Wow! An award! My buttocks are still tingling. This spot was awarded a Gold award from Promax/BDA this year and I would like to reprint my acceptance speech here in its entirety:
Thank You! Wow, my buttocks are tingling. I have many people to thank. First of all a big shout out to my boy, the Big G up in the sky.
So many people are responsible for helping me achieve my vision, and I would like to take the time here to thank them all personally:
First up, none of this would even be possible without my dog, Scott Grieg, Creative Director of SexTV and whatnot…
Next, that gorgeous hunk of chocolate man, designer Santosh Isaac who added all the ‘bling’ and whatnot…
Also, props go out to Elizabeth Martin, who worked her magic with the sound design and mixing…and…whatnot.
A great big hug to Chantal Quesnelle and Rachel Harry for laying down some phat voice overs…
And lastly, to my parents, Mom and Dad, you gave birth to me, so I could give back to the world…I won’t let you (tearing up) or the rest of y’all down!
PEACE OUT!
Actually, I wasn’t even there for the ceremony in New York last month, but, whatever… how often do you get a chance to write an acceptance speech.
Most of the time I come up with sarcastic, humorous, brilliantly inventive promos for SexTV, but on occasion I am able to take things a little more seriously. This image spot is an example of one of those occasions.
Here I am interested in sex as it relates to gender, specifically in this case, the female gender. My concept was to create a tribute to historically significant women in a pop art collage style. This proved harder to do then first expected. Very quickly I realized that choosing who was to be included in this mini ‘hall of fame’ brought up a series of issues that ultimately I had to put away. If I spent too much time debating whether or not I, as a man, even had the right to make such a selection, the thing would have been shelved very early on. So, armed with a fairly weak conviction that I had some understanding of gender politics, I just went ahead and asked every woman I know whom she would include.
The end result is a beautiful and very compelling spot.
My collaborator on the design and execution of the spot was Santosh Issac (a very talented graphic artist and compositor). Below are short bios of all the women who are quoted in the spot provided by our production assistant Emily Chou.
Email your comments to:
Azed Majeed On-Air Promo Producer, SexTV:The Channel
“I have had the same goal I’ve had ever since I was a girl. I want to rule the world.”
-Madonna
It's funny how strong, feminist statements like this still come across as very masculine. Madonna is both respected and feared for her incredible success, shrewd business sense, and her propensity to provoke. Her desire to rule the world, whether literally or figuratively, doesn't come as a surprise, given her track record and ability to top the charts.
“Being a sex symbol was rather like being a convict.”
-Raquel Welch
This comment is both eye-opening and slightly disturbing, coming from one of the most iconic sex symbols of the 1960s and 1970s. Of course we're no longer that naive to think that being a sex symbol is all glamour and glory, but it's still treated within our cultural discourse as something young girls and boys should aspire to. For Raquel Welch to say that being a sex symbol was like being a convict almost gives the impression that she's ungrateful for her celebrity status, but when you think about it - do we ever think of her as anything more than a sex symbol? Obviously she's a successful woman whose career is still alive and well, but this makes you wonder just how much more to her there was than her legendary pose on the poster for One Million Years B.C. (1966). Or what she could have accomplished if she weren't typecast during her youth.
“A marriage is no amusement but a solemn act, and generally a sad one.”
-Queen Victoria
Okay, so how depressing is this? Here we have a British monarch who's supposedly representative of the Victorian era - a time stereotyped as sexually repressive, socially conservative, but industrially progressive. Queen Victoria, who also holds the position of longest reigning monarch in British history, comes across as a woman who is prim and proper, and seemingly grim in many of her portraits and photographs. Not only is she credited with jumpstarting the white wedding dress tradition, but she's also always characterized by her deep devotion to her consort Prince Albert, with whom she had nine children, which is why this quote comes across as a bit of a surprise. You don't really expect someone who was a shining example of Victorian virtue and motherhood to comment on marriage as a solemn and sad act. Could it be possible that the history books are hiding a much more complex personality? Rumors of Queen Victoria's love affairs after Albert's death have fueled speculation about who the real Victoria was.
“I don’t think there are any men who are faithful to their wives.”
-Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jackie O, the "good wife" whose stoic demeanor at her husband's funeral won the hearts of Americans everywhere, has been immortalized as a fashion icon and model First Lady of the United States. Unfortunately, John F. Kennedy was a ladies' man, and rumours of his affairs with women such as Marilyn Monroe abound to this day. For Jackie to declare that she didn't think there were any men who are faithful to their wives indicates a strange kind of rationalization - like she's trying to console herself by repeating that mantra. Is it a universal truth that men aren't naturally faithful, and so therefore JFK's infidelities are justifiable, and have nothing to do with her?
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
-Virginia Woolf
A woman writing fiction was not unheard of at the beginning of the twentieth century. After all, before Virginia Woolf there had been the likes of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, among others. However, the profession was by no means widely accessible or even accepted for women. This quote, taken from one of Woolf's seminal works, A Room of One's Own (1929), questions women's independence and the landscape that was out there at the time for female writers and artists. Woolf, to this day, is still one of the only female literary figures to be consistently included in the English literature canon, and perhaps arguably the only one given due credence. What she so straightforwardly points out is that women can't pursue writing or the arts without financial, social and domestic independence.
“One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” -Simone de Beauvoir
Contrary to what one might think when reading this out of context, what Simone de Beauvoir meant is not that one grows into a woman - one becomes a woman in the sense that one is socially conditioned and shaped into what "woman" means, which is everything a man is not. Woman is the Other, and defined only in relation to "man". When Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex in 1949, this idea became integral to feminist discourse for decades to come, and is still relevant today. What I find interesting is that while de Beauvoir's work made an enormous impact on Western feminism in general, its recognition in her native France was minimal in comparison. De Beauvoir is also notoriously linked to Jean Paul Sartre, the philosopher, and I find it ironic that she more or less lived in his shadow - considering the subject matter of her work.
“I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.”
-Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo is considered one of the great feminist painters of the twentieth century. Her deeply personal and often disturbing portraits of her physical and psychological self are often classified as surrealist, though Kahlo did not consider work as such. I think her statement that she paints her own reality hides a subconscious (or even conscious) resentment of being recognized for the "female themes" in her work. What we might infer from this is that Kahlo, like many women, wanted to be recognized for her work and not her work as a representation of what a woman artist might produce. Why can't she be lauded for her remarkable achievements unto themselves, as opposed to for her feminist perspective? Kahlo and other female artists, writers, musicians and professionals to this day are recognized for their female identity first and foremost, before they are recognized for their work. What was Kahlo's reality? The important thing is that it was her own, and though her gender certainly informs her work, it does not define it, nor does is it speak for the dreams and nightmares of her sex.
“Most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.”
-bell hooks
This quote makes me angry only in the sense that feminism has gotten such a bad rap due to its coverage by the mass media, which has led to a stigmatization of the word "feminist" and the impression that all associations with the term have something to do with bra-burning dykes. I think hooks' point, however, is perhaps that there are many more complex facets to the feminist movement, and that we get a pretty homogenized and simplified impression of it through the media.
“I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.”
-Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn was known for her acerbic tongue and her unconventional personality - unconventional for her time, that is. This little stinger is a paean to her devil-may-care and anti-Hollywood attitude. Hepburn was really one in a million when it came to women in the acting profession - aside from being enormously talented, she did not conform to stereotypes, refused to wear dresses and instead preferred pantsuits, and she scorned media attention. This was unusual, especially in a sea of blonde bombshells, and while it may not have made her a favourite at the time, it has certainly catapulted her into one of the most respected and beloved actresses in Hollywood history. Her sarcastic comment is so characteristic of her almost arrogant personality, and of her disregard for the social mores of her time.
“I’m not a woman, I’m a force of nature.”
-Courtney Love
Okay, so is she denying that she's a woman? Or is she saying that she's much more than what a "woman" is supposed to be? In a way, Love's statement is rather illuminating, though she may not have consciously meant it as such. It's kind of like saying she's beyond what the constraints of what a woman means - she's more than what "woman" as a socially constructed entity is. If you look at her erratic behaviour, tendency to go against traditional female norms, and the way the media has portrayed her, Love really is a force of nature in her own right. She doesn't conform, but yet is still strangely appealing.
