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.


Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Crouching Tiger, Hidden ... Subtext?

I found the presentation on transnational feminism very interesting and definitely informative - I admit I'm woefully uneducated on feminist issues in many other countries, and the shift away from American pop culture (emphasized in basically all our other groups) was an interesting change.

Something that I found curious was the American trailer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. First of all, there's that word again - "princess"! In the movie, isn't she a governor's daughter? An aristocrat? Does changing her title in the advertising pique more interest, because we're more inclined to see her as more important, more dynamic, with that girly title? More frustratingly, though they do mention Jen (the princess/aristocrat), the trailer seemed much more focused on telling us that the film would be about Li Mu Bai and Lo - the men in the film. While they are certainly important characters, I feel like a lot more emphasis in the actual film is placed on Jen and Shu Lien's (female) characters, their struggles, and their relationship. I don't know how I feel about the assumption that it would be easier to advertise this movie by giving the trailer more of a male focus.

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