{"id":19800,"date":"2015-04-26T10:55:32","date_gmt":"2015-04-26T17:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19800"},"modified":"2015-04-26T10:56:53","modified_gmt":"2015-04-26T17:56:53","slug":"american-reflexxx-a-short-film-showing-mob-hatred-of-gender-ambiguity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19800","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;American Reflexxx,&#8221; a short film showing mob hatred of gender ambiguity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Content warning:<\/strong> This short film contains extreme transmisogyny, a hostile mob, violence, and is disturbing. <\/p>\n<p>The film has a style of editing that makes it difficult to watch, even apart from the content; if the editing makes it hard to watch for you, turning the volume down or off may help. (It&#8217;s subtitled.) If the content makes it hard to watch, well, then you&#8217;re a decent person.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"590\" height=\"332\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/bXn1xavynj8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/flavorwire.com\/?p=515563\">Tom Hawking of Flaverwire<\/a> summarizes the film:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201c&#8230;A camera [follows] a woman as she walks through a public space, recording the reactions of the members of the public she encounters. In this case, the woman is Pierce and the space is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Pierce certainly cuts a striking figure. She\u2019s wearing a skimpy blue dress and neon yellow heels, and most strikingly, her face is entirely covered by a reflective mask. She\u2019s also of apparently indeterminate gender; much of the video involves passersby trying to work out if she\u2019s a cisgender man or woman, or a trans woman, or what. (I actually have no idea what Pierce\u2019s gender identity is, which is kind of the point.)<\/p>\n<p>The results are, as one might expect, pretty depressing. People seem genuinely terrified by her \u2014 several times groups of people scatter as she walks toward them, and at one point a girl shouts, \u201cOh hell no, don\u2019t walk this way!\u201d As the film progresses, the reactions become more violent \u2014 she has water thrown on her, someone attempts to trip her, and eventually she is pushed head-first into the pavement. Notably, all the acts of violence against her are carried out by women. The film ends with a sort of survey of her body, lingering on the blood streaming from the knee she gashed open when she hit the ground.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanreflexxx.com\/info\/\">statement <\/a>from the creators:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>American Reflexxx is a short film documenting a social experiment that took place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/allicoates\"> Alli Coates<\/a> filmed performance artist <a href=\"http:\/\/signepierce.tumblr.com\/\">Signe Pierce<\/a> as she strutted down a busy oceanside street in stripper garb and a reflective mask. The pair agreed not to communicate until the experiment was completed, but never anticipated the horror that would unfold in under an hour.<\/p>\n<p>The result is a heart wrenching technicolor spectacle that raises questions about gender stereotypes, mob mentality, and violence in America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A few points:<\/p>\n<p>1) In the comments at <a href=\"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/pharyngula\/2015\/04\/25\/disturbing\/\">Pharyngula<\/a>, &#8220;Janine&#8221; comments:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Just watched the film and I am still processing it. But I will say this, while I do not dress to call attention to myself and while I never had a crowd of people howling at me like that; I have heard everything shouted in that video shouted at me at some point.<\/p>\n<p>Every single one.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; the editing, the stutter shots and the slowed down version of that rape anthem is all an attempt to show the disassociation that the person was feeling. When one is being yelled at and being assaulted, one sense of time and perception becomes distorted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>2) And in the same comments, &#8220;Caitiecat&#8221; writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And before anyone gets all righteous about how crappy the US is, you could shoot that same video in almost any city in the world, and it\u2019d go the same way. I\u2019ve encountered this kind of abuse in Canada, the US, the UK, France, Hong Kong and Thailand, also known as \u201cevery country I\u2019ve been to since transition\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>3) The mirror-mask is interesting. It serves a bunch of functions: It implicitly says &#8220;you are the subject of this film, not me,&#8221; both to the people Pierce encounters, and to the viewers watching the film. It makes Pierce more gender-ambiguous. It draws attention to Pierce. A writer at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nylon.com\/articles\/american-reflexxx-video\">Nylon <\/a>comments, &#8220;Only after the deeply unsettling climax does the crowd begin to back off \u2014 away from themselves, really, considering the mirrored mask.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>4) In the sequence with the street preacher, I can&#8217;t tell if the preacher is responding to her, or is not reacting at all to her and just screaming what he would have been screaming regardless.<\/p>\n<p>5) How different would the crowd have acted if there wasn&#8217;t a woman with a camera obviously filming their actions? Maybe some of them were performing for the camera, but I&#8217;m sure some would have acted worse if they hadn&#8217;t known they were being recorded. <\/p>\n<p>6)  The people we see physically attacking Pierce are all women or girls, apart from the guy who paws her right at the start of the video. One girl attacks Pierce three escalating times &#8211; first trying to slap her when running by (&#8220;I missed!&#8221;), then throwing water on her, then trying to trip her. But we can hear at least one man (and maybe multiple men) being warned not to attack her by their friends (&#8220;Don&#8217;t get arrested for her, man&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>7) &#8220;Goblinman,&#8221; in Pharyngula&#8217;s comments, had an interesting theory as to why the men in the crowd didn&#8217;t get violent:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I don\u2019t think the women in the crowd were actually responding more negatively than the men. I think the men were holding back. It means something different, culturally-speaking, when men attack compared to when women attack (especially if we\u2019re talking about a mob mentality). Women attacking someone doesn\u2019t seem as \u201cserious\u201d: Men are \u201csupposed\u201d to be fighters. If the men had started attacking the person in the mask it would have been nearly the equivalent of someone drawing a weapon. It would have escalated things to a much more violent level.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>8) A fun fluff-piece about the home of the film&#8217;s creators: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.papermag.com\/view\/gallery\/55369577b6de8267322ba552#1\">PAPERMAG Galleries: Inside the Hot Pink Barbie Bungalow of Artists, &#8220;Cyberfeminists&#8221; and Real-Life Couple Signe Pierce and Alli Coates<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Content warning: This short film contains extreme transmisogyny, a hostile mob, violence, and is disturbing. The film has a style of editing that makes it difficult to watch, even apart from the content; if the editing makes it hard to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19800\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism-sexism-etc","category-transsexual-and-transgender-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19800"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19802,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19800\/revisions\/19802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}