Final Presentation- Cara G., Elizabeth, Cara W.

Our group exercised our ability to apply Althusser, Rubin, and Butler’s views to clips from the movie “White Chicks”. We chose to use: “This is Our Jam”, “$1000”, and the movie trailer to incorporate these theorist’s views effectively. In the process of applying these theories we noticed that there were many similarities and differences among our individual interpretations. Some of the most obvious similarities that we came across were our abilities to look at the movie in different perspectives. When Elizabeth applied Rubin, we found that feminist views caused us to notice the aspects of women’s oppression and the gender inequality and differences between men and women in “White Chicks”. Rubin’s views that women are often seen as gifts, “Women are given in marriage, taken in battle, exchanged for favors, sent as tribute, traded, bought and sold.” (Rubin 1673) can relate to “$1000” from “White Chicks”. Women are given demeaning labels by society and discriminated against for their gender role as a woman. However, when looking at it from Butler’s point of view as Cara G did, you may see that the movie can be interpreted through her gender performativity theory. Butler believes that in order to perform gender appropriately, one must perform sexuality appropriately. She also says that because gender is not a fact, and that it does not have a definition, the ways in which a person acts and performs their gender makes gender exist. Gender “humanizes” a person and if one does not perform it in the right way, they may be punished by society. Butler’s theories relate to the clip

“This is Our Jam” in “White Chicks” because the male cops that are posing as females, experience how important it is to perform their gender correctly and appropriately in order to be accepted in society. When Cara W. applied Althusser’s theory to the FBI present in “White Chicks” we see that both the Repressive State Apparatus and Ideological State Apparatuses are present. Seeing that the RSA makes sure these things are kept the way they should be in society by having the ability to use “violence”, causing society to conform to their ways. Yet while incorporating the ISA to “White Chicks”, we can also make the connections between the FBI agents and how they are being used away from the agency as a whole to carry out a task, where they are unified under the ruling ideology. “There reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills, but also, at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established order” (Althusser, 1485).

By applying these theorist’s views to “White Chicks”, we realized that this caused us to examine and interpret the movie differently than we would have prior to learning about each theorist. Yet from all these similarities, we found that there was also one main difference that was evident. By looking at a movie or text with only applying one view, this may cause a bias interpretation of the text as a whole. After completing our individual interpretations we discovered that these three theorists could link onto each other. Rubin explains the oppression of women through their degrading gender roles in society. This links to Butler’s idea of performing the female gender role appropriately in order to perform sexuality appropriately. Therefore if one does not perform sexuality and gender appropriately the women may feel oppressed by society. Althusser’s idea of society as an ISA, along with the various components of the RSA tie smaller parts found through both Butler and Rubin’s ideas.We have learned that by studying each individual theorist, it has provided us with the knowledge and advantage of incorporating their work to various texts. This allows us to see different aspects of the material that one may not have been highlighted beforehand. After reviewing these clips we found that by incorporating these three theorists work each of us was able to view the movie in either a femist or marxist perspective. Doing this not only exercises your knowledge of the theorist’s work but also allows us to exercise our own personal interpretations in connection to everyday life. By using these techniques, we have realized that in “White Chicks”, the oppression of women and the pressure to perform gender appropriately are all contributing factors to society as a whole system.

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