Femininity & Alternative Discourse -- Femininity Week 9

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8e6-IeQ0aw

Alternative discourses can provide us with a valuable tool for identifying and understanding dominant discourses and their impact on us. This is understandable, as dominant discourses are frequently experienced as “taken for granted truths,” so it’s easy for us to be unaware of how we’re being positioned by them, until we are presented with some “alternatives” or “challenges” to them.

This SNL clip starring Natalie Portman asserts several alternative discourses about femininity. In the clip, this young, petite, White woman is performing a form of gangster rap. She is, therefore, portrayed as vulgar, aggressive, angry and even violent (which coincides with our dominant discourses about Black men and gangster rap). The producers of this clip clearly thought that their audience would be amused by this representation. Why? What assumptions were they making about us and how we view femininity?

When we laugh at this clip (and/or find it amusing), we are recognizing that the behavior being displayed is NOT what we typically associate with femininity. This, in turn, highlights what the dominant discourses about femininity actually are—that women should be docile, calm, passive, & polite.

Certainly part of what makes this clip funny (and/or amusing) is that Natalie Portman, a film star, is not someone who we associate with this type of behavior (the clip clearly shows this in the segments where she is being interviewed). The “joke” is that Natalie isn’t the “nice girl” people expect her to be. Of course, if we change Natalie’s social location, our expectations of “nice girl” change along with them. If, for example, Natalie were a Black woman film star doing gangster rap, would our interpretation of her actions be different? Would we still be as amused or think it was as funny? In other words, Natalie’s social location as a young, petite, White female film star fits with the dominant discourses about femininity, so when she performs this alternative discourse about femininity we are able to find it funny/amusing.

So when you watch this clip, which alternative discourses about femininity do you notice? What do they tell you about dominant discourses of femininity?