The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, November 29, 2018 — 5

WARNER BROS.

CHANEL

In Sept. of this year, Chanel 

released Boy de Chanel in Seoul, 
with plans to launch a global 
release in early 2019. Their 
inaugural line of men’s makeup 
is fairly pared down, with 
offerings of “tinted fluid” in (an 
abysmal) four different shades, 
an eyebrow pencil and a matte 
lip balm. Despite its humble 
catalogue, the announcement 
initially felt like a liberating step 
forward for a beauty industry 
that is becoming something of 
a microcosm for the erosion of 
gender norms. After a little bit 
of consideration, however, that 
foundation doesn’t set quite as 
evenly as one might think. Boy 
de Chanel is a definitive moment 
in 
normalizing 
the 
use 
of 

makeup for people who present 
masculinely, but it is also a cry to 
reinforce the gender binary in a 
realm already laden with it.

Chanel wields decades of 

unmatched multinational cache, 
and the power to set standards 
in its respective trades. Earlier 
this 
year, 
it 
exposed 
the 

underpinnings of its tweed box 

jacket, revealing a streamlined 
overview of its sales in 2017 for 
the first time in over a century. 
The lining can stand up to its 
finely woven shell — clocking in 
at almost $10 billion in annual 
revenue, it continues to dominate 
markets as a luxury brand, 
outselling 
more 
outwardly 

progressive names like Gucci, 
Louis Vuitton and Dior. For a 
venerable force in fashion that 
can, from a numbers standpoint, 
walk its talk better than any of 
its competitors, it’s a mark of 
something when it engages with 
a social movement that was once 
considered deviant, or at least 
unconventional. Whether or not 
that engagement is productive is 
a different conversation. 

The gendered designation of 

cosmetics is a perennial issue 
that is varied widely depending 
on 
its 
cultural 
context. 

Historically speaking, its usage 
of cosmetics was associated 
more with class than it was 
with gender. In aristocratic 
systems, most notably Imperial 
European systems in the 17th 
and 18th centuries, those with 
inherited power would wear 
white powder, wigs and rouge 
as a visual assertion of their 

status. Ancient Roman nobles 
would paint their nails with the 
blood and fat of pigs for similar 
reasons; makeup was a way 
of distinguishing oneself as a 
member of a privileged group. 
Towards the end of the 19th 
century, however, a socially 
conservative wave in religion, 
championed by Queen Victoria, 
along with the development of 
psychology and the study of sex, 
concurrently placed cosmetics 
at the cross-section of vanity 
and a strict sense of devalued 
femininity. The modern beauty 
industry, despite the capitalist 
— duh — concept of being able to 
make more money marketing a 
product to a range of markets as 
opposed to one, still very much 
adheres to and enforces these 
norms.

Sexology 
and 
psychiatry 

were the two defining hands 
in how society has viewed 
and continues to view gender. 
Inversion theory, one of the 
earliest conceptions of same-
sex sexuality, was an attempt 
to put words to and legitimize 
an identity that, until then, was 
only thought of as a form of 
deviant behavior and was often 
swept under the rug. While 

SAM KREMKE

For the Daily

Makeup is de-gendered

STYLE NOTEBOOK

noble in its cause, it conflated 
gender expression and roles with 
sexuality and failed to separate 
societal notions of same-sex 
sexuality 
from 
pederasty. 

Sexual inversion theory and 
the work of early psychiatrists 
(see: 
Sigmund 
Freud) 
also 

placed a lot of emphasis on the 
environmental 
factors 
that 

might shape sexuality.

The culmination of religious 

conservatism and conjectures 
from social scientists of that 
era resulted in the idea that (A) 
same-sex sexuality and gender 
expression that deviated from 
what was considered “standard” 
were the same thing, (B) these 
behaviors were not inherent 
and, therefore, either a set of 
reversible choices or a result 
of something that went wrong 
during childhood and (C) they 
were indicative of sickness, 
sexual perversion and predation 
of the highest order. The stigma 
placed on occupying any space 
on the gender or sexual spectrum 
that wasn’t rigidly adherent to 
the cis-heteronormative status 
quo was subjective and context 
dependent (as it continues to 
be), but could be and often was 
absolutely dire. Notions of what 
is meant to be a man and what 
it meant to be a woman at this 
time were effectively under 
the purview of medicine, law 
and religion — and the beauty 
industry marketed its wares 
accordingly.

Rigid gender expectations 

still exist, but they slowly 
began to erode over the course 
of the 20th century. The first 
glint of expressive freedom 
in America’s eye was during 
Prohibition, when many urban 
speakeasies were also places 
with an anything-goes policy. 
Harlem 
ballroom 
culture 

exploded in popularity at this 
time, and artists au courant 
such as Marcel Duchamp did 
not shy away from poking 
fun at gender norms in their 
work (Duchamp himself very 
famously had a drag persona 
called Rrose Selavy). Drag’s 
relevance in the mainstream 
consciousness grew over the 
course of the 20th century and 
played a part in deconstructing 
societal expectations by both 
poking 
fun 
at 
unrealistic 

gendered 
expectations 
and 

celebrating 
femininity 
and 

freedom of expression. Part of 
the reason that drag was able to 
survive in spite of such blatant 
disregard for an institutionally 
backed binary was that it was 
considered 
performance 
art. 

While it still wasn’t treated with 
the same level of regard as other 
mediums due to its association 
with gay culture, it created a 
space in which the concept of a 
man throwing on a little pressed 
powder wasn’t so alien. 

Cinema’s 
march 
to 

ubiquity as the most popular 
form 
of 
entertainment 
also 

re-indoctrinated the concept 
of the idealized male. It was no 
secret that the likes of James 
Dean and Cary Grant wore 
foundation on screen, and while 
other masculine attributes were 
reinforced by this medium, 
gliding in the background of 
“washing your face makes you 
gay” culture was an aesthetic 
standard that could be achieved 
by wearing makeup. On the 
other end of the spectrum, 
stage performers, who were 
undoubtedly 
influenced 
by 

drag queens and attitude shifts 
brought on by the gay liberation 
and feminist movements of the 
late ’60s and early ’70s, blew the 
lid off of what the mainstream 
consumer could expect to see 
from a visual standpoint. 

An entirely separate online 

drawl belongs to the influence 
that 
David 
Bowie, 
Prince, 

Siouxsie Sioux, Boy George 
and their ilk had on creative 
expression. 
Punk, 
glam-rock 

and other movements of the 
time spawned artists that went 
beyond enhancing their own 
features or smearing kohl in 
their waterline for a touch 
of 
externalized 
melancholy. 

Pigment became a vehicle to 
forge new identities that could 
change over time. 

Stage personas championed 

by 
these 
idols 
were 
about 

exploration 
in 
every 
sense, 

often blowing the roof off of 
gendered norms and creating 
something entirely alien. They 
were about materializing ideas 
and recovering a sense of agency 
over what people can present to 
the world around them. Though 
the concepts put forward by 
wildly 
famous 
artists 
were 

tangental at best to the general 
public, 
their 
popularity 

indicated that people were ready 
to embrace the idea that visual 
communication is not attached 
to sex or gender identity. Though 
it was motivated by rebellion to 
his record label, Prince briefly 
changing his name to a symbol 
that 
fused 
gender 
together 

at the height of his fame best 
encapsulates the collective work 
done by entertainers of the 20th 
century.

Entertainment 
and 
other 

forms 
of 
media 
are 
both 

institutions of influence and 
societal barometers when it 
comes to group dynamics like 
representation, 
stigma 
and 

realms of acceptability. Time’s 
arrow has marched forward into 
the era of information, in which 
technology has both redefined 
media and agents of influence 
to mean almost anything and 
allowed it to act much more 
quickly. People with access 
to the internet are flooded 
with content on a daily basis 
and the visibility that content 
has created has been a huge 
catalyst for the expansion of 
what’s considered “normal.” As 
social networking has become a 

platform for people to develop 
their own personas and have a 
greater impact on normalization, 
it has enabled brands and other 
organizations to function in the 
same way — both influencing 
and tailoring their products and 
brand identity according to their 
interactions with consumers. 

Beauty lines like Milk, Fenty 

and GCDS have facilitated a 
wave of inclusivity as well as 
interaction between industry 
and the individual, reposting 
selfies they’ve been tagged in 
and showcasing MUAs across 
the gender spectrum. Queer-
centric Fluide wears their heart 
on their sleeve — proclaiming 
themselves as a “celebration 
of kinship, love and queer 
glamour,” reflecting that in the 
models they work with and the 
organizations they give back 
to. Brands having the agency 
to interact with individuals 
at an immediate level and act 
as one themselves, their core 
philosophy and what they do 
as 
companies 
is 
becoming 

more and more central to their 
success. The words and actions 
of a company’s founders, as 
well as those that are given the 
authority to represent it, are 
now paramount — companies 
need to be transparent and 
consistently incorporate their 
morality into what they do. 

The 
declining 
reign 
of 

gendered constructs indicate 
that 
inviting 
all 
creatures 

to experiment with you is a 
winning mantra for cosmetic 
brands. 
As 
GCDS 
founder, 

Giuliano Calza, put it for The 
Flow 
House, 
“Everyone 
is 

battling for gender equality and 
beauty diversity. I just consider 
it necessary and something that 
should already exist, something 
that should be guaranteed. If 
you handle it normally, everyone 
will think it’s normal. That’s 
why I try to push for beauty 
and unconventional ideas in my 
communication.”

Quality of the product, the 

standards of beauty you set and 
the people you choose to support 
ultimately manifest themselves 
in the groups that will spend 
with you, or whether they will 
spend at all.

Beauty lines from luxury 

giants like Chanel have their 
reputation 
to 
rely 
on, 
but 

their respective social market 
economy is a rapidly expanding 
current that will move and 
shift without regard to it. 
Symbolizing opulence isn’t a 
big enough balance to cover a 
dusty move like taking the same 
formulas and repackaging them 
to appeal to fragile masculinity. 
Boy de Chanel symbolizes an 
earnest effort to democratize 
cosmetics, but as one of the 
premier purveyors of face paint, 
it would carry a lot of weight 
if Chanel’s focus was a little 
bit less “Men Are from Mars, 
Women Are from Venus.”

The genre-blending ‘Black 
Christmas’ has an impact

FILM NOTEBOOK

Here’s the issue. I’m among 

the most avid horror fans I 
know, and the genre’s most 
classic, scariest features don’t 
terrify me one bit. In particular, 
the ’70s can be considered as a 
sort of fertile breeding ground 
for new horror ideas. Not all of 
them were widely adopted into 
the popular consciousness, but 
they were certainly creative. 
Now, many of these films are 
idolized, not only as the most 
successful, but as the scariest 
horror can be. 

Whether I’m watching “Texas 

Chainsaw Massacre,” “The Last 
House on the Left” or even 
one of my personal favorites, 
“Halloween,” I am consistently 
more interested in the craft than 
I am strictly terrified. The body 
horror of “The Exorcist” and 
the ghostly apparitions of “The 
Amityville Horror” play for 
laughs, not scares. These films, 
for all their fearless innovation, 
have aged far from gracefully.

And I’m not the only one 

who feels this way. Whenever 
I suggest watching a horror 
movie with friends, the titles 
that come to the top of our list 
are rarely older than 15 years 
(with the notable exception of 
“Silence of the Lambs”). Horror, 
for all of the wonderful, electric, 
introspective 
things 
it 
has 

meant to me, is also ephemeral 
in its generational impact. Of 
course, there is an exception to 
all these generalizations about 
a decade of horror movies: 
1974’s “Black Christmas.” It 
is a film that not only stays 
resoundingly unsettling to this 
day, but is a lost horror gem that 

institutionalized myriad slasher 
tropes. 

“Black Christmas” follows 

two nights at a sorority house 
during the holiday break. We 
can hear nothing but faint 
cheerful voices from within 
the house and unsteady, ragged 
breathing from a masked lurker 
right outside. The ground is 
snowy, the air is frigid and the 
stalker prowls around without 
any clear purpose. That’s why 
he’s so frightening. Whether 
for personal vendetta or gleeful 
masochism, he could be stalking 
the girls inside for any number 
of reasons or none at all.

Before 
“Black 
Christmas,” 

horror had rarely placed a 
camera in an attacker’s point of 
view. Every murder that happens 
doesn’t feel as detached and 
punishing as much cinematic 
violence does. The brutality 
is kinetic and impossible to 
look away from because we as 
viewers seem, on some level, 
to partake in the stabbing and 
the strangling. More than this, 
there is a sense of inevitability 
to the stalker’s rampage, a 
feeling that the audience is 
not only responsible for his 
aggression but also helpless 
to resist it. Three features 
of “Black Christmas” — the 
panting breathing, POV mask 
shots and obscene phone calls to 
foreshadow the killer’s rampage 
— were borrowed by none other 
than “Halloween” three years 
later. From there, they took off 
to horror and thriller flicks for 
years afterword.

One of the few elements of 

“Black Christmas” that did not 
deeply pervade the parade of 
serial killer stories of the ’80s is 
probably one that has aged the 
best. These slasher films almost 

always had a “final girl,” which 
turned into an archetype of 
sexual punishment that killed 
off the promiscuous and only 
allowed the virginal to survive. 
However, “Black Christmas,” 
even 
in 
1974, 
transcended 

this dry and sanctimonious 
stereotype. 
In 
fact, 
its 

protagonist Jess is pregnant 
during the events of the film. 
She is an indelible character and 
among my favorites in horror, 
not because she follows common 
horror archetypes, but because 
she defies them and acts only on 
her own agency. 

Aside from the film’s modest 

influence 
on 
whole 
horror 

subgenre, it holds up well today 
for one reason: It’s terrifying. 
It’s one of the few older horror 
movies that provoked me to 
scream, to jump back in my 
seat and to peek at the screen 
only 
through 
interlocked 

fingers. “Black Christmas” is 
unrelentingly tense, a wound 
machine 
that 
threatens 
to 

implode at any given moment. But 
to label the movie as a slow-burn 
would be an oversimplification. 
“Black 
Christmas” 
upholds 

its promise for violence with 
murder 
sequences 
that 
are 

breaktaking in their ambition 
and unforgettable in their gore. 

The greatest thing about 

“Black Christmas?” It is both 
a Halloween and a Christmas 
movie. 
That 
means 
it 
is 

acceptable to watch from Oct. 
to Dec. — like right now! If 
you’re like me, and have never 
been frightened by older horror 
movies, 
I 
can’t 
recommend 

this enough. If you’re also 
comfortably into the holiday 
season but can’t resist some 
decent scares, this is more than 
ideal. 

ANISH TAMHANEY

Daily Arts Writer

CHANEL