The artifact that I have chosen for my Feminist Perspective Analysis is the episode Witch-ay Woman from the tv show Johnny Bravo. This episode is about how Johnny winds up angering a gypsy woman with his constant flirting, even after she tells him no, and she turns him into a woman. She tells him that the only way for him to become a man again is to learn what it really means to be a woman, and not act like men are God’s gift to women. Initially Johnny is set in his ways, viewing women as good looking only. He works to make himself as attractive as a woman as he viewed himself as a man. As the episode progresses Johnny, who is still a woman, sees how men will not leave him alone because the is a good looking woman. Johnny wonders what lesson he’s supposed to learn, since all he’s seen so far are men being annoying and unable to take no as an answer. Until other women intervene explaining that women are smart and not just for looking good. Johnny then realizes the lesson, that women are smart, and turns back to a man. Then all of what he just went through goes right out the window because he is surrounded by women and he begin to act just like he was before he turned into a woman.
The feminist perspective that can be applied to this episode, and the show as a whole, is the radical feminist perspective. The radical feminist perspective focuses on how inequities and oppression stem from how the system creates men and women differently. This perspective also deals with the “male gaze”, a phenomenon in which women are viewed as sex objects. Throughout the episode this is shown in how what the gypsy woman says is true, the men are acting like God’s gift to women. Johnny himself was most certainly acting like it in the very beginning and end of the episode. Johnny and the other men are unable to take no as an answer, which leads to the women beating up the men to get them to stop harassing them. There’s an entire song in this episode on how women are smart, which is sung by the women who help Johnny. Up until that point, all you see is how the men are nice to Johnny because he is a good looking woman.
I think this is a really cool and interesting artifact for this perspective. What implications do you see this episode having? I think it speaks a lot to systemic sexism and how people (in this case, men) are not going to change until society does. I think it would help your analysis to pull directly from the book as well in order to make your argument stronger (i.e. exact definitions in relation to your statement).
One aspect of the analysis which I believe you only lightly touch on is how the sexism that Johnny exudes is systematic. Johnny turns back into the stereotypical man after his transformation because the system that created him is still in place. Without changing the system itself there will be no lasting impact on Johnny.