In Which the Oompa Loompas Teach us Poststructuralist Feminism

So, I'm driving in the car with EvilGeniusGirl, and we're talking about our recent favoritest movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We were talking about the way they used digital effects to make one actor look like all 165 little Oompa Loompas.* And of course, it is one actor, as opposed to actress, that is used to create all the dozens and dozens of little Oompa Loompas. Thus, all the Oompa Loompas are male.

Hmm...

EvilGeniusGirl argued that there were actually a few females. I asked where, and she thought a moment and pointed out the secretary (because, after all, men can't do secretarial labor) and possibly the Oompa-Loompa who was watching Oprah. So one, possibly two out of 165. Both engaged in activities traditionally coded as female.

So, I point out how sexist it is that all the Oompa Loompas are male, just from a "“women-ought-to-be-included"” standpoint. EvilGeniusGirl agrees. It's not fair that only guys get to be Oompa Loompas.

But it's also sexist on a deeper level, and that's where the word of the day comes in.

Today's word is "cisgender" (aka "cissexual"). It's created from the Latin prefix meaning "on this side of" or "not across," as in "cisalpine" (a word I'm sure you use almost every day).

"Cisgender" was coined as a complement to "transgender," in response to the observation that there was no way to [as Wikipedia puts it] "describe non-transgender people without the use of negative prefixes" (as in non-transgender) "while still avoiding terms like 'normal', 'born' or 'genetic' " (as in normal man, genetic woman, etc)

The mighty Wikipedia goes on to say:

it originated as a way to shift the focus off of a marginalized group, by defining not only the minority group but also the majority. This is based upon the hypothesis that categorizing everyone will illustrate a difference between equal alternatives, whereas singling out the minority group implies some deviance, immorality, or defect on the part of the labeled group. [emphasis added]

That's the same line of thought that brought us "people of color" as a replacement for "non-whites." If you call people "non-whites," you set up "White" as the norm--as that against which all others are measured. Falling into one of these "non" categories (non-Christian, non-standard, etc.) implies failure to measure up to the standard.

This is basic post-structualism. Read Foucault and Derrida (if you dare).

So, it's not just that women don't get to play in the Oompa Loompa reindeer games. And it's not even that women's very existence is erased by having all 165 Oompa Loompas played by a somewhat grizzled, Charles Bronsonesqe male actor.

It's the way in which, by constructing women as the "exception" (despite their making up over half of the world's fucking population), women become "non-men," and thus abnormal.

So, while there's no doubt that using a single actor for all the Oompa Loompas was a neat digital trick,** my question for EvilGeniusGirl was, "what if they had chosen a female actor?"

What if they had? What if all 165 Oompa Loompas had been portrayed by, say, Rosie O'Donnell? How many kids would ask "“Why were all the Oompa Loompas female?"” You know damn well that all the adults would.

So, being male in this case, as in most cases, is unremarkable. The Oompa Loompas portrayed aren't "male Oompa Loompas," they're just "Oompa Loompas." In the same way that we have "athletes" and "female athletes," and "health concerns" and "women's health concerns." Being male is unremarkable, and being female is remarkable--in the sense that being female marks you as being different, marks you as "non-male."

Even the secretary Oompa Loompa--the sole explicitly female character***--reinforces this. She is clearly a "“female Oompa Loompa."” She stands out like a sore thumb. Being a male Oompa Loompa is normal. Being a male Oompa Loompa is so "“normal"” it isn'’t noticed. To be a female Oompa Loompa is to be abnormal.

An illustration: no one, I promise (except for theory geeks like me) would watch the movie and ask, "“How come all the Oompa Loompas were traditionally able?"” But we would ask "“How come all the Oompa Loompas were in wheelchairs?" if all 165 Oompa Loompas had been played by an actor who used a wheelchair. That'’s because being in a wheelchair is considered abnormal, so it gets named.

Which brings us to the ever-trenchant Twisty's insistance that women are not, in our patriarchal society, granted full human being status.

It may sound like an exaggeration, but as I've found with the phrase "controlling women'’s bodies," once you start digging into this shit, you find that it's not actually a rhetorical or hysterical exaggeration of run-of-the-mill oppression. You find that controlling women's bodies and relegating them to subhuman status are actually foundational fucking concepts that structure the very fabric of our social relationships.

It's not that I'm looking at the absence of female actors in a movie and saying "there aren't any female Oompa Loompas, therefore women enjoy subhuman status in our society." No. That's the caricature that Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh love so much: the angry, unreasonable Feminazi who takes minor setbacks and imagined slights and tries to paint them as a vast and brutal sexist conspiracy to enslave women.

No, what I'm doing here is looking at the absence of female actors in a movie and saying "there aren't any female Oompa Loompas, because women enjoy subhuman status in our society."

Due to a vast and brutal sexist conspiracy to enslave women called "patriarchy."

Now go read Foucault.


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*For the Roald Dahl impaired among you, Oompa Loompas are the tiny, swarthy indigenous people that Willy Wonka has exported from their native land like so much lac resin to provide the labor at his factory. No, we didn't go into the racial/post-colonialist/Marxist implications of that. I figure one major axis of oppression per conversation. At least till she's 12.

**And using a single actor for all 165 Oompa Loompa plays right into racist/imperialist constructions of "non-white," "un-civilized" people as being functionally identical. They are the "undifferentiated mass" which is the polar opposite of the singular, male individual with an individual subjectivity and rigid boundaries. But let's stick with sexisim for the moment.

***Unless it's actually an Oompa Loompa in drag, which opens a whole other can of semiotic worms.