Selfe, SUMMARY

Jesse Conroy
English 100/O

A) In Cynthia L. Selfe’s writing, Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution, she says, “Quite simply put, like many Americans, we hope computers can help us make the world a better place in which to live.” Pg.(293) Selfe goes on to explain how people see technology as a way to become more productive in our everyday lives, whether it be at work, school, or at home. Technology is an ever changing thing and companies that create these technologies are promoting positive change, or are they? Selfe writes, “This optimism about technology often masks in a peculiar way, however, a contrasting set of extremely potent fears. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, an exclusive focus on the positive changes associated with technology, often serves to distract educators from recognizing how existing social forces actually work to resist change in connection with technology.” Pg.(293) Selfe continues on to serve up advertisements that companies have put out in the past to promote their new technological products. Such ads show pictures of beautiful women staring into a personal computer at home or business men using their computers in an office at work. This ads are showing how technology can make the lives of these people change in a more productive way, but what it is also doing is sticking with a gender role from the past that does not promote change. Selfe says, “In these ads, we see reflected the roles that our culture can imagine women playing in relation to technology. And they are familiar roles-the seductress, the beauty, the mother-all relationships ratified by our historical experience, easily accessible to our collective imagination, and informed by traditional social values. These roles exist, and are reproduced, within a set of over determined social formations that makes radical change hard to imagine and even harder to enact-especially when technology is involved.” Pg.(315-316) Any one person can use a computer, regardless of gender or race and gender or race is not a pre site for success in our current techno-utopia. Selfe is explaining how technology changes the way we live our lives but advertisements for technology do not promote change when they use stereotypical gender roles from previous eras.

B) Selfe makes several claims on gender roles associated with technology in the reading and then supports them with evidence from the advertisements. Selfe claims, “But the roles of parent, housewife, and secretary/boss are not the only ones open to women in the new cyberlandscape represented by the same old Gendered Stuff narrative.” Pg.(309) she supports this by going on to say, “Figure 16 (page 314), for example, shows and ad for Nokia monitors, and in doing so, portrays a woman in the traditional role of “beauty.” in the advertisement, a sophisticated woman draped with jewels, decked out in a chic black dress, washed in sepia tones and softened by a grainy texture gazes into a computer monitor. Although the text accompanying this image ostensibly outlines the capabilities and design of the monitor, the language itself leaves no doubt of the pictures intent. As it notes, the “European passion for beauty” is quickly “winning the hearts and eyes of Americans too” by seductive means. The woman pictured in this advisement, it should be noted, gazes longingly into a monitor, but lacks a keyboard with which she could act on the computer.” Pgs(315-316) Selfe claims that women are stuck to the same “old gender roles” and goes on to list a few such as housewife, parent, and secretary/boss. She supports her claim by explaining yet another gender role women are related to by these technology advertisements. She puts in detail a Nokia ad where a “beautiful” women stares longingly into a sleek new “beautiful” computer monitor without a keyboard. Nokia’s ad is using this woman and exploiting her beauty to sell their product. Selfe makes another claim on gender roles in technology ads, only this time her claim applies to men. She states, “The revision of the Un-Gendered Utopia narrative into the Same Old Gendered Stuff narrative deals no less traditionally with men’s roles, it should be noted.” Pg.(316) She goes on to back this claim up by saying, “in connection with workplace technologies, men are allowed essentially the same tie-and-oxford-cloth look in the nineties (figure 18) as they were in the fifties (figure 19), although slight variations of this role-the impatient-and-rebellious young entrepreneur on the go sans tie (figure 20,pg 318) or the successful architect-net-cruiser (figure 21,pg 319) sporting a turtle neck-are also permitted. Out of the workplace (figures 22-24,pgs 319-321), men are shown to adopt the equally traditional and retrograde roles of bikers, nerds, and sex maniacs.” Pg.(316) Selfe is explaining how these advertisements are sticking with the traditional roles of men being boss’s or leaders in the work place and always looking professional. She also goes on to say men can take on the role of a biker, nerd, or sex maniac because that’s yet another traditional role society can see a man playing.