Your readings for this week are:
1) Ursula Biemann's "Performing the Border: On Gender, Transnational Bodies, and Technology"
2) MAC Rodarte make-up named for Juarez is not pretty
3) An International Tribute, With Love, to Women Killed in Juarez
There is also a blog associated with the art project dedicated to the Juárez murders, located here. It includes pictures of the artwork mentioned in the third article.
Please respond with your thoughts on these readings, including what struck you the most from reading about the horrific mutilations of womyn, and similarities that you see between exploitation of labor in Mexico and in the United States. Other questions to think about:
-Biemann mentions "the entanglement of the female body with technology and image production" (pg. 101). What are examples of this "entanglement" that you have seen in the media? Feel free to includes links to pictures or commercials.
-Did any pieces from the Juárez art project stand out to you? What did you like about it?
-What was your reaction to reading about the MAC make-up with names like "factory" and "del Norte"? What does that say about the commodification of not only labor, but also how womyn are implicated in the oppression of other womyn?
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7 comments:
In Performing the Border, the section on serial killers struck me the most. The piece said that serial killers do “nothing more than make literal and visible the prevailing” perceptions about women and maquiladoras in the border region. This assertion helps show the pervasiveness of the idea that female bodies are disposable and not valuable. As horrible as this disposability of women may be, it helped me to better understand the conditions in the maquiladora factories. It makes me question though why women were initially attracted to these positions in assembly plants in the first place.
I saw the image of the MAC Rodarte ad for their new makeup line in contrast to the portraits of the women killed in Juarez. Even though the women featured in the portraits by various British artists were brutally murdered, the images are beautiful and a respectful way to honor the women. On the other hand, the MAC ad and line is disrespectful and unaware of what is actually happening in the city that they named their line after. I don’t think MAC is “romanticizing the murder and exploitation of women” as the blogger claims, but I do agree that their actions are ignorant and disrespectful.
After I read the MAC Rodarte article, I wasn't surprised that such a controversy had surfaced, and that a big-scale popular makeup company had made such a powerful mistake. I wasn't surprised because I feel that all the information and representations that Americans feel like they have acquired and come to understand are oftentimes skewed. Even those who claim that they "have gone in and experienced the environment" personally, have an individual and specific connection to the atrocities, or maintain some connection or affiliation that has provided them with superior and legitimate knowledge as to what is actually happening many times don't understand until they have lived it. These two women, of Mexican descent, feel that they have justified their actions with a road trip--the environment influencing the names of the different makeup items. My first thought was how are any of the names at all relevant to any specific natural features? There is no mention of greenery, rugged mountains, farmland; but rather comparisons to exhausted and half-alive communities and societies. How would a road trip convey this through SCENERY? Furthermore, the author brought up one other important point that frightened me and made me realize the severity and hopeless, aimless desperation of Juarez. She writes, "Donating some money is a nice idea but to who or what group of to the city itself?" This made me think: Juarez is likely one of the most corrupt and dangerous cities on the planet right now. Who exactly is working, or at least trying to clean it up? What nonprofit/agency/organization/uncorrupted government program has the resources, safety equipment or funds to tackle a city so buried in problems of immigration, violence, gangs, and the drug trade? This quote scared me because it forced me to recognize one of the most simple questions: who's taking care of this? We know that much or marginally safer communities (like Tijuana for example) can better access aide, but I fear in places like Juarez that homicides have pushed almost everyone out. Therefore, by the end of the article I felt both concerned and angry about the exploitation of females in the ad, but more importantly, the piece had raised bigger fears of if we wanted to help, where would we even start?
I had heard about the MAC-Rodarte make-up line before this article. I was astonished by the fact that a popular make-up line like MAC would use the atrocities in Juarez to make money. As a woman and consumer of MAC make-up I am angered that they are glamorizing the deaths of the women in Mexico, who in their right mind would do that? I don’t think that MAC understands what is actually happening in Juarez and they saw it as an opportunity to profit. But yet, who would actually purchase an eye shadow named “Ghost Town”, or any make-up product that is “influenced” by deaths of hundreds of women? Not only did MAC and Rodarte apologize for their line, but MAC thinks that by providing the city with money they will solve the issue or help a suffering city. On the other hand, I think that this make-up line brought attention to the murders happening in Mexico, and what their probable causes might be.
I knew that the maquiladoras in the border region in Mexico were a form of oppression and control, but read “Performing the Border” showed me that that’s an understatement. The part that surprised me the most was the part that mentioned how management in the maquilas check women to make sure that they are not pregnant, or else they would be fired. That is an invasion of privacy and an act of dehumanization. The fact that women who work in the maquilas put up with this goes to show how desperate people are for in order to provide for their families. This issue raising a greater issue: what is going on in Mexico that forces women to put themselves in danger, and ultimately trying to migrate to the United States.
All the images in the Juarez art project seemed to portray women that look beautiful. What I liked is that every women seems different than the other. I feel that the artist point in doing that is to show that although there have been many women that have been killed, each one is different and has their own story. My reaction to the MAC was that it is ridiculous how people think that money can solve everything. I can't believe that they had the audacity to think that by donating the money to that charity, it would make their mistake and lack of respect for those women in Juarez disappear. Instead, of just getting rid of the line in the first place, they were finding ways to not have to do that. The lack of their sincere compassion for this women is particularly alarming to me since, they as well come from a Latino background, because of their Mexican descent. This to me is especially offensive, because it makes me think about how sometimes as generations people lose sense of their culture and where their ancestors have come from. I also think that their anecdote about their reason for naming the line after their trip was honestly really ignorant, because Texas is not a part of Mexico, so I don't see how they even got that idea. The whole thing is just ridiculous and offensive.
Biemann’s explanation of how the maquiladoras keep women from creating unions (even though unions themselves are not illegal) and criticizing their work place stuck out to me. I think that by stripping the women of the ability to vocalize concerns with confidence reinforces the machine-like qualities that are forced upon them because it suppresses individuality and complexities that come from expressing one’s self. I also found it interesting, however, that the women are more able to express their sexual desires and satisfy these desires.
I think that the Juarez art project is a touching way to honor these women and raise awareness about the murders taking place. I like how different artists got to paint a picture of different women because it conveys a sense of uniqueness of each women, which in a way contrasts their deaths; all of these women were seen by their killers as faceless objects that could satisfy some twisted sexual and violent desire. But with the paintings, each artist portrayed them with specific colors or different styles. I don’t know, I guess an overall theme that I am gathering from these articles is the importance of respecting and supporting individuality. When we strip people of their individuality – of their emotions, their dreams, their backgrounds, struggles, and history – it is easy to exploit someone or abuse them. It is easy to watch the news and hear about some number of killings in some place somewhere that is not ‘here.’
I think that commercializing the makeup line was just bad taste. I looked up more articles about this, and I got the sense that this was, at first, more of a kind of art: these two sisters were inspired by different aspects of their trip and decided to do some fashion show. But, honestly, making money off of that was just disrespectful, and MAC’s apology seemed almost too brief, too general, and insincere. “Yeah, sure, um… we’ll give some money to, uh, some charity or something…yeah…”
The performing the Border article makes a great connection between the enviroment the maquiladora women work in and the dehumanizing effect it creates for them. I have one beef with her argument and that's in her reasoning for the serial killing of these young, innocent women. The description left a strong impression with me, so that my overall sympathy was with these women, but in reasoning the serial killings by the dehumanization already set in place by the working environment of these women, the author is also saying that these criminals are helpless to their perception of them. I would like to point out that many of the cultural implications like machismo also dehumanize women in Mexico, but you wouldn't say that men are helpless in taking on this attitude. there has to be some kind of agency for these terrible murders to take place. I understand these men really lose it in order to be capable of such terrible things, but to put it all on the environment takes off the responsibilty of the individual for these actions.
Another interesting effect of the article is that it creates an image of the maquiladora woman as a walking paradox, because in a sense they are helpless but also incredibly strong. They mention the women defying their gender roles by going to dance clubs and strip clubs for women, but also resorting to prostitution for extra money, so that they are not completely free from their objectiveness. Similarly, they are corageous to walk at dangerous hours to work, but this is when as the author describes it 'the distinction between night and day is blurred' and they ultimately become the victims of rape and murder. The maquiladora woman, then, is a courageous and modern one, but cannot seem to escape the objectivity that preceeds her. An objectivity that I would argue is enhanced by their working environment but not created by it. In my opinion, machismo has a greater role in the continuous dehumanizing of Mexican women whether in the border or not.
As I was reading the MAC make-up article I was really disturbed to see that people would name make-up after “factory”, “Ghost town”, and “del Norte” and actually think there is nothing wrong with that. Eventhough MAC cosmetics apologized, I strongly feel that wasn’t enough. In fact, I feel it was more of a ‘slap on the face’ and brushed it off. What angered me even more was that this line was inspired when they took a ‘road trip’ and wanted to ‘celbrate the beauty in the areas they found’. Unless I’m missing something, I just cant understand what’s so beautiful of women being killed because of drug wars, horrible working conditions in the factories, and women being raped. I don’t understand how MAC, being a cosmetic line whose primary consumers are women, would go to this extreme and not be sensitive to these issues, instead it serves as a form of oppression of other women.
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