Dazed and Confused: Power, Gender and Everyday Life
By Jessica Tait
“Dazed and Confused” is a great movie that I think really shows an interesting relationship between power hierarchies, gender and the use of everyday space. The movie is set on the last day of school in 1976. The new seniors every year initiate the new freshman which establishes the social hierarchy of high school. These initiation rituals are divided along gender lines. First of all the guys’ initiation involves physical violence. The freshman males are forced to take the submissive ‘spread em’ pose while being beaten on the ass with paddles. The girls are required to wear dog leashes, suck on soothers like babies, drop to the ground on command, and kneel before guys to make proposals with the promise that they will do “anything you like”. How these initiations are carried out ties in nicely with the geographical focus of the class. The guys respond to the threat of initiation in a stereotypical masculine manner. That is, they don’t willingly submit. Instead their initiation might last an entire summer of running and dodging the initiation all over town. On the other hand the girls are expected to willingly submit by making a strategic social choice to participate. The girls’ initiation lasts one day and is primarily confined to the same parking lot each year. I also thought it was interesting how clear it was that these gendered rituals were actively reproduced by the characters in the movie. While the power hierarchies were challenged a few times in the movie I can’t think of one instance where gender roles were challenged.
