Adam's Death Rib: Eve's Trip to Genesis
A response to Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip.
Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip in my opinion, goes beyond ideas about death. The pictures are put together to follow a narrative, a message that goes beyond representing Wisconsin daily life. I focused a lot on the representation and construction of gender in this book. I was not surprised when I found pictures of men at bars, working, doing daily activities, and women at home, siting, holding babies, etc. It is a representation of what life was like in Wisconsin on the 70's.
What I found interesting is the lack of pictures of "active" women. The women are sitting next to men when they are in the outside, as if only being able to be captured as long as they are accompanied by men. The one picture where a woman is outside she has snakes on her shoulder as she is laughing in front of an upside-down bench giving the idea of chaos, representing the woman as crazy to a certain extent.
Before I continue explaining my response to this book, I would like to present my video titled:
I wanted to (re)present gender constructions as non-traditional as possible. I create this piece observing what elements we consider representational of a gender, yet using such element in connection to other elements to have a loss of understanding about what representation is being made. The woman in this video is represented in different ways juxtaposed with images of a man who seems to be represented in a way but towards the end we know that there is more beyond what is presented.
The title makes reference to Adam and Eve in the Genesis since nothing is more traditionally conservative in our society than religious texts, just as our ideas of gender binaries, and the construction of what makes a man, a man, and a woman, a woman. To me, male characteristics in Wisconsin Death Trip were stressed by differentiating the pictures of men with the pictures of women. In other words, men are men because they are not women.
And as a reaction to that, I observe that: if we still think that Adam's "Rib" is what made Eve, then we should think that such bone does not exist or is "Dead" for Adam and as a result, for men, because what made Eve is 'that' which we lack.
I suggest that we reconsider our ideas about what make us, us. Do "men" wear lipstick? Do "men" cry? Are "women" pretty only when they smile or laugh? Should they look at the camera/viewer when "she" is supposed to be the object of the film?
What I found interesting is the lack of pictures of "active" women. The women are sitting next to men when they are in the outside, as if only being able to be captured as long as they are accompanied by men. The one picture where a woman is outside she has snakes on her shoulder as she is laughing in front of an upside-down bench giving the idea of chaos, representing the woman as crazy to a certain extent.
Before I continue explaining my response to this book, I would like to present my video titled:
Adam's Death Rib: Eve's Trip to Genesis
Here is the link to You Tube
I wanted to (re)present gender constructions as non-traditional as possible. I create this piece observing what elements we consider representational of a gender, yet using such element in connection to other elements to have a loss of understanding about what representation is being made. The woman in this video is represented in different ways juxtaposed with images of a man who seems to be represented in a way but towards the end we know that there is more beyond what is presented.
The title makes reference to Adam and Eve in the Genesis since nothing is more traditionally conservative in our society than religious texts, just as our ideas of gender binaries, and the construction of what makes a man, a man, and a woman, a woman. To me, male characteristics in Wisconsin Death Trip were stressed by differentiating the pictures of men with the pictures of women. In other words, men are men because they are not women.
And as a reaction to that, I observe that: if we still think that Adam's "Rib" is what made Eve, then we should think that such bone does not exist or is "Dead" for Adam and as a result, for men, because what made Eve is 'that' which we lack.
I suggest that we reconsider our ideas about what make us, us. Do "men" wear lipstick? Do "men" cry? Are "women" pretty only when they smile or laugh? Should they look at the camera/viewer when "she" is supposed to be the object of the film?
since I've seen your video...so what I get in the first place is not you holding a baby picture! not at all, I thought you were singing out of tune and got frustrating so you kept singing.....anyways, but I do find this way of putting the answer in a end a very nice way of story telling in this video! and it is interesting, how we got so many different things out of the very same photo book.
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