Social standards and pressure force society to meet their gender expectations and although sexism has been improving, it is still a major global issue to this day. Rezkallah’s “In a Parallel Universe” and Carol Ann Duffy’s “The World’s Wife” explores and challenges gender representations and power dynamics in different ways. “In a Parallel Universe” is Rezkallah’s collection of intertextual parody which he inverts the gender representation and roles presented in sexist 1940s-50s advertisements, in order to ridicule and mock the misogynic representation. On the other hand, Carol Ann Duffy’s themed collection of poetry, “The World’s Wife”, gives unheard female characters a voice and mocks the idolized male figures to reinstate the marginalized female figures.
Both Rezkallah’s and Carol Ann Duffy’s work have unique styles in their work to satirize outdated values and attitudes towards women. One of Rezkallah’s work in his “In a Parallel Universe” collection is a parody of Schlitz’s magazine advertisement published in the 1940s. In the original advertisement, we see a wife crying over a burnt beer and husband comforting her in the kitchen with the tagline, “Don’t worry darling, you didn’t burn the beer!”. Rezkallah’s parody of this advertisement uses the same key styles and elements from the original advertisement including the composition, orientation, and typography to highlight the gender reverse with some tweaks to modernize the advertisement for the audience to think about the current attitude towards gender dynamics. Rezkallah uses retro aesthetics from the use of vintage and retro color schemes table so that the audience is capable to determine that his work is a mockery of an outdated advertisement and lets the audience notice the progress made in gender representation and feel comfortable to find the obsolete representation in the past humorous. Rezkallah’s modernized modifications made in the parody, such as the modernized kitchen cabinet and oven in addition to making his work a photographic parody, creates further incongruity in the reversal of the stereotypical roles and makes the audience realize the generalization of the existence of typical gender roles even in modern-day society. Carol Ann Duffy gives voice to Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway in one of her poetry collections, “Anne Hathaway”. The poem is in a sonnet form which was frequently used by Shakespeare and often associated with love. By giving voice to Carol Ann Daffy’s Anne Hathaway in a dramatic monologue in a sonnet form, the poet is able to suggest that their love was unconditional and real which contradicts readers’ assumption that ‘second best bed’ is an insult towards Anne Hathaway. However, this can also be interpreted as Daffy ridiculing Shakespeare’s unconditional love and Daffy’s Anne Hathaway is using a different completely interpretation of the “second best bed” in order to fully believe that their love was unconditional and experience no heartbreak. Considering Shakespeare’s best love was not present for Anne, the detailed lovemaking presented in the poem enables the reader to mock Shakespeare’s selfishness and sympathize with Anne Hathaway for having a relationship that she believes to be unconditional but it was not. The poet makes the speaker sound like she is talking softly or whispering through the repetition of the soft and gentle ‘s’ sounds such as kisses, scent, and spinning as well as sibilances like shooting stars. The whispering imagery created by this emphasizes the intimacy that was present when they were in the bed. Duffy’s metaphors in this poem references to Shakespeare’s play and literary devices to describe Anne’s thrilling experience sleeping with him in the second-best bed. Similarly to Rezkallah, Duffy uses intertextual by referencing to the settings of Shakespeare’s famous work including Macbeth and Hamlet evident in, “The forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas” which supports the idea of how the bed was a “spinning world” that makes her feel dizzy from the excitement and unreal experience. The speaker also compared herself and Shakespeare’s relationship by comparing themselves to literary terms such as “his touch a verb dancing in the center of a noun” which can be implied that Shakespeare’s touch is an “action” that is moving around the “person” who in this case is Anne. It can also be interpreted as Shakespeare dominating and controlling the actions while Anne is just a noun that cannot control the verb, reflecting the conditional love. In conclusion, Rezkallah’s and Carol Ann Duffy’s style in the text support the purpose of their work of ridiculing outdated values and attitude through the mockery of the original sexist advertisement and Shakespeare’s unconditional love for Anne Hathaway.
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