''Semiotics of the Kitchen'' is a feminist

parody A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its sub ...

single-channel video Single-channel video is a video art work using a single electronic source, presented and exhibited from one playback device. Electronic sources can be any format of video tape, DVDs or computer-generated moving images utilizing the applicable playba ...

and performance piece released in 1975 by

Martha Rosler Martha Rosler (born 1943) is an American artist. She is a conceptual artist who works in photography and photo text, video, installation, sculpture, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture. Rosler's work is centered on everyday ...

. The video, which runs six minutes, is considered a critique of the commodified versions of traditional women's roles in modern society.

Scenario

Featuring Rosler as a generic

cooking show A cooking show, cookery show, or cooking program (also spelled cooking programme in British English) is a television genre that presents food preparation, often in a restaurant kitchen or on a studio set, or at the host's personal home. Typ ...

host A host is a person responsible for guests at an event or for providing hospitality during it. Host may also refer to: Places * Host, Pennsylvania, a village in Berks County People *Jim Host (born 1937), American businessman * Michel Host ...

, the camera observes as she presents an array of kitchen hand utensils, many of them outdated or strange. After identifying them, she demonstrates unproductive, and sometimes violent, uses for each. It uses a largely static camera and a plain set. Letter by letter, Rosler navigates a culinary lexicon, using a different kitchen implement for each step along the way. She begins with an

apron An apron is a garment that is worn over other clothing to cover the front of the body. The word comes from old French ''napron'' meaning a small piece of cloth, however over time "a napron" became "an apron", through a linguistics process cal ...

, which she ties around her waist, and, with

deadpan Deadpan, dry humour, or dry-wit humour is the deliberate display of emotional neutrality or no emotion, commonly as a form of comedic delivery to contrast with the ridiculousness or absurdity of the subject matter. The delivery is meant to be blun ...

humor, journeys through the alphabet, until the last few letters. For these, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z, the implements are dispensed with and Rosler's gestures and body become a signal system themselves. The Z replicates the mark of

Zorro Zorro ( Spanish for 'fox') is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp writer Johnston McCulley, appearing in works set in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in Alta California. He is typically portrayed as a dashing masked vigilante w ...

, a filmic reference. At the end of the entire work, the artist offers a shrug, somehow defusing the negative reading of the parody. The focus on

linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

semiotics Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...

, and words is important, since Rosler intended the video to challenge "the familiar system of everyday kitchen meanings -- the securely understood signs of domestic industry and food production."

Meaning

A well-known feminist, Rosler remarked about this work that "when the woman speaks, she names her own oppression." The symbolic terminology of the kitchen, she hypothesized, transforms the woman into a sign of the system of food production and harnessed subjectivity. The video subject is an "anti- Julia Child," Rosler explains; she "replaces the domesticated 'meaning' of tools with a lexicon of rage and frustration." The work was intended, like all early video, to be shown on a television monitor, and thus it is no accident that some of the gestures represent a tossing or throwing of the imaginary contents of certain implements "outside the box" of television programming. It is not the production of food in and of itself that is Rosler's target but the taken-for-granted role of happy housewife and selfless producer that the tape intends to spotlight. Her gestures demonstrate frustration with the language of domesticity, as she uses the domestic space of the kitchen as a backdrop for resistance and change.

References

External links

Video Data Bank
includes a description of the video as well as a clip from it. *{{IMDb title, id=2050610 1975 films 1970s feminist films 1970s parody films 1975 short films Cooking films Performances Semiotics 1975 comedy films 1970s English-language films