The female body has long been a site for power struggles, both political and aesthetic. A force of creation and destruction, women's bodies are confined, denied, and vied for. In The Fat Studies Reader, Christina Fisanick writes: "Femininity is not a descriptor, but rather an ideological system in which all people participate...The female body, then, is femininity's site for struggle and its vehicle for expression and coercion."(160) Using three examples of disparate womanhood - Hedda from Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Sartje Baartman from Suzan-Lori Parks' Venus, and Helen from Neil LaBute's Fat Pig - I will attempt to negotiate how each playwright personifies "femininity", and how that compares and/or contrasts to the expectations of women in the historical moment in which the play was written. In the case of Venus, though it is a contemporary play, I will look at the historical moment it deals with, as well. Hedda's pregnancy, Sartje's race, and Helen's fatness are all marks of difference/other-ness in their respective societies, which are inscribed on their bodies. How do their bodies trouble our notions of femininity, power dynamics, and ways of being? I will also discuss how the actor's body would inform each play, potentially complicating the ideas of the play, or adding to its dramatic power. Should it be merely acting talent that directors take into consideration, or does the actor's body in our reality have to mesh with the play's reality? Theorists that will inform my research will be varied, but may include Judith Butler, Sandra Bartky, Michel Foucault, Peggy Phelan, and Julia Kristeva.
Fisanick, Christina. "Fatness (In)Visible: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and the Rhetoric of Normative Femininity." The Fat Studies Reader. Eds. Esther D. Rothblum and Sondra Solovay. New York: New York UP, 2009. Print.
1 comment:
Jess,
This is an exciting project, but a vast one. My first suggestion is that you look for a stronger commonality between the works you compare. It seems clear to me that all three roles—Hedda, Sartje and Helen—are about women who are, in varying ways, “fat.” Hedda’s fatness is of course impending, but there is no question that pregnancy changes the way we see a female subject; as the tabloid press proves again and again, it invites a unique scrutiny of the body for signs of distortive abnormality that are present already (albeit in a different anatomical and signifying register) in Sartje and Helen.
Second, is the primary interest of this project really historical? If so, can each work really stand in for a given period’s cultural understanding of femininity? On the one hand, the problem I see here is methodological, since I doubt the power of the single (and unique) example to stand in for a place and time. This is the problem of metonymy that Jackson addresses. On the other, I invite you to consider whether your interest is in shifting cultural values over time, or in the question you pose subsequently: “Should it be merely acting talent that directors take into consideration, or does the actor's body in our reality have to mesh with the play's reality?” Here you bring out a fascinating problem in the performance of a play like Fat Pig, which is whether the humiliation to which Helen is subject extends to the actor as well as the role. What exactly is being performed here? (And on this front, you might look to the debate around Charlize Theron’s uglification in Monster and the casting of Gabourey Sidibe in Precious for a powerful expression of the cultural confusion, not to say idiocy, on the subject of what makes a woman’s film performance Oscar-worthy). Your project also raises for me Samuel Hunter’s The Whale (now running in NY), in which the lead actor, Shuler Hensley wears a fat suit. The distinction between male and female fatness as/and performance seems to me really intriguing.
(see a compilation of major review of The Whale here: http://www.stagegrade.com/productions/1129 )
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