Naked on the inside
November 15th 2007 21:59
Some ideas from, and thoughts inspired by, a doco I saw last night: "Naked on the inside" (7pm, Wednesday 14 November 2007; Greater Union Cinemas, Bondi Junction; hosted by Popcorn Taxi).
This film has screened in various places, and a 52-minute version (the full feature is 81 minutes) will appear on SBS on Friday 23 November at 10pm.
Standard blurb goes: "[S]ix extra-ordinary people from around the world reveal their bodies and share their secrets in a unique experiment in search of their inner selves... One by one, they reveal their unique relationship with their body... Australian film-maker Kim Farrant has built a reputation for compassionately exposing the 'unguarded moment' in her subjects."
***
-- Was born with crossed legs that were amputated when he was 18 months old.
-- Formerly a postman, now a dancer with DV8 Physical Theatre. Enjoys being in a position where his body is on display (perhaps because it removes ambiguity, whereas, normally, people want to stare, but don't know whether decorum dictates looking at him or looking away).
-- Gave glimpses into the extent to which a disabled person is conscious of their disability or identifies in terms of it. When people see him and he's angry, they automatically assume that it's got something to do with his disability -- it couldn't simply be that he's had a bad day. (For some reason, this made me think of wearing a uniform, or a t-shirt with a slogan, and other people reacting to you in light of that.)
-- Desperately wants to be liked, he comments, laughing. But his disability is not a continual mental preoccupation. "I don't pretend I don't have this body, but sometimes I forget." (To what extent does the "sometimes" imply a norm of remembering?)
-- Discusses whether he's sexy.
-- Slightly playfully, he lists things he likes about himself -- eyes, chest, arms, etc (where do such standards of evaluation, specific to each body part, come from? and where does the delineation into parts come from -- why do we say "cheek" and "ear", and not "hollow just under the ear"?).
-- Comments (how seriously?) that he wouldn't want ugly lumps of legs, wouldn't know what to do with this mass of flesh, it'd just weigh him down (and, incidentally, among all the possible physical forms, our ideas of beauty really are very contingent -- if we were cockroaches, we might say to each other, My what lovely antennae you have, and be horrified at people who lacked antennae).
-- As he's undressing (each subject undergoes a naked self-portrait), he repeats to himself, "This is what people see, this is what people see". I'm found this striking, but I'm not sure what it means.
-- Former model.
-- Said she never thought of herself as beautiful (disingenuous?), and mentioned that she still can't walk down a beach wearing a bikini, I think because she's worried that her moving body is unaesthetic (a good example of how body image constrains people from doing what they want).
-- Talks about the weariness of maintaining a model's body, striving to reach an impossible image she never once felt she'd attained. Speaks of constant preoccupations, being on a diet for seventeen years, long hours spent training with very little fuel in her system, and a cycle of starving herself, eating something, feeling guilty about it, throwing it up, continually obsessing about food, living in fear of fat, worrying about keeping up appearances.
-- Had a heart seizure (implied to be somehow self-induced), gained some weight after the operation, and then felt disconnected from her body, "Whose body is this?" (compare the alien limb phenomenon Oliver Sachs describes -- the patient becomes convinced that his leg is not his own; or compare my blog on dismemberments).
-- Had a period for the first time in six years, and felt like her body was out of control.
-- Spoke about how she first began to be looked at in a sexual way by other people, then needed to control that. She relates the need to control to a rape experience. (Sartre writes about parts of you growing beyond your consciousness -- how, under the gaze of the Other, you realize that there are meanings of yourself that will always be alien to you, and there are various tactics you devise to reappropriate control.)
-- Eventually thought, "Wait a minute, what the hell, why am I doing this to myself?" "Where did the idea come from that we should all look the same?" (A lot of the film had a somewhat preachy message of self-acceptance...)
-- "Each day before he goes to work, Marcus binds his double-D-cup breasts to flatten them, before shaving and dressing in male attire. With his goatee beard and tattoos, Marcus (born Renee 28 years ago) is convincing at 'passing' as a man. He believes he’s male on the inside... He walks the streets... with the ever-present threat that his cover could be blown at any moment. The deception could cost him his job, his teaching reputation, his church".
-- Thinks "it's no one else's business what I have between my legs".
-- Observes that, if you discover his secret, you're still not comfortable calling him a "woman". You don't want to put him in that category, he doesn't quite fit. "Only in a biological sense am I a woman". (Compare the varied ways to slice up the homosexuality concept.)
-- What does it mean to be perceived as male, what are the implications, what do people expect of you?
-- Speaks of the way that, when people find out, they call him a freak of nature, and simply stare at him, at a loss for words. He finds that silence intolerable.
-- I think he says something about facial hair and hair styles (and one might consider how ridiculous it is that we are judged on the basis of them, how much energy is wasted -- whereas, from a Martian point of view, it might be perplexing why anyone would let hairstyle affect their life).
-- Expresses fear that, once you see his naked body, you'll relate to his body, and not to who he really is (I think anonymous internet folk like myself can to some extent understand this).
-- As he's undressing, he repeats to himself, "This is what I am, this is what I am", apparently trying to accept himself and trying to make himself go through with it.
-- In the course of the film, has a masectomy. She dies five months after the final interview.
-- When she became pregnant, she no longer felt she "owned" her body -- her body now belonged to her baby (and, after all, why do we believe we have property rights in our body?).
-- Feels that an adulterous secret she was carrying translated into flesh -- manifested itself as cancer. Talks about how every day she thought about confessing to her husband.
-- Makes the difficult choice of a lumpectomy instead of a masectomy in the first place, and then alternative treatments instead of chemotherapy -- quality of life over length.
-- "Fat activist" (for instance, she demonstrates against a gym advertisement that has a slogan to the effect, "When the aliens come, they'll eat the fat chicks first").
-- Speaks of how it was only when she went to school that she learned she was "fat" -- and she was quite surprised to hear it. She didn't realize she was different.
-- Frustration that this attribute of hers, that she was born with, is regarded as bad.
-- Speaks of beginning to live only from the neck up, disowning the rest of her body, not feeling it was a part of her.
-- I don't overeat, I don't eat chocolate every week, I work out regularly, everyone get off my back.
-- Speaks of deciding she was beautiful. "It may not be beautiful to everyone, but it's my home, so it has to be beautiful to me." "I was born in this body -- why be ashamed of it." Speaks of "fat" as a simple adjective, like short or tall -- it's not essentially a dirty word.
-- Observes that, in other cultures, her body type was admired, or even revered.
-- Notes also that there are problems in accepting the changes of an ageing body.
-- Former gang member.
-- What associations do one's body parts carry? Director Kim Farrant wanted to push the line that his scars remind him of his past (for instance, he was shot four times in the head, and slashed around the face; and his gang involvement cost him his family). He kind of shrugs this off. He replies that he doesn't look at his face much, but sometimes thinks about the way his hands have brought a lot of pain to people, as well as some happiness.
-- Talks about contempt for weak bodies.
-- Mentions that gangs accept anyone, regardless of body type -- just bring your anger and hate, etc.
***
During the Q&A...
-- Megan Spencer, acting as MC, talked too long (probably forgetting about the 9pm "Gabriel" session immediately following). There was only time for two audience questions.
-- A Popcorn Taxi person mentioned that the film made her cry, and Spencer spoke at length about her crying experiences, after first seeing the DVD. It's unclear to me why they were crying -- perhaps because the masectomy patient dies, or perhaps because they experienced a moment of boundary-transcending love, or...? (Ms Spencer, if you ever read this, please leave a comment and elaborate.)
Kim Farrant
-- The producer (Ian Walker) mentioned that Rick's choices for treatments were controversial. He himself thought she'd chosen badly, and some audience members from previous screenings -- mainly mothers -- had reacted with anger, believing Rick had made immoral decisions with regards to her children's welfare.
-- An audience member asked about the subjects' reactions to the film, and whether any problems had been caused for Marcus. -- Dave liked the film, and thought it was an accurate reflection of his life at the time. Shirley liked it. Rick had seen a version of it before she passed away, and she'd rung the director to talk about the amazing range of bodies, and didn't mention herself. There was some sort of legal issue with screening the film for any of the American subjects (I think this was something to do with a deal with Showtime), so none of them had seen it. Jose was back in prison (some sort of immigration problem). There was originally an arrangement with Marcus to not release the film until he'd finished his employment term in Taiwan, but he'd since decided to extend his contract. It was unclear whether the film would ever be screened in Taiwan. The producer mentioned that Marcus was already well known over the Internet as a trans hiphop artist.
-- An audience member asked Kim Farrant how she persuaded her subjects to speak so frankly. Farrant retold the story of reaching a brick wall in the course of her conversations with her first subject, Dave, then hitting on the idea to get him to interview her naked, in order to level the playing field. All of the remaining subjects also interviewed Farrant naked. These interviews were supposed to appear in the film, but Walker thought Farrant's issues weren't interesting enough -- they're now on the DVD extras. Farrant also spoke of: (1) long preparatory phone conversations and e-mails with her subjects, so that they knew where she was coming from and felt unthreatened; (2) sharing her own body image issues, so that the subjects felt more permitted/encouraged/dared to expose theirs; (3) gradually moving to more intimate, personal, uncomfortable territory. (Note, incidentally, the efficacy of gradualism: basically the same technique was used in the McDonald's strip search prank calls -- "By beginning with seemingly reasonable requests, such as taking the victim aside and searching their personal belongings, the [police impersonator] was able to work his way up to unimaginable transgressions, such as sexual assault.")
***
Some further thoughts
-- The press kit at the website has copious information.
-- First-time nudists often speak, enthusiastically and somewhat surprisedly, of the diversity of body types they've encountered. Clothes really do homogenize people. And there really is only a small range of body types presented in popular media.
-- Are regulatory body images necessarily a bad thing? And how plausible is a world without body image? -- Compare also Cressida J Heyes's thoughts on the notions of a good body in yoga as opposed to more limited gym ideals.
-- Farrant comments about Carre "Yet there is still a need to look beautiful in order to feel worthy, even though she knows in her heart that she is more than just her physical self." And of her own inspiration for the project, she writes: "On an intellectual level, I knew I was more than just my physical shell, yet for as long as I can remember, my body, my health, my size, my sexuality, has defined my sense of self and often my outlook on life."
I suppose one thing I want to flag is the woolliness of many of these ideas -- "self", "more than self", "sense of self", and so forth. Even in psychology they're used in a pretty vague way (often in relation to another vague concept -- "identity").
I'm assuming that what Farrant means by "being your physical self" is something like being reducible to, or contained by, the meanings that other people inscribe on your body, the interpretations they give to it. You perceive me as beautiful and confident, but I'm actually insecure, You perceive me as male, but I'm not everything that that word implies, etc. -- In this sense I think it's trivially true that you're more than your body.
Reading the words slightly differently... I reckon there's plenty of people who believe that there's nothing but physical stuff -- people who'd doubt the existence of spiritual stuff, and who argue that the mental is reducible to the physical.
I'm one of them. But I'm also happy to entertain the idea that "self" doesn't end at the skin. I suppose this is ultimately a matter of stipulating a definition for the word -- presumably it's used in any number of vague and contradictory ways.
This is a complex topic that I doubt I'll ever see the bottom of... I've made notes on some aspects of it before -- Confucius and the situated self, connected to community, evolution into superorganisms, the person as timespace worm, the cyborg self, connected to environment, the possibility of some phenomenological sense of self, and the notion of traces you leave behind you.
-- Farrant writes: "When I am naked, something more than my skin is revealed. It's as if I can’t hide my inner truth, 'the real me' whatever that is." And in the Q&A, she spoke of her self being hidden by the meanings of clothing -- religion, status, gender, etc.
I suppose I respond to this idea with a lot of caution. Firstly, I don't think there need be a connection between nudity and revelation -- I think a porn star can wear nudity like armour. (But perhaps there is a distinction to be drawn between "nude" and "naked".) Secondly, I'm very skeptical of the idea of a real self -- I'm more inclined to think that there's a biological organism, and it reacts differently in different contexts -- there is nothing identifiable as an essence. Thirdly, I think that if you start to take seriously the idea that we're "cyborgs" and in some sense form a unit with our environments -- programmed to function in a particular set of givens, incomplete except in certain situations or in certain company -- then "reducing" a person to their naked flesh might be better understood as a diminution of a true self than a distillation of it.
-- One general idea that struck me was all the different perspectives one can take on bodies, and the way, when you walk around the world: (1) that you're moving in a field where things are good, bad, attractive, unattractive, disgusting, pleasing, interesting, boring; (2) that this space is accidental -- it might mean nothing to anyone else, and might mean a lot less in a couple of hundred years' time; for instance, I've written elsewhere of the incommunicability of 9/11; (3) that, in particular, people will not understand the fine grain of it -- that you find that hair colour attractive in this particular way on that body shape on a figure perceived as female -- the arbitrary lenses we use to orient ourselves, ridiculous from an outsider perspective.
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Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
Relativity Watch
Padsoc
Since I've gained even more weight I often have the feeling that I'm disconnected from my body... I find that I act as if I was thinner, or more in shape, get disappointed when I look in a mirror, and then back away from my current body awareness. I'm working to accept myself the way I am more, and it's working... bit by bit.
I agree. Nudity as full-body spectacle perhaps?
It was really interesting to compare and contrast these people's body image.
Comment by Nonymous
Philosophy Blog
Thanks very much for your comment!
The idea of "act as if I was thinner" I find intriguing -- that we think there is a certain sort of way that it is appropriate to act based on our bodies. But, apart from practical issues like banging your head on the ceiling if you're too tall, why shouldn't a short man "act like" a tall man, or a tall man like a short man -- why should there be ways to act that are appropriate to body types?
Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
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Padsoc
I find that dancing makes me feel much better - I can focus on expressing myself in the body I'm in and I often forget to long for something else. What I'm really doing when I do that is not taking full advantage of the body I'm in and enjoying it, which is a shame.
How do you relate to your body?
Comment by Nonymous
Philosophy Blog
Well, mainly in terms of trying to shrink it.
But it's really far too complex a question to answer... at least in the space of this comment box. A proper answer would include: All the different perspectives one has on each body part, what one is reminded of by each body part, how one uses one's body in this or that particular situation, how one evaluates one's body in this or that context, and how present bodily issues and awareness are at any time...
I suppose, to the extent I am interested in my own bodily attitudes, it's something I'm investigating very gradually, and more as a dimension of this or that experience rather than something to concentrate on in itself. So, for instance, when I write about sculpture, I think I'm often implicitly commenting on my own body, or my bodily self-perception. And even when I'm talking about something dry like "belief", I try not to leave the body out of the discussion -- I speak of "embodied belief", etc.
Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
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Padsoc