[Vwoolf] staging female author suicides

Jean Mills millsj7 at gmail.com
Tue Jun 25 11:19:33 EDT 2013


I am grateful for this on-going discussion, and am especially in agreement
with the comments made by Kimberly Coates, Kristin Czarnecki, Jean
Mallinson, Brenda Helt,Tonya Krouse, and Jeanette Smyth, early on. The
spread made me feel manipulated, violated, and disgusted as a woman, a
Woolf scholar, a feminist, a survivor, a human being, and, if I may be so
bold, a fashionista (although one might find that point to be esp in
contention, as it is true I am far away from my undergraduate years, and
yet continue to wear sweatpants to the library!), and the input here on the
listserv really helped me to navigate the initial jolt from Vice.

I often feel the same way when I view much of photojournalism (not that I'm
characterizing the spread as such, I'm not), especially images of violence
and war. I was particularly interested in Jeanette's comments on genocide
art and snuff porn, and began to think of the ways in which this
conversation might intersect with, say, Lee Miller's Vogue spread, with a
narrative laid upon it, of dead SS, and the pictures of her in Hitler's
bathtub, etc. which I guess in certain photos might be characterized as the
Nazi body in pain being aestheticized, feminized, and eroticized, the
snuffers being snuffed.

It also led me back, thankfully, and not uncommonly, to Woolf's Three
Guineas, where she, with her usual profound eloquence, refuses (notice the
present tense, here) to show the pictures of the dead children from the
Spanish Civil War, but displays instead the photographs of the patriarchs
in charge of policy---military, religious, legal, and cultural---policy,
whose decisions affect us, our hearts and minds (with a little shout out to
the obscene Vietnam war), in very real terms.

An artist (and an entrepreneur, for that matter) would do well to study
that text, for I feel that he or she would discover a much more provocative
and profitable way not only to make art, but to sell some incredibly sexy
clothes, as well.

I see the spread as a disappointment (I, too, loathe the proliferation of
"artist statements" online that claim or attempt to direct my perception
and apprehension of the piece) and as a colossal, yet run-of-the-mill
failure of the human imagination.

Jean


On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Melanie White <melanie.white at comcast.net>wrote:

>
> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/18/193014174/book-news-vice-draws-ire-by-staging-female-author-suicides?utm_source&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130617
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> Someone said this has been taken down now. ****
>
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-- 
Jean Mills, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
English Department
John Jay College
524 West 59th Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10019

212.237.8706
JEMILLS at JJAY.CUNY.EDU
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