For our final group presentation my group and I decided to focus on the movie White Chicks. In this movie, two black cops decide to go undercover as white women to try to solve a kidnapping case. We looked at a few clips and we realized that we could apply a few different theorists and their ideas to parts of the movie and well as the movie as a whole. The clip that I chose to interpret is called “This is Our Jam.” In this clip you will see that the two cops are riding in a car with three of their new girl friends. The driver of the car is switching the radio stations and stops on a song entitled “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton. The girls get excited and the driver says “this is our song!” It is then that all of the girls start to sing along to the song, dancing and motioning to the words. All of them recognize it and know every word very well. The two cops do not know it and try to pretend to sing along until one of the girls tell them to “take it” meaning for them to sing a part of the song solo. The cops try, but the girls are surprised that they do not know the words and roll their eyes in disgust since it is typically a “girl song” and they should know the words. The driver gets fed up with their lack of knowledge of an obvious song that a girl should know and decided to change the station. The next song that comes on is called “Get Low” by the Ying Yang Twins. This song is typically a “male song” and of course, since the cops are undercover females, they do know the song and start singing and dancing as the girls look at them is disbelief. I thought that this clip related to Judith Butler and her idea of gender performativity vs. its expression.
Butler’s goal is to try to “uncover the assumptions that ‘restrict the meaning of gender to received notions of masculinity and femininity’” (Norton Anthology 2485). Butler says “Hence, as a strategy of survival within compulsory systems, gender is a performance with clearly punitive consequences. Discrete genders are part of what “humanizes” individuals within contemporary culture; indeed we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right. Because there is neither an “essence” that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires, and because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all” (Norton Anthology 2500). In other words, Butler is basically saying that in order to perform gender appropriately, one must perform sexuality appropriately. She is also saying that having a gender “humanizes” a person and if they do not act in the certain way that their gender is suppose to, then they may be punished for it. Because gender is “not a fact” and has not definition, the ways in which a person acts or performs their gender makes gender exist. Butler also says “that gender reality is created through sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a true or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part of the strategy that conceals gender’s performative character and the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality” (Norton Anthology 2501). This means that gender is created by “sustained social performances” which determines if a person is masculine or feminine and if they are performing their “gender duty” depending on their sex. Butler basically believes that gender in society is a constant show and that in order to fit in, one must perform the correct way.
The “This is Our Jam” clip can be explained in Butler’s terms. The girls in the car are performing their correct gender role. They are singing along to a “girl song” and know all of the words. They are dancing and motioning to each word and expressing themselves in what one would call a “feminine” manner. The two cops, since they are males, do not know the “girl song” lyrics, which would normally be considered okay because males would not know the words to a song that is more likely to attract female fans. Since they are males dressed up like females, the girls in the car expect them to know the lyrics. When the girls realize that the cops are obviously oblivious to the lyrics, the girls roll their eyes and turn the station. This could be seen as a form of out casting the cops, or punishing them for not knowing the lyrics, which defies their gender role. When the driver of the car switches the station and a “male song” comes on, the two cops do know the words and excitedly start to sing along as the girls look at them oddly. The girls recognize it is unusual for a “female” to get excited about a male song and also for a “female” to know the lyrics to a male song and not a female song. The girls rolling their eyes and giving them a dirty look again is a way “punish” the cops because they are straying from their typical female gender norm.
