"The Sticky Embrace of Beauty" is an article written by Ann Frances Wysocki, possibly written for a classroom that aims to learn for the basic constructions of sexuality, that attempts to figure out one central question after anger from a picture in The New Yorker: How can students learn a understanding of visual means of writing, when the per-determined mindset that everybody has known by now is limiting that understanding into concepts that make sense on a technical (or artistic) level, but not on rhetorical principles? The result is formality that depends not on the time and place--or gravity of ascetic proportions-- those principles are known for, but on this judgment of universal understanding that can change the way students think of what exactly the purpose of a suggestive piece of something--in this case, the photo for Kinsey--is truly is.
It's this search for better understanding that brings back to mind of Sherman Alexie's "Superman and Me," where his love for his father brought him into personal literacy? Why bring him up? Because both Alexie and Wysocki were both inspired by what they personally believe in eventually evolved into dedication to their craft; Alexie with his "aching devotion" (WOW 363) to his father that eventually made him a writer that believes of "trying to save our lives" (WOW 365), while Wysocki observation that "we all [...] are pushed to see women only as sexual objects, as objects serving as the means to the ends of others" (ROW 93) eventually led her to teach her students, as a teacher herself, to "learn the social and temporal expectations of visual composition" and "change some of the results" of what she learned (ROW 97). The only big difference between the two is that one managed to get personal satisfaction of what he learned and used it out of a love for writing, while the material of Wysocki's only put her into a state of determination for her and her students to understand what it is that makes social expectation of womanhood so frustrating to many.
Now, in this regularly organized Pre-Reading exercise, I'm going to do
something different; if you, the reader, want to join me in looking at the following question ("Spend 10-15 minutes looking up one or more of the following: Kant, Frankenstein, and the Kinsey Institute" it says), go ahead and do what it says and look up "Kinsey Institute" on your search engine and click away for 10 minutes. If successful, you will learn on how the institute researches information for "more effective intervention programs for sexual compulsion and risk-taking that would contribute to reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS," [1] learn about the history of sexology, and discover an archive that can further reader's opinion of various sexualities. Go ahead, we got time to spare.
Okay, where were we? Oh yes, the structure of these reading responses. Well, thinking now of the relationship of Bernhardt and Wysocki, Berhardt explains that the sort of text that "display their structure, providing the reader/ viewer with a schematic representation of the divisions and hierarchies which organize the text." (ROW 35) Because of this existence, with "multiple considerations of audience and purpose functionally constrain the text, influencing its shape and structure," (ROW 39) the visual work Wysocki sets up will work for many people, but shows detriment to searching for the point for readers like myself, where, despite proving the article's purpose of seeking form that's separate from time and space, provides little to the imagination of some readers and the most benefit of the author herself. Does that make it a low-visual text? Possibly; if reader follow Bernhardlt's rule that they "can move about, settle on certain sections, read some sections lightly, some intently, some not at all, and still have a good idea of what the text is about" (ROW 41) without worrying about rhetorical context of the text itself--focusing on the form of the paragraph--then Bernhardlt's explanation apply to the article easily.
Then there is the ad work from Peek. At the least, does it has my interest? Well, it does, but not in a different way. Wysocki mentions that the body "has been made into form, has been departicularized [...] we are seeing a body only through the distant, universalized, formality," (ROW 93) meaning that the nudity within the picture is not one of purity on behalf on the women, but of the representation she stands for. As a reader, curiosity will then strike, leading to a bunch of questions Kinsley probably intended: What this representation is suppose to attract? What does this institution offers to this nudity towards The New Yorker readers? Is this picture telling me the appeals of taking such photography? Sure, the body attracts me, but as a product to arrive at an end, I can't help but ask questions about the personal context, because the motivations/question behind the product overtakes my personal feeling about the nudity itself.
So, is beauty indeed the eye of the beholder? That's a question I'm afraid to answer. See, if a thing is indeed beautiful, what are we suppose to judge it on? I would guess it would either involve my own feelings on the matter, or what someone else who tells me what is beautiful. But when that happens, then I arrive at disputation with others, and myself. What would happen if, say, someone who is really into international programming thinks [x], [y], and [z] is absolutely beautiful, and once I finally get around to seeing it for myself, and I find the beauty to be nothing but artificial, unemotional manipulation in my eyes? Maybe it's because those programming being beautiful doesn't come for the material within, but what the purity is already formed by others. Same thing applies if it applies to myself; what if I tell someone that character [x] is the most flexible construct to form stories, but once another sees the character, they just see that character at their own observation? I guess the answer would be somewhere in the middle: If I can find beauty, it's not because of what it represents, but because it appeal to my already predetermined guidelines of my own attractions; a personal subjectively that applies only to myself and others can agree or disagree at. So to answer the question, yes, but not to either argument, but towards both; the social forces of beauty is out there, and it's possible for that beauty to be inherent, but towards beauty itself, it's all subjective. Beauty in a social context has its' place, but it has to come at an universal level in order for it to work in that context, despite the arguments of what it truly is will eventually be debated into pure subjectively.
Oddly, this fits to a statement Wysocki brings up later on in her article:
"There is no question that there is a certain necessity to effective visual
composition because a design must fit a viewer's expectation if it is to
make sense… but if design it to have any sense of possibility—of
freedom—to it, then it must also push against the conventions, the
horizon, of those expectations" (ROW 97).
What does they have to do with the article? They further explain what Wysocki is angry about the picture, where she believes that, in bold, that the objectification of pictorial bodies are "as inseparable from the formal approaches we have learned for analyzing and making visual presentations of all kinds." (ROW 93) As a result of disconnected frustration over social expectations at work, she now becomes aware of this appreciation of the freedom such imagery can actually bring beyond its' aesthetic senses, so she now, instead, aims towards "its particularities" to "make visible the limitations of the forms we have been asked to grow into but [...] cannot" (ROW 94). In others words, she is not against what the image represents, but against the expression the picture isn't from the three morals she brings up from Kant: the study of nature, the study of morals, and the study of taste and aesthetics (ROW 87). It's this frustration she would probably have to deal with sometime once she goes past photo advertising and looks into the art of drawing, where the line between the purity of the artist's expression and the interpretation of its' audience is now at even greater odds, and the studies she brings up is now sustained by the rules of drawing: negative spaces, spacing, the form, and the various different tools needed. Therefore, the approaches are now even further complicated, while the rules from earlier still serving as the foundation, so the difference between a nude photo and nude drawing will all depends on whenever or not the person seeing it gets personal joy from it or not, despite the differences each brings.
All in all, the article brought up a lot of topics that's worth for my consideration, and I'm glad I got the opportunity to read it. The topic of sexuality and what exactly what it means to be to be seen as one thing by one person but can be something else entirely, which then opens up the possibility that each of their own virtues to a conclusion of a specific individual can eventually form into a even more complicated discussion of the article itself, which is this case, is how form should be treated, has this great complexity I'm eager to explore sometime in the future (what can I say, I love understanding what I think and having it confirm by others). I say bring on more like it.
1. http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/compulsive.html
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