David Lyle "Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold"

David Lyle is a New York based artist whose paintings are based on the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.  I chose David Lyle’s artwork because he has a particular painting titled “Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold” which shows a 60’s housewife with a blonde flip hairstyle in the kitchen, preparing some kind of dessert or pastry. The irony of this picture is that instead of using flour, there is a sack “rat and mouse killer”.

I found this picture to be extremely relevant to my Women and Film Studies class because it shows how throughout time, there have only been two ways in which women are viewed. In the era of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s especially, women were sorted into two different categories: hoe or housewife. In “Ways of Seeing”, John Berger says, “men survey women before they relate to them and the result of this measuring determine their relation to the woman.”

In this time period, women were immensely objectified in media as “this or the other”. I believe the inclusion of the rodent poison is significant because it implies just how much women grew to hate these stereotypes. You could be only either the Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn but never a combination of both and there was definitely no other alternative.

A lot of people like to think that ideals like these are obsolete concepts that no longer exist in today’s world. Notions like these are still very much prevalent. In the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s however, there was very little opportunity for the female gender. We were considered inferior to the man, being single or a single mother was frowned upon since we were not meant to be the “bread winners” but rather the one’s who cook, sow, and cater to their man in the bedroom.

Stereotypes like these confined women to certain lifestyles for a very long time. Independent from the growing film industry the Laura Murvey incessantly mentions in her analysis of “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, I believe that women have always been objectified and trivialized.

I don’t know who started the trend of the domesticated lifestyle for woman, but I do know that inevitably women were forced to adopt the trend and culture that came with it. A competitive woman who sought a role beyond the home was scorned upon and considered obnoxious. Examined more closely though, that kind of reaction from men was likely because it was intimidating and castrating to the man.

What I mean by castrating is that a woman that was anything short of obedient or homebound was automatically considered the Marilyn Monroe. She was promiscuous, adventurous, independent, all characteristics that were too innovative for that time. The “Marilyn Monroe” type of woman was beautiful to look at and subsequently to fantasize about. But she is the woman that you have an affair with, not the one you propose to.

The ideal of a woman that can be so free and independent in regards to a male companion was particularly disquieting because it challenged the notion that men were superior, stronger and smarter than women. It implied that all those qualities that once made a man so desirable, would slowly begin to deteriorate when a woman acknowledges that she too, can fend for herself.

Hence why men as a gender have always objectified women throughout history. You can be the woman on the centerfold or the housewife but you were definitely one or the other. Regardless of which one you were, your purpose still lied in pleasing a man whether it meant sexually or domestically.

The Marilyn Monroe’s of that time were not in fact whore’s or ho’s, however. But since they pursued and embodied such a drastic change from the “housewife”, they were not considered ideal mates and for that reason they invited more perverse and remote thoughts. The Marilyn Monroe’s sought to embrace their sexuality rather than conceal it, which in turn made them the “one night stand” kind of woman. That kind of thinking is very similar to the philosophy that you “attract what you put out”.

I strongly believe that the Marilyn Monroe’s of this time were not striving to be strictly sexual but instead dignified, feminine and prideful in their anatomy and sensuality. They pioneered to break free from the chains of small-mindedness that all women should be subservient, conservative and inferior. By no surprise however, they were seen by men in a way that implied “I am the black sheep and as such I am here to provide to you the sexual favors that your old-fashioned, archaic consort refuses to perform”.