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.


Monday, October 28, 2013

Pleasure, Taste, Class and Questions



            I’d like to go back to the issue of reality TV and pleasure that Prof. Aniko mentioned in class last week as well as analyze the issue in relation to taste and class. 

            What I found inspiring in this week's reading is the idea of class that the writers convey through analyzing the receptions of reality shows. While I understood beforehand how taste reflects class, it seems to me that I did not have adequate knowledge of how reality TV could be a good place to “test” taste and class as effectively as the writers do in their essays. Also, reading these articles along with my responses to the screenings makes me think of the issue of class more carefully. 

            To be honest, I suffered through the show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. After 15 mins of screening, I wanted to get out of the class because I did not have any pleasure and had no identification with any characters. On the one hand, I reminded myself that “this is an alternative representation of women and you need to get to know it.” On the other hand, my mind kept on “yelling” at me “OK you got a sense of what the “alternative representations “look” like; now get out of the classroom, no more suffering.” I eventually did not leave because I had to wait for the following screening but I did find myself distracted with the  internet while watching it. 

            On the contrary, I found myself enjoying and paying attention to the show My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding because of its enticing narrative and its good-looking characters with their gorgeous outfits. In both cases, my receptions were mainly based on pleasure and more particularly voyeurism. For Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, almost nothing attracted my eyes. While I find Alana pretty cute, I was annoyed of the way her mom prepares her for the child beauty pageant. For My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, the gypsy culture--wedding, outfits and lifestyles, and the pretty young women and teen girls--attracted my attention. At some specific points I stopped to think of the “realness” of the representations, such as when the groom does not allow the cameraman go into his wedding room or when he got lost on his way to the church for his wedding. Yet, for almost the entire screen time, I was blown away with the process of narrative of the main characters’ marriage.

            With these perceptions, some questions came to mind when I was reading the articles:

            Firstly, to what extent do taste and emotion authentically reflect class? As I pointed out, I did not enjoy Honey Boo Boo, but liked Gypsy Wedding. Moreover, I have a negative attitude toward the lifestyle of Alana’s family but a positive mood toward that of the Gypsy Wedding.  

            Secondly, in terms of self-reflexivity and methods of interview, I think it is problematic because the perception of the interviewee is adjustable and unstable. In their article, Skeggs, Thumim, and Wood point out that middle-class women are more self-reflexive than working-class women toward reality TV. While this is understandable for me, I still question the level of the self-reflexivity. I believe that with the presence of the interviewer, the women in the interview become more conscious in terms of their perception of reality shows and adjust themselves because they are aware of the hierarchy of genre. Naturally, they want to portray themselves in a good light by emphasizing what they do not like about reality TV rather than openly expressing what they really like. 

            Thirdly, the awareness of the hierarchy of genre urges me to think of the variety of the cultures and audience’s awareness of the hierarchy of the genre which challenges the definition of classes through their tastes. Take me for example. I had not been knowledgeable of the hierarchy of genre before I came to study in the U.S. By that time I was fan of melodrama and some reality shows. I talked about my pleasure openly without any shame or guilt. However, after getting more knowledge about the hierarchy of genre and observing the cautious reaction of people in academia toward some lower genres, I have become more conscious of my reflection. Facing this situation I am very confused because if taste is something very precarious, the boundaries of classes which are based on the taste are also vulnerable.   Thus, I wonder how I can apply the lessons that I have learned about taste reflected through the reception of TV genre to investigate the class issue.  How is this possible, when I can see that--just like me before--my friends who are not aware of the hierarchy of genre are enjoying low TV genres and enthusiastically sharing about TV reality shows on Facebook daily? In the process of this reflection I am also questioning which class I belong to in terms of taste.  


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