blog four yo
The everyday becomes as changeable as gender as performance, when we think of it as a concept constructed by society. Henry Lefebvre in his article says that we create a norm of “everyday� behavior by being influenced by the gender norms and power norms. These are often confusing and conflicting, as we can see by the characters behavior in Cusp.
Alice, the lead character in the movie, is confronted by expectations from all directions, in all aspects of her life. These expectations are meant to give her a grounding in what it means to be an adult within the world she lives (“You gotta wise up, girl!�). Her mother expects her to be an adult, to do the dishes, to run errands, to generally do what she is told. When Alice fights back she is told to “grow up.� This is solidifying a concept of power with relation to her mother. Her response is, “its not my fault no one can stand to be around you.� This is after speaking with Lila, the neighbor, who suggests to Alice by her actions and words that the only way for a woman to get along is to have a man to take care of her. This experience is giving Alice fledgling ideas of the role of gender. These ideas about gender roles are further underscored by watching couples yelling on the street, her interactions with the bodega counter-boy, and watching her schoolmates interactions. These experiences all come together in the mind of an adolescent girl as information about how to conduct herself in her small society. The scene that most poignantly showed how the societal norms created by these experiences conflict with eachother is when Lila dresses Alice in her clothes, puts makeup on her, and sends her home walking telling her the only way to get anywhere in life is to look gorgeous everyday. As Alice is walking home, she feels increasingly uncomfortable in the role she is performing, and covers herself more and more.
Cusp illustrates well how what might be seen as simple, everyday experiences really inform our behavior more than we think. Because adults have internalized the everyday, it takes the eye of a child to tell us how we learn to act within these conflicting societal restraints imposed upon us by the construct of the “everyday,� as proposed by Lefebvre.-- Britta