ARTIST AND MUSE
Order for Working Relationships between Men and Women
In Business and Otherwise
Power-positioning in the virtual world, male and female posturing, interspersed with masculinization and feminization of the celebrity self-image, what current themes and topics men and women share in thread conversations, posts as status updates, images on Instagram and in Tweets irrespective of each other, all factors into who we are as gendered groups and our ability to associate and dissociate.
Interweb connectivity then serves as playground for furthering intellectual body sizing and maneuverability on what each sex values as important in-between pop-polluting with hilarity, social media becoming a conscious avenue for flinging spontaneous thoughts in reference to male and female idealization and how we manage confluence within our separate yet controlled gradual evolution.
Gender and sexual politics has endured a manifest ever since sex curatorial in popular culture of young pop diva, a carry-over from 1980’s Madonna craze. During early to mid-90’s a cultural explosion featured a burgeoning group, the Barely Legal, young female explosively given a sexual identity embracing both innocence of pre-teen and promiscuity of the adult female.
This then becomes Hollywoodizing of the young female as product permeating search for the next big star as seen in television programs set up to find pop idols and super models marketed for a general public less intuitive on exceptional talent, more so reliant on general aspects of fame and persona.
Over time there has been subjectively less introduction of what would be considered “genius” talent as trade-off for something more commercial. Those who exhibit overwhelming brilliance and are given marketability govern an upper echelon of celebrity. The carry-over is evident in how the younger demographic are targeted. Rise for such acknowledgement began with the Reality Show which cost little money to make; extent of artistry came in post-production, making the producers great profit. Reward for the particular form of adventurism in television production gave way to unsuspecting stars and idols. That notion of a “nobody” becoming “somebody” was the sentiment of Andy Warhol’s statement, “In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes”.
Westernized notion of beauty has been “blue-eyed, blonde girl”. As response to Madonna’s street-wise and self-professed authority, primary factors of her persona, a more Mickey Mouse Club attribute was given Britney Spears, different generation’s answer to Debbie Gibson, 1980’s pop star. Spears and Christina Aguilera spearheaded new notion of the female pop star, something which a decade later saw globalization in Miley Cyrus’ Hannah Montana.
Given commercialization of this new product, it was made clear transport was between merchandizing the new viral phenomenon into conscience of most men, what has been stressing of sex in the young adult male and what was purported to be the “dirty old man”, by parlance referencing Humbert Humbert from Vladimir Nabakov’s, Lolita, how Barely Legal magazine soon led to internet porn, a moment when the art muse became sex muse.
In Marnina Gonick’s article, Between “Girl Power” and “Reviving Ophelia”:Constituting the Neoliberal Girl Subject, she reflects, “Since the early 1990s, the popular media, popular literature, television, films, academic conferences, and special issues of feminist journals have been participants in an incredible proliferation of images, texts, and discourses around girls and girlhood in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries”.
Furthermore, “However, a close examination of this amassing of images and discourses also raises some critical questions, opening up further perspectives on what they may mean about changing constructions of girlhood, shifting subjectivities for girls, and their relationship to modernity”.
Girl Power given a face and concentration in pop groups, Spice Girls being the most dominant, showcased the “new girl” who governed outside boundaries of femininity, whereas “Reviving Ophelia” valued the girl as vulnerable and passive.
Marnina Gonick’s article investigates how the two realms of discussion, made popular in the international best-selling book by U.S. psychologist Mary Pipher entitled, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, position girls separately in relation to the emerging configurations of subjectivity demanded by shifting relations of production, world economy, and redefined relationships between governments and citizens related to the rise of neoliberal policy and practice.
- “how emerging forms of femininity are linked to shifting cultural ideals of personhood, individuality, and agency and how these are, in turn, reflective of social, economic, and political changes”.
Idea of a self-governing “new girl” was represented in emergence of the Riot Grrrl movement, an underground feminist punk movement that originated in the state of Washington and Washington, D.C. As a subcultural movement it combined feminist consciousness and punk culture and politics. It also promoted musical acts that served as an inspiration for a musical movement that inspired women to express themselves the way men had all along.
Vulnerability among young girls spurned a subculture derivative of what was known as Emo, a rock music genre characterized by expressive and confessional lyrics, which emerged as a post-hardcore musical style from the mid-1980’s hardcore-punk movement of Washington, D.C.
Emo has been associated with a stereotype that includes angst and sensitivity. An Emo girl would be more than likely to be depressed, attempt suicide or cause bodily harm, like cutting, a prevalent behavior where girls with knife or blade cut themselves.
A modernized merging of the angst-ridden girl with subtlety of perversion and the docile is the Suicide Girl, which formerly originated from an on-line community based website that revolves around pin-up photography of young tattooed women known as the Suicide Girls.
These circumstances in how the young female thrusted her sexual and proverbial defiant and deviant conscience onto society spurned a new popular feminist movement which broadened discussion on how varying subjectivity of female transcendence could co-exist within a “gendered, raced, classed and sexed identities”.
In Mirnina Gonick’s article she refers to Lesly Johnson who suggests history of the gendered role of the female in the 1950’s experienced a cultural shift, which Gonick argues “is an important antecedent to current transformations”.
Bettina May, Las Vegas-based burlesque performer, model, photographer and vintage stylist.
“It was during the 1950’s that the historical constitution of an opposition between womanhood and personhood was disrupted and women were, for the first time, recognized as subjects within discourses of modernity”.
Women were previously subjected to roles as lesser to a man’s rationality and individuality.
As Gonick explains, “Women were located in the subordinate position of binaries such as passivity and activity, agent and victim, and subject and object and thus were constituted as outside prevailing definitions of full personhood.”
As many feminist youth researchers have noted expressed in the Gonick article, “these same cultural definitions precluded young women from meeting the criteria of modern adolescence in the form of the individual en route to becoming the self-determining adult”.
Overwhelming factor behind the shift was due to the “feminist agenda of the time” but also “as the result of women’s crucial role in the processes of modernization itself. Women’s involvement as both laborers and as consumers created new demand for unprecedented forms of technologies and novel forms of cultural goods”.
A conclusiveness drawn in the underpinning of how men and women co-angular and form a balance within relationships in a non-working or working and business setting is evident as mass-approximation of ideas and gender proclivity within the roles of the artist and the muse.
Modernizing of functionability between the artist and muse can be found in photographs Alfred Stieglitz took of Georgia O’Keefe, film work Andy Warhol accomplished using Edie Sedgwick as model and the sexually sensational partnership of Jeff Koons and Ilona Staller, also known as Cicciolina.
The artist yearns for symbiosis and symmetry within his art. Origin of the artist’s query is in an intellectual thought, an idea he stumbles upon by way of sketch, a psychic prompt, inspiration, all in accord with refrain from stagnancy. Allowing for common understanding of his role, he self-wills a concept in preparation for a piece of art. As with the order of gravity, there’s a tug and pull, a theory founded in the life experience. The art riddle more or less takes on a supernatural formulation whereby the artist is prone to spontaneous interventions.
In lieu of a hypnotic and unexpected momentous occurrence which brings to a stop any and all of his schedule to chronicle and pinpoint this surprise, ultimately referred to as inspiration, he values physicality of the muse, as someone he channels his opinions on art, a relationship which takes on parameters of power and control, love and sex.
The need for an intervention is his acknowledgement and need and want for poetry. Much of this stems from chaos meeting order and not sentiment of verse and meter. Other elements of art play into the defining point of inspiration whether actual poetry, prose, music, theater or film. Inspiration is means of enlightenment for the artist. He values it more than anything. The muse therefore has to be a constant source of inspiration.
Beauty for the artist is aestheticized and objectified. The artist seeks physical beauty in his muse. Beauty therefore being a combination of the artist’s neurotic agenda, what elements of his libido is magnified in the muse. Essence of the muse is the artist accepting and rejecting himself. The love/hate principle is prevalent in how the artist attracts the muse. Circumstantially there is no prerequisite. Everything is choreographed in a first chance meeting. Immediate attraction is felt more than just as a physical assumption. It is processed as transcendence. Sexual dynamics determine the intent. Lust and fear drive the cause.
Language found in his dialogue with the muse is one of fawning, making direct his expectations, hoping to benefit and achieve a desired effect. Level of behavior revolves around a touch and go philosophy. The artist can never get all that he desires. The muse holds back enough to maintain her own existence. Once the relationship manages a current and concurrent ideal, both the artist and muse know their roles.
Bettina May, Las Vegas-based burlesque performer, model, photographer and vintage stylist.
A business setting operates on a devised platform where principally the employee is chosen based on his or her various orders of professionalism and credit to required official expectations. As made clear by the employer whatever is expected of the employee is to be met with absolute clarity and dedication. Objectivity makes for necessary coordinated symmetry, major factor which encourages a balanced rhythm, an imagined logic that keeps all parties involved operating at a tremendous level. Business acumen therefore weighs on how employee meets demand of the job, whether he or she and the employer manage consistency keeping with profit and longevity.
As with the artist and muse, gender ramifications are basis for operating. There is no bias involved in the hiring of a person. Discrimination against any particular gender, race or sexual orientation is totally prohibited. Content for asserting progress and workmanship between the artist and muse is trust. The two entities enter the field of work with promise. Viewed as duty it can be free of nonsensical sexual retribution, although language under which the artist and muse operate can involve romantic interplay. Any form of punishment in the working place is against the law. Whereas regard for courtship is an element within artist and muse working relationship, sexual harassment as practice from employer to employee or among employees has criminal bearings. Not all artist and muse relationships involve politics on love and eroticism.
Order for working business relationship with the artist and muse as reference formally explores the atypically platonic circumstance. However keen on genderisms, both working business and art relationships and otherwise should involve a sense of humanism. The person operating on maturity and experience must confide in his employee as someone upholding a sense of will but with a breaking point. Having empathy for and managing a respectable coexistence goes a long way.
Company like a department store or any other means of employment where most employees work and collect a check, there isn’t that expected need for simpatico. Factory settings however function on order for synchronicity, that sing-song pattern whereby everything happens within a natural flow.
Asserting our gendered roles for benefit of a scheme, program or plan, we must respect the partnering gender opposite free from judgment. Centering one’s intent as means of procuring a goal must be practical. Setting standards allows all parties involved a chance to work in accordance with the original plan. These unwritten rules are forms whereby humanizing each other’s role separate the rational of the id-oriented, psycho-analyzing of how the respected gender should behave. Supposing dominance of the male ego or as much as a female in question may exhibit an advantage in prowess, one must approach each person and circumstance differently.
Persona and performance are subjective interpretations that highlight how each person has amounted status and experience. Much of this presents itself when a person is put under test. How he or she reacts supposes a predilection. There are many ideologies and stereotypes pertaining to each characteristic, psychology of which is match for confrontations or the all too unavoidable test of emotion. Acquiring a type, discipline or behavior made relevant as an example for the betterment towards the projected accomplishment and hence success goes far back than one expects.
Contentment we bring to a project matches over confidence we may have exhibited in other situations as professionals. Most importantly these are evidences far-reaching back into our experiences as student. One’s persona is an amalgamation of the parent – father/mother overbearance and need for instituting a probability and distinction in their children. The child spends a life trying to live up to acceptance of the parent’s trust and faith. Whatever exercising and exorcising of life, love and death metaphors as experienced within context of people in the outside world sets a trend in who and what a person becomes.
How social media feeds into this remarks on parental upbringing of the so-called “spoiled child”. One would be alarmed to recall “white entitlement” or its trickle effect into a black relevance. The social media persona is of someone who warrants a need for not so much respect but rather adoration, the artist to muse fawning. Further inspection would suggest love hysteria has been perversely channeled to include the street idiom of “kissing one’s ass”. The artist and muse practice of mirroring goes on with frequency in social media. Idea of Facebook is propping up profiles and images pitted against each other. Will to “like” a post maintains the idolizing format, subtly indicated which keeps up the rhythm of behavior in social media.
Persona therefore principally determines one’s acceptance and rejection. More incalculable self-authority expressed inspires a “trending” and “following” of posts, images and accounts. The person who exists outside of the virtual world can easily be encouraged and made hyper-desirable as a social media muse. The manipulated effect happens overtime, continuously changing dynamics of who the person is as a thought or concept, then evaluated with his or her continuous exchange with the public. Origin of posts, tweets, thread conversation and status updates determine this.
Workability hereby interpreted as a union of gendered male and female employees attempting an undertaking for profit has to be free of misguided egos, certainly no gender mansizing and its female equivalent.
Fraternizing has easily caused great qualm in the projected success of an organization, what overtime creates distance and opinionated views on dominance, power and the marginalized. Adjoining entities that promote visions made to accentuate pride of a governing race or gender is the ongoing need for diversity in the entertainment world.
As Claire Zillman reported for Fortune, actress Jessica Chastain earlier this year at Cannes championed role of women in Hollywood, speaking about the entertainment industry's wage gap and her very own efforts to achieve equal pay with her male counterparts.
Bettina May, Las Vegas-based burlesque performer, model, photographer and vintage stylist.
The star of films such as Zero Dark Thirty and Miss Sloane as a jury member of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival spoke candidly at a press conference about the "quite disturbing" way women were portrayed in the movies she had seen at the annual event in France.
"I watched 20 films in 10 days—and I love movies—and the one thing I really took away from this experience is how the world views women. From the female characters that I saw represented, it was quite disturbing, to be honest," Chastain said.
She renewed a call for "more female storytellers," which she felt could lead to female characters that reflect the women she is used to seeing in her daily life—"ones that are proactive, have their own agencies, don’t just react to the men around them; they have their own point of view."
Interestingly enough the jury at Cannes awarded the award for best director to Sofia Coppola for her remake of the Clint Eastwood film The Beguiled.
Coppola is just the second woman to win the prize in the festival's 70-year history.
In her acceptance speech read on her behalf, Coppola thanked female director, Jane Campion, for being “a role model and supporting women filmmakers.” Campion to this date is the only woman to have won the festival's coveted Palme d'Or award, the highest honor at the Cannes’ Festival.
Want and need for accountability regarding more positive female roles must be looked at not from the view point of more female directors and filmmakers in the Hollywood movie making process, rather better filmmakers both male and female.
Kathryn Bigelow’s directed film, Detroit, a period crime drama written by Mark Boal about an incident at a motel during a street riot in Detroit in 1967 is an example of a Hollywood film directed by a female director with intent on making and producing a good to great film.
Ava DuVernay who catapulted to fame with her movie, Selma, continues to pave the way as Documentarian, Screenwriter and Director.
What has to be recognized is credit to good film making. With great directors, proper films will be made, therefore prescribing potentially appropriate roles for actors, whether male or female.
A success story like Quentin Tarantino opened the eyes and minds of Heads of film studios. There’s always a search for the next great thing. Unfortunately that idea has been shelved for the prospects of the next big block buster film.
The questions raised now comment on importance of film schools, talent of the screenwriter, purchasing of good film scripts, distribution of films, current popularity of what once were groundbreaking independent films and so many topics concerning where we are with producers of films, the new ground for talent on television and if the current social media scene helps or hurts the creative process.
The artist was once dangerous in his creatively maddening spirit, Toulouse Lautrec, Salvador Dali. Rauschenberg and Alex Katz of the 70’s presented the world with an appeasement of talent and hunger in the artist.
Certainly Warhol changed the whole spectrum, defined and redefined what it meant and currently means to be an artist.
The movie show is lived sensationally in the minds of people online. Any of them have their favorite films they have loved for years, once when movies permeated our conscience and prioritized how we lived our lives.
The movie experience continues to be a break from the hardship of life. A lot of time now is spent suspended on the trivialities of social media activities.
Seemingly what we once did and who we once were are transformed as an online metamorphosing process.
In the moment and in the spirit and with every turn we change, the relationship between the artist and the muse as the last great romance, their dead selves possessing people to art – the pretentious ability to attract attention with talent.
What talent is, who the artist represents himself or herself as, how they are rewarded will always be an ongoing mystery.
