Gendered Constructions of the Forest in The Village

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women's Studies)
14 April 2010

Gendered Constructions of the Forest in The Village

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village is the story of a small farming village isolated from the main world by the forest surrounding it. While the film examines gender roles in relation to nature in several ways, the characterization of the forest presents the most interesting and complex case. At once masculine and feminine, the forest serves initially as an oppressive force locking the villagers inside it and severely punishing those, like the film’s protagonist Ivy, who dare to venture into it; as the film reveals the village’s secret, however, the forest takes on a more gender-ambiguous role, becoming both the feminine creator and masculine protector of the constructed space the villagers inhabit and understand as safe.

The forest is most easily understood as a masculine, aggressive presence, largely because of The Village’s similarities to “Red Riding Hood” and similar fairytales. In both, a young, female protagonist dons a specifically-colored cloak; leaves her sheltered home to travel through a dark, treacherous wood to help a sick person she knows; is attacked by a forewarned monster; and (for purposes of this film) survives, but not without losing her innocence to the new revelation about what’s actually out there in the world. For Red in the fairytale, her innocence leaves with the realization that the world is not as safe or harmonious as she had once thought. For Ivy in The Village, this realization is twofold, leaving her aware by the film’s conclusion that a) her village is set in a consciously-constructed and -maintained reality grounded in the values, social systems, and technologies of 18th-century America, rather than the 21st-century America that exists outside the forest, and b) the chief instrument of maintaining this constructed reality, the red-cloaked monsters that stalk and guard the forest’s borders, are actually the village elders. In both cases, this innocence is stolen by a journey into the forest itself, lending the forest a distinctly masculine quality in its construction as an active force. Rather than being “feminized and sexualized through imagery such as ‘virgin forest’ . . . and ‘penetrating’ the wilderness” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 539), as traditional Western thought tends to understand it, nature here is obviously, definitively aggressive. It is not the innocence that needs to be protected; as in “Red Riding Hood,” it is the innocence-stealing force that needs to be protected against.

Ivy’s loss of innocence to the forest is what allows us to see it as, in some ways, a potentially gender-ambiguous force. The realization that the village’s setting and environment are consciously constructed casts the forest in a new light by making it no longer exclusively oppressive. As the new information about the elders’ involvement shows, it is also a creative force—a trait more commonly associated in Western tradition with femininity, especially in understandings of the environment. The myth that the elders have chosen to construct around the forest is undoubtedly oppressive in that it restricts the villagers’ access and power to move outside a certain space. It is a system both like and unlike patriarchy—like in that it creates “an arrangement of shared understandings and relationships that connect people to one another and something larger than themselves” (Johnson 71), and unlike in that the system and the space it creates are consciously maintained by a select few people within the village society. But the fact that the forest itself allows for the creation of that space and system in the first place is significant. It becomes both a protective barrier (associated with masculinity) and an almost nurturing presence, in that it provides for the villagers’ careful maintenance of the space they have constructed as normal and safe. Ivy’s breaking through the barrier to reach the outside world lends the forest and the space it provides for an additional “feminine” trait: the need to be protected and defended. Ivy’s new knowledge threatens the existence of the constructed reality of the village. Should she choose to share what she has learned, the space created by the elders and the forest-myth they rule by will be destroyed; should she choose to remain silent, the space will be preserved, with Ivy joining the ranks of the constant protectors of the secret that threatens it. Ultimately, Ivy keeps her silence and allows the system maintaining the village to continue unchallenged, questionably taking the path of least resistance but leaving us with a new understanding of the relative fragility of even the most seemingly-deep-set social systems.



Works Cited

Johnson, Allan G. “Patriarchy, the System.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 68-76. Print

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Women and the Environment.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 534-549. Print

Shyamalan, M. Night, dir. The Village. 2004. Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2005. DVD-ROM

Critiques of Western Media in Baghdad Burning

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women's Studies)
17 March 2010

Critiques of Western Media in Baghdad Burning

In the entry “Teapots and Kettles . . .,” dated 7 April 2004, Riverbend recounts the early days of the American occupation of Baghdad and eventually concludes that, despite what the Western media would have their audiences believe, not much about life in the city has changed or improved. Like the rest of Baghdad Burning, this entry uses Riverbend’s personal experience to critique the American occupation, with particular focus on exposing the false reality about Iraqi life presented by Western news outlets. In this sense, her blog follows two “paths” of “media advocacy . . . critiquing mainstream media, and making media tools available to people from subordinated groups to express themselves” (“Globalizing World” 387). Both a personal account and an educational tool, Baghdad Burning is the method by which Riverbend successfully calls into question the cultural perceptions Americans hold of Iraqis and the cultural perceptions Americans hold of our own military.

Riverbend’s blatant critique of Western media is a common, constant theme throughout her blog. As in another entry from later that same month, “Media and Falloojeh,” she contrasts accounts of what Western or Western-affiliated news stations are reporting with her own observations as a citizen of occupied Baghdad. “The foreign news channels [CNN, BBC, LBC] are hardly showing anything,” she says. Instead of reporting on the “over 150 Iraqis [who] have been killed by troops all over Iraq” during the last three days, the Western media airs “dazzling reportages on football games and family pets,” only occasionally “showing the same faces running around in a frenzy of bombing and gunfire” (Riverbend). For Riverbend, this inaccurate portrayal of circumstances is inexcusable. It presents an obviously false image of the American occupation and furthers the ludicrous beliefs Americans hold about the Iraqi population and the war itself. Rather than acknowledge the war as a serious, deadly affront with serious, deadly consequences for Iraq, the Western media’s reporting maintains the myth of American liberation: the idea that “the [American] troops were going to be ‘greeted with flowers and candy’” (Riverbend) by Iraqis grateful for liberation upon their arrival. In reality, the truth could not be more different. If Riverbend’s account is anything to go by, the Iraqis feel like “caged animal[s]—there’s so much frustration and anger . . . all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad” (Riverbend), and no one feels safe, stable, or free.

Less obviously, Riverbend’s entry forces us as Americans to reevaluate how we perceive our military. Even if we don’t fully realize it, “the military shapes our notions of patriotism, heroism, honor, duty, adventure, and citizenship . . . Politically, economically, and culturally, the military is a central U.S. institution” (“Women and the Military” 494). We are taught to evaluate and understand patriotism, devotion to one’s country, and courage in terms of military service, which further engenders an already-deep sense of pride in our troops and any initiative they become involved in. Riverbend’s accounts, however, remind us that there is more involved in war than our troops making us proud—namely severe consequences for the country being “liberated.” Why, she challenges us to ask, are we proud to learn of our military “bombing” a city “constantly,” leaving “dozens dead” and taking out “the only functional hospital . . . except a meager clinic that can hold up to 10 patients at a time” (Riverbend)? Why are we proud to hear of our troops effectively blockading a city, cutting off supplies of produce and food and leaving its inhabitants in streets littered with “bodies . . . beginning to decompose in the April heat” (Riverbend)? By unrepentantly showing us the harsh, negative consequences of war, Riverbend forces us to acknowledge that the “liberating Americans” myth is false from both perspectives: just as Iraqis (and, indeed, many people supposedly in need of democracy and U.S. aid) largely do not feel grateful and liberated under American occupation, our American troops are not nearly so often the heroic, untarnished saviors we should like to understand them as.



Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Living in a Globalizing World.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 371-392. Print

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Women and the Military, War, and Peace.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 493-509. Print

Riverbend. “Teapots and Kettles . . .” Baghdad Burning. Blogger, 7 Apr. 2004. Web. 5 Apr. 2010.

Activism Log VII

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
4 April 2010

Activism
Family emergency stayed pretty severe this week, so again, no tabling for me. I’ve sent an email to Rebecca to see about alternative forms of involvement, but so far, I haven’t heard anything back yet. I was able to start a Facebook chat with a few friends about the project in hopes of gaining support for it, but that quickly turned more infuriating than productive, so not much luck there.

Reflection
The most interesting discussion and readings we had this week were on Womanism, which I personally find to be a fascinating branch of feminism. The article I particularly enjoyed was Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” which discusses Walker’s attempts to rediscover and reclaim the history of black women, the generations of mothers and grandmothers who came before her and were forbidden by social convention from being understood or recognized as capable of great things. For the transgendered community, I feel this idea of rediscovering and reclaiming history is especially relevant. Because transgenderism is still largely rejected and feared by society, that community exists with little to no knowledge of its own history. There are some records of transvestitism, or of the earliest transsexuals to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, but for the most part, general society marks transgenderism and the achievements of transgendered or gender-variant people as taboo and unmentionable. Hopefully, as activist efforts force social tolerance and acceptance of the transgendered community, its ability to recover and acknowledge its own history will be restored and, much like Walker’s search, what is uncovered will help further develop a sense of strengthened identity in that community.

Reciprocity
This week was an extremely stressful one for several reasons. First, I am beyond frustrated with myself and the circumstances that have prevented me from tabling so far. I feel like I am letting down my project group and the entire initiative, and while Rebecca has told me she understands, I sincerely hope she can come up with something for me to do so I feel like more of a contributing member. I’ve still been collecting signatures on my own where I can, but it’s slow-going. And finally, the Facebook chat I tried to start turned into a complete disaster. Instead of talking to my friends about issues relating to the transgendered community and our project, I spent an hour in a heated, immensely aggravating discussion about more well-known “aspects” of feminism. I say “aspects” very loosely, because it was mostly a few friends throwing around negative stereotypes of feminists while one refused to hear anything other than his own belief that women belong in the kitchen and the bedroom, and nowhere else. Normally, I am all for discussions about feminism, especially when they’re informative discussions that help clear up common misconceptions surrounding the movement for people who are genuinely interested; the type of conversation I found myself in this week, though, was quite the opposite, and one I’ve been hearing/having all too frequently since really establishing myself as a feminist this semester. Overall, this week was just a stressful, disheartening experience, and I’m glad it’s over. The good news is that it looks like my family troubles are clearing up, at least for now, so I should definitely be on for tabling next week. I just want something that will get me back into loving this project whole-heartedly like I did during the first few weeks.



Works Referenced
Walker, Alice. "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens." In Search of Our Mother's Gardens. Ed. Alice Walker. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003. 231-43. Print.

Activism Log VI

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
28 March 2010

Activism
My involvement was interrupted again this week, this time by a severe family emergency that had me heading back home almost every night after my classes let out. As such, I wasn’t able to attend tabling. I’m hoping this clears up by next week, but I’ll have to see; if it doesn’t, I’ll be emailing Rebecca, our community partner, to see if she has any alternative ways I can get involved. I did collect a few more signatures, this time by passing the petition around my anthropology class. My professor was, again, very supportive, but the reception from the class seemed a bit more stilted. It wasn’t nearly as bolstering an experience as soliciting my creative writing class for support was, but I suppose that’s par for the course in activism—some you win and some you lose.

Reflection
My favorite reading from this week was the collection of excerpts from Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning blog. The article and blog entries comprising it provided a fascinating look at an alternative perspective on the war in Iraq, particularly regarding actual versus perceived needs and responses of the Iraqi population. Contrary to popular U.S. belief, Iraq had modern amenities, utilities, and cultural attributes. Most surprising to me was the realization that “females in Iraq were a lot better off than females in other parts of the Arab word (and some parts of the Western world . . .)” (Riverbend 527)—a statement which directly contradicted the image I have always been presented with of Iraqi and general Middle Eastern women as the most severely oppressed and limited in the world. Connected to our project, this realization that presented perceptions of culture/identity are not always accurate is a bit sobering. It’s great to be able to say that my efforts are helping benefit an oppressed community, or that I have a personal connection to that community through a family member, or that I’ve done research on key issues, sure. But the simple, undeniable fact is that I will never understand what it means to be transgendered, which means that I will never fully understand if my actions are actually helping or hurting. I can immerse myself in the culture of the community (which would be so much more involved than what I’m doing now), but without being transgendered and experiencing things as a transgendered individual, I will always, to an extent, be an outsider incapable of completely understanding the situation.

Reciprocity
Again, I’m disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to table this week, although I’m still a bit more concerned about the situation at home. In all, this has been a fairly stressful week for me; the less-than-warm reception I got in my anthropology class didn’t help much, and it has all dampened my spirits about this project and life in general. Better luck next week, I hope.



Works Cited
Riverbend. “Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 525-530. Print.

Activism Log V

*Note: Spring break week skipped!*

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
21 March 2010

Activism
Tabling was canceled this week because of Equal’s participation at a rally in Tallahassee. It was disappointing, but it also left me more time to collect signatures on my own. I actually spoke about the initiative in my creative writing class. My professor was extremely supportive of the project and allowed me about ten minutes at the end of class to explain it, the reasons/need for it, and to pass around a petition sheet. Not everyone signed, which I expected, but I was not met with any open hostility; in a nice turn of events, everyone seemed generally interested and receptive to the idea, even if it wasn’t something they ended up wanting to support.

Reflection
This week’s readings and class discussion covered a wide range of material, but as best I can summarize, they tended to focus on feminist conceptions of family and defining lifestyles. The article that struck me as most interesting was Ettelbrick’s “Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” In it, Ettelbrick discusses her rejection of the gay marriage equality movement. For her, obtaining equal marriage rights would only perpetuate other systems of privilege, such as race, class, religion, etc. It would also do nothing to address underlying social heteronormativity; instead of celebrating the differences inherent in queer lifestyles and challenging perceptions of heternormativity, Ettelbrick feels gay marriage would only increase the presence and power of heteronormativity by forcing queer couples to “end up mimicking all that is bad about the institution of marriage in [their] effort[s] to appear to be the same as straight couples” (318), and as such worthy of the same privilege. Ettelbrick presents here another complication of passing, which is an issue facing much of the LGBT community, but particularly the transgendered population. Because society so viciously stigmatizes transgenderism, the temptation is strong to pass for cisgendered and gain social acceptance. But as Ettelbrick discusses, the cost of this social acceptance is, like in all cases of passing, a loss of identity and fundamental connection to a supportive community. Ultimately, is it worth forgoing support and total acceptance to be tolerated in spite of your differences, rather than acceptance because of them?

Reciprocity
I was definitely disappointed in the lack of tabling this week, but I do feel that the success in speaking to my class about the project has helped boost my esteem regarding my fears of soliciting support for this cause. It showed me that people may easily prove more accepting than I had initially assumed going into this project, which alleviates my stresses about tabling a bit.



Works Cited
Ettelbrick, Paula. “Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 317-320. Print.

If the Aptly-Given Episode Title Fits . . .

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
17 March 2010

If the Aptly-Given Episode Title Fits . . .

The pilot episode of Brothers and Sisters (named, ironically enough, “Patriarchy”) introduces us to the Walker family, a large, hectic group consisting of Mom, Dad, and five siblings. Although I don’t regularly watch the show, I have heard of it, mostly because of the notice it has received for the storylines surrounding Kevin, an openly gay member of the Walker family, and his developing relationship with eventual-husband Scotty. This episode, however, focuses on Kitty, the second-eldest Walker child, so this discussion will follow suit.

Kitty begins the episode in New York City, where she lives estranged by merit of distance from the rest of her Los Angeles-based family. She returns to LA primarily for work concerns; already a successful politically-conservative radio pundit, she is currently investigating a position as the Republican speaker on a late-night political television show. Her trip also includes visiting her family to celebrate her birthday. With the rest of the family involved in their own drama, Kitty’s major conflicts for the episode are her indecision about the job offer and her fear of confrontation with her mother, who is far more of a political liberal than she. The latter conflict resolves fairly positively. Kitty and Nora do argue in one scene, but for most of the episode, their issues are kept under wraps. While there is certainly noticeable tension between them, Kitty still receives reassurance that her worries of being rejected by her mother are unfounded: Nora admits that they “will probably always violently disagree,” but also that “[she] [has] never stopped loving” (“Patriarchy”) her daughter.

Though both conflicts have compelling points of analysis, I found the issues surrounding the job offer a bit more interesting, largely because they incorporate several aspects of the stress Kitty faces. Her Republican politics are the butt of many of her family’s jokes and what she perceives as a barrier between them; the job would require her to relocate to LA, forcing her to relinquish the independence-by-distance she has acquired since moving away from her family; and her boyfriend Jonathon pressures her to turn down what they both know is a highly strategic career move in favor of marrying and staying in New York with him. For Kitty, this job offers her the chance to advance her politics and reconnect on some level with her family, but potentially at the expense of the family she could have with Jonathon. Her situation is not uncommon among career-focused women, who often follow “the ‘be a man’ strategy;” they “finish school, find a job, acquire skills, develop seniority, get tenure, make partner, and put children off until the very last minute” (Crittenden 342). The problem with Kitty’s situation, and with that of the general career-focused woman, is, as Crittenden discusses, the assumption that parenthood is primarily the woman’s responsibility, even at the expense of her salary and career. Jonathon’s proposal exemplifies this. He offers her what is essentially an ultimatum: Kitty can either take this job and advance her career, or she can remain stagnant at work, marry him, and start a family, which no doubt will later become her responsibility to sacrifice for and raise. The consequences of not taking the job, then, seem ludicrously restrictive for someone so driven and career-focused as Kitty.

In some lights, however, the consequences of taking the job are just as restrictive. It is clear that Kitty has worked to gain independence outside of her family, probably because her political views differ so much from theirs. While she shows some regret about the distance this has created between her and her siblings, she also seems attached to the idea of remaining independent from them, which moving back to LA would hinder by sheer proximity. Taking the television job would certainly advance her career and identity as an empowered, political woman, but it could simultaneously pull her firmly back into a family defined by its relational identities to each other. She would be a career woman, yes, but also a sister and a daughter, with those roles prioritized by the sense of obligation that would likely develop from reconnecting with the rest of the Walkers. Even as the move would protect her from sacrificing her career for the relational identities of Jonathon’s wife and their children’s mother, it could easily force her, again, into another, different set of care-focused, “nonthreatening and disempowering roles . . . in society” (Seely 100) she has already worked to escape. Ultimately, Kitty makes no decision by the episode’s end and the conflict goes unresolved, leaving us with a clear sense of how difficult it is for a woman to not only choose between her family and her career in a society structured to offer her no other options, but also for her to maintain her own independent identity when our understanding of women inherently connects them to the roles they fill for someone else.



Works Cited

Crittenden, Ann. “The Mommy Tax (2001).” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 337-345. Print.

“Patriarchy.” Brothers and Sisters. ABC. 24 Sept. 2006. Web.

Seely, Megan. Fight Like a Girl. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Print.

Alright, Alright, Alright: Violence in "The Rake's Song"

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
8 March 2010

Alright, Alright, Alright: Violence in “The Rake’s Song”

The Decemberists’ “The Rake’s Song” describes the extreme violence a man commits to escape the perceived limitations of married and parental life. Shortly after marrying at age 21, the song’s protagonist finds himself father to three children—a boy, Isaiah, and two girls, Charlotte and Dawn—each one considered more of an unfortunate, unwanted burden than the last. But with his wife’s death in labor for their stillborn fourth child, he finds his chance for escape. He systematically poisons, drowns, and beats to death his other three children, leaving him free physically and emotionally to resume his previous bachelor lifestyle.

Personally, I am still a bit unsure about the point of the violence in the song. On one hand, it presents violence as excusable within the confines of the narrator’s perspective, which is certainly an issue. For the narrator, his marriage is a means to an end. He signs on for readily-available sex, not for children and the responsibilities of a family. In his understanding, the children “her womb [starts] spilling out” (The Decemberists) are his wife’s burden, completely detached from him by his lack of desire for them. This understanding of women and children connects the protagonist’s later violence to the “general pattern of violence between the powerful and the powerless” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 267): as a man in a patriarchal society, the narrator’s freedom and power before marriage were seemingly unchecked; even after marriage, and furthered by his alienation of himself within his undesired family, his power remains greater than that held by his wife and children. Killing his children, then, is simply him exercising his greater power over people he views as disposable. Because he associates his children entirely with his wife, her death, for him, removes all reason for their existence; they are now entirely unwanted, and as such, his disposing of them to reclaim his freedom and identity as a bachelor is acceptable. As we are given no other insight into the story, it is expected that we, too, will understand his reasoning and excuse his violent actions as a man’s rightful struggle to regain his autonomy.

Obviously, this presentation of violence is problematic. But are there grounds for viewing “The Rake’s Song” as a statement against domestic violence? In some sense, yes. By presenting us with only the protagonist’s reasoning behind his actions, the song pressures us to accept the story and the violence within it. However, doing so also raises the question of why we feel so compelled to easily accept and excuse violence when we are confronted with it. Are there larger systems and influences at work convincing us to sweep things under the rug and move on? The lyrics hint at addressing such larger systems, particularly patriarchy, in their reduction of women to wives and wombs, even as they idealize men and the concepts of masculine freedom and independence. Unfortunately, they never seem to go beyond hinting at it as something pervasive and dangerous to all of society. The patriarchal mindset is here ascribed to a self-identified rake, or “dissolute man in fashionable society” (“Rake”), furthering the perception that such an attitude is an individual problem, not a systemic one. So while it neatly raises the question of why “we make excuses for male temper,” the song’s presentation of male temper and resulting violence as being the anomalous traits of bad-apple individuals ultimately distracts us from the larger issue that these are, in actuality, things we “as a culture” (Seely 200) create.



Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Violence Against Women.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 257-272. Print

“Rake.” Princeton WordNet 3.0. Princeton University, 2006. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. .

Seely, Megan. Fight Like a Girl. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Print.

The Decemberists. “The Rake's Song.” The Hazards of Love. Capitol Records, 2008. Web. 8 Mar. 2010.