viz. - costume

New Girl's New Man

Aubri Plourde — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 02:15:46 +0000

Fox’s New Girl could never have avoided the question of gender. The very title isolates gender issues by framing protagonist Jessica Day within the male-dominated apartment she joins. The sexual politics of New Girl are mostly wrapped up in Zooey Deschanel’s character. My friend Mike, for example, has written about Jess as a postfeminist figure here, and the show creator herself has more than once addressed the gender politics of the Nick-and-Jess coupledom. I’d like to acknowledge that the “adorkable” appeal of Deschanel’s character positions her strangely between feminist and postfeminist positions, but, for the purpose of considering the visual appeal of the show, I’m more drawn to the way the show represents the masculinity of lovable douchebag, Schmit.

Most of Schmidt’s best and worst qualities are verbal, not visual. For example, entire reels of one-liners, like this one and this one show off the snappy writing of New Girl’s staff. Still, the character’s arch depends heavily on the transition between the days when he was obese and the fit version we see weekly.

Schmidt's story begins like this:

Image Credit: E!online

So, Schmidt’s role becomes something of a dramatized before-and-after shot. Most of these flashbacks are meant to assure us that while Nick and Schmidt’s friendship was founded during this time period, Schmidt himself was desperately unhappy. His smiles are generally self-deprecating, or at the very least unaware that others are mocking him.

After having lost a whole bunch of weight, Schmidt looks more like the fit and handsome Max Greenfield:

Image Credit: Us Weekly

On the show, though, Schmidt’s body is still the site of spectacle. He’s the character we’re most likely to see in a costume, and his body has started to function like a paper doll for the writers’ various getups:

Image Credit: UnderScoopFire

Image Credit: Entertainment Weekly

Image Credit: Hollywood.com

What strikes me is that this outlandish behavior is so often associated with Schmidt’s trying-too-hard enthusiasm for his new body. In other words, thinness has corrupted him into the cartoon we (I, at least) love to laugh at. So, this brings up interesting questions for masculinity. Are we viewers in for a more nuanced and sensitive treatment of male body image issues? Also, how does “metrosexuality” get figured in visual terms?

I’m interested in the way the show positions Schmidt’s morality. Nick describes him as a sweet boy in college, yelling, “What happened to you?…You didn’t used to be like this, Schmidt!” when Schmidt insists on wearing this kimono:

Image Credit: Lifehack

The costume, then, dramatizes Schmidt’s deteriorated morality and his self-image. Similarly, the Douchebag Jar hints that Schmidt lost weight and sensitivity at the same time. This, too, is a sort of strange system of morality. Does the Douchebag jar make us think that his casually racist-misogynist-classist behavior is acceptable, because he can afford the “toll”? Or is this behavior excused by the show (and by Jess, the show’s moral compass) because of his previously-fat past? In a cultural backdrop all too aware of fat shaming, body image issues, and materialism, how are we meant to deal with Schmidt’s transition? We don’t quite love to hate him, since most fans find him endearing. Still, we can’t deny that the lines he spouts to earn himself more Douchebag Jar deposits have more than earned some censure. "I just found a Groupon for hypnosis lessons!” he says to Jess. "Think about what you could do with that...sex stuff!” (s01e10). Or, upon Winston’s failure at a trivia night: "Don't worry about it, man, it's your public school education - you'll catch up!” (s01e17). The show suggests that a fat Schmidt would never say such terrible things. What is it about thinness that has corrupted him? How are we meant to view Schmidt’s excessive performance of masculinity?

I have no answer to this kind of question, so I’ll just leave this here:

Image Credit: Walk in Beauty

"Your caveman ideas about manhood are so over. Manhood today is about exfoliation, cheese courses, emotional honesty, and Paxil. And yes, cutting peppers in teh classic style de Julienne. You may have bested me in a competition of pre-Clinton manhood, but I am Schmidt, a refined and enlightened pescatarian, 90% of the time." (s02e08).

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masculinity

television

Visual Rhetoric

costume

body image

Desiring Histories in The Wolf Among Us

Scott Garbacz — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 22:34:11 +0000

Image source: N3rdabl3.co.uk.

Earlier this semester, I discussed the way Once Upon a Time, particularly in its first season, played with Disney-inspired costuming to evoke nostalgia for Disney-tinged fairytales even as it valorized the present over the past. As a follow-up, and as Viz moves towards consideration of video games, I want to look at a more recent work with similar themes: the critically acclaimed fairy-tale-noir adventure game, The Wolf Among Us. In this game, the player takes on the role of a reformed Big Bad Wolf (known, now, as Bigby), who solves a series of gruesome mysteries with the help of his potential love-interest, Snow White. Specifically, I will look at three costumes associated with Snow. Like those worn by Once’s Snow White, these costumes each present a different way in which we can view the past. Unlike those in Once, these costumes trouble any clear distinction between our modern lives and the medieval-themed fairy tales that underwrite them. Instead of encouraging us to celebrate our modernity, The Wolf Among Us troubles our neat divisions between the present and the past, asking us how we use the past to think about, or act in, the present. (Content Warning: the discussion below, like the game, deals with prostitution and disturbing sexual power dynamics.)

Image credit: Gamespot

The first—and primary—image of Snow White in The Wolf Among Us balances carefully between the game’s two primary visual referents. Physically, she largely echoes her fairy-tale legends; perhaps more tanned than her namesake, she nonetheless wears white earrings that contrast with her “lips as red as blood” and “hair as black as ebony.” Similarly, her snowflake-decorated blouse coordinates with her blue skirt, perhaps echoing the dramatic blue coloring of the Disney Snow white’s costume, but certainly reminding viewers of her fairy-tale-princess heritage. Over that, however she wears a fitted, short blazer, its tan color and stylings evoking the trench coat of Bogart-era crime films. She thus bears on her body the generic hybrid that plays out over the course of the game’s narrative: fairy-tale characters stuck in a gritty noir universe.

The noir stylings may be incidental, but the snowflake pattern is central to the character’s self-fashioning, since they remind other Fables (fairy-tale creatures) of her high status in their world. Indeed, her relative privilege is one of the game’s central themes. While the game’s backstory posits a general amnesty that allows all New-York dwelling fairy tale characters to live harmonious lives unaffected by past crimes, those of noble birth tend to occupy the town’s upper crust. Snow herself works as the secretary for the town’s mayor, often serving as a gatekeeper determining whose concerns will and will not be heard by the government. Her authority is made more secure by a strict division between those characters whose natural form is nonhuman, and those who can naturally blend in among normal humans. The latter exclusively occupy elected positions, and often demonstrate ignorance of or hostility to the concerns of other characters. Snow’s outfit echoes her status as a recipient of considerable privilege and power, while expressing a continuity between her present position and her fairy-tale nobility.

Image credit: Gizorama.com.

The game’s first image of the medieval Snow White places her in a far less privileged position. Her plain dress hints, perhaps, at a modest income, while her sorrowful gaze at an already-bitten reminds viewers that her original, fairy-tale self is already well-acquainted with evil. Life may have been simpler, the game argues, in the fairy-tale world, but even the pasts evoked in chilrden stories are not immune to violence and sorrow.

The apparent simplicity of the game’s medieval history is closely tied to its portrait of gender. Strikingly, Snow’s outstretched arm serves as a visual echo of the Big Bad Wolf’s snarling mouth. The contrast falls upon stereotypical lines: the Wolf’s powerful, unreflective masculine violence contrasts with Snow’s thoughtful expression. The visually powerful, angry, masculine force of the Wolf is, literally, the flip side of Snow’s contemplative femininity. The modern world, where the Big Bad Wolf wears a collared shirt and Snow is quite capable of playing hardball politics, offers a far more complex vision of gender.

Image credit: fables.wikia.org.

The final costume associated with Snow White offers the darkest interpretation of fairy-tales. In the sort of sordid twist demanded of the game’s noir atmosphere, Snow’s boss (a craven version of Ichabod Crane) has an ongoing relationship with a prostitute, a troll who wears the clothing and (thanks to magic) physical appearance of Snow herself, and who is murdered at the end of Episode 1. The clothing in question is far more complex than Snow’s medieval outfit in the earlier tapestry: its skirts, bodice, corset, and complicated sleeves hint that this is far more the product of sophisticated medieval or renaissance fashion than of an idylic childhood. Yet this dress is explicitly based on an illustrated children’s story found in the hotel where Crane staged his assignations. The third “Snow White” outfit, then, represents the present-day desire of her boss to seduce her, bizarrely re-routed through a children’s book that itself draws on medieval history.

An early interpretation of Snow White by Alexander Zick (1845-1907). Image credit: Wikimedia commons.

If the first two costumes paint a sharp contrast between a fairy-tale prehistory and a relatively muddled, gritty present, this third hints that our real-world uses of the past are similarly more complicated than we might expect. For Crane, childhood fairy-tales and medieval history are not incomplete or innocent ancestors of the present, but rather objects of desire that shape the way he imagines his employee and expresses his sexuality. Crane’s “Snow White” costume is closer to what one might expect of the princess described by the Brothers Grimm, and is very similar to the illustration inserted above, which seeks to evoke medieval aesthetics both in its costume and its mis-en-page. Yet for Crane, historical studies serve not to document the past, but to support the sordid world of his present imagination.

Of course, the game is unapologetic in its insistence that Crane is a despicable coward, and his use of children’s literature is disturbing precisely because it diverges from standard, expected uses of such works. Yet I also wonder how much Crane’s engagement with history reflects that of our own age. On the domestic, premium-cable front, Game of Thrones presents “medieval” female nudity to its audience to great financial success, reinforcing our linkage between the medieval and a male gaze pointed towards female bodies. Abroad, ISIS presents itself as a revival of medieval Islam even as it arguably deploys “profoundly modern” philosophies of statehood and violence. Perhaps the complex interweaving of modern desires and historical imagination that Crane demonstrates, then, is closer to our modern world than we might want to think.

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