Saturday, June 26, 2010

Doll Face

Here is a 4 minute video which is extremely creepy (I must emphasize the creepy), yet it is a very accurate metaphor for the incredibly impossible task of achieving feminine beauty in our culture.

It begins with a mechanized 'doll' and a TV screen very close to the machine.  The fact that the 'female doll' is a machine can have so many layers of meaning.  Drawing from my previous post about childbirth, women's bodies = money, profit to corporations.  It's not important that women (and men) have feelings, have lives of their own, have pain of their own; profit is the bottom line, and, therefore, women become machines with no purpose of their own other than to serve someone who controls them.

As the mechanized 'doll' takes in what's on the TV, the 'doll' begins to doll herself up with makeup.  After the 'doll' achieves this goal, the TV moves further and further away the more she tries to achieve perfection, representing the unachievable goal of American beauty.  The doll then tries to move closer, but it eventually ends in her own destruction (real life examples: anorexia, bulimia, depression, poor self-image, bad diets habits etc.)

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