In my earlier post Andrea Dworkin and Allen Jones I decided that language was one of the main areas of interest for me in the world of feminist theory, and one that I’d like to approach in my work. I’ve been looking a lot at the way Sarah Lucas plays with language in her work. For example, in Bitch she plays with common misogynistic references to women by portraying a woman as a beaten up old kitchen table with melons for breasts and a stinking kipper in place of a vagina. This desire to use modern, abusive, masculine language in my work is becoming stronger and I’m noticing it much more around me on a daily basis. I’m becoming more and more aware of how prevalent it really is in our society and how discomforting that is.
Dapper Laughs ‘Vines’ Compilation
Late last year I stumbled across the work of ‘comedian’ Daniel O’Reilly, better known as his character Dapper Laughs. He rose to fame via his publication of six second videos called vines. His popularity increased to a level of recognition that warranted him an entire series of programmes on ITV.
If you watch the video above, you get an idea of his style of ‘comedy’.
My initial thoughts when I saw his ‘comedy’ for the fast time was that he must be making some kind of statement on the ridiculousness of this type of banter language used against women specifically by particular types of ‘modern’ man. In my blissful naivety I understood his routines as a cleverly ironic feminist comment. Nope, the man is simply a chauvinistic, foul-mouthed idiot.
The more I watched and read, the worse it became and the more I felt I wanted to create something that could subvert his material and try to make a powerful comment against it. Because of the quick, off the cuff nature of these short videos, when you watch them one after the other, after a time they become like white noise. Similar to the background drone of ‘laddish’ shouts at football matches.
Depressing, infuriating, demoralising, harmful, degrading, sickly, offensive, thick. All I could feel about it was just a torrent of negativity.
Perhaps influenced by my recent study of the work of Sarah Lucas, I was interested in the language used by O’Reilly. One of the main focus points of my essay is the aggressive and abusive language used by men against women in an attempt to maintain patriarchal, masculine roles of power in society. This is a perfectly packaged example of all of the worst parts of this concept.
I want to use his language somehow, create a bombardment of offensive masculinity to emphasise how damaging it can be for women as something which affects them in daily life.
– How can I find an impactful way of demonstrating my discontent with this ridiculous barrage of language?
Next steps:
Further research
Play with the language
Research contextual links with this language and other examples I’ve studied
