For Whose Entertainment?: Images of BDSM in Pop Music, Part 1

(TRIGGER WARNING: The following series will contain discussions of the bondage/discipline/domination/submission/sadism/masochism (BDSM) subculture and sex positive feminism. While the series contains no descriptions of graphic or violent sex, if any of these topics might disturb you, please refrain from reading it.)

Introduction

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me!

            — Rhianna “S&M”

 “Do you know what you got into?/Can you handle what I’m ‘bout to do?/’Cause it’s about to get rough in you./I’m here for YOUR entertainment.”

            –Adam Lambert, “For Your Entertainment” (emphasis added)

Images of the bondage/discipline/domination/submission/sadism/masochism (BDSM) subculture have existed on the periphery of popular culture, much to the consternation of both the conservative and the BDSM community, for quite some time. Wearing leather, cuffs, collars, and corsets has become almost commonplace in images of popular culture and fashion, so much so that many who wear them might not even be aware of their significance to BDSM. As a teenager, when I bought my first leather armbands, I had no idea that they were related to BDSM culture.

Not until I was in college did I learn the significance of those armbands and other accessories I’d acquired in my infatuation with the goth subculture (corsets, leather collars, etc.). My interest in sex-positive feminism had lead me to an interest in the BDSM subculture, which I learned was actually, in some ways, more affirming of sexuality and more promoting of consent than traditional, straight-laced, “vanilla” culture. The problem is, for both conservatives and the BDSM community, that images of BDSM that get presented in popular culture do not adequately reflect all of the shades and flavors of BDSM. Conservatives would probably prefer that sex were not presented in popular culture at all, but because sex sells, I will turn to the BDSM community’s concerns when their subculture is portrayed by the mass media.

BDSM is not a subculture that can be easily grapsed. Those who are introduced to its ideas are often shocked or revolted at what is presented because it seems to stand in such stark opposition to how we are taught to think about sex and love. Somebody whips you and burns you with hot wax and you enjoy it? You willingly undergo sensory deprivation because you like it? You choose to be humiliated? The idea, initially, is inconcievable. So I will being by explaining what BDSM is and what it is not. BDSM is a complex and diverse subculture, so this post will be meant to give an overview and not a complete and detailed account of BDSM.

BDSM and Vanilla: Not So Different Underneath the Leather

Firstly, BDSM, at its core, is based on ideas that govern all relationships, sexual or otherwise, and its values are, essentially, not too different from those of progressive liberals who wish we could be more open and honest in discussions about sex and consent. Forget the stereotypes of whips and crops for a moment and think purely about healthy human relationships of any sort, be they BDSM or vanilla.

In all relationships, one person is generally “in charge” while the other person is content to let that person lead. Even in relationships that claim to be equal, a closer examination of the dynamics almost always reveals that one partner is usually the one to make the final decisions. There is nothing wrong with this. This does not mean that one partner makes the decisions in an authoritarian manner that leaves out the feelings of the other partner. This does not mean that one partner is coerced, manipulated, or forced to do anything. It simply means that, in any relationship, decisions affecting both partners will need to be made. This decision will most likely be discussed between both partners, both of their needs and wishes will be taken into account, but ultimately, the final decision usually lies with one partner.

Sometimes the final decision for one issue will be decided by one partner, and the final decision for another issue will be decided by the other partner. Each individual relationship has its own rules about who makes what decisions and how decisions are made. But in each relationship, someone is going to have more power than someone else. There is nothing wrong with this. It does not mean that all relationships are based on an abuse of power. I am simply observing that in relationships, there is a (sometimes sliding) distribution of power. (Also, I am not speaking of relationships in which one partner uses this power to verbally, physically, mentally, or sexually abuse the other partner. I am speaking of relationships in which the power between partners is managed in a healthy way that attempts to benefit both partners.) Often, these power imbalances accomidate the personalities and decision-making preferences of the partners involved and are beneficial to the functioning of the relationship.

While most relationships have this imbalance of power, in “vanilla”—the BDSM term for traditional romantic relationships and sexual practices devoid of BDSM play—partnerships, this imbalance of power is rarely discussed, both in and out of the bedroom. Couples tend to feel their way through the relationship blindly, and while they may have some unconscious sense of who is in control and who is not at any point in time, they rarely have direct discussions about them. They may fall into these roles out of habit or attempt to act them out based on social expectations.

In BDSM relationships, be they merely for the duration of a scene or long-term, discussions of control are extermely important. People in the BDSM community often identify themselves based on their role as a submissive (also called “bottom”), dominant (also called “top”), or switch (someone who switches between the role of a bottom and top). Other varities of these roles exist, but they often refer to specific kinds of play. A bottom might indentify as just a bottom, or he might also describe the role as that of a “slave,” someone who wants his top to keep a tight control over many aspects of his life both in and out of the bedroom. A bottom might also describe herself as a daddy’s little girl (DLG), meaning that she is looking for play with an older man who will treat her like a child in some respects. (Please keep in mind that all of this play is enacted by of-age, consenting, fully informed adults.) In the BDSM community, someone’s identification tells their potential partners what role they will take in sex play.

However, what playing out this role entails is different for every individual, and before play takes place, partners will have to discuss exactly what scene will be played out. Does the bottom want the top’s control in every aspect of his or her life, or just during play? What are their hard limits (acts that they will not perform under any circumstances)? How will limits be communicated? All of these things must be taken into account and discussed explicitly and in detail before any play takes place.

This brings me to the topic of consent in the vanilla and BDSM communities. In both, consent to sex and/or play is the ideal. However, in the vanilla community, because explicit discussions of what sex acts will be performed and who will take what role rarely take place, consent may not always be communicated effectively. Both men and women may engage in sex acts that they do not particularly want but feel that their partner expects. Partners may assume that because an act has been consented to in the past, it will always be consented to. Often, in the vanilla community, the lack of a clear “No” is interpreted as a “Yes,” even when that is not the case. This is a problem that sex positive feminism wishes to address. Ideally, when a sex act would be performed, both partners would enthusiastically consent or the act would not take place. Enthusiastic consent would need to be given at every stage of foreplay and sex, and consent on one occasion would not translate to consent in all occasions.

I do not think that this lack of sex positivity in vanilla relationships means that there is something wrong with vanilla relationships. I think that problem is that in our mainstream society, we are not taught how to have these discussions about sex, consent, and control, and so it might be difficult for partners to negotiate these boundaries together. They may have trouble talking about what they were taught was a taboo subject or they might lack the vocabulary in which to discuss their relationship. They may feel vulnerable or embarrassed. They may think that they are intuitively supposed to know what their partner wants and being told takes away from the romantic mood of the moment. All of these problems, however, can lead to poor communication about sex, which can lead to partners engaging in sex acts that they do not want.

Many sex positive feminists, who are working to promote open, honest discussions about sex and sexual relationships in our society, have turned to the BDSM community for ideas about how to talk about consent. Consent, in the BDSM community, is discussed in depth before the sex play even begins. Even after the scene has started, the top needs consent from the bottom to move on to new stages of play. Consent is and can never be assumed, and consent on one occasion does not mean consent for every future occasion. Limits are to be respected. Despite the shocking nature of much BDSM sex play, despite the difficulty for someone in the vanilla community to understand why a partner would want to be controlled, the knee-jerk reaction against BDSM can be softened when it is explained that everything going on is completely consensual. Consent in the bedrock of BDSM play and nothing happens without it. (I realize that no community is perfect and that violations do occur within the BDSM community, just like they do in the vanilla community. However, I believe that, in both communities, consent is the ideal. My argument is that in the BDSM community, partners are ideally expected to have discussions about power and limits in the relationship. In the vanilla community, these topics are often not discussed explicitly.)

Explaining these nuances of BDSM culture, however, is time-consuming and difficult. Most people don’t understand it, and so it exists on the periphery of our culture. It is something most people have a vague notion of, and they vaguely think of it as wrong, and that is all. So, when BDSM shows up in popular culture, the accessories, toys, props, and acts are shown, while the ideas underlying BDSM play—thorough discussion of control, limits, and consent—are ignored. For this reason, BDSM is more often than not misrepresented in popular culture. It can be used to show acts of violence enacted upon unconsenting women. It can be used as a tool for shock value. Most often, it is a backdrop over which pop can appear “edgy.”

These misrepresentations can lead to problems when partners see the images of violence, without the discussions of consent and limits, and believe that this type of relationship is what they should want, even if they personally don’t want it. When people expect sex or play to hurt or believe that it should inherently be violent, then there is a problem. When BDSM is represented in pop, it presents the violence but leaves out the discussions of power and consent, and the discussions of power and consent are what is most important to BDSM play. Sex can hurt, but only if the bottom wants it to. Sex can be violent, but only when fully informed, consenting adults have agreed upon what that will involve and what the limits are. Unfortunately, the viewers of BDSM-as-filtered-through-pop are unaware of these discussions, and so these viewers, particularly teenagers, can come away with ideas about relationships and sex that are based purely on control without limits and violence without consent.

Part 2 looks at common representations of BDSM in pop music videos.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?” Hyper-Irony and Robot Chicken, Part 2

Here’s Part 1.

To examine how we got from The Simpsons to RC, however, I want to first look at another show—Seth McFarland’s FOX comedy, Family Guy. Family Guy is often criticized for being a rip-off of The Simpsons, and superficially this claim does seem to stand up. Both shows focus on a nuclear family lead by a drunk and ineffectual father and a long-suffering but loving mother. These parents also have a son and daughter who argue constantly as well as a baby who shows uncanny intelligence. The humor is often crude and juvenile and seems to be written for the purpose of making its audience uncomfortable as well as amused.

However, these are only superficial similarities. Family Guy took the hyper-irony game begun by The Simpsons and expanded it to even more ludicrous proportions. The quotationalism of The Simpsons was still linked to the plot in some way, and in many ways enhanced the plot. It acted as a cultural short-hand that cued the audience, if it was properly in the know, how to feel about the situation. For instance, in one of the episodes that Matheson references, “A Streetcar Named Marge,” Maggie and her cohorts attempt to break out of an oppressive daycare. The theme from The Great Escape plays in the background as they seek to free their confiscated pacifiers. This quotationalism is funny, certainly, but it also serves a purpose within the action of the scene. It cues the audience to feel that Maggie is doing something heroic and even adds an element of melodrama to the plot. Many of the other instances of quotationalism within The Simpsons behave in the same way—they are woven throughout the plot of the episode so that the action is enhanced, rather than broken, by the bevy of pop culture references.

Family Guy takes the quotationalism begun in The Simpsons one step further. Instead of enhancing the plot, the quotationalism often takes the audience out of the plot entirely. It also forces the Griffin family to break character, as they act out a brief sketch to illustrate whatever reference or joke has just been made. For instance, in one episode, Peter mentions playing a joke on Ashton Kutcher. The scene then switches to a shot of Peter throwing a tomahawk at Ashton Kutcher, causing him to pass out. Peter then explains that he only hit Kutcher because that is the purpose of his television show—to go around filming himself hitting people with tomahawks. Then the scene ends, and the audience is returned to the regular plot of the show. This parody of Punk’d has nothing directly to do with the plot of the episode and seems to serve no purpose other than to make viewers who get the reference feel “in the know.”

This parody and other pop culture references like it within Family Guy, breaks up the show. Instead of enhancing the plot, it actually detracts from it. The quotationalism of Family Guy is often criticized because it is irrelevant to anything else going on in the episodes. However, the quotationalism can’t be that unfunny, or Family Guy would not be one of the most popular comedies in America. Rather, Family Guy takes the cult of pop culture knowingness begun in The Simpsons and raises it to a new level. In The Simpsons, the quotationalism still had a purpose within the show. In Family Guy, the quotationalism is its own purpose. It references purely for the sake of referencing, and only audience members who are in the know are assumed to be worthy of the joke.

This quotationalism for its own sake is, I believe, the natural progression of hyper-irony in comedy. If everything is a source of  ridicule and the best we can hope for is a constant game of one-up-manship in the rules of a particular ideological discourse, then Family Guy does not try to disguise that game behind a plot. Instead, it blatantly exposes the game and acknowledges that it is being hyper-ironic. The show even mocks itself for its constant breaks in the flow of the plot, as occasionally characters will make a bizarre pop culture reference or mash up and then pause. “I thought we had a clip for that,” Stewie says on one such occasion. “Oh? No we don’t? Never mind, then.” The show makes fun of its own quotationalism, proving that even it is not free from ridicule.

Though Family Guy is fresher than The Simpsons, after nine seasons, it too seems to be stalling. Just as The Simpsons has settled into a particular ideological comfort zone of family values and liberal-leaning politics, so too has Family Guy. For instance, in the episode “Trading Places,” in which Meg and Chris swap places with their parents for a week, Chris eventually becomes so stressed that he has a heart attack. When he revives in the hospital and admits that being an adult is harder than he thought it would be, Lois comforts him with a reminder that he still has his family to help him through difficult times. Many recent episodes have ended with a reinteration of family values, and the Griffins seem to take comfort in the fact that while the world may be cruel and unpredictable, at least they have each other to depend upon. In older seasons, this idea of the importance of the family would be under-cut, and to some extent, it still is. After all, what kind of family does Chris have to depend upon? Peter is a selfish drunk. Meg is superficial. Stewie is too concerned about planning world domination and understanding his sexual orientation to care about anything else. Brian is too busy finding a girlfriend and working on his novel (or drinking and thinking about working on his novel), and while Lois might mean well, she rarely offers real solutions to her family’s problems. However, the episode and many like it, seem to end with the message that even though the Griffins are all flawed, they love each other, and that love is enough overcome their faults. This uplifting end note is becoming a common theme on the series, suggesting that Family Guy may be slowly dropping its hyper-ironic stance for a more touchy-feely message.

So why have The Simpsons and Family Guy gone soft? I believe that their nature as  situation comedies prevents them from upholding their hyper-ironic cynicism for too long. Because both shows involve a regular cast of re-occuring characters, these characters and their relationships must develop in some way after a period of time. After all of their wacky adventures and mishaps, how could the Simpsons or Griffins not have a strong bond with each other? In twenty-two minutes they undergo some sort of crisis, resolve it, and return their world to normal. In some sense, the love that they have for each other is enough to get them through any kind of trouble, simply because at the end of each episode, they must have re-established their normal lives so that they will be ready for the next episode. The nature of the situation comedy forces them to find some sort of ideological ground, even if it is a tenuous one.  Chris, voiced by Seth Green, can depend on his family, because the medium in which he exists insists that he can.

But another show involving Seth Green does not have such limitations, which brings us to the next progression of hyper-irony: Robot Chicken. Unlike situation comedies, sketch comedy is under no compunction to always include regular characters and plots, thus it does not become entangled in requiring those characters to grow or change in some way. It is neither required to force its quotationalism to conform to their plots nor does it need to break a plotline to include it. Its quotationalism is purely for the sake of comedy, but it avoids the criticism that plagues Family Guy. Because nothing about sketch comedy is required to be constant, it avoids the risk of settling on some ideological platform, and instead may freely mock anything and everything. Sketch comedy appears to be hyper-irony’s most suitable medium.

What makes Robot Chicken different from other sketch comedies, such as SNL, however, is that it relies entirely on hyper-irony for its humor. SNL contains multipe parodies of popular culture and current events, but these sketches usually exist to convey some sort of message. SNL also relies on physical comedy, absurdism, and its audience’s ability to relate to uncomfortable social situations for humor. Quotationalism is a large source of its comedy, but it is not the only source. And there are lines that SNL will not cross. RC, however, leaves no sacred cow unskewered. It exists purely to under-cut and then to under-cut its own under-cutting.

In some sense, hardly any of its material is wholey original, because nearly all of its sketches references at least one form of popular culture. The Simpsons and Family Guy may borrow from popular culture, but they also feature their own original characters and plotlines. RC is almost entirely intertexual. It plays the pop culture referencing game better than any other contemporary show, but that is because sketch comedy is the natural progression of hyper-irony as comedy. There are multiple playlists on YouTube consisting of just the cutaway gags from Family Guy. Why bother with regular characters and a plot when the best bits are quotational? Unencumbered by regular characters and their relationships, which must be held together in some manner for the show to continue and thus demand a commitment to some sort of ideology, RC may be as irreverent as it likes. (The fact that it is shown on Adult Swim of Cartoon Network, a cable channel that runs adult-themed cartoons at early hours of the morning also helps, as unlike The Simpsons and Family Guy, it is held to much looser standards of censorship.) It holds to no higher authority, even its own, and its medium allows it to move fluidly from one subject of mockery to the next.

Robot Chicken, then, is the culmination of comedy in our postmodern society where there is no ultimate source of authority or truth. It is a show where every source of understanding is constantly put into question. It engages in a rapid-fire battle of pop culture analogies with its viewers, challenging them to get the references quickly before it moves on to the next sketch. We may not be able to ultimately know anything, but we can at least prove that we know how the pop culture game works and we can play it better than anyone else. After all, in a society where all authority is questioned, the old rules no longer apply. The old jokes, like “Why did the chicken cross the road?”, are no longer funny. Instead of attempting to remake the old, we must make something completely new from what’s left of the past. We’re not entirely sure what we are now or where we are, and like the robot chicken, all we can do is sit back, watch the whole experience, and laugh.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?: Hyper-Irony in Robot Chicken, Part 1

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“I don’t know. Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“To get to the other side!”

Everyone knows this joke, so much so that it is no longer funny. And yet, is has become a sort of symbol for comedy. Though no one laughs at it, it has almost become synonymous with the word “joke.”

It is also the beginning of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim show Robot Chicken (RC) created by Seth Green and Mathew Senreich. In the opening, a mad scientist (we know he’s mad because his hair is messy and he has a maniacal grin on his face) finds a chicken, presumably dead, in the middle of the road. The opening obviously references the classic joke that no one finds humorous anymore. However, in this version of the joke, the chicken has failed to complete its passage across the road. In fact, it is lying dead in the middle of the road. The old joke has been left incomplete, perhaps even died itself. The mad scientist takes the chicken back to his laboratory and rebuilds it as a cyborg that is half machine and half organic. A melodramatic voice announces, “It’s alive!” Then the scientist forces his resurrected creation, a la A Clockwork Orange, to watch the comedy sketches that comprise the show.

In just the opening, we see exactly what RC’s take on comedy is, as well as what it sets out to do to with comedy.

Just like the robot chicken, the show itself is a combination of the new and the old. Despite their crude humor and ever-current pop culture references, in many ways, the RC sketches are no different than previous forms of comedy. They are incredibly brief, some lasting merely a second or two, but comedy, unlike drama, is a fast-paced medium. A joke can’t have a long lead-up, otherwise the audience will become bored. Stand-up comics often offer jokes that are one-liners before moving on to new material. Sketch comedy is also not new in television. The Ed Sullivan show and others like it offered their viewers a wide variety of entertainment, and if audience members found one act boring, well, another, more interesting one would soon follow it. Monty Python’s Flying Circus also bombarded its viewers with comedy sketch after comedy sketch, some sketchs being very brief and others weaving themselves throughout the show. Saturday Night Liveoften focuses on short sketches that parody some form of popular cutlture. RC uses this same technique. Its humor is quick, with little build-up or introduction. As soon as we’ve seen the joke, we’re on to the next one, and if one sketch fails to satisfy, well, a new one will be on shortly. The humor itself would probably have shocked and disgusted Ed Sullivanviewers and may be too risque for even Monty Python or the not-yet-read-for-Prime-Time players, but the style in which it is presented is not unlike old-time variety or sketch comedy shows.

The humor itself often relies on parody, either by stretching the object of ridicule to its ludicrous extreme, such as the militarism of George W. Bush or the violence present in U.S. television, or by inverting a well-known pop culture phenomenon. (The kind and loving Care Bears become racists promoting ethnic cleansing.) The show, like most comedy, also often relies on stereotypes, such as the recurring nerd character, who may be brilliant but cannot overcome his social awkwardness to find a girlfriend. Parody, in any of these forms, is nothing new. Even the ancient Greeks used parody to critique their social institutions, so parody is nothing new to comedy.

Though RC is not completely new, it is also different from any show that has come before it. And in the opening, the mad scientists does not remake the chicken only to have it complete its road-crossing journey. Instead, the old seems to be thrown out in favor of a new one. The chicken may be resurrected, but the joke itself is not. As John Cleese might say, “And now, it’s time for something completely different.”

In many ways, RC is a response to our postmodern, technology-driven lives. The chicken itself is half biological, half machine, just as we have built our lives around our machines. We carry phones with us everywhere that can connect us to the internet in a matter of seconds. We check our emails daily, if not hourly. Cars, buses, and airplanes carry us to our destinations. Our homes can be heated or cooled, regardless of the temperatures outside. We are a sort of cybog, a robot human that is so reliant on technology that it might as well be physically attached to us. RC is responding to that change. Our lives are fast-paced, and require a fast-paced television show. After all, one RC episode only lasts fifteen minutes, while other shows are at least half an hour long. We expect web pages to download in seconds, we express ourselves through 140 characters on Twitter, and we want our entertainment to be as immediate and brief. RC delivers with bite (or byte?) sized humor.

However, to say that RC is merely pandering to an audience whose attention spans are stretched thin is to miss the show’s full significance in the evolution of comedy. Specifically, the show relies almost entirely on what Carl Matheson called “hyper-irony.” In his article “The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life,” Matheson tracks the changes in American comedy up until The Simpsons, which he cites as the first show to make use of hyper-irony, often through quotationalism, a “rapid-fire sequence of [pop culture] allusions” used in “a constant process of under-cutting.” One cannot understand the humor of The Simpsons, he asserts, unless one has a thorough background in popular culture.

For those of you who don’t have the time to read Matheson’s argument, I will summarize it thus (Although, seriously, go read it. It’s entertaining, well-written, and academic. A rare combination, indeed!): What makes The Simpsons different from the shows that came before it that referenced popular culture is that The Simpsons lacks any sort of moral agenda. It does not parody or allude to popular culture in order to promote any sort of values, be they liberal or conservative, but instead merely references for the sake of referencing. Matheson’s explanaition for the continuous use of allusions is that in our postmodern society, all authority is in question and we lack a solid place in which to put our faith. In such a social climate, Matheson asserts, contemporary artists often go back to the past for inspiration. However, because even history if one of the forms of authority in question, this inspiration from the past is often under-cut. What results is a constant flow of references, and those who can catch the most references are lucky enough to be “in the know.” They are members of what Matheson calls “the cult of knowingness.” This cult is built, Matheson claims, by the idea that even though there may be no ultimate truth, one can demonstrate one’s superior understanding of a set of intellectual rules. The point is not to have a depth of knowledge, but to have a broad understanding of a variety of ideological positions…and popular culture. One then proceeds to tear down any sort of ideological ediface that claims to have an understanding of ultimate knowledge. In other words, anything and everything is up for grabs as an object of parody. However, in the process of tearing down every source of ultimate truth, the show itself lacks any sort of ideological ground to stand on.

The Simpsons may have begun to maximize quotationalism and hyper-irony in comedy, but the show has since stalled. Both society and The Simpsons have changed since Matheson’s essay, and the show is now something of family-values comedy with liberal-leaning politics. While it paved the way for many of the popular comedy shows today and has had a huge influence on American entertainment, it has not been able to uphold its hyper-ironic stance for twenty-two seasons. I believe that the nature of The Simpsons as a situation comedy prevents it from being able to uphold a hyper-ironic worldview indefinitely, and that shows in sketch comedy form, like RC, are the natural progression of hyper-ironic comedy.

Stay Tuned for Part 2!

Are We Cyborgs Yet?: Evolution of the DROID Commercials

I distinctly remember the first DROID commercial I ever saw. It was for the DROID 2, and it ran in 2010. Somehow, it seems so long ago, perhaps because the idea of a smartphone still seemed novel and now it’s become a part of everyday life. In any case, upon seeing the commercial, I was taken with the way in which the smartphone turns the man in the commercial into a machine—literally. As he types on the slide-out keyboard (which only a year later seems so quaint), his fingers, hands, and arms gradually become metallic, his muscles replaced with metal and his tendons transforming into wires. The phone has made him a cyborg—an amalgamation of human and machine.

I found myself mesmerized and a little disturbed by the commercial. If the comments on the commercial’s YouTube video are anything to go by, I wasn’t the only one. Most of them approved of the commercial, but others seemed displeased with the lack of humanity, references to The Terminator and Cybermen of Doctor Who, and disgust with corporations turning their clients into robots. Personally, I think the red DROID eye is reminiscent of the glowing Hal of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Whatever the reference, the glaring red light that seems to be looking at the viewer is reminiscent of various movie and television examples of technology gone awry and controlling people’s lives. Hal takes over the ship in 2001. The Terminator, a robot meant to infiltrate human society and kill a particular human target, is the result of Skynet, a self-aware program that rebelled against the humans that created it in the Terminator movies. The Cybermen are the frequent adversaries of the Doctor in Doctor Who, as they overpower biological subjects and turn them into metal automatons. All of these robots are pop culture warnings of what can happen when technology becomes too all-consuming in our lives.

Other DROID commercials also portray the smartphones as part of a person or in one case, a snowman, and not merely a tool to be used. However, the commercials seem to be moving away from presenting the DROID as a physical part of a person. The DROID Bionic commercial places the smartphone outside the protagonist of the commercial. In fact, the ending tagline states that the DROID was “made from machines to rule all machines.” This most recent commercial seems to be making up for the earlier ones, in which the phone was so seemlessly melded to its user that it was hard to tell who was controlling whom. The statement that the DROID Bionic “rules all machines” suggests that the smartphone is giving the user control over machines instead of being controlled by them.

So, who really does control our smartphones? Do we control them, or do they control us? Or have we entered into a sort of symbiotic relationship with them? In many ways, we are beginning to think of our technology as extensions of ourselves, though whether this is due to marketing that gives us an identity associated with a product or to the increasing prevelance of technology in our society, I can’t say. Most likely, it’s some combination of the two. In any case, as these commercials show, our close relationship with our technology is turning us into a sort of cyborg, something part human and part machine. Technically, anytime our culture presents the human body as being something like a machine, like a piece of technology, it is presenting us as cyborgs.

Rather than worry about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing (because there are good arguments on both sides), I’d like to focus on how these commercials present our interactions with technology as embodied. Usually, when we think about going on the Internet or using smartphones, we aren’t thinking much about our bodies. We tend to think more about our minds, since Western culture has generally placed more emphasis on the mind over the body. But using technology is an embodied experience. We type on our keyboards, our smartphones, our iPads or tablets with our fingers. We manipulate webpages with our hands, whether through a touchscreen or a mouse. Our interactions with technology are not something that takes us out of our bodies. Instead, they do the very opposite. They rely on our bodies, so much so that they have become an extension of our bodies.

As changes in the DROID commercials suggests, this doesn’t seem to be a concept that we, as a culture, are completely comfortable with yet.

We’re Straight! We Swear!: Being Homosocial in a 3OH!3 Music Video

What do you call two straight men who are very, very close friends?

Give up? I don’t know either. While our society seems to recognize and often even celebrate purely platonic bonds between women, we still don’t quite know what to do with men who are close but not romantically interested in each other. Recently, we’ve attempted to give a name to this relationship—the “bromance,” but the term is still a pun on the word “romance” and has a homoerotic undercurrent.

This is the bind that patriarchal society puts men in. On the one hand, they are expected to be blatantly heterosexual. A man’s not a man if he can’t seduce and impregnate a woman, and the more women he can do this too, the more manly he is. At the same time, however, women are mere objects for his sexual pleasure, and as a man (who is expected to be intelligent and strong while women are expected to be flighty and weak), he can’t really form a deep and meaningful bond with a woman. (I’m referring here to the ideals of patriarchal society and how they are often portrayed in certain aspects of popular culture, not to how relationships between men and women really play out.) He can seek out these meaningful bonds with other men, but these relationships must be tempered. They can’t be too emotional, lest they seem “womanish” or “sissy,” and they must be restricted in how they show affection, lest they be mistaken for homoeroticism. You can save your buddy’s life, beat up his enemies, and tell him you’ve “got his back,” but you can’t hug him or tell him that you love him.

So how does popular culture present close, emotional bonds between two men and avoid homoeroticism? It surrounds those men with adoring, beautiful women. The effect the women are supposed to serve is a that of a signifier for heterosexuality. “See, we’re straight,” the men seem to say as they bask in female attention. “We’re surrounded by all of these women, and we love it! Oh, that guy over there? He’s just my buddy. But we’re totally straight! I mean, look all of these women!”

Many of the music videos put out by 3OH!3, the pop duo consisting of Nat Motte and Sean Foreman from Boulder, Colorado (area code three-oh-three), take this convention to ludicrus extremes. Nearly all of the videos focus on a platonic relationship between Motte and Foreman, but to avoid the accusation of homoeroticism, the videos surround them with adoring women. The videos are often concoted around ridiculous premises to explain why women would be fawning over them, but the absurdity of the videos often highlights the bizarre position in which patriarchal society places men and their platonic relationships.

(Note: From here on out, when I refer to Motte and Foreman, I do not mean them personally. Instead, I am referring to the pop personas that they have taken on and perform in their music videos.)

3OH!3’s best known song and video, “Don’t Trust Me” features a ridiculous premise. It is, so an introduction informs us, the story of two male models who are the only survivors of a virus that has wiped out the rest of earth’s male population. While anyone else faced with this highly unlikely situation might show some concern,  Motte and Foreman, in the context of the video, see this as an opportunity to bask in the adoration of a planet full of women who are starved for men. (Because, of course, women want nothing more than a man to satisfy them. Even lesbians are just waiting for the right man.)

But are they really basking in the women’s adoration? A quick view of the music video might assume that they are, but a closer look reveals that the video isn’t so much about the women as it is about Motte and Foreman. The women exist on the periphery, literally. Most of the camera shots focus them as they stand together in the middle of the shot, its focus, while the women are placed, like props, to the side of the frame. Te women’s prescence is merely that of a signifier of male heterosexuality. They are there to reassure us that, no matter how much Motte and Foreman might wrestle with each other, rap together or playfully shove each other, they are ultimately heterosexual.

I also think that the video, to some extent, is aware of its own ridiculousness. At the beginning, after we have established that Motte and Foreman are male models, the first shot of them we see portrays them as adorned in purple capes and speedos. They don’t look like male models so much as they look like two frat boys playing at being male models. Neither of them are particularly muscular or toned, the “ideal” body for male pop stars. (Aside: I actually find their average physical appearances refreshing. Unlike many pop stars, who are so perfect-looking as to be interchangeable, Motte and Foreman actually stand out.) Motte is tall, skinny, and lanky, with long, stringy hair, while Foreman is short and stocky. When paired together, their opposite physiques are even more noticeable. They do not dance so much as they flail and crudely mime the lyrics to their songs. The video mocks the performance of pop—the elaborate costumes, the impossible perfection of pop stars’ bodies, and the ostentatious dance routines that often accompany music videos. “This is all in fun. Don’t take it too seriously, because we certainly aren’t,” the video seems to say to the audience.

Stripped of its spectacle and reduced to what looks almost more like two fans rocking out to their favorite song than two pop artists in a music video, the video makes Motte and Foreman more relatable to the audience. They’re just two average guys—straight guys, mind you! Very, very straight! Did you see all those hot chicks back there? They’re kind of hard to see because they’re just on the edge of the camera shot, but they’re there and boy, are they hot!—having a good time together. This stripped version of pop, however, adds to the masculine image of the video. Dancing artistically, wearing elaborate costumes, and looking beautiful are all coded as “feminine” in patriarchal society, so to prove that they are not feminine (and therefore not gay), Motte and Foreman, in their video, eschew anything that could be construed as homoerotic.

Their “Starstrukk” video, featuring Katy Perry, goes one step further and inserts a girl between them. All of the elements from “Don’t Trust Me” remain. The new ridiculous premise is that the guys have found a fountain full of coins that women have tossed in, wishing for men. When they remove the coins, they become the answer to the women’s wishes, and the women run at them, eager (we are led to assume) to have sex with them. Unlike in “Don’t Trust Me,” in which Motte and Foreman were paired as the focus of the camera shots and interacted with each other, they are now joined by Katy Perry, who stands between them, like a bulwark protecting them from any accusations of homoeroticism.

However, the video is still more about the buddy relationship than it is about relationships with women. The scenes in front of the fountain are intersperced with scenes of Motte and Foreman, always together, doing manly and adventurous things…in order to attract women, of course. In one scene, they are boating in Italy and hold up champagne glasses to the (presumably female) viewers with “come and get it” gestures. In other scene, they pose for the camera while dressed as street toughs, the bodies of other, weaker men whom they’ve just beaten, strewn on the side of the shot. Though these scenes appear to be about attracting women, they actually emphasize the relationship between the two men. Women may come and go, but they’ll still have their friendship and be able to do things like climb mountains while feeding each other sashimi (a homosocial and perhaps even vaguely homoerotic image if there ever was one). Like the “Don’t Trust Me” video, this video also emphasizes the buddy relationship between Motte and Foreman, and it uses the women in the video to assert their heterosexuality. They may be close, but they’re not that close.

All of the hypermasculine imagery of the 3OH!3 music videos works for the purpose of establishing Motte and Foreman as heterosexual men. The videos are unkind to women, perhaps even misogynistic, but the reason for it is to establish the 3OH!3 duo as he-men. The bind that patriarchal society puts women in is obvious in these vidoes, but what also becomes apparent is the bind that patriarchal society also puts upon men who have close friendships with other men. There is a tension in the videos between emphasizing the bond between Motte and Foreman and also trying to de-emphasize the bond so that their relationship does not seem homoerotic.

This tension points to the larger problem within patriarchal culture, which does not seem to know what to do with male-male friendships. When women are nothing but objects, to have any kind of meaningful relationship, men must seek out other men. At the same time, however, these men cannot appear to close to each other for fear of being branded homoerotic. Our society lacks any kind of way to talk about and discuss male relationships that are not sexual, and as a result, the homosocial and the homoerotic tend to become inflated. Men can, of course, be straight and have close, platonic relationships with other men. Unfortunately, our society lacks a way to place and understand these realtionships outside of homoeroticism.