|
Article Excerpt
Many toy stores of the Western world have boys sections dominated by toy representations of cars and weapons, action figures, and, interestingly, since the mid-1980s, a range of toys that blend these categories and locate men as machines. The MASK series of action figures, for instance, has been described as "a heroic team of armed machines." (1) Other action figures have carried names such as Dynaman, Man Tech Robot Warriors, Robotech, and Lazer Knights. Their defined areas of interest and the imagery built around them are as revealing of their machine-likeness as their names.
Such representations of men as machines--and similarly, although with less consistency, of machines as men--warrant discussion for several reasons. First, toys are among the earliest and most influential technologies with which children come into contact. As such, they transmit to children, in concert with other cultural apparatus, particular views of gender relations, examples of appropriate behavior, and character models. They can also be a window to broader phenomena extending beyond the toybox. We can expect that representations of males as machines, both in and out of the toybox, may contribute to young boys forming perceptions of masculinity within the framework of the meanings which inform those representations.
Second, toys that represent males in a machinelike way are of interest in that they run counter to the broadening of roles which have, albeit rather gradually, been opening up for both genders in Western societies. It has been noted that mens images and perceptions of masculinity have been fragmented, softened, and subtly altered, with an allowance for men to be caring fathers, more sensitive lovers, and so forth. (2) Andrew Wernick has pointed to images of men in advertising to show that "the masculinist complex has not only begun to fade" but has also "given way to a contradictory melange in which the wider meaning of gender within the advertising cosmos cannot with any consistency be pinned down at all." (3) If this is the case, then boys toys present an anomaly as far as images of men are concerned. The images are few and relatively static, apart from their creep toward ever more explicit violence, power, and likeness to machinery.
This article sets out to place male-machine toys within the context of their deep-seated meanings, to describe more specifically what notions might be conveyed by the particular toy lines within the broader category, and to discuss why boys toys might be displaying such regression to gender stereotypes at a time when moves in the opposite direction have been noted in relation to other aspects of culture. At a broader level, I attempt to unveil the male-machine connection via its representation and technological embedding in toys, for we can be sure that these toys hint at something more pervasive than a trend in Toyland. Although there are other "masculine" traits which are represented in boys toys, such as violence and high risk taking, I do not deal with these except where they have a direct impact on the analogy between males and machines. Finally, I discuss the limitations of Donna Haraways writing on cyborgs, particularly with respect to the conditions of their construction.
Gender in Toy Technology
Children enter a world that is heavily reliant on technology in both a physical and cultural sense. Although the technology is instantly accessible to the senses and omnipresent, questions of who designed the technology, and in whose interests, are essentially absent, leaving technology and its social infrastructure to seem natural. Often the first social commentary on technology that children encounter is mediated through the toys they are given which are not only technologically based themselves but also carry messages about the social relations in which technology, gender, class, and much more are embedded. The impact of these first cultural utensils cannot be overlooked. They not only help establish worldviews at a time when ideologies are still being formed, but they are also generally presented as bearing the official or favored explanation (if not the only explanation) of the way things are, because they are given and promoted by parents and other adults who are generally acknowledged by children to be those from whom the workings of the world must be learned.
Toys and the context within which they are presented tell children much about technology and incline them to be optimistic and confident in their relationships with it, although this is mediated by factors such as gender and class. As historian Antonia Fraser notes, "If toys are the starting-point of dreams, then the nature of childrens toys must be of extreme importance, not only in forming their fantasies, but also in guiding what sort of fantasies they form." (4) That toys carry such different fantasies for each gender ensures separate dreams, separate expectations, and quite different self-identities. Successes in strong gender demarcation by toy manufacturers who have firm ideas as to what sells best to each gender reinforce for the industry notions that girls and boys are different, but they also promote that precise idea to children.
Ann Oakley has noted that the idea of separate spheres became more pronounced with the emergence of a commercialistic society. (5) Not surprisingly, the separation of toys for girls and boys also started becoming more pronounced about this time, as the number of toys available grew and scope for demarcation set in. By the mid-nineteenth century, there was sufficient demarcation between toys for each gender for Michael Faraday to note that "boys toys are the most philosophical things in the world" while another commentator claimed that, by contrast, toys of the "gentler sex" were more concerned with feelings of the heart, tenderness, love, and the domestic virtues. (6) Faraday was doubtless referring to manufactured toys for children of the upper classes who had most access to them. It was at about this time that toys became more pedagogic, with beliefs as to what was appropriate for each gender to learn sharply defining their content.
Caroll W. Pursell claims that, between the two world wars, there were three significant changes which impinged on toy design in the United States. There were dramatic changes in technology itself, with a widespread integration into a burgeoning market of consumer goods. Formal education was becoming more practical, as well as more widespread. This meant that people looked to toys to give practical lessons and experience which would serve them in leadership and provide other skills, especially in relation to engineering and scientific mailers in the case of boys. Finally, a burst of growth in the toy industry itself, at least in the United States, reflected the larger role that toys were taking in play. (7)
The most significant shift toward a new level of gender demarcation, and one which extended way beyond the United States to other Western countries and later to many Third World countries as well, occurred in the post-World War II period with the launching of the Barbie doll in 1959 and GI Joe in 1964. These toys were opposite images of each other. Each depicted a caricature, albeit serious, of its side of the gender divide which was now hugely evident in the postwar period as women were coaxed into the domestic sphere, which was taking on a new importance in the consumer boom, and men were urged to reclaim the workforce which women had inhabited during the war years. Both Barbie and GI Joe were in the vanguard of a new approach to toys. Barbie was a highly defined doll. She was said to be different because she was a teenager but it is more significant that she was heavily imaged. Other dolls which had been defined in character, such as the Shirley Temple dolls, did not have play defined around them to the e xtent that Barbie did, nor did they have the complexity of marketing behind them which was typical of Barbie and has become the yardstick by which other toys are marketed. Both Barbie and GI Joe were innovative in that they were sharply defined in their imaging, in their social identity, and in the sophistication of gendering that went into those identities. Each of these toys gave explicit and elaborately detailed messages about the appropriate worlds and behavior of women and men. For instance, Barbie soon had a boyfriend, Ken, and much of the play which she, her accessories, and her wardrobe inspired revolved around dates with Ken. She also pushed shopping as a pleasurable and "natural" role for women, with a great many of her accessories featuring shops or commodities, often tied in with real companies, such as Benetton, Reebok, Coke and Nestle. One talking Barbie implores "Lets go shopping!" GI Joe was similarly highly defined, being not only a soldier but also one with a very strong cold war ideology, which interestingly made the action figure somewhat redundant in the 1990s with the collapse of the Eastern bloc (8) and a search for new enemies who inevitably were not as clear-cut.
In as much as Barbie and GI Joe spelled out in fine detail what was appropriate for each gender, they ruled out much else as "inappropriate," as belonging to "the other." Each of these toys was more than a toy. Each came with a name, a context, a set of relationships (as well as her boyfriend, Barbie has girlfriends and a little sister; GI Joe had enemies), accessories (fashion clothes, dream houses, and fun commodities for Barbie; military vehicles and weapons for GI Joe), and fantasies around which play was...
|
