find it hard to get out of but a majority of them feel differently, and it is women who for the most part are the powerful ones. In porn women call the shots, many porn companies are owned by women (Jenna Jameson, Club Jenna), they make more money then their male counterparts (the only industry in America in which this is the case) all in all the women control this industry. Talk to Savannah Sampson or Heather Hunter, and you wont here sad sob stories of having to turn to porn to survive and how bad it is. Savannah will tell you how it got her out of an unhappy marriage and allowed herself to become comfortably with her sexuality and create a new family. Heather has nothing but pride for her influence in the porn industry as the first black porn start. A majority of the porn stars I have spent time with enjoy what they are doing. Tera once did say that she feels as though she had given up a part of herself when she entered into the industry, but what artists doesn’t give up some part of themselves to their art?
Now that’s a whole other issue, what do people consider art, our question asks us where the lines are between art, erotic art and porn. For me I consider it all art, porn to me is an art form. I have seen it created and I know the passions that the people have who make it. People laterally bleed and sweat in to create something likeable for their audience in this industry. I know that for many people, porn looks the same from one video to another, bad acting predictable plot ect… But people don’t give it a chance to be anything more if they did they would see a form there. They would see the passion that these performers have to create something to make the audience get off. To me that is really impressive skill to have the ability to make someone get off and you aren’t even present. To make someone believe that you are cumming and that maybe they even have a chance of cumming with you. There are skills in porn that must be developed just as a painter develops skill. Men have to control when they ejaculate not just make sure they don’t cum to fast but to also be able to cum on command. And women too have to control their bodies, there is extreme discipline the performer must have with their bodies and mind much like a dancer.
So I don’t know if any of that got my message across, I am very passionate about erotic art in all forms and can get carried away. But in conclusion I guess I want to say adult film stars and exotic dancers are not victims they are artists who allow us to escape from the world a bit and experience feelings and emotions that at times we need help feeling. They are just as much artists as any painter or filmmaker. As long as they got that passion and skill who cares how they show it.
Jordan // June 12, 2008 at 5:41 pm |
Emlinger represents the stripper as someone in between a pioneering trangressive artist and victim. At first her tone seemed to be more along the lines of judgmental, more like Croce. Then she starts to examine more the theory of “victim” art. “I felt from her candid discussion of the disease as it related to her
performance continued to bother me,” she says. Isnt that what art is supposed to do? Make us uncomfortable? I def. think that Emlinger would agree with Croce, she almost admits this. “Not only was the dancer ill, but
the audience was bound to draw a connection between the stripping and
her illness.”
For the review I am going to review a documentary coming on PBS this Sun. called “Adrift.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372124/
Ashley // June 12, 2008 at 5:42 pm |
Oh and for my review I decided that i would like to review the film Funny Games instead of my friends dance piece since now she wont be performing it till later on.
rachael harter // June 13, 2008 at 12:18 pm |
so sorry…left for ohio after class and got in around 4am…just woke up..haha…my review proposal is to review one of the movies at the African Diaspora Film festival this weekend…i forget the name of the one i am going to see on sunday night…i will relay that as soon as i can…its a documentary of sorts on a child soldier….
Nancy // June 14, 2008 at 7:48 am |
Apologies for the delay…. Just went through the week from hell…
I enjoyed this reading very much. I felt that Roberts was able to express my own feelings in regards to both Jones’ “Still/Here’ as well as the stripper’s act as “performance art.” I think she hit the nail on the head when she said that we DO see pain and suffering reflected in art, but it’s usually “representative” suffering: “actors on the stage, saying the words of playwrights…; paint on the canvas…, but name any painting, sculpture, play, or other medium that depicts human suffering: the medium mediates.”
The problem that Roberts had, and even Croce, was that there was no longer any mediation in Jones’ piece, and that of the stripper. The pain and suffering was very real and the audience didn’t know what to do with that. Their response, I believe, was not as it should have been. I think that even when a person is viewing or witnessing art that has pain as subject matter, the response is, for lack of a better word, “clean.” We’re always told that our first response, or our first answer, is the right one. Our knee-jerk reaction is instinct and to run with it, to trust it. In these pieces the audience’s first reactions, or knee-jerk responses, get muddied. Real life intrudes. I’m not saying that art should be a means of escape, but typically, a person is transported somewhere – whether it’s to a place of beauty or even ugliness doesn’t matter – the viewer knows that it’s not REALLY real. In my mind, the point in a work of art, if there is one, is better able to be made in pieces where there is that “representation of suffering.” Real suffering gets in the way of a person’s ability to “get the point” because they no longer feel comfortable enough to do so.
Michael Miles // June 19, 2008 at 5:59 pm |
For my Review I am going to review a book called “Bomb The Suburbs.” By William Upski Wimsatt.
It is published by an independent publisher in New York City and my friend from Los Angelese picked it up at an alternative book store on his recent trip to NYC. The book is written by Chicago author and is about hip-hop as a social movement and is told through essays, interviews, articles, and dirges. I just finished reading it last week and am exciting to review this piece for the class.
Michael Miles // June 23, 2008 at 6:09 pm |
Though she brings up many interesting ideas, Emlinger brings up a real conundrum in her article, when she really digs into the idea of how we, as humans, are incapable of separating morality from anything that we view. Here, she gets quite controversial. In this day and age, it’s something that is almost viewed as the ideal. The further we can get away from making moral judgements upon what we view, the closer we can get to truly unblocking our minds and hearing what the artists is attempting to say.
This idea is something so modern and so new, that I believe some actually think they are capable of doing and maybe even claim that they do. However, the reality is no human can. If you put the most so-called open minded human being in front of enough things, eventually you will hit a nerve. Imagine, if you had a person take a child up on stage and molest that child, in the name of performance art. Could anyone let that go as performance? Would any person be able to coolly and idly watch from the sidelines.
I would represent that no, no one could that. Unless, that person himself was sexually interested in the molesting of children, few could stand by and watch without being outraged. As much as we would like to believe we are evolved humans who have moved beyond the strict rules and regulations of religions and governments and morality in many ways, we have not. We are all still bound to follow our conscience. Whether that conscience is innate or was formed solely outside of the womb, we all have a moral center.
Because of this, Emlinger hits the nail on the head. “Victim art is not solely a question of right or wrong art; it is also, and perhaps even primarily, a question of a compromised aesthetic: to present as a formal element a person in pain is to invite a struggle between one central aspect of art and another. This is the crisis, that we
are roused to attention on opposing fronts—on the one hand, our mental life is busily knitting a tale that insists that we are not at all like the body we are beholding, while on the other, we are drawn to it because we are that body…” (Emlinger The Stripper: Victim Art and the Art of Suffering 32,33)
Though “Victim Art” is most likely an absurd term, the idea of making the disease or the victimization the art does cause a certain murkiness in the aesthetics which can lead to the entire work feeling hollow and shallow. It ruins the art work in a way, because it robs us of anyway to separate our immediate feelings about the pain and then can leave us feelings confused and for me personally, it feels like just an exploitation of that particular pain, whether it be disease or physical mutilation. It tends to make bad or murky art.