A manifesta for feminist media criticism. Click here for part 1.

Because we are committed to critically analyzing systems of power in all their forms—but especially with regard to gender and media culture—and we want others to be as well.

Because we believe our culture and society can be better, and we can play an active role in transforming them.

Because we share in the fight to end oppression so all individuals everywhere can be who they want to be and reach their potential happily and without suffering.

Because we believe that biology is not destiny, that gender and other identity norms are socially constructed, and that they can and should be deconstructed.

Because we are angry at a society that continues to tell us that a woman’s first priority is to be sexy, that to be smart is to be unattractive, and that feminism is no longer necessary and/or that feminist = anti-male, feminist = humorless, and feminist = nazi.

Because too many of our female students, colleagues, and friends say, “I’m not a feminist,” despite acknowledging they want equality with men and don’t experience it in many aspects of their lives.

Because there are not more men who are willing to join our fight.

Because we refuse to assimilate to someone else’s standards of what makes a good scholar, teacher, artist, writer, activist, citizen, consumer, or person.

Because we understand the media industries as comprising the most powerful and influential social institution today, and they traffic in normative values harmful to many.

Because we want to destroy the domination of global media culture by those who want us to keep consuming whatever they churn out, buying whatever their sponsors are shilling, ignoring politics, hating ourselves, and competing with each other rather than producing our own media, working to end oppression, fighting for social justice, loving ourselves, and supporting each other.

Because we want more movies, TV shows, songs, games, websites, comics, radio programs, and news stories that don’t infantilize, hypersexualize, demonize, exoticize, marginalize, exclude, or demean us—or anyone else.

Because we value our media tastes and pleasures and want them affirmed rather than ignored for those of a more lucrative market.

Because we are troubled that popular culture has become more focused on sex and violence than when feminist media criticism emerged four decades ago.

Because women in the news are consistently discussed in relation to their appearance, and men hardly ever are.

Because we are frustrated that women are always seen as women first, and whatever other role we have is secondary.

Because Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to have earned the Academy Award for Best Director, and because most people don’t even know who Kathryn Bigelow is.

Because so many female characters on television are victims of assault and murder, and because so many girl characters are motherless and sisterless.

Because women-made and women-themed movies are considered “niche.”

Because the privileged role for girl musicians is still the sexy vocalist, and playing instruments continues to be seen as a “guy thing.”

Because many journalists see “women’s issues” as not serious and apolitical and thus ghettoize them in the Life and Style section of newspapers.

Because we know reading/watching/hearing/writing/doing things that validate and challenge us can help us to build the knowledge, strength, and community we need to overcome the sexism, racism, classism, ageism, heterocentrism, able-bodieism, thinism, and xenophobia writ large, which structure our lives, our communities, and our culture.

Because we understand the power of media as tools for documenting lives, expressing creativity, exploring identity, and building community, and we want all people to have equal access to those tools and those powers.

Because we are committed to supporting feminist, queer, and anti-racist media producers and know that doing so is integral to changing our society for the better.

Because many media studies programs do not have classes specifically devoted to exploring gender in media culture.

Because so many media history and production classes continue to focus on the Great White Men of Celluloid, of Video, of the Air, of the Tubes, of the Internet, of Gaming, and of Comics . . . and privilege the work of only the male scholars who write about them.

Because so many girls, parents, and teachers the world over don’t see media production as a worthwhile profession for women, and males continue to dominate both production programs and the media industries at all levels.

Because female media critics and producers tend to earn less and are promoted less than their male peers, and women are more affected by contingent labor practices than are men.

Because we know being multiply oppressed as a result of sexuality, race, or ability makes all this much, much, much more difficult.

Because we are encouraged to remain quiet or tone down our activist rhetoric and activities to get better teaching evaluations, promotion reviews, and salary increases.

Because we know the heart of academic life is about participating in critical debates started many years before us, about having our beliefs and expectations challenged, about facilitating learning in community with others, and about mentoring others so they can develop as participatory citizens, discerning consumers, and genuinely nice people.

Because we are interested in creating ways of learning, teaching, mentoring, administrating, and sharing research that privilege collaboration and communication over competition and celebrity.

Because we want to make it easier for feminist media scholars to read and hear each other’s work so we can share strategies and resources, critique each other, and support one another.

Because we honor, draw strength from, and want to continue the work of older feminist media critics, and because we desire to teach, mentor, and collaborate with younger scholars who will do the same, until such a time when that work is no longer necessary.

And, last but not least:

Because we believe, with all our hearts/minds/bodies, that progressive change is necessary, that progressive change is possible, and that feminist media critics constitute a revolutionary force that transforms academia and popular culture—for real.

(Photo by Michael Kackman – phobject.com.)

But eventually I reconnected with my muse, and the words flowed. I hope what follows below and in tomorrow’s post helps readers to understand better why folks like me do what we do.  If you’re a student working on research papers right now, I hope this inspires you to foreground the larger political stakes of your scholarship and thereby to connect your projects to the longer history of critical media studies.  Thanks to the Antenna staff for their enthusiasm and for providing another opportunity to share the spirit.

***

For Console-ing Passions, on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary.

I’ve changed the direction of my plenary talk a bit from when I first started writing it, but I think you’ll like this version better.

I was going to talk about some of the major transformations in feminist media criticism over the past two decades that Console-ing Passions has been in existence, including:

1) changes in feminist politics, especially the rise of third wave and third world feminisms; 2) transformations in feminist epistemology as a result of the development and diffusion of poststructuralist theory, postcolonialist theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and theories of postfeminism; 3) the emergence and growth of new areas of feminist media research, including fan studies, Internet studies, industry studies, game studies, and girls’ studies; 4) the expansion of publishing venues for our scholarship, not only via the Feminist Media Studies journal, but also various online ventures, like Antenna; and 5) the broad growth of feminist media criticism outside the academy, especially as a result of the zine revolution in the 1990s and the blogging revolution of the past decade.

I was also going to talk about three of the challenges facing our field that I think deserve much more attention, particularly: 1) the privileging of a presentist perspective and myopic focus on contemporary media, combined with the devaluation of historical research; 2) the decreased attention to independent media, despite the so-called rise of participatory culture and an increase in production studies; and 3) (which is related to the other two) the de-radicalization of media studies with the rise of various subfields seemingly resistant to analyses of power.

And I was going to wrap up all that with a plea to all of you to pay more attention to the totally out of whack gender imbalance in college training programs for film and TV production, which I see as one of the highest priorities for feminist media scholars and activists today.

But, I changed my mind.  As I was writing all that, I thought: “Wow, this seems pretty boring to me, and most of this is already probably evident to the folks participating in a Console-ing Passions conference.”  So, I asked myself: “What do I really want people at this conference to take away from my talk?  What would I like to hear?  How might I be more inspiring?  After all, when the hell will I be asked to do this again?  Shouldn’t I seize this as an opportunity to be provocative?”

And the bad-ass, scabby-kneed, chukka-boot-wearing, kick-ball-loving little Mary Celeste deep inside me—the one that is about 7 and fearless, because she doesn’t give a shit what people say about her—that little girl-me raised her fist and shouted loudly, “YES! YES! YES!”

So, shortly after this, I got a migraine (probably from working on this plenary talk and my panel paper at the same time – not advised).  But in the midst of skull-crushing pain, I still heard the younger me.  I heard her loud and clear.  She wouldn’t shut up.

Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  I want to be inspirational.  I want to put my money where my mouth is.  I want to present myself as an activist and not just an academic.  I want to channel all the fierce and fiery women who have motivated me to be a feminist and a feminist media scholar.  I want to pay homage to all their blood, sweat, and tears.  I want to acknowledge them and their work, and I want to pay it forward.  I want you to feel energized.  I want to do what I can in the few minutes I have up here to help keep this thing—feminist media studies—going for as long as it’s needed.  I want to be the feminist media scholar I want to see in the world.

So, I turned up the volume on my headphones (after the migraine had passed, of course), and I let the percussive beats, driving rhythms, and fist-thrusting lyrics of Wild Flag, Bikini Kill, L7, the Gossip, and Patti Smith wash over me.  In other words, I tapped into the vein of feminist media production that most inspires me—women’s punk—and, on fire and dancing in my seat, I came up with this: A manifesta for feminist media scholars.  Props to Kathleen Hanna and riot grrrls everywhere.

Click here for part 2: my manifesta for feminist media criticism.

(Image credit: Kara Passey, 2012)

The second question is easier to tackle than the first, so I’ll start there.  In the tradition of feminist standpoint theory, I/we need to remember as scholars and teachers that despite how we may professionalize and depersonalize our writing, that our questions and approaches are shaped by who we are and where we’ve been.   So, to illuminate where I write from, I grew up the daughter of a Mexican mother and German and English American father, in mostly white neighborhoods in the U.S.  I thus write as a Latina and Chicana, with these identities claimed mostly as an adult, and as mixed race. My mother didn’t get the opportunity to go to high school, and my parents, while they helped me get a college education, never expected me to pursue graduate degrees.  Especially important to my work today, I later became a social worker, and worked for several years with low-income families and Latina and African American teen parents in San Francisco before returning to graduate school to pursue a Ph.D in media studies. Do my mixed ethnic background, class positioning, past romantic partnerships with women, work experience, or even my feminist values make my scholarship more feminist, however?

There’s a story I tell sometimes when asked what inspired me to become a media studies scholar. One of my days working with teen parents has stuck with me; it was a screening of Mi Vida Loca, Allison Anders’ film about Latina gang members.  The girls were riveted, and later told me that it was the first time they’d seen themselves in a film.  (Which is not to say that I’m proposing Latinas should always be portrayed as cholas or as working class, but that we all want to see ourselves represented, respectfully, in the media). In my visits to my clients’ homes I also saw how many of them were very isolated, with only their babies and a television to keep them company.  As I considered what mid-1990s television offered them in terms of role models or inspiration to even finish high school, I realized just how much media representation – or lack thereof – matters.  This is part of what is feminist in my work; I’m motivated by the fact that these young women are not there, on the TV or movie screen, or behind the scenes telling their stories. But Console-ing Passions made me think about how I might better foreground feminism in my research, teaching, and mentoring. We may assume it’s “built in” to our work, as a colleague and I joked at the conference, but our readers and students don’t necessarily know that.

Excellent anthologies such as Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra’s Interrogating Post-feminism and the work of a number of smart scholars, many who contribute to Antenna, aside, the word feminism is coming to feel out of place in contemporary media scholarship.  As we’ve become more integrated into the academy, it seems we’re in fact expected to build in feminist, anti-racist, and related objectives but not focus on them too directly. We’re also not always studying histories of oppression that contribute to the dearth of female and non-white voices in media production or the impact of media texts on audiences, which at worst, I think, can result in analyses that are far removed from how media matters.  We might be viewed as less than rigorous scholars if we call attention to or take an activist stance when we encounter denigrating representations, cite Gloria Anzaldúa or bell hooks before Foucault or Stuart Hall, or acknowledge that we personally are motivated by feminism and related ideals. And I write this as someone with the new freedom of tenure, remembering that it often is less safe to be open on these topics as a graduate student or untenured faculty member.

I don’t think all media studies scholarship should be feminist or social change-oriented, but I do think we play a role in creating space for this work, and that what we say and what we leave out has an impact.  I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this as well. What’s your opinion on the integration of feminism in contemporary media scholarship?  How can scholars successfully accomplish this? And do these issues resonate in the same way for younger scholars?