Crafting the Ideal Male Identity
Art Exhibit featuring:
Society plays a huge role in gender differences, especially when it comes to the media as depicted in six different video installations by artists Janet Biggs and Barbara Pollack in PG-13: Male Adolescent Identity in the Age of Video Culture. Because the contemporary world lays out the gender schemas for the society, we are prone to conformity, following the guidelines of how we are "supposed" to act and behave according to our gender. In this exhibit, in particular, Biggs and Pollack examine the confusing world of male adolescents growing up in today's society. These video installations not only display impressive imagery and sound, but also bring out the disturbing ways of how video games, sports, and music videos construct these gender stereotypes in male behaviors.
For example, Pollack's Perfect Dark and America's Army pieces force us to think about the influence of such violent video games on youth. Close-up images of a young boy's face show that while he is playing the video game, he seems to be desensitized by such violent imagery, and thus acquire a higher level of aggressiveness as a personality factor fashioned by society for the gender role of men. Interestingly, America's Army is a video game used by the U.S. Army to recruit young male teenagers to enlist in the military.
With the piece of Ritalin, Biggs projects a nine-year-old boy performing a drum solo, which is viewed simultaneously with a three-screen video of a horse stomping in tune to the boy's drumming. This not only illustrates how drugs can alter the mind and creates conformity in behavior, but also warns us of the potential dangerous side effects of anti-psychotic drugs. Another similar theme is also displayed in Haldol, which shows repeated juxtapositions of a boy dribbling a basketball, a horse violently attacking the camera lens, and a rushing waterfall.
Finally, in the video footage of Stronger by Pollack shows three adolescent boys watching a Britney Spears' music video called Stronger (2002), in which sexuality is explored. Also, with the pop-up commentaries of these adolescents along the way, this artistic piece impressively undermines the manipulative strategies the marketing world uses to brainwash adolescents to approach their sexuality aggressively and "in the macho-guy way." This similar theme is also expressed in Biggs' Chamblee, with high school athletes practicing their wrestling drills. The artist uses this scenario as a way to not only illustrate male aggression and sexuality, but power, control, and anxiety.
This extended exhibit is a perfect example of Erikson's Theory for the adolescence period, in which adolescents encounter the "identity versus role confusion" dilemma. With the media continuously streaming and pounding sexual music videos, aggressive sports, and violent video games on the minds of male adolescents, it's no wonder how these young people struggle in confusion and at times, painful frustration, growing up in the contemporary world, as they make their transition from childhood to adulthood. If we were to raise today's younger generation with good parental skills, we must take into consideration that the adolescence period is the most fragile in the human lifespan. If we were to help our children grow up peacefully and happily, making the transition into adulthood successfully and less problematic, we must teach them ways to go against these stereotypes and not to conform to the ideal male behaviors of aggression, power, and control. One way to do this is to help these male adolescents establish an androgynous mind, because having "feminine-like qualities" is an "okay thing," instead of something being ridiculed. There should be much appraise for Biggs and Pollack, for they not only capture the typical male stereotypes fabricated by society, but also show the audience the upsetting drawbacks and painful struggles these male adolescents must go through in order to determine their male identity.
References
Biggs, J. & Pollack, B. PG-13: Male Adolescent Identity in the Age of Video Culture [Art Work]. Houston, TX: DiverseWorks Art Space.
--Reviews by Kathy Nguyen, 2004.
For more information, please visit the site: DiverseWorks.
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