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E-book Ladies in Arms : Women, Guns, and Feminisms in Contemporary Popular Culture

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Penilaian

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In2019,agraffitiartistsprayedamuralofFridaKahloonthebackofagunshopin Greensboro, North Carolina. The Mexican artist is shown with an ammunitionbelt around her hips, leaning back against the wall. In her hand, she holds a gunpointing downward,as if ready to lift her arms and shoot at the viewer.The mural copied a photograph of Kahlo which has long become a commodity.Itsdepictionof»Frida«reiteratesherimaginedpersonaasself-confident,powerful,and impressive woman artist. It bears witness to her transformation into a secularicon, building on her status as a quasi-martyr on the one hand, and on the other hand on her artistic self-expression, for instance with her surrealist self-portraits(Sanchez 2012). The production of Frida Kahlo »as material culture« began in herlifetime and continues full throttle (Pankl/Blake 2012); today she can be found ont-shirts, decorative pillows, and as heroine of children’s books celebrating womentrailblazers.Hence,her rebel woman portrait comes in handy for ornamenting andbranding an American gun store. But there is a catch: This image of Frida with thegunisamontage.Itwasfabricatedintheearly2010sbyphotographerRobertToren,whostatedthat»FridawasthecuteCommunistweleftistsmostwantedtoseenude«(quotedinMatsuoka2019).NexttofetishizingKahloforthemalegaze,Toren’smon-tage is also blatantly anachronistic: Kahlo’s self-portraits as well as historic pho-tographs show that she didn’t dress erotically,and 1930s Mexican ladies’fashion didnot include breezy blouses and chunky jewelry. The image also sexes up the artist’sbroken body: at age 23, Kahlo was immobilized by a bus accident and tied to thebed for the rest of her life,her torso upheld by a steel corset.Toren’s montage galva-nizes her professional struggle for recognition as an artist, her political vision for anew political order in Mexico, and her personal battle with disability and pain intoacontemporaryrebelgirlimagetiedtothebeautynorm-conformingbodyinasexypose, and to the gun she holds in her hands. The key signifier of this image seemsto be the gun. Placed prominently before her lower body, the revolver can be seenas a tool for female self-defense and resistance against any oppressive system thatmay range, depending on the viewer’s taste, from street gangs to capitalism or pa-triarchy at large.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

305.3 HIE l

Penerbit

Germany : transcript Verlag., 2024

Deskripsi Fisik

323 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783839469552

Klasifikasi

305.3

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Gender

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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