Friday, July 15, 2016

Politics of the Body and Mind in the Fiction Krazy Kat

Chapter 1 – Problem Statement

1.1. The Text
Jay Cantor’s fiction “Krazy Kat”( Cantor, 2004) is a triangle love story of a cat(Krazy), a mouse (Ignatz), and a dog ( Bull Pup) . In this fiction, we observe how Krazy endures the domination of Ignatz Mouse since she considers herself as weaker sex.  Krazy submits herself before the manipulating discourses of the patriarchal society. In this fiction, we find Krazy as a fairly passive object of Ignatz’s domination. Krazy’s role in this fiction is feminine who rely’s upon the authority (Ignatz). Then, we see how media manipulates and makes Krazy vulnerable in the name of “Ideal Beauty Standard”
1.2. The Issues
  We know that “Feminine Body” or Women’s Body” is always grabbed the attention of the patriarchal society. Feminine body is always considered as a subjugated body. In the name of “Gender Politics” male and female are systematically separated in the society, and thus, become an element of subjugation in the society,“ a woman’s sexual parts or sexual functions are separated out from her person, reduced to the status or more instruments ……..( Bartky 1982:130, emphasis added) Thus, for women in particular , the body has seen problematized- readily acknowledged as a way of expression, but stigmatized if she acquiesces.” Most of the women are subscribed themselves to these manipulative discourses since these are become the integral part of the society and consider as ideal discourse.
              In this paper, I am going to discuss the “Politics of the Body and Mind” in Jay Cantor’s short story “Krazy Kat” (ibid) from CDA perspectives. From this small piece of paper, people will come to know how certain discourses are created, (re -) produced, and legitimized to subjugate not only female body but also their mind. Then, I am also going to discuss how certain discourses of media manipulate the female body in the name of “Ideal Beauty Standard”.
1.3. Appropriateness of CDA for Analyzing the Text
            Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a discipline studies various text, print and/or television media contents and advertisements, billboard advertisements and other types of discourses in order to find out the not-so-apparent agendas which might be manipulative. By doing this, CDA eventually informs the people which were previously unknown to them. Critical Discourse Analysis “ focuses on social issues it’s objective is to empower people by making them conscious/aware of the hidden  structures that exist in the social make-up or have become the part of the social set-up of a community” And, “ By critical discourse analysis Fairclough (1995 a:132) means discourse aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts and (b) wider social cultural structures , relations and processes”( Haque ,112). In this paper, I shall try to explore and inform people, how certain discourses are (re-)produced, legitimized and practiced through texts, media, and by society to manipulate the female body and try to help the female to make inform choices, whether the female will contribute to the maintenance of the domination or they will try to de-construct the existing domineering discourses of the society and media. These manipulative discourses have become the integral part and an instrument to manipulate not only the female body but also their minds. In this paper, I shall try to explore “the veiled power structures” and the “opaque aspects of discourse” which are used as instruments to perpetuate inequality and to manipulate the women in the patriarchal society.
                                                                    Chapter 2          
 2.1. Intentions behind Doing the Research

The intensions behind doing the research are mainly to examine and expose whether the text and other form of discourses are used to legitimize, exercise, and enact power of the patriarchal society over the women. The discourse within the whole text should be thoroughly analyzed from CDA perspective and find out the instances wherever there are signs of manipulation and attempt to establish a hidden ideology. When these non-apparent manipulative contents are brought into foreground, people can be informed and make aware of the fact that a text might sometimes apparently suggests something that is negative and manipulative thus the text might try to influence people and establish manipulative ideology through the use of discourse.
2.2Probable Beneficiaries
We know that Critical Discourse Analysis “ focuses on social issues it’s objective is to empower people by making them conscious/aware of the hidden  structures that exist in the social make-up or have became part of the social set-up of a community” And, “ By critical discourse analysis Fairclough (1995 a:132) means discourse aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts and (b) wider social cultural structures , relations and processes”( Haque ,112). In this paper, I shall try to explore and inform people, how certain discourses are (re-)produced, legitimized and practiced through texts, media, and by society to manipulate the female body and their minds and try to help the female to make inform choices; whether the female will contribute to the maintenance of the domination or they will try to de-construct the existing domineering discourses of the society and media.
Chapter 3 - Central Research Questions
3.1. Specific Research Questions
a)  How certain discourses are embedded in the society to subjugate the female body and their minds?
b) Whether a woman is born as a woman or certain ideologies are imposed upon her to make her woman?
c) How media manipulates the female body and their minds and thus make them vulnerable in the name of “Ideal Beauty Standard”?
d) Whether Krazy’s experience is the experience of almost all the women in the society

Chapter 4 - Results and Discussion
4.1. Findings in Terms of Central Research Questions
In”Krazy Kat” (ibid), we find that the popularity of Krazy in the strip is gradually falling down.   Ignatz thinks, since of the Krazy’s mistakes the popularity of their strip is declining.  Not only Krazy but also Ignatz blames Krazy for this. Krazy has learned from the society to accept the blame even though she is not completely guilty of any particular fault. Aristotle assumed that “women were defective part of humanity, having only developed mistake when the temperature during conception too low.” The society teaches a woman to take the burden on her shoulder (most of the times), “ the burden imposed on women by her reproductive function ……… society alone is the arbiter” Krazy thinks “ It wasn’t in her nature to blame others; and she still, no matter how much else had changed ,couldn’t say what wasn’t in her nature. Anyway, it wasn’t as if the box office were her god, that whatever-sells –is-right attitude that she sometimes felt lurking behind Ignatz’s spiteful judgments on other performers, the outward show on his part of what was really an inward biting sense of-his-their-insufficiency. He insufficiency, he would end up saying, after himself up into an angry little snit; her blithe, unrealistic lack of concern for the market place, for what the audience wanted. Why wouldn’t she vary the plot? Settled round his shoulders: it’s my fault, he’d say, that we’re so flat and insipid. Followed by: the world is a dung heap. But, even to make him happy, she couldn’t   vary the plot.” Then“Ignatz had often ended up taking out his anxieties on her; he couldn’t help himself.” Krazy is hovering between questions, whether she is guilty or not, “Was she a radical, she wondered, anti-boo wash? Or did she really covet the big audiences the new cats got for themselves? Or did she was just irritable because it was time for break fast? Have I changed?  She wondered, have I truly changed? Am I really guilty? But of what?”

“When Irigaray refers to male and female bodily characteristics she is, according to Whit fording capturing the way she finds these features both represented and imagined, that is, affectively experienced, in the personal and social domain. Male bodies are those that have form or identity, power and authority. Female bodies are defective male bodies, marked by lack, the lack which forms the necessary and negative opposite to the plenitude of masculinity; meanings matched with imaginary associations in which female bodies are experienced as chaotic, formless and threatening.” In “Krazy Kat”, we observe that Krazy does the role of Gracie Allen who represents the manipulated body and Ignatz does the role George Burns who symbolizes the authority of the Gracie Allen Show, “(………she thought ,had been Mr. Hearst,himself?) that their art-hers and Ignatz’s and the Pup’s – was as legitimate as George and Gracie’s.” Gracie Allen Show’s ideologies have been imposed upon them, that’s why Krazy appears as a subjugated body in the fiction and Ignatz always speaks with Krazy as a manipulative figure. For example, “Where’s breakfast?”  “ Ignatz asked, swaggering into her abode.”  “Where are my soft-boiled eggs?” “He speaks in a mock- gruff sort of voice, not his own squeak.”“Your eggs”, “Ignatz said, in a falsetto voice,”  “will be ready in six minutes” “Six Minutes,”  “ Why Gracie, do  two soft- boiled eggs take six minutes?” “He waited, staring at Krazy as if he could conjure words out of her with his stare. She looked at the ground, tears forming in her eyes unable to speak. She knew now what he was doing: It was a Burns and Allen routine, one from the moving pictures.”  “Yes” “Ignatz as Krazy as Gracie said- recovering from the real cat’s real silence, and carrying on as if playing a scene with the most natural thing in the world( for Ignatz sense of  timing had always been impeccable).”  “Of course it takes it takes six minutes, George, silly. I’m boiling two-three minutes eggs.” We know that, normally it takes six or seven minutes to boil eggs but Ignatz claims that it takes two or three minutes to boil eggs to produce his manipulative power over Krazy. Sometimes, Ignatz gives a tough laugh to show his marchioness and manipulation over Ignatz. “For a moment she thought she actually did hear that dear laugh, that terrible laugh (the contrary feeling warred in side her and made all thought of breakfast anathema). She had heard it. It was high, lispy laugh outside her window.” Krazy represents the typical women in the society who is a mixture of feminine characteristics like, “crying was another sign of her weakness.”, and always try to hide her mistakes from Ignatz, “He had come by, as he often did, for breakfast, she closed up variety and pushed it under the table cloth before she hoped –she could see her reading it and reopen the old debate between them when could they go back to work?” I mentioned earlier that the ideologies of Gracie Allen Show have been imposed upon the fiction “Krazy Kat (ibid)” and the Ideologies of society have been imposed on the “Gracie Allen Show”. We know, “These gendered performances are ones which we act out ourselves and which others act out in relation to us. They are acted out in accordance with social scripts prescribing ideals which are unrealizable, but which none the less provide the framework for our activities. These dominant ideals reinforce the power of certain groups……” From the society, Krazy has learned to become a woman( passive, submissive, and weak etc.) and Ignatz has learned to become a man( active, manipulative, and stronger etc),  “sex is seen as fixed by biology, but gender, as the social meaning which is given to such biology, is seen as historically and socially variable,…….” ……”Beauvoir claims that, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (295) is consistently quoted. Nonetheless Beauvoir's own position in relation to biology is more complex. For her the data of biology, offered here by her as facts, lack the fixity which later accounts sometimes took for granted. She shows herself aware of the way in which cultural myths and metaphors influence the telling of the biological story, even as she herself offers it to us. In pointing out the ideological influence on the descriptions of the active sperm and the passive egg (44)…..”

We know that, “Images in the media today projects an unrealistic and even dangerous standard of feminine beauty that can have a powerful influence on the way women view themselves. From the perspective of the mass media, thinness is idealized and expected for women to be considered "attractive." Images in advertisements, television, and music usually portray the "ideal woman" as tall, white, and thin, with a tubular body and blonde hair (Dittmar & Howard, 2004; Lin & Kulik, 2002; Polivy & Herman, 2004; Sands & Wardle, 2003; Schooler, Ward, Merriwether, & Caruthers, 2004; Tiggemann & Slater, 2003). The media is littered with images of females who fulfill these unrealistic standards, making it seem as if it is normal for women to live up to this ideal. Dittmar and Howard (2004) made this statement regarding the prevalence of unrealistic media images……….”

 In “Krazy Kat” (ibid), we observe that the popularity of Krazy in the strip is gradually decaling. She considers that other “cute” cats that are able to fulfill the demands of the Ideal Beauty Standard of they are replaced by her. She thinks, “ Yet it wasn’t the shifts of the market place that most upset her-their show fade from the public memory that was measured out in the widening disparity between their slowly diminishing (now quickly diminishing)  royalty, statements and the much larger figures next to other, newer names………They depressed her. Cartoon cats today were just popular as in her time, perhaps more so-some of the cats, she noticed, even got top banana position, the upper right-hand corner of the body page, the first strip in the Sunday supplement. But those cats were cute!” These “projected beautiful images” of media constantly disturbs makes Krazy vulnerable since “Body image is a complicated aspect of the self-concept that concerns an individual's perceptions and feelings about their body and physical appearance (Cash & Pruzinsky, 2002). Females of all ages seem to be particularly vulnerable to disturbance in this area …” and “Evidence for the negative effects of women's social comparison with media images is plentiful. Research has found that women who report frequently comparing themselves to other women, especially women in the media, are more likely to show signs of negative mood and body image disturbance (Schooler et al., 2004). Tiggemann and Mcgill (2004) found that women participants' brief exposure to media images of females led to increased levels of body dissatisfaction and weight anxiety. This finding is disturbing because the number of images used in the study is far less than what is present in any women's magazine or shown in most television programming.”

“Images in the media generally project a standard to which women are expected to aspire…” (Schooler et al., 2004; Thompson & Coovert, 1999) Krazy wanted to be, “(……………. cute! Why? Was it to say that little bitty innocently Kitty couldn’t have done nothing bad? Or was it the Fall Out! in the drinking water that made both audiences actors want what wasn’t good for them?)

In order to be “cute”, Krazy takes “………….deliciously dangerous tiger’s tea? ……….she was drinking too much tea that it would build up in her blood and might cause hallucinations.” Many women in today’s world are inclined to different beauty products even sometimes knowing the negative effects of these products since “Most companies that target women in the media actually attempt to foster social comparison with idealized images, in order to motivate women to buy products that will bring them closer to the ideal (e.g. diet products, makeup, hair products). If women see a discrepancy between themselves and the images they view in advertisements (which the almost definitely will), they will be more inclined to buy the products that are advertised (Thompson & Coovert, 1999).”  Krazy is a typical consumer of beauty products (tiger’s tea) who willingly buy the product though she knows the side effect of these products in order to achieve the ideal beauty image of the media.
In this paper, I have tried to explore, how female body is an element of subjugation the society. In this patriarchal society, certain discourses are enacted, (re-)produced, and legitimized to subjugate the female body and their minds. These manipulative discourses are very strongly rooted in the society and are transferred from generation after generation. Almost every text, talk and movie delineates some ideal discourses which become very necessary for the women to follow. But in the name of ideal discourses, patriarchal society subjugates not only the female body but also their minds.  Krazy is not born as a woman rather she becomes a woman by the ideologies of the society. Krazy is produced by the patriarchal society as a subject (a woman) in order to maintain domination on her. Krazy becomes an object of Ignatz’s manipulation. She, willingly or unwillingly forced to subscribe to the manipulative ideologies of the patriarchal society. These manipulative ideologies are used as a tool to perpetuate manipulation upon Krazy (and other women) and these ideologies interpellate Krazy as a female body (a subjugated body).

Then, in the name of “Ideal Beauty Standard” of women, media manipulates not only the female body but also their minds. Krazy is so much infatuated by the projected beauty images of the media. These “projected images” of the media (slim, thin, fair etc.) constantly disturb and makes Krazy vulnerable.  Krazy constantly compares herself with other “cute” cats. She thinks that the popularity of their strip is declaiming since other “cute” cats are replaced by her in other strips. Krazy aspires to achieve the projected beauty of the media that is why she takes tiger’s tea, instead of knowing its negative effects.

We know that politics is always connected with the collectivity. A woman re-presents almost all the women in the society. That is why; the experience of the krazy is the experience of almost all the women (collective body). Like Krazy, almost all the women subscribe themselves before the ideologies of the patriarchal society, and like her, almost all the women contribute to the maintenance of the domination of the society.
4.2. Findings in Terms of Discourse, Ideology and Power
According to  “de los Heros (2009: 173), CDA examines how texts represent and construct reality within a specific ideological system through implicit messages based on what is said and left unsaid. Therefore, CDA reveals how the ideological system is created and recreated by discourse/texts as well as social practices that serve certain groups maintain their privileges, power and access to goods and services in society by naturalizing their discourse and convincing people that their ideological interpretations just reality.” In the fiction “Krazy Kat”, we observe that Jay Cantor tries to portray the real picture of the society, how women are manipulated in every sphere of the male chauvinistic society. Different domineering ideologies are re-presented in the “Krazy Kat” (ibid) and these domineering ideologies are considered universal by most of the people; most of the women subscribed to these ideologies, and thus, subjugate by the opposite sexes.

We know that, “language is entwined in social power in a number of ways: language indexes power, expresses power…”  Ignatz becomes the spokesman of the male dominated society; his language expresses and legitimizes power on Krazy Kat, a representative of almost all the subjugated female body. Certain manipulative discourses of the society are re-produced through the fiction “Krazy Kat (ibid)” and these ideologies are practiced by the patriarchal society since we know that ideologies have the impetus power to influence a person’s belief, values and anticipations. “The discourse dimension of ideologies explains how ideologies influence our daily texts and talk, how we understand ideological discourse, and how discourse is involved in the reproduction of ideology in society” I mentioned earlier in this paper that the domineering ideologies of the society have been transferred to the “Gracie Allen Show” and , these ideologies transferred to the fiction “ Krazy Kat”; people are influenced by these ideologies and operate within the society to subjugate the female body. Similarly, in the name of “Ideal Beauty Standard” of women, the media indirectly impose its power on the women. Women are so much infatuated by the projected ideal images of the media and thus make themselves vulnerable before the discourses of the media.
Chapter 5 - Conclusion
5.1. How can this small-scale research help the ‘uninformed people’ make ‘informed choices’
In this paper, I have tried to explore some explicit discourses which are used to perpetuate hegemony and domination over women in the patriarchal society. We know that the objective of CDA “is to take up the cause of the oppressed and downtrodden of the society” and “to empower people by making them conscious/aware of the hidden structures that exist in the social make-up or have became part of the social set-up of a community”  I think, this paper helps to make understand the women how certain manipulative discourses have become the inseparable part of the society; this paper helps the women to make understand in the name of ideal   discourses of the patriarchal society and media how women are  manipulated. This paper makes the women conscious regarding some explicit and implicit manipulation of the patriarchal society and media. As well as, the patriarchal society also understands that the in the name of ideal discourses how they subjugate the female body and their minds.  In general, the common readers and in specific, the female readers will be aware of the domination of the patriarchal society and thus, raise their voice against the manipulation of the society as a whole.  This paper also helps not only the uninformed women but also the informed women to choices whether they will subscribe and thus, contribute to the maintenance of the manipulation of the society or they will raise their voice against the manipulation of the patriarchal society and media. As well as, the male will understand how they intentionally or unintentionally try to exert power over the female to control their body and minds in the name of ideal ideologies, and thus, the male might change their domineering attitude over the female.













References
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posted by Ainul Momen Rafat @ July 15, 2016   0 Comments