Thursday, October 13, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Gidget as traditional
Byrnes, P 2007 Movies that conjure an endless summer. Sydney Morning Herald Viewed 7th July 2011 <http://www.smh.com.au/news/film/movies-that-conjure-an-endless-summer/2007/12/25/1198345008852.html>
Gidget as radical
SARCASTATHON3000, 2010, Make It A Date: Gidget, Viewed 7th July 2011 http://dangerrampling.wordpress.com/2010/08/
Gidget as childlike
Seablanket. 2007 {Style Crush: Sandra Dee as Gidget} Viewed 7th July 2011, http://seablanket.blogspot.com/2010/07/style-crush-sandra-dee-as-gidget.html
References:
Berry, S (2000) Screen Style: Fashion and femininity in 1930s Hollywood. University of Minnesota Press, USA pp 1-46.
Booth, D, 1996, Surfing Films and Videos: Adolescent Fun, Alternative Lifestyle, Adventure Industry University of Otago journal of sport history volume 23 number 3, fall 1996.
Campbell, N, 2004, American Youth Cultures, Edinburgh university press, UK pp237, 238, 242, 259.
Gidget, 1959, motion picture, Columbia pictures corporation, California. USA.
Gordon, D, Gidget Girls. Newsweek, 00289604, 8/19/2002, Vol. 140, Issue 8
Granat, K. 2002 Golden State, Golden Youth: The California Image in Popular Culture, 1955-1966. May, University of North Carolina Press.
Lewis, P, 1978, The fifties, the cupid press, Woodbridge, UK. Pp 42-64.
Nash, 2002. "Nowhere Else to Go": Gidget and the Construction of Adolescent Femininity.
Feminist Media Studies November 1, 2002 p. 341-357.
Gidget and the ‘new’ representation of femininity
Charles Eckert famously argued that ‘Hollywood arguably gave modern consumerism its distinctive bent. Please present ONE example of a link you have found between film and the consumption of fashion. This can be an individual star of any cinema in any decade past or present; or it may be a particular film that you believe influenced fashion in some way or genre (e.g. detective)
Your essay MUST be analytical, rather than descriptive.
During the 1950s, women were proud to have their identity built around being a wife and a mother, following direction from the writings of Dr Bowlby and Dr Spock. However, the findings of Dr Kinsey with their revelation about women’s sexuality, revolutionized social dynamics. Stars like Monroe and Bardot personified these findings. Playboy began being published. The sentiment of housewives waned toward the end of the ‘50s, when they sought relief from boredom. The Feminine Mystique was being written, to ask, “Is this all?” During the same period, rise in youth power was a demographic fact, with films earlier in the 50s, representing this fear of the rise of youth and delinquency. At the intersection of this ambivalence in identity regarding traditional and new femininity, and child versus adult, came the film Gidget.
Gidget was Hollywood’s first surf film, and was heralded as creating a new feminine icon, a girl with a ‘can do’ attitude, who defies stereotypes, and makes it as one of the boys. Gidget made surfing popular, and showed girls that it is not just a boy’s terrain. It had potential to be a feminist text, where the ‘active men, passive women’ gender binary was challenged. However, on closer analysis of the film, it does more to reinforce traditional social values than it does to revolutionize the way women are portrayed. This essay will analyse Gidget’s adolescent, childlike, radical female, and traditional female representations. Gidget is an important film in regard to the way it shaped the fashion f adolescent female identity. Gidget is constructed as: part of the adolescent culture, a naïve childlike girl unable to assume a façade. She is depicted as a brave woman standing up in a man’s world, yet this radicalness is undermined by her resumption of traditional 1950s dress and gender roles.
Adolescent and Childlike
In the mid 1950s, Hollywood began producing films centered around the adolescent, capitalizing upon the societal fear of the rising power of delinquent youth. Films including Rebel without a cause, (1953) Blackboard Jungle, (1955) Juvenile jungle (1958) and Dangerous youth (1958) exemplify this. Gidget represents a new kind of filmic teenage representation. The film breaks away from the delinquent representation of youth, toward a cleaner, more saccharine image. She is portrayed as an innocent teeny bopping tomboy. Gidget tackles issues relevant to teenagers of the time, however she is also portrayed in an immature, childlike manner.
The theme of youth culture is established in the film when the opening song says ‘She acts sort of teen age,’ later her parents call Gidget a ‘teenage daughter.’ Gidget was produced at a time when the first generation of post WWII baby boomers reached adolescence. She represented the consumerism of the group, with her car, surfboards, swimsuits, and leisure time. There were sexual elements to beachside representation; women were dressed scantily in bikini, and muscular men were topless in tight shorts. Gidget was the start of a wave of surf movies, and rise in popularity of surf music. This influenced youth style. Bleached blond hair and goatees, T-shirts and striped Pendleton shirts, narrow white Levi jeans and Ray-Ban sunglasses were worn, instead of greasy hair and pegger pants. (Booth 1996. P.315) Surfing also influenced the argot of teenagers, “like wow,” “daddy-o,” and “strictly squaresville” are examples of popularized phrases. Surfing popularized a free, idealistic, fun. Attitude (Booth 1996. P.315)
However, to make the film more palatable: offensive but accurate aspects of adolescence, which were in the Gidget book, were eschewed from the film. This included references to Playboy, marijuana, and words like ‘Bitchin’” (Kirse 2002) There was also concern about how much media power to grant adolescents, and what the ramifications would be. (Nash, 2002) Concern about teenagers influencing the adult world was shown in magazines like Esquire, and books like Teenage Tyranny. They saw teens as ‘retarding agents upon American civilization’, which was in danger of becoming a ‘teen-age society’, with thought, culture and goals no more advanced than the teenage level. They saw American society as ‘growing down’ (Grace Hechinger and Fred M. Hechinger 1963: x).
Gidget’s teenage representation borders on childlike; she is shown as naïve and unable to assume any deceptive façades. Contrasted to the other girls around her, and previous swimwear film stars like Esther Williams; Gidget’s beach wear is unstructured, with her costume sagging over her body in a child like manner. This lack of sartorial sophistication is intensified by her large snorkel and flippers. Her arms are skinny and gangly, and she fiddles uncomfortably with her swimsuit. Her skin is very white, contrasted to the tanned, weathered men at the beach. This further positions her as innocent and childlike. Gidget’s high-pitched voice and emotive, melodramatic, rambling script further possess her as child like and unsophisticated. This could be perceived as giving her authenticity as a good, innocent girl who is unable to assume a façade. Her unsophisticated persona is also represented by her loss of composure when asking her father for money. “Gee I’d be extra super careful…oh please? Now honest surfing is out of this world, you just can’t even imagine the thrill of shooting the curl…Honest to goodness mother this surfboard is a gilt edged guarantee to a summer of sheer happiness.”
She has the same character trait at the beach with the girls. When contrasted to her friends, who carefully construct an attractive persona around the boys, Gidget is again seen to be naïve and authentic when she is clumsy around the boys. At the start of the film, she reminisces about previous summers, where the girls were not ‘manhunting.’ The lyrics of the title song say ‘She’s just a baby.’
The male surfers make jokes and talk about her sexual attractiveness; but she is constructed as too naive to understand, thinking they are just talking about surfing. One of the guys says, “Hey, some pull out, huh” Speaking of Moondoggie (Jeffrey) bringing Gidget out of the ocean. She thinks they are talking about riding the wave in, and says “yeah, wasn’t it!” She also doesn’t understand the meaning of the word orgy. In her initiation surf, she squeals and is dependant upon Moondoggie to do the surfing for her. Moondoggie introduces her to a lady “this is the kid I was telling you about” She later says “will you fellas stop treating me like an infant!” The Kahuna emphasises her childlike qualities by contrasting her. He has a deep voice, is cool and together, speaking in short, clear lines. He calls her pet names, like angel, in a friendly, yet macho and patronising way. This is exemplified in the scene where she rambles and begs to go to the luau; he calls her baby doll and asks if she ever gives up. She goes on a rant about working hard for something that you want. The Kahuna concisely replies “Oh, it’s no skin off my nose what you do” Her authenticity and naivety are also shown by her later conversation with Kahuna, where she pushes her own point of view and lacks understanding about how what she says will influence him. She says “Well everybody is, is working in life toward some sort of goal, well I mean, I mean [sic] you don’t have a goal.” This clearly makes him uncomfortable, and he changes the subject.
Radical female
Gidget is established as a tomboy who doesn’t fit the social norms. Her friends take her to the beach on a ‘manhunt,’ she begrudgingly attends but spoils their image in front of the men. The representation of women contrasts the representation in swimwear films starring Esther Williams. Williams in films including Million Dollar Mermaid, Neptune’s Daughter, and Dangerous When Wet, plays a career driven woman who treats eligible men brusquely. The men persist and she finally gives in. However, in Gidget, her peers make themselves available to men, but the men are disinterested. Their swimsuits are used as a tool to attract men. Gidget contrasts her desperate friends by wearing a demure swimsuit. She makes her friends look unattractively desperate and high maintenance. This espousal of the low maintenance look can be linked to Brigitte Bardot’s style legacy. Bardot and Gidget are both more underdressed compared to their peers, yet they are the ones the men find most desirable. Providing social context is the character Kahuna, an ex WWII pilot who now spends his life surfing and living on the beach. There is an Esther Williams style pin up on the wall of his hut, suggesting that he is attracted to women who are fit and active, like Gidget. This suggests that society is moving away from the traditional 1950s feminine ideal of a conservative woman in New Look style dress.
As Anne Taylor Fleming observed: Gidget was a transitional figure from 1950s femininity to the 1960s women’s movement. She achieved this through her perky demeanor, which still made her seem cute and innocent, yet masked her assertiveness. Cuteness allowed her to get her way, while still seeming feminine and submissive to patriarchs. (Nash 2002)
Surfing in Malibu in the 1950s was rough and competitive, regardless of gender. The girls were required to be strong and stand their ground against men who would cut in on their wave. One of the main reasons women didn’t surf as much was that the redwood surfboards were 60 pounds (Gordon, 2002) The men in Gidget claim it is ‘too dangerous for girls.’ This description of the subculture makes it admirable that Gidget fought her way in. Her defiance of convention has been described as legendary, particularly given what her nickname represents. Gidget is a portmanteau of girl and midget. Gidget is shown to be brave and headstrong when she attacks Moondoggie’s lady, saying, “you’d better get out of the sun before you melt!”
Gidget’s challenge of submissive feminine modes is not confined to the beach. Her contrast to the traditional feminine modes is seen when she keenly offers to mow the lawns, a traditionally men’s job. Later, her dad yells at her to turn off her music the ‘infernal racket’, and she mutters “infernal racket, no wonder they call them the lost generation.” Gidget manipulates her parents into providing funds for her surfboard. She even talks to the vendor about getting credit, representing the rise in economic power of the adolescent. Her authentic and naïve disposition is challenged when she goes to the luau. She has a blunt conversation with her parents, who are offended that she is going to a party where she is not welcome, and has used bribery to get in. Gidget is upset by the conversation, and finishes it with the suggestion that she will also give the man sex as a payment. Gidget finds that, paradoxically, Moondoggie is filling in for the man she paid to be her date, to make Moondoggie jealous. Her manipulative, constructed side is revealed as she feigns wanting to make the Kahuna jealous. She is confident, and womanly and makes Moondoggie think that she will find someone else to do the job, if he does a bad job at pretending to be interested in her.
The issue of premarital sex is acknowledged in a scene where she goes with Kahuna to a house. There are severe ramifications from the parental generation for this action. A neighbour calls the police, who are active in disciplining this behaviour. They tell Gidget’s father; “just a tip sir, kids need some supervision, a little parental interest in what they’re doing.” This demonstrates the conservativeness of the parental generation, and difficulty for youth to break free of these expectations.
Gidget drives herself home, which alludes to films with powerful females, such as Neptune’s daughter where Williams drives herself home. Later in the film, Gidget’s father arranges a date for her, with the man who turns out to be Moondoggie. Frances has changed in demeanor. She appears more sophisticated as she is unhappy and speaks in a low tone, in considered sentences.
The radical message of the film in counteracted, as shown in deeper analysis. The way Gidget got into surfing is that she had been snorkeling, and got caught in a patch of kelp. Moondoggie came to her rescue, putting her on his board and surfing her in to shore. This hardly constructs her as a tough tomboy looking to break free of constraining modes of femininity, instead, as helpless, reliant on men, and child-like. Despite some feminine agency shown, the film depicts Gidget’s battles as easily won. All she has to do for the money is to plead with her daddy, helped by her mother. The boys were willing to help her generously in learning to surf, and she is taken under the wing of Kahuna, the most respected surfer. The film shows that all she had to do to become a good surfer was to read books and practice on a waterbed.
For the power the film gives its star, it also takes a lot away. Gidget is represented as silly and chaotic. She is ridiculed and subordinated as young and female. Overall, the film positions girls as politically harmless, but sexually enjoyable. Gidget is under the control of a triple pronged patriarchy- lover, father, society, The feminine radicalness is softened by the fact that at the end of the movie, she makes her parents happy by dating a man of their choice who is set to go to college. The twist is that this man was the one she had fallen for while surfing during the summer. Moondoggie was a ‘well of Princeton man masquerading as a beach bum, fulfilling both the teenage and the adult ideals.’ (Kirse, 2002, p75) There is sharp contrast between the young, cool beach image, and the conservative ‘New look’ style dress in front of her parents.
Hollywood created a consumer item out of the subculture, making surfing mainstream, and no longer radical. The nonchalant mindset of the true surfer girl is described in this quote, but it is questionable whether Gidget personifies this. Her desperate actions to get Moondoggie, and fit in, typecast her as more of a self-loathing Ophelia than a tough surf girl.
“In an age of popular panics about self-loathing ‘Ophelia’s’ and competitive ‘queen bees,’ the new surfer girl’s mental health appears stable and secure, guaranteed by sports activities…keeps intact her femininity, meaning she does not denounce her ‘girl-ness’ and, in effect, insists that girl-ness be valued, taken seriously.” (Campbell 2004 p. 238)
Traditional female
The man as viewer, woman as spectacle binary is established in the first beach scene where Gidget’s friends strip down and parade in their swimsuits in front of the admiring, cheering boys.
The traditional modes of femininity are represented in the home, where Gidget’s mother gives her father a massage as he has a headache, and Gidget offers to get him his pipe and slippers. Gidget shows respect for her parents, and when she does lose her temper, she is remorseful. When Gidget (Frances) talks to her mum about her lack of desire to date, her mother does not say that it does not matter if she becomes a single, self-sufficient woman, rather, telling her to wait. This suggests that there is no other option than the traditional role of the woman as a lover and mother. Her mother later reaffirms the social norm that men must take the first step in love. “One of the advantages of being a girl is that its not up to you, It’s up to the young man.” Her mother snuffs out the sense of Gidget’s feminist fire by reinforcing these traditional stereotypes.
Despite her comment ‘this is the way I like it, just kids horsing around,’ her role within the surfing group becomes a romantic one. She is seen in her room doing exercises, which supposedly increased bust size. She sees this as her ticket to getting to the luau. Any agency she showed in daring to fit in with the surfers is marginalized by her desperation to win Moondoggie at the luau. The method she plans to woo him is unconventional, and manipulative by making him jealous and hiring another date.
The final scene reinforces the traditional social values and shows resumption of adult responsibility. (Kirse 2002. P 76) The couple are dressed in formal clothes walking along the beach, Kahuna has given up the ‘beach bum’ lifestyle, and Moondoggie and Gidget are returning to their studies. He wears a suit; she wears a New Look style white dress. Kahuna is knocking down his beach shack, a symbol of letting go of this lifestyle. His bags are packed as he has taken a job as a pilot. He took this job because Gidget got him thinking, he says that she is quite a woman. Gidget refers to her grandmother’s embroidery, which says ‘to be a real woman is to bring out the best in a man’. This implies that ‘bringing out the best’ in Kahuna meant encouraging him to relinquish his surf bum lifestyle, and take a respectable job. This contradicts the glorification of the freedom of surfing that the whole film has stood for. The lyrics of the song ‘Gidget’ reinforce the traditional expectations placed on her. “Although she’s not king size, Her finger is ring size.”
Gidget’s story is marked with conformity to traditional roles, despite her membership in a mildly rebellious surfing clique. (Kirse 2002 p. 76.) The film was successful because of its saccharine representation of youth, at a time when delinquency was of great concern. Though Gidget had potential to represent a new type of femininity, empowering women to compete in the leagues of men, the conclusion of the film adheres to traditional feminine stereotypes, reinforcing existing ideals. However, Gidget’s legacy did focus on the idea of empowerment of women. It was the first film of its kind, on the vanguard of surf girl filmic representation. Though its representation of strong women may not have been ideal, Gidget paved the way for a new train of though about 1950s adolescent women. Gidget signifies the transition to the fashion of tough femininity of the 1960s. Gidget taught women that as long as you act cute, you can be tough, and get what you want without being offensive.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
fashademic: The Incorporation of Bloggers Continues
Finding this post on Fashademic today made me think of our class discussion yesterday. Having bloggers bought out by a larger company verifies this idea that it is rare to find things that have no commercial spin!
fashademic: The Incorporation of Bloggers Continues: "Industrie Magazine Bryanboy, Fashion Toast, Style by Kling and the Industrie Magazine blogs are all now being hosted by a new platform, NOW..."
Monday, July 4, 2011
Class Summary of readings
‘Undressing Cinema’.
This article addresses the use of clothes as mechanisms of display. It favours high fashion, and discusses Edith Head's role in Sabrina. She was superseded as a costume designer by Givenchy in terms of grandeur. This constructs costume design as less important than the role of the couturier. Film fashions were no longer subservient to the plot, character and camera, but they were upgraded to become a spectacle in their own right. Chanel’s aim is to project beauty upon the woman wearing it. She had an interesting idea that is a woman's dress was seen as beautiful, she was dressed badly, but if she was seen to be beautiful, then she was dressed well. This idea relates to the theory about the fashioned construction of a facade. The superficiality of a fashioned appearance is uncovered in the makeover films which hollywood favours. What Chanel is suggesting is that the more seamless this representation is, the more she adopts this fashioned persona, the more beautiful she will appear. Chanel and YSL film costumes were often minimalist, but supported the character. Armani played an important role in the transformation of male fashioned identity. Men used to have to dress them selves in film. Now; it is not exclusively feminine to dress well. Gaultier designs for the narrative, Chanel does not. She imposed her own narrative through the clothes. Film can be a vehicle for a particular designer’s fashion. Look at live action film and animation. There is a real art to designing costumes for animation.
'Hot Couture: Brigitte Bardot’s Fashion Revolution'.
Brigitte grew up in a wealthy setting with a very fashionable, well connected mother. Started a Childlike fashion revival, including gingham and broderie anglaise. Emblem of youth with overtly feminine dress +radical American youth clothes: James Dean’s jeans. Beatnik Duffle coats.
Bardot’s generation had economic freedom, but not social, therefore used delinquency and Cinephilia as outlets. She was essentially revolting against the feminine construct which had been presented to her by her mother and her mother's peers.
Her clothes: child like but ostentatiously sexualized.
Choucroute hairstyle combined invitation and defiance. Simultaneously said fuck me, and fuck you. ‘Bardot adopted and promoted fashion that liberated the body (and hair) from the constraints of rigid couture outfits, leaving behind bourgeois conventions.’ Simplicity and cheapness.
Bardot rejected couture as ‘for grannies’ and promoted young designers. Bardot’s clothes easily reproducible, so she was the centre of fashion production and consumption change. Youth and joie de vivre. She was an essential figure in the rise of the teenager and the working class.
Her ‘highly sexed behaviour lost its appeal in 'the permissive age', her fashion sense was no longer innovative.’
Bardot in 2011 has formed a completely different identity. Now it is ‘offensive’ to look as if she does not give a toss. Going against the constructed image.
'Brad and George'.
Brad- Acessible. George- smooth guy, unavailable. Not dressed in a sexualized way. Out of Sight. Only time his body is shown, even then, he is in white boxer shorts, and not sexualized. Brad is body, George is brain. He covered up body has more mystique than the naked body. Cary Grant was bisexual. Rock Hudson was gay. George models himself around these images. Narrow set of types in cinema. Needs to be challenged. Not enough is written on this. Women had to fight a lot, for feminism… have learnt articulation about empowerment for gender, but men have not learnt this. Masculinity needs to be written about.
With marketing and branding, be inventive!!!! All of the good decisions were made by people outside the business. The Player. Robert Altman. Opening sequence. Nashville.
'The taste of time'.
Postwar shifts in taste. Stylistic differences in Architecture. Blue poles. Jackson Pollock painting. Government acquired it. Says culture is important. Started Australian society looking at art.
Bauhaus. Postwar emphasis on individuality, but was actually unsuccessful.
'The Fifties'.
Social oppression of women. Married young. Their duty to society. Happy housewife. Women’s place was raising families, not in the workplace. Helped equality in some ways. Togetherness. Men came back into the home after work, and helped out. McKinsey report. Women sexuality equal or higher to men. This changed the representation of women, which was portrayed in film. Sex had been the domain of men, not of women. Women were seen to just put up with it. New contraception enabled this freedom. Shift in puritan values. Cone bra. Sex symbol. Celebrity scene. Jane Mansfield. Breasts insured for $1,000,000. What happened outside the film was just as important as what happened inside. Mansfield and Bardot portrayed a new childlike sexuality. Now, not a shift in the type of women portrayed, just shifting it trend-wise.
Child-like glorification. Why can’t people grow up? Extension of childhood started postwar. Bardot image acknowledges this. Before that, you weren’t taken seriously unless you were an adult. Teenagers were considered valid.
Media in the ‘50s was very censored. Women’s sexual roles changed. Enabled the revolution of the ‘60s.
Now still censorship. Radical sites now; Wikileaks. No editing or opinions, just information.
Politics, subcultures, fashion, art, architecture… sources for information are controlled by the dollar. We think we live in radical times. Some things change, but some things don’t change at all.
General knowledge. To be truly inventive you need to look outside of your area of expertise, not cannibalise it.
Now; source of knowledge is so easy to access that it does not require a difficult journey to obtain specific information. We know the google stores the information, so we do not worry about storing it ourselves.
Red eye records.
Think there will be a reaction by humans, against information overload. Relate this to design practise. If you want to make a mark in design, you have to take a risk in your sources, usually go offline.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Fashion film project notes
Model must not look at the camera at the end of the shot. Gives you leeway to edit.
Bring in a tripod.
Cut between controlled shots, and frantic shots.
Control in the sity, intercut with interiors out of control.
Really controlled women are usually very out of control on the inside.
Exterior symbolizes exterior of control. Interior symbolizes she is a woman of appetites and lack of control.
Follow her. Pace… longer on her control, then bang bang bang lack of control. Business end of the city. Sydney uni. Macquarie street. Finance end of town. Hunter street downwards. Near the ivy. Chifley tower.
Monday- hand in films with articulate group presentation.Be definite about how scenes are set up. Get arty with the food. Food porn. Materialist consumption of food. Link between fashion porn and food porn. Shot list. Talent costume, makeup. Props, locations/sets, lighting, crew, equipment. Shoot film extra at top and tail of the shot you want. Get little bits, like feet, to fill out the movie. Think about the dynamics and psychology of shots. Logistics, schedule, and shotlist for Tuesday. Schedule- pre production, production and post production. Early john waters. Watch them Strong conceptual framework
When making video, consider audience. Be bold and simple.
Beginning, middle and end.
Restrcitons of mobile phones. Panning shots and zoom ins don’t work too well. Need to do them slowly, but can use the blur to your advantage to create the mood.
Be inventive. Panning on wheels.
Lighting. Steady.
Handheld. make sure you’re leaning on something. Wall, table. Clamp it. Hardware. With case to protect the phone.
Biggest thing is planning. Concept. Have ideas on Monday.
Storyboard. Show breakdown. Locations. Actors/ models, props. Costume accessories. Special effects. Makeup, backgrounds. Audio. Schedule. Who what when, where.
Continuity. from different angles. Leaps in the air. Eyeline.body direction.
Fashion film festivals. David lynch. 3 minutes. Storyboard it out so you know what you’re doing.
,
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Avant Garde Fashion film inspiration- Osaka kid and the predators
Osaka Kid and The Predators from Hello Family on Vimeo.
The narrative and costuming in this film is strong. It has a very intriguing aesthetic and storyline, which inspired us to create something contemporary and Avant Garde.
Lecture 6- Beyond Hollywood.
Brigitte bardot. 1950s france very conservative. had children out of wedlock. For young french women, she represented youth rebellion. And god created woman. With one line, brought couture to an end. “I bought it in a little boutique in the village(paraphrase)” Bardot was representative of a casual youth culture. She still had sex appeal through her figure, and her hair and make up, but this casual chic made other women feel overdressed. She bypassed traditional modes of fashion portrayal.The following are films and actors referenced in the lecture, which are important to watch and understand, to have a deeper understanding of this theory.
Caherine Deneuve.
Belle de jour. Bourgeois housewife. Dressed by YSL.
Sophia Loren, la ciociara, 1960. Italian icon. Steven Gundle theorist on glamour.
Italian film from the ‘70s Il conformista.
Juliette Greco beatnik chic of the ‘50s. black jumper represents political protest and existential philosophy. Audrey tidied up that look, and made it acceptable.
Anna Karina
A bout de soufflé (breathless) 1959.
The birth of the cool. The book.
Pierre bourdieu- taste is a marker of social class.
Crossdressing- Richard Dyer says that it emphasizes the performative nature of dress.
In the mood for love, 2000. Cheongsams. Set in 1960s HK. Made costumes with 1960s upholdtery fabrics.
New Chinese cinema of the ‘90s. gong li.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Notes about Gidget, from Campbell, N, 2004, American Youth Cultures, Edinburgh university press, UK pp237-…
237
“In the history of surfing, two such ‘takeovers’ figure prominently: the first signaled in the late 1950 to mid 1960s by the litereary sensation turned mass cultural icon ‘gidget’; the second by what we might think of as the arrival of girl power in surf communities in the mid-1990s.’
238
‘If the Gidget phenomenon generated subcultural foreboding about the potential costs to surf culture of its own newfound popularity, it also generated a host of creative and financial possibilites which, as they were explored and realized over the next two decades, financed many a surfer’s primary desire: to be in the water for hours on end. Whether it was working in the movie business as a stunt surfer, founding magazines and making films that told the story of how mass culture got surfing all wrong, or providing equipment and information to the subculture’s expanding commercial base, many of the era’s best known surfers got in on the ground floor of the popularization process and rode it to places that nobody imagined surfing, or a surfer would go.’
‘During the early cold war period, mass culture’s representations of beachy California youth served to school baby boomer adolescents in the how to’s of living the postwar good life: conformity, consumerism, mobility and WASPy niceness equaled ‘decent’ American youth. When the subculture ‘wrote back’ after Gidget to say that mass culture had sugarcoated and, in effect, feminised surfing, it countered with images of surfers as rebelliously masculine, sensual, anti materialist social drop outs- not a discourse about American youth as readily adaptive to cold war national alert. It is this tension between mass cultural and subcultural ‘ownership’ of surfing narratives that, in fact enabled the subculture over the next three decades to produce itself as a viable alternative public culture, eventually a functioning and very masculinist counter-culture.’
Outlaw surf culture is sexy and bohemian.
‘in an age of popular panics about self-loathing ‘Ophelias’ and competitive ‘queen bees,’ the new surfergil’s mental health appears stable and secure, guaranteed by sports activities…keeps intact her feminity, meaning she does not denounce her ‘girl-ness’ and , in effect, insists that girl-ness be valued be valued, taken seriously.’
242
Desirous of importing more females into the ranks of surfing amenable already (a legacy of Gidget) to the playfulness of girl cultures, women surfers/ business owners made it a central goal to recruit girls into male-dominated surf communities.
259
The gidget phenomenon includes 6 gidget novels, appearing between 1957 and 1968, some selling over a million copies, and reprinted in 10 languages, the Gidget films 1958-1963. As well as the dozens of beach blanket films spawned by gidget, and the tv series gidget. The most sustained commentary on this cultural trend is to be found in Kirse Granat May 2002. Historical figure Kathy Kohner upon whom gidget was based.
Contemporary society, a new market for surf stories.
Hollywood creating consumer item out of subcutlture.
Can include 3 or 4 images. Introduction. State the obvious. Reference images. Have a conclusion at the end, to wrap everything up. Make it engaging. Really hone things down to concise statements.
Ideas to explore:
rise of youth consumption. Middle class. Gender wise. Embodied… women physical. More child like. Gidget. Constructed image for a market, and for a type of consumption.
Films worth watching, as recommended by Pamela Church-Gibson
1917. Eisenstein ivan terrible. Alexander Nevsky. Russia
Man with a movie camera. Dziga Vertov
German. Sunrise. F.W. Murnau City Girl. Hollywood. City scenes.
Metropolis. 1930. Envisaged the future.
Citizen Kane.
The rules of the game. 1969.
French new wave.
Italian cinema of the 50s and 60s.
Read Church-Gibson’s journal. Film, Fashion and consumption. http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=203/
La dolce vita!
British new wave. 60s. Darling. Julie Christie.
60s. new Hollywood. Easy rider. Bonnie and Clyde.
Japanese cinema. Kurosawa. Macbeth, king lear. Vosnu.
New Chinese cinema. Raise the red lantern.
Xena burton 20s.
50s. America andy warhol’s films. Chelsea girls.
Brokeback mountain.
Hindi films!!!! Biggest film industry in the world. Has its way of selling clothes.
Planning our Film
Things to consider:
Message: fast fashion is not sustainable or healthy
Concept
protagonist represents the mainstream consumer. She consumes fashion in a unsustainable way. She is always in search of the next trend, the latest release, the hot items. However she is never fulfilled and is in constant search to end her hunger.
Job: High level creative corporate.
Marital status: Single
Education:
Visual representation:
· Greed: the way she physically consumes the food- grotesque consumption
· Pace of the film- speeding up of the film shots, fast cuts, movement within the shot
· Use of music
Types of shots
· Close up shots of the eating
· Stairs- feet
· Elevator
· Close ups of clothing
Personas
The Interior= food consumption. The private self
Private self, what we hide from view, freedom to eat what they want, grotesque eating
· Dishevelled
· Unconventional style, not current trends
· Mismatched
· Kitsch
· Chaotic
Exteriors= public self
The persona we want the world to view us by
Women have control over their consumption
Women shouldn’t have appetites
Food consumption is controlled. Example eating a single pea, leaving 2 on the plate
Confessionals
· Up to date with current fashions, trendy but not to outlandish
· ‘workwear’ corporate cross evening
Locations
Control, power, glamour/ gloss, money
· Syd uni- new buildings, glass and metal- reflections. Views back towards the city OR building 10, aerial
· City- financial area, blight st
· Double Bay
· Food desire- cupcake shop, bakery, DJ food hall
· Trade halls building
Hot Couture: Brigitte Bardot’s Fashion Revolution.
Brigitte grew up in a wealthy setting with a very fashionable, well connected mother. It is interesting that she rejected this feminine ideal. The origin of the 1950's feminine ideal stemmed from the postwar reclamation of femininity. It is interesting, that perhaps Brigitte felt that women had sufficiently explored overt femininity, and felt the need to move toward a more androgynous dress sense. Brigitte, however, compensated for her relatively androgynous dress, by highly sexualised feminine styling, with emphasis on a small waist, pointed breasts, long legs, and sultry hair and makeup.
Started a Childlike fashion revival, including gingham and broderie anglaise. Emblem of youth with overtly feminine dress +radical amrican youth clothes: james dean’s jeans. Beatnik Duffle coats.
Bardot’s generation had economic freedom, but not social, therefore used delincincy and cinephilia as outlets.
Her clothes: child like but ostentatiously sexualized.
Choucroute hairstyle combined invitation and defiance. Simultaneously said fuck me, and fuck you. ‘Bardot adopted and promoted fashion that liberated the body (and hair) from the constraints of rigid couture outfits, leaving behind bourgeois conventions.’ Simplicity and cheapness.
Rejected couture as ‘for grannies’ and promoted young designers. Bardot’s clothes easily reproducible, so she was the centre of fashion production and consumption change. Youth and joie de vivre.
Her ‘highly sexed behaviour lost its appeal in the permissive age, her fashion sense was no longer innovative.’
Monday, June 27, 2011
Lecture 5- change, identity and rebellion.
Pamela gave us an overview of the history of subcultures:
First use of the word subculture was in the 1940s to describe gangs.
First real subculture was the zoot suit. Late ‘40s America. Malcolm x.
Bikers.
Teddy boys. Mods. Rockers.
Can you have a genuine subctulture anymore, or does it become too commercial. This idea of contemporary subcultures is intriguing. Perhaps designers are aware of the importance of 'trickle up' fashion, on top of simply 'trickle down' fashion, so they have their 'ear to the ground,' and are aware of underground trend movements.
Rockers- Hollywood.
Youth culture 1950s.
Rise of the teenager is a demographic fact.
High urban populations and improved standards of living.
The rise of the teenager as a consumer group
Disposable income and credits for young people.
Abolition of national service in some countries.
Not many young people went to university at that time.
Hay’s Code was relaxed!!! TV!!!! The Wild One 1953. Quite tame to see it, but it was banned. Fear that it would make people do bad things. Blackboard jungle. 1955. Rebel without a cause. 1955.
Teen movie now formulaic. As it has been done so much. Not another teen movie. Mean girls.
Easy Rider. The first road movie. First movie to have songs of the day as soundtrack rather than a score.
Alienated youth on a killing spree. Gun crazy 1950. Bonnie and clyde 1967. Clockwork orange 1971. Badlands 1973. Natural born killers 1994. Elephant 2004.
Subculture. Symbolic resistance through style. The problematics of lived class existence. Perhaps the reason contemporary subcultures, particularly in Australia, are more ambiguous, is the changed modes of communication ad activism. Perhaps youth feel empowered by social networking sites and the democratisation of media, that if they have something to revolt against, they are more likely to start a facebook group, than start a mob on the street.
All youth cultures, bar hippies, were largely working class. Had style. In 2011, mass production has allowed garments to be so cheap that class is not necessarily restrictive of sartorial identity, to such an extent as it was in previous eras, such as the golden age of couture, where the real and the fake had such a strong distinction.
Mods- young working classs men looking amazing in Italian tailoring. Was at a time when middle class men looked terrible and sloppy.
Bricolage. mods were bricoleurs. Take sharp tailoring, and arrange it differently to subvert its establishment meaning. Take pills and vespa, and make them status symbols, not functional objects. Metal combs. Union jacks. It was ok for men to talk to each other about clothes. ‘face’ façade. means look good. Influeced by Italian. Why la dolce vita was so important!! Quadrophenia. This is England.
Subculture; linked to notions of authenticity. Style leaders. Active and creative consumers. Innovative and original. Opposing bourgeois values. Resisting mass consumption and taste.
Point break.
Two methods of subculture recuperation. The commodity form, and the ideololdical form.
The girl can’t help it 1955.
Jailhouse rock- the only decent movie Elvis made. Came from the south, wore clothes from shops where only black men shopped. Zoot suit ish.
Jubilee 1977. Watch it. Derrick Jarman. About girl punks.
Sarah thornton. Subcultures not necessarily about resistance. Could have creative and commercial living side by side, not cancelling each other out. Mainstream and alternative boundaries are nto distinct.
Subcultures are defined and created by entrepreneurs. Taste cultures organized around subcultural capital.
Subcultural capital may not equal economic capital as successfully as cultural capital, but it still employs djs, club organizers, clothes designers…
Clubbed to death, french film. Not very good film
La Haine. Good powerful film.
Mc Robbie- girls and subcultures. Female youth culture were more private. Schools, girls bedrooms. Overpriveledge consumption over work and production. Magazine Jackie. Group behaviour.
Are there any current examples of Bricoleurs? Lady Gaga. She represents mainstream commodification of sartorial revolt.
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