A picture of the humor in gender roles (Analysis #2)

She laughed at his proposal for marriage, not just because he was the wrong type of man, but because he had the audacity to propose in the first place. After all, the two had only met a week ago and he was her boss. The nerve of him using his status in the company to presume he had any rights to a romantic engagement with Susie left her tickled to death. The shock he received was the best part; he had really believed that he had a chance. She couldn't help but laugh right in his face, right in the face of society, how dare they presume that these archaic roles would be carried out by her, or any woman, any longer.

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Jonathan Culler wrote that structuralism was based "on the realization that if human actions or productions have a meaning there must be an underlying system of distinctions and conventions which makes this meaning possible" (Culler, 56). Therefore, the picture above generates meaning through the societal context that it comes from. Even without words the image itself can contain a narrative due to the societal-gender signs and symbols that it contains. Culler also wrote that, "social and cultural phenomena are not simply material objects or events but objects or events with meaning, and hence signs" and "in studying signs one must investigate the system of relations that enables meaning to be produced" (Culler, 56). Therefore, the image above is only relevant to those of us who can recognize the system of rules that it stems from. In this case the rules are determined by American gender roles. The woman is laughing at the man and by the look on his face his ego is affected. He is shocked by her laughter because in American society it has historically been men who laugh at women, or rather, it is men who hold the power over women and therefore men tend to do the laughing. One does not have to know where this image comes from as long as they are aware of the system of rules that it stems from they can use a structuralist analysis of the picture to draw out its meaning.

This same logic can be applied to language itself as Culler wrote that, "The rules of English enable sequences of sound to have meaning; they make it possible to utter grammatical or ungrammatical sentences" (Culler, 56). The sounds are given meaning due to the meaning assigned to them by the system of the English language. Culler says the same is true for events such as soccer and marriage. Without the rules that state that two posts will be used as a goal, or two rings will represent a union, than the events just become material objects without meaning. The event occurring in the image above contains objects such as the business attire being worn by both the man and the woman. These signs dictate to those of who know about women-men relations that the two must work together, and most likely the man is the woman's boss. Although these gender roles are evolving as woman continue to gain more power and influence in American society, the picture is in black and white and that in of itself is a sign to those of us familiar with technology that the image is from the distant past. In the past women did not have as much social status and as a result most viewers of this image could assume that the woman has a lower status than the man, and as a result her laughter might be presumed as rebellion.
Culler would say that this rebellion is only observable if one is informed of the system that is being rebelled against. As a result knowledge is power, and structuralism is a literary movement that can give us power by making us aware of the rules that govern our language, our literature, and our society. Without knowledge of the rules one can never truly break them. The woman in this image is very aware of the rules that she is expected to conform to and in breaking those rules she has become a structurlaist of sorts as she redefines her own narrative with behavior (the laughter) that runs contrary to the norm. Or some might argue that her hysterics subscribe her to the rule because although a woman is not expected to laugh at her superiors (publicly), it can be said that women were considered to be nervous and flighty, incapable of reason. In this sense her laughter condemns her to the expectation that states she is not worthy of being taken seriously.

Works Cited

Culler, Jonathan. "The Linguistic Foundation." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Second Ed. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. 56-68. Print.

Rabelais and His World

Bakhtin was obsessed with language. He felt that communication is at the center of all art. Form, within the context of a novel, is used by an author to send a message to the reader. He believed that a dialogue was taking place when one reads a novel. Sine this dialogue cannot occur without a speaker (the writer) who is human, than it is safe to conclude that each word in a novel has a social agenda that is charged by the author's own ideology. Essentially, all novels in Bakhtin's eyes were socially charged.


In addition Bakhtin was very concerned with folk culture. He felt that folk culture always includes a carnival as a major component. He feels that carnivals are remarkable for their multiplicity of styles that, like words do for language, morph together to form one cognitive experience. It was that variety that lead to the fun in life, and in language.

Plato on Nine Inch Nails with Bowie (Analysis #1)

Plato would find the music video "I'm Afraid of Americans", by David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails, to be dangerous to his Republic, and he would ban it immediately. The first problem he would have would be the artistic medium being used. With video the object is three times removed from it's original form. The art is inherently imitative because the musicians are essentially actors in the video. Plato felt that "that imitation is a form of play and not serious . . . all those who compose tragic poetry, whether in iambic or epic verse, are imitators in the highest degree possible . . . this imitating is concerned with something at third removed from the truth" (Plato, 49). The forms, in this case Americans and David Bowie, exist but we see only a reflection which is then captured on film to create an image three times removed from what Plato considers to be truth. Once it is being viewed over the Internet and onto a monitor it has finally become four times removed. Thus all truth and virtue that could have existed in Americans and Bowie would be completely obscured by the time it reached the Internet and our computer. Although he would surely marvel at the technological accomplishment of being able to capture actual events as they occur on film, he would find the use of that technology to only be appropriate for filming historical events, and only the people of the most highest virtue would be allowed to be captured on film.


In additio, Plato would also have concerns about the art form of music videos because the images and lyrics of the song create a narrative/myth about society that could be used to create social upheaval. Plato asks in the Republic, "shall we than carelessly allow the children to listen to any myths made up by anyone, and to absorb into their souls opinions which are for the most part opposite of those we think they should have when they grow up?" (Plato, 16). From the onset of the video Bowie is running from Renzor's character "Johnny" because he is "afraid of Americans". This would be seen by Plato as promoting fear and hysteria. In Plato's Republic there would be no reason to fear enemies of the state because one should have trust in the Republics superiority. In addition there are images in the video that include the insinuation of a woman giving oral sex to a man in public, a man shooting a police officer in the head, and regular citizens shooting each other at whim, which Plato would conclude to be dangerous for citizens to watch. Just like his disdain for tragedy, Plato would say that these images, coupled with the disturbing quality of the music, could evoke passion within common people that could not be controlled, and thus make it difficult for them to separate reason and virtue from immoral desires.

Finally, at one point Bowie sings that "God is an American", and for Plato this would be the ultimate outrage. It would be the equivalent of saying that Zeus is a Spartan, or a Persian, and comparing Zeus to an average human is the same as equating humans with the Gods. Plato believed that the muse inspired artists to create and that reason was not needed to create poetry. If one was divinely inspired to blaspheme it would come as a shock to Plato and his contemporaries because when one challenged the Gods they were always vanquished. To Plato all men have is reason and virtue, and Bowie's music video "I'm Afraid of Americans" implies that virtue and reason are utterly abandoned when societies like America begin to police the world with fear tactics. The same tactics that Plato himself would like to employ against artists like Bowie.

Works Cited

I'm Afraid of Americans. Dir. Dom and Nick. Perf. David Bowie and Trent Reznor. 1998. Film.

Plato. “Republic 10." Classical Literary Criticism. Ed. Penelope Murray, T.S. Dorsch. London: Penguin Classics, 2004. Print.