Chic Point starts with a fashion show. We see a dimly lit catwalk and hear the rhythmic music associated with fashion shows. By virtue of the placement of the camera and the mise en scène of the frame, the viewer of the video is at once satisfying two functions and assuming two positions: the viewer of an art work called chic point and a spectator of a fashion show that is about to begin. For roughly six minutes, the viewer experiences a simulated fashion show (worthy of fashion television), where worked out, attractive male models exhibit a line of clothing that follows the dictates of normative high fashion in terms of design. Using a variety of materials (cotton, silk, gauze, etc.) and a panoply of fashion paraphernalia (zippers, collars, buttons, weaved nets etc.), the clothes exhibited share a common feature: through holes, cuts, and slits, they expose certain parts of the models’ bodies mainly the abdomen, torso, and lower back. After six minutes, the catwalk fades to black and the viewer is introduced to a series of still photographs taken at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza dating from the period 2000 till 2003. What the art-piece-viewer-cum-fashion-show-spectator sees in these stills is the daily routine of abasement that Palestinians experience at Israeli checkpoints. One of the characteristic routines instituted at checkpoints is to check for suicide bombers carrying explosives around their waists and on their backs. This check involves Palestinian men exposing their abdomens and backs for Israeli soldiers. The piece ends by screening a series of still photographs depicting the mandatory unveiling that Palestinian men go through under the gaze of the Israeli military establishment.

The video, with its juxtaposition of two events (a fashion show and Israeli check points) opens us multiple spaces for interpretation. I believe that the checkpoints photographs illuminate the fashion show, which the viewer took part in, through politicizing the costumes worn by the models imbuing the fashion show sequence with a kind of political legibility/readability. On the other hand, it is the fashion show sequence of the video that provides a new optic for understating and making sense of the checkpoint phenomenon by making a whole new level of interpretation possible through the lens of masculinity, sexuality, and visibility. Waked’s conceptualization of the video makes the narrative polysemic allowing for a plurality of meanings to be derived from the piece. Thus, I will attempt to map out some of meanings made possible in this video through the juxtaposition of these two events.

What do a fashion show and an Israeli checkpoint have in common? Both are spectacles that are excessive and at the same time banal. The spectacular nature of a fashion show originates from its excess. It offers an excess of bodies that are commodified as fetish objects through their desirability, perfection, and level of visibility. The garments that these bodies exhibit are not clothes that are regular or commonplace in a functional sense. On the contrary, the garments in a fashion show offer an excess of meaning: they market a life style, connote exclusivity, and encourage consumption of luxury goods. Furthermore, fashion shows are globalized spectacles of consumption (fetishistic consumption of bodies and clothes) that are consumed worldwide by millions of fashionistas through satellite channels like Fashion Television, which is global in its reach thanks to the proliferation of transnational satellite technology. It is this proliferation and over saturation of fashion show images that make it a spectacle that is excessive and at the same time banal.

Fashion shows tend to efface the subjectivity of the models whose bodies exhibit the garments. Although in a fashion show, perfect bodies are put on exhibition, it is only for the service of the garment. In a sense, aside from super models that are known by name and acquire the status of cinema stars in today’s mass culture, the army of models that are dutifully conscripted for the service of fashion shows are denied any subjectivity where they officially remain bodies only, albeit idealized and fetishized.

The Palestinian bodies at Israeli checkpoints that the video shows are far from being perfect, model-like bodies. However, they share certain aspects with the models in the fashion show. For both the fashion show and the checkpoint are spectacles of excess and banality. The checkpoint is a spectacle where the bodies (in this case of the Palestinians) are subjected to total visibility through the gaze of the Israeli military apparatus just like the bodies of the models in a fashion show is captive to the voyeuristic gaze of the consumer-spectator. Furthermore, The checkpoint spectacle connotes an excess of power on the part of the Israeli officers and an excess of powerlessness on the part of the Palestinians, who like the models of the fashion show, expose their bodies for an audience, albeit a different kind of audience. Furthermore, at the checkpoint subjectivity of the Palestinians is denied and what prominently emerges to center stage is an undifferentiated dangerous body that needs to be made visible. Thus, we find that whether on a simulated catwalk of fashion show or the occupational catwalk of a checkpoint, the body becomes the desired site of surveillance by the primacy and urgency of the gaze.

Waked’s video implicates the viewer by putting him/her in the double position of a spectator of a fashion show spectator and a witness to the plight of Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints. In fact, by virtue of the juxtaposition of the two events, the viewer of the video becomes the spectator of the fashion show, who scrutinizes the bodies of the models on the catwalk, and also becomes, concurrently, the Israeli soldier at the checkpoint voyeuristically gazing on the bodies of the Palestinians. Here the discussion takes us to the subject of masculinity. The image of the fashion show spectator/ checkpoint soldier/video viewer as the desiring subject who voyeuristically gazes on the bodies of the models/Palestinians is laden with (homo)erotic overtones. Male models in fashion show, by virtue of their objectification (a function traditionally reserved fro women) are automatically feminized. There is curious link between nationalism and masculinity. Joseph Massad, using Benedict Anderson and George Mosse thesis on European nationalism, argues that “nationalism favors a distinctly homosocial form of male bonding.” (1) It follows that nationlessness connotes a certain kind of effeminacy. (2) Therefore, the checkpoint (just like a fashion show) posits a similar feminizing moment, where powerlessness and nationlessness of the Palestine automatically feminizes him.

Finally, writing about the Vietnam war, Marita Sturken reminds us the “photographic images in general have a greater capacity than moving images to achieve iconic status… the posses an ability to connote completeness and to evoke the past… these image icons… are emblems of rupture, unyielding in their stillness, demanding narration. They offer not closure but a sense of horror.” (3) In Chic point, waked chooses to juxtapose a simulated fashion show in the form of film images with still photographs of Israeli checkpoints instead of opting for moving images or footage of checkpoints. Here the impact of the use of still photography amplifies the meaning that Waked seeks to deliver, which is also made sharper by the juxtaposition with the moving images of the fashion show. By ending with the still images of the checkpoints, Waked allows us a time for reflection and contemplation. Far from providing a sense of closure, the photographs invite the spectator to ponder the situation, opening up the narrative of the video and the conflict to a plurality of interpretations and reflection.

Footnotes:

1. Joseph Massad, “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism,” in The Middle East Journal. Washington: Summer 1995. Vol. 49, issue. 3. Retrieved through ProQuest on February 10 2006

2. Historically, Zionism can be conceived of not only as a national project but a sexual one as well aiming to efface the stigma of homosexuality that has marked the diasporic Jew in Europe before the establishment of the state of Israel. For more details on this issue refer to Raz Yosef, Beyond Flesh: Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004) and Daniel Boyarin, “Outing Freud’s Zionism, or, the Bitextuality of the Diaspora Jew,” in Cindy Patton and Benigno Sanchez-Eppler (eds), Queer Diasporas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).

3. Marita Sturken. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, The Aids Epidemic, and the Politics of Representation. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) p. 90-94

Bio:

Karim Tartoussieh is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. His research interests include gender and sexuality, Cultural studies, and Film studies.