“Beauty and the Idea of America” by Fenella Cannell
“Beauty and the Idea of America” by Fenella Cannell
In “Beauty and the Idea of America”, Fenella Cannell explores the conception of beauty in Naga City, Bicol, Philippines. She asserts
that Bicolanos’ perceptions of beauty are aligned with American conceptions of beauty, specifically praises of “brains and beauty” and an individual-emphasis, stemming from America’s goals to secularize the Philippines. Cannell connects beauty to capitalism where beauty can be “bought” with sponsors, dresses, make-up artists, etc. This ethnography details beauty pageants, “amateurans” (singing contests), the roles of emcees (masters of ceremony), and “Ms. Gay Naga City” beauty contests, wherein Cannnell concludes that these performances imitate American pop/culture as American songs are performed, English-speaking is praised, and achieving American-beauty becomes the goal. Cannell relates to the belief Filipinxs overemphasize shame-avoidance, as beauty contests allow significant risks that can allow one to escape shame (if they are well-liked and become the best imitators). Cannell expands on the “bakla” (specifically queer-transgender women) community. The author claims that while the bakla are the best imitators of Americanness, in their mastery of beautifying others and themselves, their participation in their own beauty contests gives them agency and power. Cannell emphasizes that the bakla in the Philippines are not as persecuted as in American culture, because of the non-bakla crowd viewing them as the ‘best of both worlds’, as they can achieve femininity without being a “full woman”, a transphobic viewpoint from Filipinxs that may be real and/or projected from the author. Cannell details that non-bakla communities imitate the bakla with their appropriation of keme (swardspeak), apper (high-fiving diction), etc. It becomes an imitation game that centers around outward-American beauty, where to gain admiration is to gain American Beauty, thus respect, and thus power.
Cannell supports her points through observations of contests where she also judged and interviews with the Bakla community, an
ethnographic strength of the study. However, this becomes a paradox. As Cannell emphasizes the talent of the bakla as imitators/performers, then can some interviews be a performance, as well? For example, one of Cannell’s points is that the bakla enjoy contests not because of their achieving of femininity but because of the attention. As this may hold true to Oning, this can be false for other queer folk or can be a performance of courage specifically towards Cannell to avoid shame, to perform their satisfaction with themselves, denying their comfortability of being “fully” feminine. This reading connected to “Taglish, or the Phantom Power of the Lingua Franca” by Vince Rafael, who focuses on Filipinx language studies/history and shame avoidance in Philippines history, and one who claimed that keme for the bakla is Taglish is for the bakya, meaning that the nonqueer community’s use of keme allow bakla to be imitated-“respected”, to gain agency and power, as the popular use of Taglish allow the bakya to be imitated and respected. Cannell’s chapter emphasizes the former. I argue against the foundation of this comparison: is imitating American beauty truly from wanting to avoid shame or is it instilled from colonial teachings? It was also not believable that the emcee teasing a contestant relaxed the contestant and allowed them to escape shame. I also wonder if studying emcee’s quotes/actions indicate a mediation of beauty and shame. How does the emcee’s jokes relate to the beauty and idealization of America? Though Cannell cites some emcee jokes, like when contestants imitate Filipinx film stars, these examples were placed haphazardly and required more explanation. Furthermore, one may find themselves asking at the end of the chapter of what tied singing competitions, emcees, and bakla contests together in regards to beauty? As Cannell attempted to amplify how efforts towards American beauty and emulation are meditated in these performances (singing, hosting, beautifying, etc.), one must ask if these are in relation to beauty or more towards other concepts like humor? Furthermore, as Cannnell is a judge in some contests, how does she judge and research? Her identity as a white American who judges these shows and writes about the emulation of Americanness seems to indicate great bias. Lastly, it was not convincing when she assumed that the laughs from the crowd during pageants create a form of community and lightheartedness for both queer and non-queerfolk and is shame-avoidance. I think as an audience member and as a white, American anthropologist, her facial analysis of the contests are not trustworthy as she is far removed from the contestants.
Questions:
- Beyond the Bicol/Naga City context, are you aware of any similar examples of the emulation of Western beauty and who/what events mediate this imitation?
- What do you think of the presence and role of humor in discussions of beauty/American beauty of this piece and in other Southeast Asian conceptions of beauty? Is it prevalent? What is the relationship of humor and beauty in imitating Western norms?
Quotes:
“All performances in elite genres can therefore be thought of as a kind of daring attempt on intimacy with the model imitated, which may raise the status of the performer, or may result in them being considered pretentious” 223
“The bakla epitomise these recapturings of power, not literally through possession, but through a wrapping of body in symbols of protective status, and a transformation of the persona by proximity to the power it imitates, which are many ways akin to it.” 223
“… the Miss Gay Naga City beauty-contest has become a popular festival because at one level it is a triumphant realization of mastery in a performance genre in which all Bicolanos have a common interest. The combined lure of international consumer culture, filtered through the national culture which is centered on Manila, and the legacy of American colonialism…” 224
“… in singing a song part of whose meaning escapes one, one evokes, among other losses, the sadness at not having completely understood, at being excluded in relationship to a cultural register which, if one masters it, can open the doors of possibility ad change one’s life” 209
“…the bakla, supreme experts in imitation, are themselves constantly an universally imitated by other people” 216
Comments
Anna,
I have always read Cannell’s chapter here as arguing almost the opposite of what you say she is arguing about the imitation of America. She is noting that there are surface similarities of superficial imitation, but that the entire conception of beauty as a surface expression is in many ways a kind of protective buffer concealing the inner self. See bottom of page 213: Beauty is a protective layer. It will be interesting to discuss this with the class.
Your point about the interview being a performance is of course brilliant and important. I would extend this to insist that all interpersonal acts of communication are in some sense performances. A news broadcast is a performance. Telling a story is a performance. Writing a little bio-sketch for a class is a performance. Still, information can be gleaned from these things, and it is the duty of the reporter (in this case anthropologist) to give enough context to allow readers to make a judgement about what might or might not be properly gleaned from an experience. And it is the job of a reader, as you do so well, to sift through the reported observations and try to make contextual sense of them. In many ways Cannell is highlighting precisely all of these dynamics in this chapter. For that ultimately, is her point: imitating “America” is a performance too, and so are all acts of imitating–but the imitation itself is a real thing, a real imitation.
Beyond this case, I think there are deeper questions about how we do or do not trust an observation of things that are imitated. But as we ponder this, it is worth remembering that even the most banal and straightforward interactions are often founded in some degree on acts of imitation. For example, aren’t we all engaging in acts of imitatation when we assume the roles we think we must play in a classroom? (I am faking it as a professor, imitating professors I have encountered in my history, and students are all performing in some way or another). Even in the world of business, people are subjected to “performance reviews”. But these performances, imitations, fakery and deceptions are also all quite real in the sense that they are happening.
Anna,
Your point about interviews being acts of performances is an important one, as Professor Harms notes above. The very act of doing fieldwork (e.g. conducting a semi-structured interview) is a performance that involves deciding how much of myself (my beliefs, my suspicions, my conjectures) I ought to reveal to my informant. They, too, are in turn making judgements on what they ought to tell me. In fact, I would argue that people often times tell you what they think you want to hear– what I see to be an act of performance and self-preservation. That the ethnographic subject can and does perform a version of themselves to the ethnographer also complicates the power dynamic between the ethnographer and the informant that we briefly discussed in class on Tuesday.
On the notion of mimicry and your invocation of colonial teachings, perhaps Homi Bhabha’s idea of mimicry could bridge these two ideas and think through Cannell’s suggestion that baklas imitate Western conceptions of beauty in their search for recognition and dignity. Bhabha argues that the colonised mimics the coloniser as a means to invert the colonial gaze so the observer becomes the observed.