Course Description

At the core of the course is the question how feminism has become a demonized and ridiculed “F-word” in an age when issues of gender and sexuality are at the center of constant, often explosive political debates. These debates often connect media representation and political representation but tend to do so in simplistic ways that bypass or distort decades of sophisticated feminist theory and practice. We will trace back such representations through the decades around case studies that encompass film, video, television and new media practices. The case studies come from the United States and beyond, taking into full account the global interconnectedness of media production and consumption as well as the transnational travel of feminist ideas. The main goal of the course is to evaluate how useful feminist thinking is to understanding the relays between media and political representation; and to develop a lasting critical apparatus to analyzing the politics of gender and sexuality in the media.


Saturday, September 21, 2013

Authorship and "Blue is the Warmest Colour"

I've recently been wondering about the relationship between authorship and viewership in the way that we interpret feminist (and non-feminist) texts. I'm interested in whether a text can escape and/or transcend the design and intention of its maker(s). I briefly discussed this with our professor in the context of our exploration of pleasure in feminist cinema in relation to the recent Cannes Film Festival Palme D'or winner, "Blue is the Warmest Colour." The French film concerns the blossoming of two young adults' lesbian romance, and includes explicit depictions of female sexuality. It is based on a graphic novel by lesbian feminist writer, Julie Maroh. The film, however, is directed by a Tunisian-French man, Abdellatif Kechiche. "Blue is the Warmest Colour," the film, has been widely praised for its willingness to display desire not coded for cis-gendered heterosexual males, and yet it has also been accused of being voyeuristic in its prolonged sex scenes and lacking of a true lesbian perspective by none other than the original author herself. I've not yet seen the film myself, so I will reserve judgement, but I believe that there is some truth to the idea of an authenticity of experience that a presumably hetero-male couldn't quite show. I say all of this to say that there will be a free screening of "Blue is the Warmest Colour" on our campus at 7pm on Wednesday October 16. I've linked our SCA website's event page where you can RSVP if you're interested in attending. I've also linked an interview that Julie Maroh recently gave in which she discusses her identity as a feminist and as a queer person, and what she hopes to accomplish with her art.

http://cinema.usc.edu/events/event.cfm?id=13732

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/21/blue_is_the_warmest_color_author_im_a_feminist_but_it_doesnt_make_me_an_activist/singleton/
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