Cindy Sherman has once again proven to me that she is, indeed, an amazingly complex artist. While I was reading Butler’s ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,’ I thought about Cindy Sherman’s photographs and how she represents gender and the femininity. Butler states that gender is not pre-determined by sex, but is created by a reproduction of pre-existing, historical, repetitive acts. Butler also states that, “one ought to consider the futility of a political program which seeks radically to transform the social situation of women without first determining whether the category of woman is socially constructed in such a way that to be woman is, by definition, to be in an oppressed situation.” (Butler 158). This can be deconstructed to mean that by radically transforming the social situation of women is to re-legitimize the idea that women are socially oppressed or different in the first place. I propose that Cindy Sherman’s photographs defy this re-legitimization of the woman being oppressed by portraying the woman in these historically defined gender roles, while also criticizing these gender roles. Sherman is calling attention to the fact that these roles do exist and, by “recreating” film stills (please note that I am not stating that Sherman recreates any one film in particular), she is addressing the fact that gender roles are a product of history.
In Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #35 (as shown above), one can assume that the woman in the photograph is fulfilling a typical female gender role by wearing an apron over her dress, signifying that she is cooking. Yet this woman in the photograph has a menacing stare, directed at someone or something not seen in the frame. Her hand on her hip could signify a triumphant defeat, or it could be seen as an angry gesture towards that undefined subject outside of the frame. What is most disturbing about this photograph is the dirt, or blood, smeared across the bottom, right-hand side of the door. A black coat is draped over the adjacent wall of the door, perhaps covering up something that this woman wants to hide.
When I was first looking through Sherman’s photographs to use as an example for this blog post, I was drawn to this photograph because she was wearing an apron and I immediately assumed she would be portraying a gender-specific role. My emotional reaction to this photograph stems from the blood streaked door and the menacing stare, not from the fact that she is wearing an apron. This performance by Sherman is put on me, forcing me to evaluate my assumptions of gender roles. Sherman could have been wearing an apron, smiling and offering a plate of cookies, but instead, this woman appears threatening, thus complicating my reaction to her. Sherman forces me, the viewer, to question my reaction to this woman in the apron, not fulfilling her historical “duties” as the woman in the kitchen. Thus, Sherman defies the re-legitimization of the oppressed woman by both representing the historically conditioned woman and by giving this woman non-traditional authority, both within the frame and over the viewer.
*Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #35 taken from MoMA.org
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