Gauntlett does a great job introducing the idea of queer
theory. He introduces and defines gender not a fixed identity but rather as a
performance an individual can identify with at various moments. With gender
being a performance we think about the behavior as a way of individuals identifying
their gender rather than automatically being categorized and expected to do
stereotypical things to identify in one of the two genders due to physical
characteristics. We see the automatic separation of what it means to be a man
and a women and anybody that does not directly identify with male or female are
outcasts. Gauntlett proposes to spread a variety of non-traditional images and
ideas about how people should perform their gender with the help of the mass
media. Insisting that, “shattering the unhelpful mounds of ‘male’ and ‘female’
roles which continue to apply constraints upon people’s ability to be
expressive and emotionally literate beings.” will break such patterns of
masculine and feminine formation.
This made me think of music’s contribution to the shattering
of fixed identity of male and female and in this clip we see African America
musicians stepping out of the fixed identities and performing their gender as
they please. Nicki Minaj does help shatter the performance of a female rap
hip-hop artist by being one of the very few females in the genre. On the contrary
she also confines to this fixed identity of a feminine woman as seen through her
very hyper sexualized appearance shown in her music video Super Bass. But
in this
clip we see Nicki Minaj before her signing with Young Money and the way she
chose to perform her gender was more on a masculine side which is a big change
from how she identifies herself now. Minaj’s identity is dependent on her
audience and success she receives. As a local artist she expressed herself differently
and now in the mass media she is forced to sell sex. Can the mass media really
help break this fixed identity? Or is it up to the people?
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