Mayssa Chehata, Blog #5: (The deterioration of ) Women in Anderson and our Films thus far

** Sorry in advance for how long this post is

What is woman’s role in forming a nation? I think we can all agree that women do not come up often in Imagined Communities. Some might say this is because Anderson speaks of humanity generally, or that the times when he refers to “man” he is speaking of mankind, but I don’t agree that this is the case. If you look through the book, you find many instances where men are distinguished from women, referring to men in certain professions (“military men” (50), “men of the market” (79)), as well as instances where the term “men” is used in lieu of “man,” clearly marking the difference between referring to all of mankind versus gender. For example, Anderson writes, “These days it appears difficult to put oneself empathetically into a world in which the dynastic realm appeared for most men as the only imagined ‘political’ system,” (19) “unification meant internal interchangeability of men,” (57) or “young men eager to learn,” (81). All of the author’s examples and anecdotes have a man at the focal point, except one which speaks of a man’s wife and his mistress (25).

The word woman/women is only mention twice; once in the sentence, “The coalition between Protestantism and print-capitalism, exploiting cheap popular editions, quickly created large new reading publics – not least among merchants and women, who typically knew little or no Latin – and simultaneously mobilized them for politico-religious purposes,” (42) and again speaking of how only men are mentioned in the Gospel of St. Matthew in the sequence of about 30 men successively begetting one another leading up to the birth of Jesus, and no women are included in this. What I find interesting here is each time Anderson makes a brief comment or insight about women, but it is quickly brushed off. In the first case, he mentions that women typically knew little Latin, but doesn’t explain why this was or the significance of that information. In addition, he mentions that once women could access print they were mobilized for politico-religious purposes, which is an important point and I’d be interested to learn more about their role in this mobilization, but Anderson stops at that. In the second instance, he notes that women are not included in the sequence of lineage from the Patriarch Abraham to Jesus, but again does not go into significance, which is very important since he does decide to mention that no women are mentioned.

However, another important aspect of Anderson’s writing should be mentioned. In three instances, gender is referenced as an entity similar to or in congruence with the nation/nation-ness. The first is, “…in the modern world everyone can, should, will ‘have’ a nationality, as he or she ‘has’ a gender…” (5) Then later he writes, “We are all aware of the contingency and ineluctability or our particular genetic heritage, our gender, our life-era, our physical capabilities, our mother-tongue, and so forth,” (10) and later, in the chapter “Patriotism and Racism,” he writes, “Something of the nature of this political love can be deciphered from [two idioms]. Both idioms denote something to which one is naturally tied. As we have seen earlier, in everything ‘natural’ there is always something unchosen. In this way, nation-ness is assimilated to skin-colour, gender, parentage, and birth-era – all those things one cannot help.” (147)

So what is the significance of all this? I think it is clear that Anderson is not unintentionally excluding women, in that the way he writes about man and men denoting a clear distinction from “mankind” or from “women.” However, I think the exclusion may be subconscious, due to the era he was writing in, the early 1980s. But really, the early 80s is not an ancient time, and many women’s rights movements had taken place, so it is still noteworthy and somewhat disturbing that women are excluded from this seminal work, especially considering their role in society. Women bring life to the world, so it would seem natural that they would be included in a book about the birth of nations. They also play and have played significant roles in the functioning of societies, political systems (as Queens, royal matriarchs, chiefs, etc.), religion, economies, and thus their significant role in nations.

I am really curious as to why people think Anderson made this exclusion, and if people agree with me at all that the exclusion seems intentional as opposed to unintended. Furthermore, on the subject of gender as a distinction for nations, do people think that Anderson refers to gender to try to signify that gender can be a unifier of a nation (that there is a male nation and a female nation), or rather that he mentions gender to give an example of something we are born with, such as skin color or parentage. I am not sure, and am interested to hear what others think.

The question about what is the state of women in some of the films we’ve seen thus far really struck me. I tried to think back on significant female characters, and honestly I don’t think there have been many besides in “La Noire de…” and even then I’m not sure if the film-maker was seeking to make a point about the state of womanhood so much as making a point about race and the homeland vs. the foreign land. I think that a man could have been interchanged for Diouana’s character and the story would have been similar. If anything using a woman for the role may even have been done to make the story more believable in that woman are maybe seen as weaker, more silent, and therefore it makes the idea of someone killing themselves without a word more believable to put a woman in that role. Maybe a man would have been expected to be more vocal or fight back to the mistress.

The next piece then that would come to mind is The Colored Museum in terms of having female roles, but again, and I didn’t notice or think about this at the time but in reflection I think they are all sort of demeaning. We see women in five pieces, six if you include Ms. Roj the drag queen. I will list them:

1. The giddy, Barbie-esc flight attendant is preparing slaves on a “slave flight” for their journey to North America. She is out of touch, working on “Celebrity Slave Ship,” and is obsessed by the sound of drums playing. She is annoying.
2. The girl (and man) who “live inside Ebony magazine.” They live there to avoid feeling pain by escaping reality.
3. Ms. Roj is an alcoholic drag queen who although she starts out on a lighthearted note, she ends on a very dark and serious one, talking about the deterioration of society and her personal problems with family and drinking.
4. The hairpiece, in which a spoiled looking girl is shocked to find that her wigs are speaking to one another. The piece centers on “natural” versus “unnatural,” i.e. an afro wig versus a relaxed wig. The woman choosing between the wigs could be considered obsessed with appearances.
5. In Permutations, we meet the “girl that laid an egg,” after having “sexual relations with the garbage man.”
6. And finally, in Mama-on-the-couch, we see what seems like a criticism of some form of black expression which are considered exploitative, such as minstrelsy and blackface. However, when considering the characters of the man’s wife and the sister, they are both extreme characters.

After thinking through the pieces, my conclusion was that the women throughout The Colored Museam all seem ridiculous. None of them are—nor should they be based on their behavior—taken seriously, as opposed to the soldier or the business man in other scenes. I realize this is partly attributed to comedy or at least maybe the irony of comedy, but I also find it confusing why there are basically no serious women in this 90 minute performance.

Particularly disturbing to me is the Permutations piece, and especially where she says something like, “I laid an egg, and that makes me special.” This makes me think about women’s role in society, and how women are often viewed as vehicles for reproduction and nothing more. I really got the sense from this piece that this girl, who seemed really lackadaisical and frankly quite dumb, had absolutely nothing else going for her, and it was almost like, “thank God she laid this egg, at least she has that,” or “thank God she has this baby, what else would she have done with her life.”

I wonder if people agree with me about the role of women in the films we’ve watched thus far being quite insignificant and where they did have a presence it was generally filling some type of stereotype (mostly negative) or adhering to a gender role in which women have been placed but that we are maybe strived to be taken out of (e.g. being obsessed with beauty, needing to have children to be “special,” being weak and vulnerable in the case of Diouana and her suicide, etc.). I’m really interested in other people’s thoughts on this, and how everyone has viewed women’s roles thus far in the films as well as in Anderson’s book.