what a brave corporate logo!

[bossymarmalade]

This article in Feministe about the Telephone video is really pissing me off. In general because of the smug, insistent pedantry of it (look, just because the song's called "Telephone" it doesn't mean EVERY SINGLE EVENT must then revolve around the telephone; also, that is a honey bun and not a sandwich, idiot; also you are a fucking feminist writer and should know why it's not on to refer to the vulva as a "vagina"; also if you did the minimum of goddamn research you could refer to Gaga's partner in the prison yard as trainer Heather Cassils instead of "Very Friendly Smoking-Hot Butch Lady"), but in particular because of this:

And was it really necessary to subtitle the Asian woman's thoughts in a different language than everybody else's? No. No, it was not! I am not so cool with the ways that this video deals with race, I think. I mean, Beyonce's there, and presented as an equal and partner. Sure. But I am thinking like, this Asian girl and her special "hey, have you noticed this chick's Asian? Just thought I'd point that one out to you" subtitle ....

Hey there, did it ever occur to you that Asian women sometimes think and speak IN ASIAN LANGUAGES?!? Maybe she's thinking "a different language than everybody else's" (nice) because, hmmm, she has access to a "different language than everybody else". What's so wrong with her using it, or -- horror of horrors! -- reflexively reacting with it in her own mind? Is this a fucking performance sport?

This is a discourse that especially pisses me off as a diasporado, because as you all well know there are a TON of issues about many of us being systematically denied access to our source-tongues. I would *love* to be able to bust out cusswords or whatever in Hindi, even for my private unspoken reactions. Sometimes I feel like among Western white society, being an Anglophone when your source-language is a non-Romance one is taken as a sign of "goodness", like you're safer, more model of a minority, more assimilated; the reaction from Canadian white folks when I tell them, "no, I only speak English", is always one of surprise and approval. (It's a different story with Canadian brown people, but I'm not getting into that right now.)

So yes, maybe it *was* necessary to subtitle the Japanese woman's thoughts in Japanese in this context. Or did you assume that nobody watching the video would be able to understand those characters, so it was purely an exercise in exotification? Was her sudden Japanese subtitle making her Asianness a little too visible? Don't translate your own discomfort over the inscrutability (yes, I went there) of those characters into some generalizing "NO FOREIGN LANGUAGES PLZ" declaration for all of Western media, thank you.

Comments

[heathershaped]

WORD. Thank you so much for this.

I've been pretty disappointed with a LOT of the 'feminist' blogs that have done articles on Telephone - Jezebel's was another one that annoyed me - but this one's by far the worst.

[bossymarmalade]

Is it some sort of reluctance to appoint Gaga the New Face of Subversive Feminism or something? Because I can understand that -- Gaga is thin and white and blonde and a number of things that privilege her within the discourse -- but there seems to be a bizarre eagerness to tear her down in response. It's very strange.

[heathershaped]

I can understand that too - the fact society deems her capable of subverting anything because she's inherently 'normal' unlike those of us who are subversive just by existing ... you have to recognize the privilege she has being able to put on a 'grotesque' image because it's assumed she isn't already.

And for a while I kind of I DID resist her because of that (before I realised that resistance is futile).

The thing is, we could guess that that's what it is, but it's not the argument that's being made by these blogs, not that I've seen. I think that's giving them too much credit. I don't know WHAT it is.

[aquaeri]

Yes, she's blonde, but she's bleached-blonde: like Madonna and Gwen Stefani have been for much of their careers. I saw at least one review that was mentioned her "ethnic harsh beauty" and I was "WTFOMGBBQ: bleached-blonde Italian-American popstars are apparently Not White Enough, after all".

It wouldn't matter what she looked like - any woman doing this level of pop cultural critique would be subject to some kind of shit along these lines. I find it almost reassuring.

[bell]

I've been pretty disappointed with a LOT of the 'feminist' blogs that have done articles on Telephone

This. :( Not that Gaga's works don't come with a whole set of issues & problems, but there's lots of good, subversive thinkitty stuff in it too! Couldn't we discuss/analyze both? Wouldn't that be interesting?

And, to bossymarmalade, thanks for this post!