Toward a definition of Ugly Studies
I’ve been thinking about ugliness a lot lately. Not that it hasn’t been a part of my life forever: as a woman growing up in America I have been socialized to realize that the thing I should fear most is being considered ugly. But where is the resistance in being “ugly”? Who decides who is ugly?
For a final paper in a seminar, I proposed a new interdisciplinary discipline called Ugly Studies. Some people were interested so I’m sharing my sources here. I am fine with anyone using this idea in a class or a lesson.
“Ugly,” is a term that evokes both emotional and visceral reaction. Ugly can refer to aesthetics, emotions, atrocities, sickness, deformity, and uncleanliness. Ugly is what is not beautiful or normal. Ugly is something to be hidden away or eradicated. I do not mean to imply any sort of personal judgement to what is ugly. Rather, this course will explore how the term has been assigned, how subjective standards have changed, how aesthetics have developed, and how these judgments have been used to dictate formal and informal policies, cultural trends, and social containment and laws throughout the nineteenth century until now. This is also point of entry to discuss disability studies, queer studies, and critical race theory concepts because “ugly” can also be seen as a way to determine what is normal and desirable As the field has had a constant struggle with method, I aim to place the ambiguity as a method, in that parsing out the meanings is similar to grounded theory in that the information dictates the study. I am not proposing that this course will remedy of the challenges of the discipline. Rather, I am considering the process of thinking about it as an experiment to consider methodology, myth, archives, and reflexiveness of the field.
For the purposes of this paper, I have divided the course concept into different subfields, which may or may not constitute a unit in the course. I have also suggested some readings for each unit. These are not meant to be assigned readings for the course; they serve as a foundation for inquiry from which reading assignments can be drawn. Finally, I offer some discussion questions to consider and explore as the topic is pursued. Obviously, this is not a complete list, as the interdisciplinary nature of the subject could have infinite possibilities. Nor have I been able to fully read all of the sources in their entirety. I intentionally tried to bring in works I have read in other courses this semester as well as in my popular culture coursework.
Topic: Aesthetics and culture
Sources:
DeSilvey, Caitlin, and Tim Edensor. 2013. Reckoning with ruins. Progress in Human Geography 37 (4): 465-85.
Douglas, Nick. 2014. It’s supposed to look like shit: The internet ugly aesthetic. Journal of Visual Culture 13 (3): 314-39.
Edensor, Tim, 1957. 2005. Industrial ruins: Spaces, aesthetics and materiality. New York;Oxford, UK;: Berg.
High, Steven, and David K. Lewis. 2007. Corporate wasteland: The landscape and memory of deindustrialization. Toronto: Between the Lines.
Pop, Andrei, and Mechtild Widrich. 2014. Ugliness: The Non-Beautiful in Art and Theory. I.B. Tauris. Reprint.
Rosenkranz, Karl. 2015. Aesthetics of ugliness: A critical edition. 1st ed. GB: Bloomsbury Academic.
In this unit, the concept of aesthetics will be explored. Specifically, how are aesthetics determined in the visual arts? What are the cultural factors that determine the judgement of aesthetics? Industrial Ruins will serve as a case study. These are especially crucial to this course because their ugliness is connected to material and industrial practices and sets forth questions about how the physical embodiment of ruins serves as a reminder of business, geography, and labor of a given area. The existence of ruins can also evoke an experience of those who encounter it, and what these ruins mark for the city.
The othered body: the construction the disabled body
Carter, Julian. 2007. The heart of whiteness: normal sexuality and race in America, 1880-1940. Durham: Duke University Press.
Gleeson, Brendan, 1998. Geographies of disability. London;New York;: Routledge.
Hill, Collins P. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Kudlick, Catherine J. 2003. Disability history: Why we need another "other". The American Historical Review 108 (3): 763-93.
McRuer, Robert, 1966. 2006. Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: New York University Press.
Ribbens, Kees. 2018. Picturing anti-semitism in the nazi-occupied netherlands: Anti-jewish stereotyping in a racist second world war comic strip. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 17 (1): 8-23.
Sullivan, Nikki, 1962. 2003. A critical introduction to queer theory. New York: New York University Press.
An important foundation for this course is the genealogy of disability studies and how it intersects with sexuality. This will not only cover how disability has moved from a medical model to a social model, but how it intersects with queer theory. Furthermore, how a disabled body has been considered an ugly body, and how social institutions have reinforced that. Crip theory, and other recent developments, have challenged the notion of what a normal body is and what is desirable.
Carter’s Heart of whiteness further explores how race is an essential part of this conversation, and how the Norma and Normann models reinforced and medicalized whiteness, straightness, and, I argue, able-bodies were not only established as normal, but made to be aspirational. Patricia Hill Collin’s Black Sexual Politics explores how controlling stereotypes of black women’s bodies justified the sexual violence of white slave owners and the pure white race. The mammy and jezebel stereotypes were embedded into our popular culture as a way to distinguish beautiful and pure from “savage” and oversexualized/desexualized imagery.
Questions:
· How did standards of normalness perpetuate what was considered ugly and unruly bodies? What constituents benefited from these images?
· How does the ugly/normal body intersect with sexuality? How did heterosexuality define ugliness and normalcy?
· How has queer theory/disability theory changed to address standards of normalcy and sexual identity?
· How does the development of medical ideas of normalcy affect cultural and social ideals?
Consuming and containing ugly bodies
Bogdan, Robert. 1988. Freak show: presenting human oddities for amusement and profit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Holmes, Rachel. 2008. The hottentot venus : The life and death of saartjie baartman: Born 1789 - buried 2002. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998. Destination culture: Tourism, museums, and heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Newkirk, Pamela. 2015. Spectacle: The astonishing life of ota benga. First ed. New York, NY: Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Schweik, Susan M. 2009. The ugly laws: disability in public. New York: New York University.
Strausbaugh, John. Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2006. Print.
This unit will explore how the ugliness of undesirable bodies were pushed to the margins of society. Furthermore, it will focus on how particular historical figures used this fear and fascination of the ugly for profit, and how the public consumerism benefited off these bodies. Bogdan’s overview provides a detailed history of the development of the freakshow. Although now appearing barbaric, many disability scholars argue that this provided a place for those with disabilities were able to thrive and be independent. The history of blackface and minstrel shows, if time allows, are also an important part of how an identity, derived from a perceived ugliness, was consumed as entertainment.
Circuses weren’t the only place that ugliness was displayed. There are many examples in which African natives were stolen for their bodies to be on display for the white gaze. Human zoos are more common than one would think, and many of these displays were in the World’s Fair, as well as in respected, educational museums, in which they were dressed and forced to perform their culture for onlookers. This includes biographies of two individuals, Oto Benga and Saarje Baartman, who were taken from their homes in Africa to be displayed in America as an object of ugly fascination. It is important not only to study specific cases for evidence, but to also give a voice to the lived experience of these individuals.
The work that rose an interest in this subject, Susan Schweik’s The Ugly Laws: Disability in public, is a historical account of how several cities passed ordinances to keep the “ugly beggar” off the streets and out of the public eye. This work is essential because it approaches the issue from the aspects of labor, capital, social control, boundary containment, and politics. I believe this work is one that, although could be categorized as history scholarship, creates a multidisciplinary approach that reflects current scholarship on American Studies.
Trauma and witnessing the ugly
Hillsburg, Heather. "Urban Captivity Narratives: Captivity and Confession in Women's Writing." Canadian Review of American Studies, 2017, pp. 1-24.
Mitchell, Joy and Trauth, Erin. “Tell Me Everything: The Cult of the Memoir.” Cult Pop Culture: How the Fringe Became Mainstream. Ed. Bob Batchelor. Praeger, Santa Barbara, Calif, 2012.
Rothe, Anne. 2011. Popular trauma culture: selling the pain of others in the mass media. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Sturken, Marita. Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Print.
Sharpley, Richard, and Philip R. Stone. 2009. The darker side of travel: the theory and practice of dark tourism. Bristol, UK: Channel View Publications.
Weissman, Gary. Fantasies of Witnessing: Postwar Efforts to Experience the Holocaust. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. Print.
This unit extends from the idea of ugliness of consumerism and to the experience of consuming ugliness in the form or trauma and atrocity. This work comes from my master’s thesis in which I analyzed the popularity and fascination with modern popular trauma memoirs. Dark tourism, the desire to explore and experience atrocities, is a new field in cultural studies. As expected, the answer to “why” of why individuals partake in this is varied. Much of these studies comes from work on Holocaust literature and texts, which became popular as the rise of mass culture mediums (television) post World War II. One reason offered is that the experiences of dark tourism or consuming trauma narratives is about mediating between life and fear of death. Another reason is that people enjoy the feeling of fear and disgust. However, in this context, I would reframe it as a continuation of the ways in which ugliness is consumed, and how the ugliness helps to form the idea of normal and adaptive.
Questions:
· What does the injured, abused, and traumatic body look like, and why do we look?
· What does the cultural memory of ugliness of trauma take form? How can consumerism of cultural memory cross over to kitsch, camp and bad taste?
· What are the messages about the experience of trauma as popular narratives? How does this tie into the idea of responsivity and who deserves trauma?
Celebrating ugliness: camp and trash culture
Barefoot, Guy, 1957. 2017. Trash cinema: The lure of the low. Vol. 65. London;New York;: Wallflower.
Cartmell, Deborah. 1997. Trash aesthetics: Popular culture and its audience. Vol. 2. London;Chicago;: Pluto Press.
Cleto, Fabio. 1999. Camp: Queer aesthetics and the performing subject: A reader. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Levine, Lawrence W. 1990. Highbrow/lowbrow: the emergence of cultural hierarchy in America. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Manga, Julie Engel, 1953. 2003. Talking trash: The cultural politics of daytime TV talk shows. New York: New York University Press.
Pela, Robrt L. 2002. Filthy: the weird world of John Waters. Los Angeles: Alyson Books.
Russo, Mary J. 1995. The female grotesque: Risk, excess, and modernity. New York: Routledge.
Wilson, Cintra. 2000. A massive swelling: celebrity re-examined as a grotesque, crippling disease, and other cultural revolutions. New York: Viking.
Petersen, Anne Helen. 2017. Too fat, too slutty, too loud: The rise and reign of the unruly woman. New York, New York: Plume.
This section approaches the topic of ugliness from the perspective of popular culture and celebrity studies. Popular culture is multidisciplinary in its own sense, providing a more layered matrix of the subject. This unit asks how the aesthetics and embodiment of ugliness is used as a form of resistance again standards, institutions and patriarchal influences. A case study of John Waters’s films provides an opportunity for textual analysis as well as production studies.
Questions
· How does trash signify depictions of class, specifically on talk shows and currently, on reality shows?
· How does “trash” and “lowbrow” cultural phenomenon change over time?
· Why is studying celebrity culture necessary? How does the media coverage of celebrities and fascination with looks, plastic surgery and fashion shape the ugly?
· How is camp a form of resistance? Is camp inherently tied to queerness, or has it evolved to a different significance?
The idea of “ugly studies” is one that I feel is important but has its challenges. For one, the broadness of the topic could weaken its central questions. Furthermore, it is hard to locate the foundation texts of this interdisciplinary topic. How does one define ugly, if the definition is inherently subjective? I argue that exploring these challenges is the inherent strength of approaching a topic in this way.
Quite simply, the method is “there is no right method.” Archival verification is of course, still important, but not all the subjects studied have the privilege of having preserved, material foundations. We also need to trust scholars to author their own theories based on how these are connected through scholarly intersections.
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