The Collective I-Function

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We have spoken in class severally of this ‘I-function,’ which is what lay people usually refer to as ‘the mind’ or ‘the will’ or ‘the self.’  I have defiantly written several times that my opinions are backed by my own experiences and that nothing anyone says can change my mind until I experience differently. That is a fair enough statement to make, as our selves/minds/ I-Functions – whatever you will call it – often cause us to assert strongly our opinions and trust our personal experiences above what we’re told. However, is it ever possible that my I-function, which supposedly is the expression of my individuality and self-hood is not as individual as I think?

      I always thought that my I-Function is what helps me make sense of the world and the outputs my brain produces. However that is not strictly true.  There has never been a time since my birth where I have received ‘neutral’ images for my brain to process and my I-function to interpret. Every bit of information from the outside world was filtered through the colored glasses of culture, of place, of national memory, of ethnicity, of history, of the surrounding community.   Since I was born my community has focused on socializing me into their definition of a good, productive citizen. My habits and opinions are by and large determined by what was socially acceptable growing up.

       I grew up thinking of culture as the spoken and unspoken norms that govern a particular group of people’s lives’; collective history and national memory of a group of people; language and other defining characteristics of a group of people. In short, culture is a way of life, and so it is. But now, informed by this class, I think of culture as “the collective I-Function” of a group of people, which informs their individual I-functions and help them make sense of the world and interact with each other in a way that is meaningful to them.

       My understanding of this collective I-function has further been challenged by my anthropology class.  How does this collective I-function arise? It doesn’t occur in a vacuum, nor has it always been. No. Because we are all different and all interpret information in different ways, people come up with many different ideas and suppositions. Some of these suppositions eventually become codified into norms by a group of people, and over time these prevailing and/or popular opinions become a part of our consciousness, our collective I-function.

      This collective I-function, these norms, contrary to what I was taught when I was growing up, is not something static, unchanged since time immemorial.  Our ancestors, the ones we credit with our traditions and many of our norms in my country were not as united in their opinions as we were made to believe. No law was universally agreed upon in the past because what is normal is never a universal fact, even within the same society. People, by virtue of their different paradigms, are always contesting established and existing norms, arguing for or against the status quo.  So it is actually individual, or a group of individual interpretations of the world around us that eventually prevail as the norms of a group of people. These opinions are not the opinions of just any individuals. They might not necessarily even be the opinions of the majority in the group. The prevailing opinions, the ones which become norms, are always, without question, and probably without exception are either the opinions of those in powerful places, or the opinions of those who can manage to inundate the society with their views for an endless period of time, until those views cross from mere sentiment to ‘fact’ in the minds of the people of the society. It goes without saying that it is most often people in the first group who can manage to do the latter.

      I came across one striking example of how a constant barrage of information goes from the opinions of a select group to popular culture to accepted norm because the public was faced with a constant barrage of these opinions. Professor Sut Jhally’s excellent videos Dream Worlds II and Dream Worlds 3: Desire, Sex, and Power in Music Videos. The documentaries explore the ubiquity of sexual imagery in music videos, images which often objectify women and ignore other parts of their beings, focusing only on their sexual side. The crux of the documentaries is this: Music videos are most often the visual representations of heterosexual male sexual fantasy.  Because they are fantasies, and fantasies are not real, women are often objectified and reduced to their sexual body parts alone. While it is arguable that there is no inherent wrong in objectifying women in fantasy, the visual representations of these fantasies have become so ubiquitous, so pervasive, and so constant that they have become a part of popular culture and a mainstay of music culture. Because popular culture informs our norms, the imagined sexualities in these videos become our expectation of sexuality in real life; they become “how the culture in general teaches us to be men and women” (Jhally).

The climax of Dreamworlds 3 shows footage from the Puerto Rico day parade in Central Park, New York City, in 2000. At the park, many female attendees were stripped naked by the male attendees, were sexually assaulted, and were pelted with water and drinks by the male attendees. The documentary juxtaposes these gruesome images of real life assault with music videos where men were stripping women naked and pelting them with water and wine. The footage represented a translation into real life of the imagery seen on television in music videos. However, there was one great difference: the females in the music videos seemed to enjoy what the men were doing to them; in real life though, the females were devastated. 

      Music videos are a representation of the sexual fantasies of those in places of power in our society: men. But in their ubiquity, we find that we soon begin to forget that they are fantasy, and begin to treat them as a fact of life.

      I still insist that I am myself, but I cannot insist anymore that my opinions are my own. My opinions are usually the opinions of a powerful minority, or a ubiquitous minority, or a ubiquitous majority. But understanding this does not make my opinions any less valid. Rather, it encourages me to examine the things I believe; it compels me to closely examine the things I am told; it behooves me to look at information presented to me through different points of view before deciding to adopt a particular paradigm. It empowers to make my experience and my opinions more authentic by learning to justify them instead of just accepting what I am told. Forewarned is forearmed.

Works Cited:

       Jhally, Sut. Dream Worlds 3: Desire, Sex, and Power in Music Videos. 2003. Youtube. Web. 5 Apr.

            2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6LHg_OFFRY&feature=PlayList&p=A399EA02C4F7C366&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1>.

       Shipley, Jesse Weaver. "Anthropology 247: Coloniallism, Law, and Human Rights in Africa." Sharpless  410. Sharples 410, Haverford College. Spring 2010. Class lectures.