Cracks, Crevices and Cocks: exploring feminist visual strategies through humour and anger

Submission note: A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Visual Arts to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.

Despite decades of feminist critique, images of women circulated through mass media, including online, advertising and popular screen cultures, continue to objectify and commodify the female body and women’s experience. Industries such as fashion, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals pressure women to conform to narrow stereotypes of ideal femininity, which underline the association of women with (acceptable types of) sexuality on the one hand, and domestic passivity on the other. This continuing, broad cultural affirmation of patriarchally derived notions of femininity have driven my research to create critical responses which aim to both lampoon such notions while also providing avenues for pleasure and collusion in the viewer. To do this I have drawn on my own anger — which I argue has found a receptive context in the age of #MeToo — and the power of humour to merge with anger to critical effect. I have also focused my images on the ‘ideal body’ substitute — the doll, pliable but also stubborn matter. I propose that interpreting dolls through montage and photography offers useful strategies to explore both how pervasive these limited notions of femininity remain, and to offer pleasurable, critical glimpses into alternatives. Throughout this project I have been awakened to how everything is skewed to the male, white, hetero ideal. Advertising still pushes the ideal female body, family and life, even though this is unattainable. Perhaps we can change the culture that we inhabit by calling out the power dynamics embedded in these ideals, not only through social media campaigns such as #MeToo but also through visual strategies that affirm the power of feminist critique through a conjunction of anger and humour. My work aims to empower, both myself and the viewer, to transform culture, the culture of patriarchy.