Gender Equality and More

Weintraub analyzes Kruger’s work and views in “Gender Equality.” Like Kruger was a feminist. To denote who the man or woman was in her work she used “we,” “my,” and “I” for the female, then “you” for the male (Composition Reader, 200-201). I never even thought of it that way, when we previously looked at Kruger’s work.
Weintraub assumes that you nothing about Kruger’s work. Weintraub gives several examples of Kruger’s work throughout the chapter. She shows you a few of the photographs and text. They include “We don’t need another hero” and “Bleed us dry.” Weintraub spends seven pages telling us about Kruger, or at least Kruger’s work.
Kruger, an artist, has the same basic approach to all of her work. She will typically have a photograph, black and white, taken from somewhere else. Then she will have the photograph blown up, and make up some text to put with it. The text is usually bold white letters surrounded in red. It appears as though she is trying to draw the viewer to the text. “Text further amplifies the aesthetic drama of the photographs,” (Composition Reader, 199). So it seems as though Kruger is trying to help get her meaning across by putting the words in the picture. Without the words it would be much harder to get the full meaning of the photograph.
When we first looked at Kruger’s work, I looked at the photograph and the words to try and make sense of what she meant. Let’s take a look at “I Shop Therefore I Am.” What does this mean? The photograph is a black and white hand holding on to these red and white words. It almost appears as though the words are in a box, sort of like the shape of a red credit card. Maybe Kruger was trying to say something about consumerism. When you add the meaning of “I” being female, it makes it say that females are the consumers. It makes it seem as though that is our role in society, to go out and buy the groceries to feed our family, and to buy the clothes for our kids. Unfortunately it appears to be scarily accurate. Go and take a walk around your local grocery store. Who’s pushing the carts full of food, with the child sitting in the cart? It’s a female. Yes there are exceptions. Sometimes the males will do the grocery shopping, but majority of the time its females. Now let’s go on a trip to the mall. Oh look, again it’s mostly females. The only exceptions as far as shopping and consumerism go are the teenage boys that hang out in the arcade spending money to hopefully become number one. Other males sometimes hang out in the hardware store, maybe that’s because we females know nothing about tools and such. Then here is the last exception, you will find mostly guys in any store that carries weapons. When it comes down to it about ninety-nine percent of the time, the females are the consumers.
Some people like you and I might say that Kruger uses propaganda and advertising in her work. Weintraub fights to say, nope, sorry, none of that it is included. For advertising Kruger would have to say, “Buy my product or service,” which she doesn’t. She isn’t trying to sell anything. She is simply trying to share her feministic point of view through photographs and words. Then comes propaganda, which Weintraub gives good examples of. “One people. One nation. One leader.” And “Nothing has been won in history without bloodshed,” (Composition Reader, 199). Those I consider to be propaganda, as does Weintraub. However, I don’t believe Kruger is really trying to shape your opinion to what she believes is going on and to see things the way she sees things. She uses the look and feel of propaganda, without it actually being propaganda. It could help that, “There is no official propaganda in the United States” (Composition Reader, 198). Later on Kruger said, “We live in a mixed culture. We have different goals. We need to hear more voices” (Composition Reader, 203). I think she is just simply putting out information for information’s sake. Everyone is allowed to put out information. Some just choose to make their information a little bolder, and more known to others. She is simply letting you make your own conclusions as to what it means. With propaganda you are trying to get a desired outcome. “Her artworks are not propaganda because their production is not orchestrated by a central governmental authority. Propaganda indoctrinates youth, censors news, stages parades, and produces demonstrations. It regulates art, literature, film, radio, music, and theater” (Composition Reader, 198). So yeah she’s fighting for gender equality, but she’s not forcing us to come together and make sure men and women are equal.
“I am interested in making art that displaces the powers that tell us who we can be and who we can’t be,” (Composition Reader, 202-203). This is a quote from Barbara Kruger herself. I believe it is telling us that we can do anything, which is only because Kruger does anything and everything in her artwork. Kruger is of the mindset that male or female, you should be equal. There should be no limitations as to what one can do. “We don’t need another hero,” (Composition Reader, 197). So sorry guys we don’t need you to pretend to be another Superman, Batman, or even Muscle Man. The females can be Wonder Woman, thus we are equal to you, both superheros. A long time ago when life first roamed the Earth, the guys were in charge of doing everything outside the house. Maybe it was so the females wouldn’t break a nail. Anyways, the females were told to stay inside, to cook, clean, and care for the children. It was the male’s job to provide for the family. We’ve come a long way since then. Now the females can work outside the home, doing any job the guys can do. We aren’t paid as much as the guys are. (Many studies/statistics have told us this). Thus we still aren’t equal. However, small steps can be one way to finally get there.
While first looking at Kruger’s work I didn’t any sense of the gender equality she was trying to bring up. Her artwork appears like it could be directed at either gender until you figure out that she used “we,” “my,” and “I” for the females, then “you” for the males (Composition Reader, 200-201). Once you are given that piece of information, you can see Kruger’s feministic ideas which shaped her work. It wasn’t until after reading “Gender Equality,” by Linda Weintraub that I had the thoughts about gender inequality about Kruger’s work as I stated in the previous paragraph.
“To make art is the ability to objectify one’s experience of the world. You can do that in a million ways—in building, a painting, with photography, a novel, a music video—but it’s your experience, not some intermediary’s vision or some client’s imposed boundaries,” (Composition Reader, 198). Kruger is simply using photographs and her writing to share her views. She is a feminist and wants equality. No one is telling her what to envision, she is simply sharing the world through her eyes. Kruger sees the world as a man’s place to be stronger and their voice to be louder, thus heard a little better.
Weintraub spends quite a bit of time explaining Kruger’s work to us, so she too must believe this is an important issue. Some people may believe that we are all equal, after all both males and females are allowed to vote. Weintraub gets to explaining how powerful of a message Kruger sends in every piece of artwork. That Kruger’s work wasn’t just spur of the moment, oh I’d like to take this picture and slap a few words on it. NO it was purposefully put together, so it could explain someone else’s point of view. Kruger wants her words to shout out at you and get your attention, and then maybe some action will be taken to get to gender equality.