Citizenship, Gender, and Representation

In Nira Yuval-Davis’s “Gender and Nation,” the author discusses gender relations and citizenship. She states, “That is its dualistic nature: on one hand, women are always included, at least to some extent, in the general body of citizens of the state, and its political, social and legal policies: on the other hand, there is always more or less developed, a separate body of legislation which relates to them specifically as women.” I agree with this assessment of citizenship. In the United States alone women make up half of the population, yet fail to be represented in the “body of legislation.” The role of the legislative branch is to make laws that protect its citizens. However, when women are not present in these discussions, legislation has the ability to hurt women. According to a recent report released by the Center for American Women and Politics, “Women currently hold 18.3% of seats in Congress and 20% of the seats in the Senate.” There is a large discrepancy between overall population and representation. Women represent less than a ¼ of the entire legislative branch, causing what Yuval-Davis states as the “dualistic nature” of citizenship.

Additionally, Yuval- Davis states that there are three dimensions of citizenship, “civil, political, and social.” She argues that though women are present in the political realm via voting, that women are largely excluded from the civil and social dimensions. I agree with her dimensions of citizenship, however, women across the world are deprived of their political rights daily. I would be wary to assume the political citizenship of all women globally. Although many women feel connected to their state, they are not “full-members” of the sovereign state. 

Teaching Project Ideas: The Makeover in Reality Television

Hey guys, I'm posting this here to see who else might be interested in forming a group focusing on the makeover in reality television for the teaching project assignment. It's a hugely broad topic, and super prevalent in today's media, in everything from America's Next Top Model to The Biggest Loser to Extreme Makeover. I don't want to narrow too much before we are able to establish a group because I think it can be useful to bounce ideas off of each other and find a focus together on something within that field we might want to hone in on. I did want to put forward one program I find extremely interesting in particular -- the British program 'Snog Marry Avoid'. It was huge in the UK and basically focuses on giving 'make-unders' to girls who are accustomed to walking around with fake tans, fake hair, heavy make-up, etc. The hosts go out into the street and ask random men if they would snog (kiss), marry, or avoid this girl before and after her 'make-under'. I find this program particularly fascinating because it proposes this whole 'natural beauty' message, which is veiled in a discourse of applying 'natural' make-up and wearing the 'right' and appropriately conservative (i.e. 'sexy but not slutty') clothes. I think it's incredible how it disguises this discourse as one that's trying to help girls get back 'on the right track' and avoid 'fake beauty' but it does so by putting forward its own agenda of what natural beauty should look like, and moreover uses male judgements to define this. It just brings forward a lot of interesting ideas to debate about how we define beauty, what are our standards for evaluating it, and emphasizes how women's bodies and styles have become commodities to be changed and shaped on our television screens (as in all makeover shows). I highly recommend checking out an episode as they are a lot of fun to watch; there are full ones on youtube. Here is one example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpBfy4amu7Y

Anyways, if anyone is interested in pursuing this topic let me know so we can form a group and start bouncing around some ideas.

How important is accessibility?

With last week's readings, I was most struck by Su Friedrich's article. I was surprised when I checked the date it was written (1989), expecting something at least a decade earlier- it seems to me that while certain societal stipulations still seem frustratingly backwards, we have come a long way. The fight for equality seems to have shifted, somewhat, if only because "radical" is a term that now seems like it would be wielded by the oppressors, and one that many on the left want to avoid. We don't want gay or lesbian stories to be seen as radical based solely on the sexuality of the characters. Friedrich says, "Both avant-garde film and gay consciousness must be resolutely created in a world that insists on a homogeneous sexuality and narrowly-defined aesthetic enforced through a stiflingly limited media" (119). While the mainstream film world is still overwhelmingly heteronormative, I think our world has changed vastly since 1989 in terms of expecting a "homogeneous sexuality." We have gone beyond Shotime-only fare like "The L Word" and seen queer characters pop up all over television, from teen-aimed hits like "Glee" and "Pretty Little Liars," to shows that also have an older fanbase, like "Modern Family" and "The Good Wife," and "Rizzoli &...oh wait, never mind about that last one. Of course I'd also be remiss if I weren't to mention our good friends to the north and "Degrassi," which I think has probably now covered every possible issue that could ever possibly happen to anyone, now including transphobia. (Go Canada!) Actually the reason I bring up Degrassi is because of how it helped me start thinking about homosexuality when I first started watching it at 13 or 14 years old. It's a ridiculously soapy show, yes, but it talked openly about these issues when American television was full of stereotypes and nothing else. In essence, it "taught [me] about how others live, think and feel, and that experience has made me re-evaluate my own prejudices, taught me the narrowness of my own thinking and my own experiences, and compelled me to put my life in the context of all those other lives out there" (122). That's why I feel it's important to have films with these kinds of stories be accessible to a more mainstream audience. For better or worse, media is how many of us accept and learn things and grow as a result. -Chelsea Gibbs

I forgot to post this but please find attached the link to the article "Finding Satisfaction in Second Best" that I talkead about last week in class.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/fashion/finding-satisfaction-in-second-best.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=2&

Oxenberg Vs. Hammer

The screenings in class Monday 9/23, to a certain extent, were foreign to me as a filmgoer. While I have seen many films that have homosexuals on display, there’s no film that I have seen that explicitly prioritizes the homosexual point of view. While the selection of films screened had different levels of explicitness, I found Jan Oxenberg’s A Comedy of Six Unnatural Acts the most provocative and effective in relaying it’s messages and themes. While Barbara Hammer’s Dyketactics was visually more explicit and shocking to an eye accustomed to heterosexual imagery, the form and dialectic Oxenberg employs is, in my opinion more effective and efficient.

While Su Friedrich argues in “Does Radical Content Deserve Radical Form?” that there hasn’t been an explicitly radical form that suits the radical themes of lesbian avant-garde and theory films, I believe Oxenberg’s films are radical. In A Comedy of Six Unnatural Acts the director uses familiar film structure and aesthetics to relay her story but reveals the lesbian element at the very end as a surprising twist. It’s not a surprise because the women are lesbians, but rather, because the viewer has been following along and assuming a heterosexual encounter will follow. It is the expectation of the viewer, and Oxenberg’s subversion of the expectation that is radical. She uses the subconscious mental connection of the audience to illustrate a provocative message about gender socialization and patriarchal societies built for male/female couples. In short, Oxenberg self-consciously appropriates “the system” she is criticizing to make her point, and in my opinion more successfully than the explicit imagery in Hammer’s film. 

- Natalie Qasabian 

Lesbian filmmaking

Just like many other students, I was confused in trying to figure out the meaning of the clips we watched on Monday. I found myself mainly distracted by the shocking and graphic lesbian scenes instead of being able to look past that and see its artistic qualities and meaning. However, by reading the article "Lesbian filmmaking: self birthing" by Barbara Hammer, I better understood her thought process and reasoning to each film she created. She explains that for her first film, although evident, sexuality was not the driving factor, but she wanted to portray the notion of sensuality that she feels with her lover and portray it in the most honest and realistic way to her viewers. She also explains that at a time of heightened powers and vulnerability, she wanted to incorporate humor to create this sense of discomfort. I then realized that maybe as an audience feeling out of place watching these films, lesbians during this time were constant outsiders just trying to fit in. Lastly, Hammer goes on to describe her personal experiences that led her to create each seperate film as a representation of her life and struggles

Avant-garde film as a subvertive mode of the look

Reading Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” along with watching the films of avant-garde filmmaker and reading Su Friedrich’s article is interesting as the films and the articles create a multifaceted conversation about the issue of pleasure, a topic that we have been talking about in class. Focusing on Hollywood cinema, Mulvey suggests the mode of seeing and being seen in narrative films in which women are always the “objects of the look”; and men are “the subjects of the look.” This means women are presented offering scopophilic pleasures for men. 

The lesbian films we saw last week subvert the modes of the look that Mulvey suggests. The avant-garde films are not about the heterosexual relationship but homosexual one – between woman and woman. Hence, taking homosexual desire as a useful device, they deconstruct the binary of the look based on gender. The avant-garde filmmakers thereby contribute an alternative mode of production beside that of the Hollywood. What I found interesting here is the question that whether avant-garde cinema which aims at the alternative mode needs an alternative form. More particularly, Su Friedrich raises the question “ Does radical content deserve radical form?” The filmmaker seems to state that she has attended to pursue an innovative way to tell her film story. However, she has to accept that the film has its own life and her film about the lesbian nun is inclined to narrative tradition rather than provocative way of avant-garde tradition. Her article is useful for me as I am used to assume that avant-garde cinema is radical form-oriented.

Sensuality vs. Sexuality

            After reading Hammer’s article, Lesbian Filmmaking: Self-Birthing, I understand the importance of showing the avant-garde clips that were shown in class. As I was watching the clips, I was unsure about the relevance and thought that the plot-less clips contained too much erotic sexuality and not enough content. However, I realize that perhaps I was mistaking sensuality for sexuality. Making a film that incorporates lesbianism, as Hammer describes, is largely about portraying sensuality. Hammer writes, “It was sensuality, the experience of touch and sensation…sensual imagery that evoked physical sensations in the audience was its basic principle.” It didn’t occur to me that these avant-garde clips had an intention other than showing sexual relationships between two women in love. However, the details in the clips highlight the intimate sensuality. The camera focuses on small details in the couple’s relationship, such as an intimate touch to the shoulder and the goosebumps that follow. These small details are what the audience should pay attention to rather than the overall idea that the couple is having intercourse. The notion of sensuality overrides the vague sexuality illustrated in the clips and it is up to the viewer to pick up on that.

Nice Is Just a Place In Paris

Over the course of the summer I began to read a book called, “Nice is just a Place in France.” While I definitely do not support a majority of the book, as the authors (called “The Betches”), can be extremely degrading towards females, I began to debate whether these “Betches” have a valid perception towards feminism.  This book serves as a guide to women on “how to win at basically everything.” The author states, “While we definitely believe in being equal if not more powerful than men, we know you’re definitely not going to achieve that by burning your bra and writing a gender studies thesis. These whiny women are only hurting themselves. Our book is about winning in a man’s world, first by accepting that as reality and then using that information to make the man’s world your bitch.” At first I was startled by the bluntness of the quote, but than as I kept reading more I began to question if these “betches” had a point. They give an example, of when they were in class and the professor stated that it will take 200 years in order for there to be an equal amount of female and male CEOs. As this statement was made, a female in the class burst into tears. They then state, “this story demonstrates the very essence of why two hundred years is too soon. Granted, the girl was probably on her period, but the fact that she was moved to tears by data she didn’t like is the precise reason why it will take at least two centuries for an equal number of woman to finally get the chance to write on of those cut little IPO letters.”  I want to reiterate the fact that I do not agree with the values that this author expresses throughout this book, but I started to think that she has a point. Rather than females crying in class about the harsh realities of this male dominated society, we need to be bold, strong, and force changes onto our society. 

            The authors of this book use humor in order to express their views on the way females should act in society. Similarly, Oxenberg uses humor and comedy in order to express, celebrate and validate the lesbian experience.  The films use comedy in order to “analyze politically and critique homosexual and heterosexual cultural stereotypes.” While to me it seemed difficult to add humor to such a controversial topic, after reading the plot synopsis of Home Movies, it seems humor is the perfect tool to convey the ideas and themes of this film, i.e females struggling to fit in, as well as struggling to be viewed with “true femininity.” 

          I found Michelle Citron’s article “The Films of Jan Oxenberg” very useful in easing my confusion after watching the films shown on Monday. Though I was able to understand that the films’ intent was to give insight into as well as celebrate life as a lesbian, I was unable to point to how exactly that was accomplished and how the images on screen fulfilled this goal. I was particularly intrigued by her comments on Home Movie (1972) which allowed me to arrange my thoughts on the film and realize why it was that I found the piece moving. 

          The use of old home video footage not only adds a sense of authenticity to the piece, but also comments on the home and family as a source of pressure and oppression. Furthermore, the location of the footage in the home and at school reinforces that these two institutions are primary sources of socialization into the female role. It made me reflect on my own experiences in school as a child and ponder the ways in which they reinforced gendered stereotypes. For example, I recall having reading time in the first grade and the teacher having separated books into a pile for the boys to pick from and one fom the girls to pick from suspecting that the books in the boys section would be of interest to boys and that those in the girls section would be of interest to girls. Thus, even the expectation of what a boy or girl’s interests should be was established in such a way that reinforced gendered stereotypes to the young and impressionable minds of children. 

          The images of the small girl dressed like a doll and dancing also resonated with me, especially once the stereotypically male act of playing sports appeared on screen. Sports reaffirm masculinity while dance and dress up reaffirm femininity. I recall in elementary school feeling like I needed to dress more girly in my day to day life because of the fact that I was so involved with sports. I did not want my athleticism to interfere with my quest to fulfill “true femininity” as Citron puts it in her article. The very nature of athletics compared to that of dress up and dance underscore the expectations of men versus women. While men are expected to be competitive, tough, strong and aggressive, the construction of the image of femininity is put-together and graceful. Taking this thought a step further, one could argue that this construction of femininity is meant to be most pleasing to males or in other words to be suited for heterosexual relationships, thus invalidating homosexual ones.

           Furthermore, while the the institutions of family and school are meant to represent community and a feeling of belonging, the film suggests otherwise by illustrating the expectations the institutions placed on females with disregard for that individuals own feelings or desires. I appreciated that though the film was about a lesbian who experienced feeling out of place, it resonated with anyone who has ever experienced pressure to act a certain way or be something they are not. Thus, a connection was drawn between lesbians as a group and all people who have struggled to fit in, giving insight to the viewer of life as a lesbian in a way they can relate to. I found the intercutting between the cheerleading images and the images of lesbians in protest and playing football particularly powerful. Despite the fact that the actions of the women in the protest and football images are against and direct contradictions to stereotypes of femininity and how a female is expected to behave, the women in these scenes have found that community and sense of belonging that they have been missing. They have realized that trying to fulfill expectations of how to behave as women in order to fit in and belong will never work and rather being true to themselves is what will give them peace and a feeling of belonging. I found this message useful to not just lesbians but all people.