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.


Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Orlando and Essentialism

I was definitely inspired by Sally Potter's Orlando and was again intellectually challenged in yesterday's class as we began to analyze and understand the film through historical feminist perspectives. I saw Orlando as born as a man and woke up halfway through his life transformed into a woman. She was one and then the other. Her metamorphosis gave her the personal strength and confidence to become more of who she was than ever before. Or maybe she transformed once she had already found herself. Either way it allowed for a humorous and intellectual commentary on gender roles as she lived on through several centuries. I see Orlando's sexual transformation as a commentary within an essentialist perspective. Potter is playing around with the essentialist debate: how does gender define a person's nature or behavior? She presents a situation where "gender is performance and construction" no longer exists. For Orlando she is always herself (whether man or woman), yet the world around her demands male characteristics when she was a man and vice versa when she is a woman. Potter asks: if our gender is internalized before we can speak what would happen if we woke up one day as the opposite sex? I'm not sure I quite exactly have an answer or necessarily know the conclusion made at the end of the film but what I do find in Orlando is a portrayal of female empowerment within a clever, cerebral discussion of gender roles and institutions.
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