Dave

Powell

Semiotics: Transgenderism within Media

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Fig 1

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Fig 2

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Advertising has changed constantly throughout its history, in response to changes in the economy, technology, fashion and more importantly social relations. Through constant challenge of the constructions of gender identity in media through recent years, transgendered individuals have been more prevalent and positively presented in television, film, magazines and especially the Internet. With the use semiotic analyzation and quotes, it is hoped to be achieved how they are viewed (and more importantly) how they view themselves within society. What must first be understood and made aware is the understanding of ideas and techniques of the objectification of women and transgendered alike and how they are not new ideas, they exist in culture already. Theyre everywhere (Arsenault, 2010).

Living in the digital age has allowed our minds to keep up with signals and agendas within advertising. The conscious mind giving into power and becoming initially neglected and subverted for the subconscious to register, enforce and remember what is seen, heard and felt. Much like dreaming, advertising speaks to us in a language we can recognize, but a voice we can never identify (Williamson, 1978), transferring mixed messages and a shift of power from physical to metaphysical. This power itself may not relate or mirror how people are acting in everyday and modern life, but instead how were dreaming and wrapping up our emotions and selling them back (Nelson, 1983) to ourselves in a method that wouldnt function in reality.

The male gaze has replaced the standard of beauty that is, and always will be, impossible for women to hit. Yet the use of the term when perceived can only be correct to different cultures and their perception on what female

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beauty is. Men of western culture have decided what the perfect legs are. The perfect body, breasts, face, skin, butt, and neck should be. And weve made no hesitations to boldly let it be known (Pearce, 2011). The power initially lies with the men who look onto the women. If this is to be true, the only power left to women is the ability to attract a males attention and hold it. Yet, women are not allowed to hold too much attention. Territory and status grow among men and which lies central to masculinity. Women who attract too much attention become a threat. Males, as the dominant sex, have only a partial view of the world and yet they are in a position to insist that their views and values are the real and only values and they are in a position to impose their version on other human beings who do not share this experience (Spender, 1985).

The transformation from woman into a man (John Berger, 1972) in a male dominated culture draws out this understanding of what men want and the awareness (and intention) of being objectified; even perhaps the need to be objectified. Fig 1, Andrej Pejic, is posed in a position as to show and capture the gaze of his viewer. The connection here lies within the eyes, non-moving and tightly focused. Projecting a powerful being, not just to invite, but also to dare the viewer to into another world, his world. The submissive postures are represented as strategic, as a sign of control of the gaze.

The power between the sexes is forced on by the penetrator whereby the submissive loses or must give up power. The power isnt only in of the male viewer, but also in the model of Fig 1. The viewer must weigh both sexual

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desire and deception and ultimately decide whether to be admirable, disgusted or both. However, with Fig 1 being male, instead of being forced to give up power, has willingly chosen so and therefore has the chance to gain further power than before through tools of trickery.

The absence of the penis only to be replaced with flowers signifies a beautification of the part of the body that is considered male, with connotations of strength, violence and assertion. In order to receive connotations and compliments of beauty and fragility, denial and association of any male characteristics are considered paramount. These contradictory messages are intended to disturb and are likely to do so, especially when they are uttered in culture where it is much more acceptable for women to aspire to male characteristics than vice versa (Goddard, 2001). The exposed chest would make this image bridge for pornographic purposes but due to the projection of a female through a males body, instead it is only challenged the societal views on what you think makes a man and what you think makes a woman (Angel, 2010), however the nakedness acts a conformation as the viewer engages and may eventually understand that he is a man like any other (John Berger, 1972). Even with Fig 1s unusual feminine features, in the eyes of the audience, a harmless male is far worse than harmless female.

Fig 1 has several denoted phases when engaged with the viewer. An initial expected reaction where it is assumed that the model is female, and if this were in the intended message, then the goal would be to fill the male audience with eroticism and sexual desire. Yet, this has the possibility to rapidly change and lead to confusion and doubt with the initial thoughts still

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remaining. Not only is the model exposed, but from his deception that has been put into effect, he has also exposed his audience. Now the image asks questions of its viewer and preoccupies with the re-enactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, demystifying her mystery), counterbalanced by devaluation (Mulvey, 1975). The photographer is presenting a man in a female condition. He is smooth skinned, slight of frame and exhibiting almost a parody of the helpless abandoned doe-eyed female. His body is male but body language is all female (Goddard, 2001).

The viewer goes through a process of understanding that the body is an object sometimes of beauty, of eroticism, but also of satire, destabilization, provocation, blasphemy and grotesqueness. It could also be said that his body is all of these things at once (Arsenault, 2010). Taking this into account, Fig 1 is polysemous and is not supported by text or bodycopy to ground the image allowing the diegesis of all these apparent meanings to become valid, accepted and expected, The image is now open to interpretation and poses a question of meaning that comes through as dysfunctional (Barthe, 1977) yet intentional and ironic with the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. (Donna Haraway, 1991) Whereby all meanings and reactions (from the artist to the viewer) are relevant and to pull any apart, would deny the truth of the entire body (Arsenault, 2010).

Once male or female is identified, the other is reduced or elevated to their primary sexual category, how false content can provide false fulfillment and shock the viewer to engage more with the model, as well as themselves. The

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relief of finding an unquestionable reality directs our demands to an earlier highly complex awareness (John Berger, 1972). Yet if none can be identified due to too many mixed messages, then objectification (or less humane) adjectives are considered only appropriate and thing becomes accurate (Peck, 2011). In turn, creating objects of the object.

From the duality of the model blending between male and female without the use of clothes, Fig 1 has metronymic connotations as he bleeds through gender roles and challenges societal (and even) biological views. Understanding where the power lies and how to obtain it, becoming a hybrid in modern day culture. Its important to recognize that the piece itself can also be synecdochal; with its portrayal of meaning, question and answer pass back and forth from viewer to model.

When it comes to trying to find a deeper meaning behind Fig 2, Milla Jovovich, it can become difficult to the viewer if they are not open to such a message, or have this aspect in themselves that are in common with the model. The image itself is sexual and provocative, yet not sexual due to the concealed body parts, but it is those specific body parts that are concealed that make the viewer aware that the model is female, thus can either be looked at for further thought or disregarded for not achieving any sexual or provocative thoughts. Although she is being objectified by the viewer (as the intention, or understanding of the photographer) the subliminal message by the photography is not objectification, but of internal struggle with what a man is. What is seen here isnt necessarily what the whole world sees. (Buck Angel, 2010)

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She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life (John Berger, 1972). The use of a binder reflects the idea of Fig 2 denying her gender and is seen as her refusal to be forced into her role as a woman: subdued and passive. Exhibiting alienation with her own body and not looking directly at her audience, but past them, on looking. You are not invited. Living in such invisibility, their existence alone trans-people challenge mainstream conceptions (Cromwell, 1999). The diegesis of Fig 2 is similar to Fig 1 from its possible and discordant meanings, yet she is retained as female, but because her thoughts of herself are not similar to that of the viewer, the piece is not as deceiving as Fig 1. Whether the viewer enjoys being deceived is where reactions of admiration or hatred become their strongest, yet are irrelevant as their opinions are intended and pose no threat; if the real is no longer possible, than the illusion is no longer possible. (Baudrillard, 1994).

The metonymic connotations of Fig 2 are apparent of depicting a woman wishing to become male; the appearance of the cigarette, connoting toxicity, self-annihilation, struggle and addiction. Where the choice is no longer relevant, it just is. The covering of the breasts in fig 2 tell the viewer that her body is not for you, thus not an object. To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men (John Berger, 1972). Fig 2 is trapped inside her own body as well as within society and considered invisible by virtue of having been born with female bodies and being assigned to the female sex. The use of the window is a visual

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representation of this. The irony here is that she must trap herself first in order to be accepted as a man and conform to codes of masculine behaviour and feel accepted within herself (Cromwell, 1999). Trapped in a world where the male-as-the-norm syndrome reigns supreme and women find themselves handicapped.

Although Fig 2s intention is to not be objectified, the use of a window also signifies a mannequin in a poised position, simultaneously displayed and to be looked at, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness (Mulvey, 1975). Yet there is a power struggle, where women were once sexual representations in the media as being presented passive, mute objects of an assumed male gaze, they can now be seen as active, desiring sexual objects that choose to present themselves in a seemingly objectified manner because it suits their interests to do so. Stating that men have the ability to be fluid with their power of the male gaze, being the subject, the subject and the object or just the object; whereas women can only ever be the subject and the object or just the object, but never just the subject. A female heroine still needs to be (and feel) beautiful, charismatic, elegant whilst performing stunts in an appetizing, admirable and erotic manner. It is clear that men dont just look at women for objective purposes, but also with power. If women look at themselves through the eyes of a man, what women are taught from the male gaze is that in order for women to gain power, they must gain control of the male view of women, attaining power through male power rather than their own. If a man is called a woman, thats

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the biggest insult he could get... Is that because women are considered something less? (Pejic). If the viewer is assumed to be male and the model is unassumed to be male, the gaze becomes deluded and misunderstood through the fight over power. They are damned if they do, damned if they dont (Lakoff, 1975) Control can now either be lost or sustained.

Gender expectations, associations and imposed limitations of men and women separate and confine that which prevents self-expression, choice and inner truth. To live as a trans-individual is to live a life of confined solitude in a personal journey that can both be denied and laid bare for the world to point and prod or think highly of and consider sacred. Where Fig 1 has embraced all that gender has to offer in the modern world, Fig 2 has rejected it, where one lives in fear and the other in courage. Advertising has allowed and opened the gateway of the world to become educated in areas that, in the past, have been considered unnatural, inhuman and blasphemous. Were playing with fire, but in turn that is the beauty behind advertising, to surge opinion, create debate, diplomacy, evolution and most of all, blur the edges.