In Perspective Marita Liulia: SOB

"Usually, when a lot of men get together, it's called war" -Mel Brooks. This quotation can be found on Marita Liulia's latest multimedia-CD-ROM, which deals with men and, moreover, with the image of urban man in our Western society.

Marita Liulia's third CD-ROM, Son of a bitch, shows, sings, whispers and shouts to us that there are all kinds of men around. Moreover, all those kinds need to be taken seriously because they constitute up to 48 per cent of the population, as we are reminded by Liulia's work. The abundant and meandering contents of the CD-ROM also present the viewer with a less familiar male perspective: "I often wake up at night pondering on some problem and decide I have to ask the pope about it. Then I wake fully and remember I am the pope." (Pope John XXII)

SOB ponders not only the problematics of being Pope but other images attached to Western man. CD-ROMs being especially appropriate for a visual approach, the word image can here be taken quite literally. The numerous male icons bring forth a torrent of associations which inevitably raise questions on delimitations to the visual representation of men. Although SOB parades hosts of different types of men, from militant punks to dressed-up dandies, it reminds us at the same time that (even) male looks are subjected to strict codification. SOB also looks at men as eroticised objects, something which they have been exempted from, shut up in a closet if you will, for the past hundred years.

The lost analyst

Designed like a computer adventure game, SOB sends the viewer on a quest for the lost analyst. The task is this: to look for psychoanalyst Jack L. Froid (pronounced in the same way as Freud) who has disappeared in strange circumstances. There is also a mystery attached to him which the observant investigator may find the solution to. The male mystery is disentangled first by searching Froid's apartment. The viewer's guide through the adventure is Esco, shaped like a tornado, floating along as the detective story progresses.

The visually enticing environment, which boasts more 3D graphics than Liulia's previous CD-ROMs, presents several surprises. Suggestive music and a rich audioscape accompany the investigator's progress through Froid's apartment, with occasional detours outside over the roofs of the city. In the attic sits Froid's computer which reveals its secrets to the viewer on certain terms. Froid's iMac is also linked to Liulia's own homepage. Clicking on cupboards, decorative items and doors opens up windows to the world of modern man. The viewer is confronted by themes such as violence, the art of being a man, the (possible) differences between women and men, patriarchalism for beginners and the male ideal 2000.

The inventive adventurer will also come across the psychoanalyst's gender theses whose key element turns out to be his navel theory. According to Jack L. Froid, instead of the male and female genitalia we should focus on the navel which is common to both sexes. The theory emphasises the similarities between them, in contrast to his better-known colleague's idea that almost all humanity is constructed around the separating phallic element. The fascinating navel theory is broadened into a comprehensive cultural theory, giving even the navel of the world in Greenwich a completely new meaning.

The story of man

Women's studies having revealed that being male actually meant having a gender, various people started to analyse the male element and masculinity through cultural products which in a sense are soul-mates of Son of a bitch. SOB was launched in a time when visual artists, copywriters and film directors, as if by some common agreement, had turned their interest to men. The scantily dressed man in particular emerged simultaneously on various fronts. Furthermore, SOB inevitably participates with other cultural products in a more comprehensive narrative, starring sex and gender issues.

As philosopher Petri Sipilä puts it, "man" and "woman" are given new meanings whenever somebody makes a public statement about them. Sipilä's claim is based on the idea of ideologically structured, incessantly evolving genders created by continuous cultural repetition. Bound to culture, gender is being created, for instance, in the class-room, at the opera, in a TV commercial or by street fashion. Similarly, SOB can be viewed as a stage producing images and ideas about men and masculinity.

The Ideal Male

SOB gives a hands-on presentation of the predominant Western male norm. The section Ideal Male 2000 lists the size and shape of modern man, down to the size of his shoes and the measurements of his penis. Clicking the various parts of the naked, white, young male makes the crucial facts pop up one at a time. Perfect man, they purport, is of course physically "immaculate" and is either single or living in a heterosexual relationship.

By and large, the men on SOB represent a wider scope than the normative Ideal Male 2000. The SOB man is both externally and internally more multi-faceted than the dominant cultural male ideal. He can be pot-bellied, old or a twit; sometimes he is vain, devilish and a coward. Sometimes he is actually a woman, as in the section Venice where Hanne Kiiveri and Tiina Knuuttila, the creators of this section, have assumed male roles. Their dreamlike creation provides the clearest breach to the thematical heterosexuality of SOB.

In SOB the male sex is generally presented as different from and complementary to the female, although the methods of presentation have interestingly been borrowed from the "female tradition". The SOB man is, for example, approached via the conventions of ladies' magazines. Only this time the issue is not mother-daughter but father-son relations. And here what are taken up for analysis are not women's problems with men but the roles of man as husband and lover. Apart from being a representative of his sex, every man belongs to a certain generation. Like women he has several personal links; he is father, son or grandfather. Finally, we take a look inside a man's cupboard, into his fears, dreams and aspirations. The demands of being a man and various beliefs related to men, violence for instance, are discussed openly.

The lone male?

Are there more men in the rooms of SOB? In order to broaden the perspective, I invited the editor-in-chief of Z-magazine, Pauli Löija, to have a look at SOB. Löija admitted that this was his first encounter with a CD-ROM; the only computer game he already knew was minesweeper. In spite of this, he threw himself into the SOB adventure and immersed himself for more than an hour in the analyst's apartment abundant with oriental carpets, decorative dressers and objet d'arts.

"Typical flat of a Helsinki gay", Löija comments as the first rooms pops up on the screen. His next comment is triggered when he opens the keys cupboard and finds a muscular man embraced by a snake: "Whoops! That's a homoerotic figure if ever I saw one." Löija moves about in Froid's rooms mostly in concentrated silence, although Venice calls forth a mutter of delight. Having visited every room and seen a selection of images, he asks finally: "Why don't these men have any pals?"

Crossing borders

Art historian Abigail Solomon-Godeau, who has studied the history of male representation, reminds us that the visual language used in an individual cultural setting is a result of the various masculinities available. European imagery, in art as in other visual culture, has always been subjected to certain conventions of presentation. Forms, including the human figure, have been regulated by the generally accepted modes of presentation, and deviations from them, even in the name of artistic originality, have not been advisable. Obviously, the same kind of regulatory practice affects the producers of visual culture in the 21st century. Possible variations are limited and transgressions are quickly spotted.

Having abandoned battle fields, sports arenas and rock venues for more unfamiliar grounds, modern man is still looking for a place. Interpretations of the male representations in SOB seemed to draw primarily on traditions derived from gay aesthetics and ladies' magazines. Or is the new man actually born in the eye of the beholder?

Minna Raitmaa