“Procrustes, said to be the son of Poseidon, had an iron bed on which he compelled his victims to lie. Here, if a victim was shorter than the bed, he stretched him by hammering or racking the body to fit. Alternatively, if the victim was longer than the bed, he cut off the legs to make the body fit the bed’s length. In either event the victim died. Ultimately Procrustes was slain by his own method by the young Attic hero Theseus, who as a young man slayed robbers and monsters whom he encountered while traveling from Trozen to Athens.
The “bed of Procrustes,” or “Procrustean bed,” has become proverbial for arbitrarily—and perhaps ruthlessly—forcing someone or something to fit into an unnatural scheme or pattern.”
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On the rare occasion that I do access Pinterest, it’s usually a binge filled with hours of ‘likes’ and results in a virtual tome of images that I rarely scan again. So it was a big deal to me that I actually stopped during one of these events and entered a site to examine a photo of a stately bed coated in toile print. (Figure 1) For some reason or another, I felt the strange urge to create a sculpture based on its image and a series of prints of my own choosing. Between this impulse and as a response to much of the readings and discussions held in class, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to develop connections and imagery appropriate for said sculpture.
Capitalism and Procrustean ideals are connected to poverty, specifically displayed in many instances, but contemporary healthcare and sickness within the workplace will be my emphasis in this paper. Through this comparison and my own personal experience with mental illness, I feel quite strongly and sympathetically to peoples taken advantage of which usually consist of the poor, minorities, women, the elderly, and the disabled.
The world of medical ethics has been an area of study dating back to the 5th century BCE, but has become more widely discussed as of late relating to implementations of socialized medicine and the Affordable Care Act. Any anecdotes written out or images constructed, I would like to filter through a common framework used for analyzing medical ethics postulated by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress (“Principles of Biomedical Ethics”):
The first principle, Respect for Autonomy, states that a patient has a right to choose their treatment or refuse it assuming they are of sound mind. The second and third, Beneficence and Non-Maleficence, follow closely to the Hippocratic oath. Not only should a practitioner act in the best interest of patients, but they should should choose to proportionally cause more good than harm if no other alternative treatments remain. Finally, Justice, concerns the distribution of scarce health resources, and the decision of who gets what treatment.
I would like to examine a couple of cases in which this last principle is either challenged or ignored all together in the name of capitalist growth and at the expense of the most vulnerable. While I could focus these examples upon the macrocosms and economics of our healthcare system, for the purposes of creating intimate and tangible scenes in this sculpture, I’m choosing to relate the dynamics between individuals and their direct paternalistic workplaces, beginning with my own.
The relationship I hold between mental illness and individualized accommodations of academic bodies/figures, is a strongly opinionated one. I grew up in an area of the country that strongly embraced the ideals of self-reliance and autonomy, that I found to permeate every level of society-- including the ‘liberal’ academic spheres of my ‘alma mater’. After having taken a break from school for about a year to be put through intensive outpatient therapy, the difficult readjustment to school and social life was interrupted by the breaking of my dominant hand and a miscarriage that left me a worn and hollow vessel. Unaware of the poorly advertised accommodations provided by the school, my mental health was subject to individual terms and rules outlined by professors. While many of my mentors were supportive and flexible, I was never directed to a department or office that would help protect me from the few professors’ who were not understanding. Arbitrary deadlines strictly enforced and an unsympathetic relationship greatly affected not only my grades but my ability to heal properly.
But I am far from being the only individual struggling with this dynamic. These relationships are systemic and symptomatic of capitalistic productivity. Ones inability to function properly is an inconvenience to production which exists in both low-income communities and wealthy sectors alike. Statistics show that depression and anxiety are more commonplace as we work more hours and make less money. “Psychosocial work stress and, in particular, job strain, are important risk factors in the development of depression. Workers with jobs low in decision latitude and high in demands show higher depressive symptoms, and those with jobs low in direction, control, and planning as defined by the U.S. Department of Labor have higher psychological distress and major depression.”
A second illustration stems from my neighbor’s experience as a single mother. After choosing to live a lifestyle free of an abusive partner, her anxieties and troubles still existed Another stressor seen in American families is the lack of paid maternity and paternity leave for new families. While a 1993 law now requires 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave, most families in low-income communities are unable to afford the time off, let alone find affordable child care. In comparison to almost every other developed nation, the lack of support for new families adds additional financial stress, continues antiquated gender roles (lack of paternity leave), emphasizes success associated with marriage and tax cuts, and exasperates gendered pay differences.
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Growing up in a home where both my parents lived and worked as interior decorators made me familiar with multiple trends within the industry; the death of wallpaper in the 90s, advances in mass-produced plastic flooring in the early 2000s, and the ever-present toile print of Waverly sprawling through fabric drapes, pillows, and upholstery. I was always drawn to the wallpaper books and fabric section of my parents store because it presented a far wider range of color and pattern than the rest of the awful pinks and beige I saw everywhere else. As these were things I saw nearly every day, I never gave much thought to any of them until much later in life when I began seeing a resurgence of Waverly toile patterns in much larger and more vibrant colors. Finally noting the detailed scenes of women working in a jovial fashion (child-rearing, feeding chickens, and washing clothes), I nearly threw up in the middle of Hobby Lobby before buying a couple yards and deciding to manipulate the scenes at home.
Derived from the French work for “canvas” the toile print we know today has been passed through a series of hands beginning with the Irish, to the English and French, finally finding itself in the “New World”. Colonial and Colonial Revival prints often depict scenes of historical importance referring to the establishment of Independence hall, to “trades” with Indigenous Americans (Figures 2 and 3), to African slaves stoking fires (Figure 4). But amongst the entire history of its creation and transformation, the genre of pastoral toile scenes has always depicted these romanticized representations of manual labor and servitude. Many designs created were adaptations of 18th century French patterns of the bourgeoisie in whimsical scenes swinging and dancing. But overwhelmingly present are pastoral scenes of happy peasants working through their manual labor.
While I could choose many ways to represent this information, the idea of repetition in toile print-- or any print for that matter-- I find interesting. In one way, I think its production process relates back to the earliest methods of printing and mass replication which in my mind relates to early material capitalism and manufacturing. I also wonder about its purpose, used to coat the interiors of wealthy homes who historically profit from the exploits of the poor.
My goal with this project is to design a repetitive toile pattern with each of these illustrative examples to create a fabric. With a multitude of eyes upon the viewer, the repetition creates a crowd. However, I don’t want the fabric to be displayed stretched out on a wall, but used as a sculpting tool. Utilizing rigid wooden structures and fabric stiffeners to create a broken bed, I still want to embody the gaudiness of the toile-laiden bed (Figure 1) while simultaneously accentuating its disintegration. This deconstructed bed and its connection with my childhood would also reference Procrustes somewhere in the title. In addition to these two instances, the other narratives and terms of healthcare also relate to bed, illness, and poverty; a birthing bed, a death bed, a bed one is bound to by illness, a bed that is sought after for psychological relief. Each of these figures, while seemingly passive or frail, will attempt to hold a determined and prevailing eye-contact-- as if they have risen up to destroy the bed-- or perhaps exist as witnesses/sirens to a third party’s actions.
With certain sections of the wood frame remaining, as if it has been destroyed in some sort of battle-- the structure will hopefully imply death, or anarchist musings. The enveloping cloth, modeled on both the original drapings of the extravagant bed and the Ecstasy of St. Therese’s robes, will hopefully relay an almost sentient movement, as if the bedding has consumed or strangled its own framework like snapping bones inside a body.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig.4
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gillon, R., “Medical ethics: four principles plus attention to scope,” National Center for Biotechnology Information, accessed Feb 23, 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2540719/?page=1
Misra, Joya, “The US is stingier with child care and maternity leave than the rest of the world”, the Conversation, Accessed Feb 23, 2019, http://theconversation.com/the-us-is-stingier-with-child-care-and-maternity-leave-than-the-rest-of-the-world-94770
Prins, Seth; et. al. “Anxious? Depressed? You might be suffering from capitalism: Contradictory class locations and the prevalence of depression and anxiety in the United States“, National Center for Biotechnology Information, Accessed Feb 23, 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4609238/
“Procrustes,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed Feb 20, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Procrustes