Apology Accepted, But…
Yesterday I received a response to the letter that I wrote to Brave New Films last week protesting their torture porn impeachment ad (see also http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/2007/07/06/robert-greenwalds-bad-ad-day/. Apology accepted, but I think it is worth sharing the wording of the form letter (a colleague received the exact same letter) because it makes so painfully clear the depth of misogyny in our political debate. Here is what the letter said:
Dear Lucinda,
The graphic was intended to represent Cheney taking America hostage, and America is represented as a woman because the country is historically represented as a woman through “Lady Liberty.” The intention was not to be offensive in any way. However, we understand how the image could be viewed as offensive, and we quickly removed it. We deeply apologize for our mistake.
Sincerely,
Madison
What is so disturbing is that this feminizing of liberty that has to be rescued from the big bad rapist sounds suspiciously like a left-wing version of George Bush’s grotesque speeches about liberating the women of Afghanistan and Iraq. That the lady liberty being rescued in the ad looks like some guy’s porn torture fetish fantasy rather than the strong nurturing figure that welcomes the huddled poor is an obscene indictment of how truly lost in the shuffle the true meaning of liberty has become. The bottom line is that all of this comes down to a modern day version of the colonization of women’s bodies in the name of patriarchy.
And while we are so busy defending this sexualized concept of liberty, a man in Jordan was just sentenced to 6 months for killing his sister in a murder that he justified as necessary to defend the honor of his family. My local paper devoted a scant column inch to this denial of liberty.
Lesson to be learned? While the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney is absolutely necessary to defend the perceived liberties we hold so dear, to proceed without taking into account a deep analysis of the patriarchal nature of those perceptions will not in the long run liberate any of us.
Filed under: Uncategorized, Commentary
Yet again despite a representative from Brave New Films apologising for the misognystic graphic, the writer managed to infer the real problem was not Brave New Films but that some viewers considered the graphic offensive. This apology was patronising to say the least. It is not the fact ‘this image could be viewed as offensive’ but the fact Brave New Films considered it acceptable to use a sexualised image of a woman which is clearly linked with porn films routinely showing women suffering sexualised torture all for the entertaiment of the male viewer. Would such an image have even been considered if instead of a woman it was a man shown tied up with a woman dominating him.