Angry White Man

I am disappointed that I missed the Munoz lecture because I find his article The White to Be Angry enlightening in the sense that the performance art of Vaginal Davis challenges and succumbs to the Marxist hegemony. As an offspring of an African American mother, Mexican American father, and the desire to live as white, Davis's disidentification serves to bring to light in the issues pertaining to the dominant ideologies that we live within today.

It appears that being gay and identified as a homosexual to sujected to the hegemonic viewpoints by the white, male-dominated society. By combining difference fragments of gender and race, Vaginal Davis (aka Clarence) becomes transforms not only from man into woman in drag but also from a black man to a white man. In essence, Dr. Davis brings to light the homophobia but also racial stereotypes of white people. Through the usage of humor and parody, Davis's performances is a terroristic attack on being masculine and white.

We see the disidentification and fragmention brought together in Davis's performance art actin "The White To Be Angry." Starting in the "Snow Period" in which Davis wants to associate himself/herself with the white militiamen in order to be associated with the hegemonic, ruling whiteness. By becoming Clarence, Davis is enraptured in an internal, subjective argument of being a white, masculine male vs. beings a gay, black and highly feminite drag queen. Also, I find it internesting that Dr. Davis does not because to aesthetically seductive in her transformation as womanly. Instead by costuming in minimalist fashion and makeup, Davis brings to light the abjected way of seeing and thinking about woman in how our dominant ideologies presupposes its mentality of what a woman should like like. Henceforth, subjecting what a woman should look like in the imago.

In the second part of the reading, Munoz reflects on Mark Simpson's book Anti-Gay which attempts to disassociate the hegemonic thinkings of homosexuality. Instead of Gay Pride Day, Simpson wants an Anti-Gay Pride Day which disavows the dominant thinkings how gayness. It appears that Simpon is trying to deconstruct the societal forces that has constructness the definition of what gay is. And this is a similar issue we saw in the Judith Butler article on feminism. In Foucaltian fashion, it appears that the description and identity of homosexuality is not determined by the communitiy of these labeled people but by the dominant people who are not ingrained or comfortable with these so-called alternative lifestyles.

I find the readings on Feminism and Gender & Race to be the most enlightening thus far for me because it disengages me from the ideologies brought forth in a white male dominated world. If I have learned anything thus far, it is that difference can be associated in how we read art and the signs it brings forth. Whether it is look at the performance art of a homosexual, terrroristic drag queen, an Impressionist painting by Monet, or a Puritantical Ansel Adams photograph, it has become tremendously important for me to understand the ideologies that have shaped the artist's work but the life of the work itself within a society that is so complex in terms of difference. And all of these differences are important and could be used to analyze any artwork regardleess of gender, race, and sexual preferences.