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[janeindamembrane]

Final Assessment

Introduction:

Watchmen (2019), is a limited series from HBO which is a retelling/extension of the 1986 graphic novels of the same name. Starring Regina King as ‘Angela Abar’, the series features many vigilantes in a story that sets heroes amongst politics, morality, and corrupt and flawed power dynamics. The idea of the hero and its modern day playability is challenged by the thematic scope of the show and the flawed nature of the heroes at the center.

To sources:

Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I” centers around how people look towards images to recognize parts of themselves. There is the eventual realization that the self (the I) does not perfectly resemble the other, and thus an ego which attempts to reconcile the two is formed.

bell hooks, “Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators” discusses how other audiences besides the dominant audience can derive pleasure and catharsis from media/representations. A focus is put on black female audiences because of their invisibility in media as well as their position within the intersection of not being a male and not being white. Oppositional gaze can provide interrogation or ego libido.

Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” is about the continual legitimization of systems of power even within opposition. It talks about how perceived differences have too long been manipulated to further drive apart and that the power that difference holds must be redefined.

Robert Stam and Ella Shohat, “Stereotype, Realism, and the Struggle over Representation” focuses on audiences interest in truth/realism and how images and the languages around them can come to define truth. If truth is defined by images, the creators of these images hold power over the depicted who bear the burden of the depictions. The article discusses the importance of participation/representation as a response to previously standing power dynamics. Common Hollywood stereotypes about races are mentioned and later stereotypes, what they reveal about society, and the issue of completely ignoring stereotypes is discussed.

Methodology:

First, I will discuss the similarities in the above sources, particularly pertaining to agreements surrounding power structures in media and the dominant (white, male) audience. Second I will discuss differences amongst the sources regarding how non dominant audiences view media and what role dominant media plays in creating an oppositional media/view and vice versa. The final section will look at two scenes one from Watchmen’s episode 6, “This Extraordinary Being”, and the other from episode 8, “A God Walked into Abar”. I will point out what I believe the authors would take away from the scenes.

Section One:

All of the authors talk about representation of images and how dissimilarity between the images one sees and their own reality can cause them to mend their own representation or image of themselves.

Lacan talks of the mirror phase: when the connection between the image of oneself and what is reflected back to them in the real world (the images of others) is perfectly in sync. This perfect reflection is eventually ruptured, whether it is simply maturity or the realization that one does not (such as through racial, class, or gender difference) resemble the others promoted within society. Lacan mentions that the reaction of forming the social I, the version of the I heavily informed by society and its views, is mediated by cultural norms. The other theorists would elaborate on that and say that these norms are power systems which continue to enforce themselves through the distortion of difference, particularly the weaponization of stereotype.

Additionally, these theorists (beyond Lacan) would agree that there is intersectionality within these power systems. The title of Lorde's works point these out: age, race, class, and sex. It is along these intersections that minorities will be unable to resonate fully with the representations created by those in dominant positions within the intersections. Lorde and hooks talk about the inner relation between the black woman and the white woman beyond just the relation of man and woman. The white woman may be the image of desire that the protagonist watches, but the black woman is ignored, belittled, or violated. Additionally, while the black male may not have the looking and representational privileges of the white male, they still have a higher position than black females.

The qualitative differences of these groups have been distorted to create a mythical difference, as Lorde calls it. Or they have been simplified to several characteristics which are then deemed negative enough to justify certain treatments. The representations of certain groups holds large weight because of how little representations there are are who these representations have been controlled by. The theorists agree that marginalized groups are forced to gain viewing pleasures in different ways because they do not see the 'mirror image' of themselves when it comes to the dominant images produced. When these images do actually resemble them, the distortion of differences and stereotyping can cause the audience to have difficult views of themselves and others.

Section Two:

The difference among the theorists is what the takeaway of the power dynamic in images should be. The oppositional gaze of bell hooks talks about the importance of continuously critiquing the dominant media in how it ignores or represents minorities. Shohat and Stan talk about the importance of representation not only in images (casting) but when it comes to who is creating. Since Lacan does not directly address the power dynamics of images beyond that of the ego being heavily informed by cultural norms, he does not adequately address what to do when those culture norms are unfortunately racist, sexist, and etc.

Lorde provides the most radical view that insists that certain forms of opposition only exist to uphold systems. For example, even by being critical of media and explaining it, it upholds the idea of certain marginalized group explaining themselves to the dominant group.

What the takeaway from the power dynamic is- should new images be formed or use same tools

Section Three: Is there Justice for The Hooded Justice?

[From left to right and clockwise] Will watches the Cyclops headquarters burn; He takes off his mask and confronts the brutal nature of the violence; His memories (through Angela's experience) flashback to him finding his wife (as a baby) during the Tusla Race Massacre.

The scene from Watchmen’s sixth episode, “This Extraordinary Being”, that I will be looking at occurs from _________. This is when Will Reeves burns down a warehouse belonging to Fred after killing the occupants individually inside. Before I get into what I believe would be the key takeaways from our authors about this scene, I want to to do a quick analysis of Will Reeves who is the vigilante The Hooded Justice. I think his character is pretty well encapsulated by a quote from later in the series:

People who wear masks are driven by trauma. They’re obsessed with justice because of some injustice they suffered, usually when they were kids. -Episode 8, “A God Walks into Abar”,

For Will Reeves, the Hooded Justice is literally a mask but also figuratively one that lets him escape being a black man while also protecting others. He is attempting to right the wrongs that he and others like him have undergone, but his way of doing this through hiding his blackness and embracing the violence of the original injustices eventually consume his character causing his wife and child to leave.

Audre Lorde’s writing focuses on feminism and the subcategory of racist feminism and other intersections within feminism. I do believe she would, however, find connections between her writings’ philosophies on difference, oppression, and liberation with the ways that Will Reeve’s enacts Justice. Lorde strongly asserts that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (110); true redemption is knowledge and community, yet acts of redemption which seek to further alienate or (in Will’s case) enact the violence he previously suffered. He strangles one of the guys in the building in a way that resembles his lynching. He later hypnotizes Judd Crawford to hang himself. He is using the exact playbook- the ‘tools’- of his oppressors. Watchmen forces the audience and Will to confront the question of whether this is justice. Yes, the ones attacked our villainous and racist, but Will has (as seen through his later confrontation with his wife and child) let his anger consume him and become an opposition yet a mirror to his oppressors. When he burns down the cyclops headquarters, he uses the mask of Hooded Justice- the mask of liberation- to enact his rage. When he watches the building burn down, he is forced to confront the similarity of the situation to the Tulsa Massacre. During this scene, he takes off his mask and watches not as a vigilante but as a man confronting that he is capable of the same violence done to him.

There is the continuous symbolism of the mask. On the practical level it is so Will can escape identification. But on top of the physical mask there is also the mask of painting the skin around his eyes white- so that the Hooded Justice is mistaken as a white man. This is effective since the show within a show parody, American Hero Story, portrays the Hooded Justice as white. June (his wife) advises him to do so since “If you're going to stay a hero, then the townsfolk are going to need to think that one of their own is under [your hood]” ().

This touches upon the idea of the mirror image, as this extra mask is all about how he is perceived by others. June talks of being “one of their own”, and how that is the only way for the Hooded Justice to be a hero. While Lacan doesn’t touch upon the ideas of audiences with power (as Shohat and Stam do), June and Will are concerned about the Hooded Justice’s reputation with the white audience as it is this audience who controls potentially violent backlash against Will. When white audiences think the Hooded Justice is white, they see not only themselves in him but an idealized version which insinuates power within themselves to stand up to wrongs when those wrongs do not confront their own privilege such as the saving of the white couple after Reeves survives the lynching. Laura Mulvey refers to this as the pleasure of ego libido (715). If this audience were to know the Hooded Justice is black and that he is particularly acting against injustices against the black community by white people in positions of power (such as the police force), the mirror stage (the perfect reflection) would be broken. Since they are the dominant audience, this would not result in ego defense. The white audience does not alter their own social Is (the ego) to better fit with the ideals of the Hooded Justice, as that would require them to still look up to him. The “cultural intervention” of a world steeped in racist power dynamics defines what the white audience’s relation to the black man and the othering competition he provides (Lacan, 79). Instead, he would be villainized and persecuted, through the distortion of difference (the mythical difference()), and he would be fit into the stereotype of the violent black man. Unfortunately because of the Hooded Justice’s visibility, this stereotype would gain weight; the public image of one black man being violent would, due to the limited representation of black men, come to dominant beliefs by the white audience about the nature of all black men (Shohat and Stam, 183).

Will Reeves own relation to his blackness is complicated. It could be argued that he himself is attempting to uphold a mirror stage or ego libido- he wants to be like the cowboys he grew up watching on screen (in the end montage during Crawford’s hanging snippets from Bass Reeve’s movie are shown). The Bass Reeves character is the inspiration behind Will Reeves joining the police force, and when Will realizes that he corruptness of the force he creates his own type of Lone Ranger. He is not allowed to this ego libido as he is reminded of how little power he has in his black body. His white coworkers lynch him simply because they can. He attempts to become white through the Hooded Justice, and while at first logistically necessary, he eventually depends on it. The only way he can be a hero, and fulfill his need to become like the heroes he watched on screen, is to be the white presenting Hooded Justice. He is attempting to present the Hooded Justice as the mirror image of white ‘heroes’. The same ones that a la Birth of a Nation are the exact perpetrators of the racist and white supremicist myths that subject Will to his treatment.

[from left to right] Will Reeves assuming power through the police uniform and through enacting a form of violence (strangling) that is very intimate and resembles the lynching he suffered.

He has become the emulation of the tools of the master to the point where he denies positive representation of ego libido for his son. He wears the costumes of systems of oppression- whether it is the mask of the Hooded Justice or his police uniform- and when he gives up on changing these systems he uses his masks to commit the same retaliatory violence. By becoming the Hooded Justice and joining the force, he provides opposition which provides interrogation of the systems. Yet by embracing the whiteness of the Hooded Justice and stooping to the same violence enacted to him, he adds to the system- perhaps experiencing some ego libido by being somewhat accepted (contingently) into some forms of white power. The show does not allow this to be a win, as shown by his facial expressions in the aftermath, the allusion to the Tulsa Massacre, and the loss of his family. Additionally, his fight against Cyclops does not stop the struggle that his granddaughter faces. When tools of oppression are used in opposition, perhaps time/history are endless.

bell hooks talks of intersectionality and how black men can still hold power within the patriarchy and white women can still hold the privilege of being white. Will Reeves, despite his own restrictions, is able to access certain privileges. His being in the police force is contrasted by the image of Angela (through the Nostalgia memories) who faces other restrictions due to being black and a woman. His access to the Hooded Justice gives him a semblance more of access to the white male patriarchal structure- which he uses to get temporary revenge rather than elevate those around of (in terms of intersectionality) below him within this system.

This is seen in his interaction, following the burning of the Cyclops headquarters, with his son and wife, June. His son looks up to him (because of the limited representation of black men having systematic power), but Will realizes with horror that the path of the Hooded Justice is not something he should want for his son. The costume represents hiding true identity and anger rather than true justice. His anger at his son can be interpreted as anger at himself and his failure to become 'Bass Reeves' and his further contribution to the lack of justice in the law (as a vigilante).

The larger question that the series poses is the morality of the situation, and the chicken and the egg debate (mentioned in the next episode I will be analyzing) over history and its injustices. Will Reeves may be using the tool of his oppressors, but whether there were other tools available to him (the community and understanding that Lorde touts) is debatable. Reeves violence is reaction to injustice, but will be weaponized to further stereotype racial difference so that further generations will continue to suffer the same injustices and stigmas.

Section Three and One Half: A God in a Black Body

Not addressed by Dr Manhattan but seen by people around him (also meta because of the influence on audiences).

Throwaway line about appropriation but otherwise no dialogue

It’s quite an interesting form you’ve decided to take. It’s not the 80’s anymore, Jon. This kind of appropriation is considered quite problematic now. - Adrien Veidt, Episode 8,

People around him perceive or may put weight on it but ultimately the difference of body distorted (Lorde), (

Choice of making Jon a Jewish man

Difference of Lorde perspective Shohat

Comfortability within this body and also previous non showing of manhattan (not confined)

Opposite of being praised

Ending potentially could be seen as retaliation

[janeindamembrane]

Analytical Application 6: Race and Representation

essentialism

orientalist theory

Definition:

Analysis:

Stereotype

Definition:

Analysis: even the politics of color

Eurocentrism

Definition:

Analysis:

Cultural Hegemony

Everybody wants to be a cat

from The Aristocats (1970)

[theuncannyprofessoro]

Reading Notes 10: Said to Shohat and Stam

To wrap up our studies of visual analysis, Edward W. Said’s “Orientalism” and Ella Shohat and Robert Stam’s “Stereotype, Realism, and the Struggle Over Representation” provide critical paths to understanding the roles of race and representation play in our production and consumption of film, television, and popular culture.

How is orientalism linked to film, television, and popular media, and in what ways has standardization and cultural stereotyping intensified academic and imaginative demonology of “the mysterious Orient” in these mediums?

What role do stereotypes play in the representation of people, and in what ways can film and television change the perception of cultural misrepresentation?

@theuncannyprofessoro

[lstine919]

Orientalism is linked to media because media has now become a powerful way of influencing how certain people (and therefore certain groups of people) are perceived, and those in positions of power have used stereotypes as a means to increase the demonization of “the mysterious Orient” by depicting a single-sided, mono-characteristic representation of marginalized groups. Said defines a specific type of Orientalism as “the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient”(1)— a westernized domination of the Orient. Western society has used film, television, and popular media to carry out this domination via the mass diffusion of information through these media outlets, which causes recipients of said media to view “othered” groups through an Orientalist lens. One way the ruling class does this is through stereotypes and ignorant, uninformed representations. Said writes that “Orientalism is premised upon exteriority,”(3) in that those with authority use their strategic location of distance from the Orient in order to paint an exotic and far-off representation of said region. Eurocentric media has reinforced an Orientalist worldview by placing itself in opposition to the East, creating a representation of difference and removal. 

Stereotypes lead to a preconceived notion of the characteristics of a certain people group, and inaccurate representation can be changed by film and television through the analysis of nuanced discourse surrounding a stereotyped group. Shohat and Stam claim that “the narrative and mimetic arts, to the extent that they represent ethos (character) and ethnos (peoples) are considered representative not only of the human figure but also of anthropomorphic vision.”(3) Media’s representation of certain people groups influences the audience’s perception of them as human beings, shaping the relationship between viewer and represented subject without the two groups truly interacting. It is imperative that viewers take the image in context with the rest of the film in order to form a complex representation of the subject onscreen. Shohat and Stam write that “Formulating the issue as one of voices and discourses helps us get past the ‘lure’ of the visual, to look beyond the epidermic surface of the text.”(4) Through the dissection of several different perspectives regarding the subject, the dangerous power given to stereotypes represented in media can be mitigated.

Bibliography:

1 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 11

2 Said, Orientalism, 28

3 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, “Stereotype, Realism and the Struggle Over Representation” in Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the media” (London: Routledge, 1994), 182

4 Shohat and Stam, Stereotype, Realism and the Struggle Over Representation, 214

@theuncannyprofessoro

[janeindamembrane]

Introduction:

Edward Said and Ella Shohat & Robert Stam explore representation in media and the position of power within representations (or Stuart Hall’s reference to the ordering of cultures). Said talks of the Orient, which in idea and representation has come to consume and obscure the actual Orient. Meanwhile, Shohat & Stam talk about a multitude of representations and how often there is the question of power behind it, the authenticity of it, and the continual racial politics and implications of it.

Question One:

Orientalism is linked to film, television, and popular media in that Orientalism as a practice is othering (in this case the residents of the area known as the near-Orient) to demonstrate/justify the superiority of one group (in this case from the West) which becomes apparent in the media representations of these maligned groups. “The Orient is an integral of European material civilization and culture” and Orientalism represents “that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with the supporting institutions” such as images through media or discourse through academics[1]. Orientalism is an academic field, a thought process of difference, and the “corporate institution for dealing with the Orient by making statements about it, authorizing it... In short, Orientalism is a Western style for dominating restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”[2]

The culture of the Orient enters popular or global culture, yet it takes a subservient and grossly simplified position to that of the West. The idea of the Orient is meant to be looked down upon while also spectated/expropriated. Fascination of the lower status, or the difference, of the Oriental from the Occidental, can be satiated through media. The Occident is given this power of looking, of studying, not out of any superiority (as inferred by Balfour and Cromer), but rather through colonialist power and then the promotion of their academic channels as higher culture (which then excludes other forms of knowledge)[3]. Yet, knowledge becomes control. The knowledge of the Orient through academic channels corresponds to what is shown in media or popular representations and the circulation/naturalization of these images validates the academic until “in a sense [the popular and the academic] create the Orient, the Oriental, and his world”[4]. Stereotypes in media, born out of Orientalism as a comparison, are justified as essence are authentic, which furthers the demonology of the Orient in Orientalism, the academic practice, thus engaging in Orientalism as an act (cycle) of  ‘dominating restructuring’.

[1] Edward Said, "Knowing the Oriental", in Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 10.

[2] Said, "Knowing the Oriental", 11.

[3] Said, 47- 49.

[4] Said, 40.

Question Two:

Stereotypes are naturalized ways of looking at the marginalized by the dominant spectaors which make the historically marginalized unable to control their own image and even subject to the limitations (and inferiority) of their image. To represent is to enact, to display, and eventually to know. There is a particular pressure on the representation of the marginalized and a fear of the weight of their representational images. When a marginalized person is represented on screen it is understood that they are standing in and “speaking on behalf of some other persons or groups”[1], but because these images could have been derived from stereotype (the producer’s understanding of the marginalized) then the representation affirms what has continuously been understood as the marginalized while sucking the marginalized of any voice. Said worries about potential failures and stereotypes arising out of his own writing, noting that stereotypes can arise from being too general or it can be seen as weighing one specific representation as representing an entirety[2]. A member of non-marginalized does not have to worry as they are given the privilege of diversity while “each negative image of an underrepresented group becomes, within the hermeneutics of domination, solely overcharged with allegorical meaning”[3]. This is the prime example of how the marginalized bear the burden of stereotype, and it can be difficult to escape as specification either feeds the beast or is shunned due to its dissimilarity of the naturalized/authentic stereotype. The power of the stereotype often does not lie in the hands of the marginalized, which leaves them scratching their head at how to abandon stereotypes without entirely abandoning themselves.

Yet stereotypes are limited and reveal several things: the oppressive patterns between the spectator and the spectated, the “psychic devastation” inflicted on the stereotyped through that image or the effects of, and the reveal of the social control aspect that stereotypes play [4](as Said summarizes in his analysis of the Oriental). The call for positive images is not the opposite and not the solution.  As discussed through the writing of Jack Halberstam, production of positive images are often the retaliation of the stereotyped, but this just trades one way of appeasing the ideological assumptions of the dominant audience for another. Now instead of being othered (a la the Orient), one is now “universal”, “palatable”, or assimilated[5].

It is ill fitting to adopt the attitude of the inevitability of stereotypes as a cynical protection, but rather recognize that stereotypes are based in some basis (however distorted) of reality, and require cultural strategies, such as the inclusion of marginalized producers and talent, to open up the world of discourse since the world of image cannot be completely abandoned[6].

[1] Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, "Stereotype, Realism and the Struggle Over Representation", in Unthinking Eurocentrism (London: Routledge, 1994), 183.

[2] Edward Said, "Knowing the Oriental", in Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 10.

[3] Shohat and Stam, 183.

[4] Shohat and Stam, 198.

[5] Shohat and Stam, 186.

[6] Stuart Hall, "What is this 'black' in black popular culture?", in Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), 471;  Shohat and Stam, 194, 198, 199.

[samchristian23]

Discussion Leader Panel Presentation - Race and Representation

While the song “Can’t Hold Us Down” by Christina Aguilera1 is mostly about female empowerment and resisting gender stereotypes, the music video conveys even more, with stark imagery of a community that is made up primarily of people of color. The intersectionality that the video possesses is key to understanding its message. In Stuart Hall’s essay “What is this ‘black’ in black popular culture?2,” he introduces his idea that the “Black” in Black popular culture is not a set idea, rather it is a fluid conversation of Blackness. In his words, “What we are talking about is the struggle over cultural hegemony, which is these days waged as much in popular culture as anywhere else”3. While, as I stated earlier, on the surface this video is about what it means to be a woman, its underlying themes are of race and representation, which is the real battle being fought. This intersectionality is still key to Hall’s philosophy. As he says, “We are always in negotiation, not with a single set of oppositions that place us always in the same relation to others, but with a series of different positionalities”4. Aguilera’s exploration of themes of sexuality while using the backdrop of a primarily people-of-color community is this video’s way of continuing the conversation about what it means to be “Black”, or in the video’s case, simply “other”. “The Other” is a concept Edouard Edward Said introduces in his seminal book Orientalism5. In the context of the Orient, better known as Asia, he states that “​​The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the other”6. He goes on to say that Europe sees Asia as “its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience”7, yet it is “an integral of European material civilization and culture”7. While Aguilera’s video does not explicitly speak about Orientalism, some key themes are very present. In Orientalism, Said refers to the way Asia is perceived as “‘a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences”6. Essentially, Orientalism places emphasis on the mystification of Asian culture, through the power of European colonialism. The environment Aguilera’s video is set in is extremely colorful, and, as previously mentioned, mostly populated with people of color. Most of the very few white people in this video appear in the beginning, shown throwing milk into the street below. This can be seen as a representation of Orientalist themes. The white people are placed above the people of color who populate the streets below, and throw milk onto them, which can represent the Orientalist turn of imposing Euro-centricity on the culture of those colonized and disenfranchised.

Of course, the question must be asked, is this music video an authentic representation of the culture and community that it’s presenting to us? In their book Unthinking Eurocentrism8, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam consider the way that race and representation exist in the media. Under the section “Writing Hollywood And Race” in the chapter “Stereotype, Realism And The Struggle Over Representation,” they argue that there is an important distinction between media image and social reality. They use the documentary Color Adjustment to help their argument, stating that “Color Adjustment underlines this contrast between media image and social reality by suggestively juxtaposing sitcom episodes with documentary street footage”9. I’d like to pose the thought that perhaps Aguilera’s video would fall under the category of sitcom in this comparison, at least when it comes to the ideas of race and representation. Aguilera, who is of Ecuadorian, German, Irish, Welsh, and Dutch descent, did not grow up in people of color dominated areas of New York. She lived in Wexford, PA for most of her adolescence, a town in a majority-white county. This music video may feel inauthentic to many because it may not be authentic to Aguilera’s experiences. Which brings me to Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar grew up in Compton, CA, at a time when the city’s high crime rates were national news, due to the prominence of gangster rap groups like NWA. The music video for his song “i”10 showcases this environment prominently. From the cars to the police uniforms, the video harkens back to a time when Kendrick was growing up in South Central Los Angeles. In my estimation, Kendrick Lamar’s video represents more of the “documentary footage” that Shohat and Stam mentioned in their comparison with media image and social reality. Aguilera’s video can be felt as inauthentic because it feels like a sitcom, not in a comedic way but in a matter of faux reality. Kendrick’s video feels like a documentary because of its groundedness in his childhood and the experiences of his city. It should be noted that Aguilera appears to darken her skin in her video. As previously stated, Hall believes that popular culture is a place where the concept of “Black” is able to be conversed about. Kendrick, in his music video for “i”, is able to redefine “Blackness” on his own terms. He presents different depictions of Black characters in every moment. One moment that shows great contrast of character and incredible conversation in his own mind on the topic of “Blackness” comes at the 2:20 mark in the video for “i”11.

Kendrick walks past a house, on the front porch of which a man yells at a woman; presumably they are in a relationship. In this very same moment, two Black children, one boy and one girl, run by, playing together, juxtaposing the depiction of adult negativity behind them. There are many things that can be interpreted from this shot, which perhaps even greater lends itself to the argument that it is more “documentary footage”. The perceived authenticity of Kendrick Lamar’s “i” video thus lends itself to a challenge of Orientalist ideals. While the video does show White police officers arresting a Black man at 1:4312, seemingly exerting that idea of power over “the other” that Orientalism is built so much upon, it is immediately followed by Kendrick and his crew of dancers/partygoers weaving through the group of cops with numbers that far outweigh what the cops possess, thus re-establishing power over themselves.

Works Cited

1Aguilera, Christina. “Christina Aguilera - Can’t Hold Us Down (Official HD Video).” YouTube, November 18, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg8QgUIKXHw&t=196s.

2Hall, Stuart. “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Essay. In Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 1996. 

3Hall. “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?”, 471

4Hall. “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?”, 476

5Said, Edward. “Introduction.” Essay. In Orientalism. London, United Kingdom: Routledge, 1978. 

6Said. Orientalism, 9

7Said. Orientalism, 10

8Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. “Stereotype, Realism And The Struggle Over Representation.” Essay. In Unthinking Eurocentrism. New York, NY: Routledge, 1994. 

9Shohat and Stam. “Stereotype, Realism And The Struggle Over Representation”, 198

10Lamar, Kendrick. “Kendrick Lamar - i (Official Video).” YouTube, November 4, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aShfolR6w8. 

11Lamar. “i”, 2:20

12Lamar. “i”, 1:43

Discussion Questions

Can the darkening of one’s skin make the work feel more authentic, and when might this backfire?

Does either video engage in stereotype, and if so, does it detract from the video or benefit it?

Is fair to compare the music videos for these songs, though the lyrics of the songs convey such different messages, and can a music video change a son’s message?

[janeindamembrane]

Regarding the second question, I think the conversation about stereotypes and their connection to social reality (although often grossly distorted) was interesting. I think Christina definitely is engaging in stereotypes. Kendrick is also similarly showing this kind of environment and showing stereotypes in a much more realized authentic way (more of the social reality than the distortion or fully aesthetic effect). Kendrick is showing the stereotype of the other while being another.

The videos are interesting to compare because they both have this theme of showing off a location. I do wonder why Christina chose this video concept since the song itself doesn't really insist upon this particular video.

[janeindamembrane]

Race and Representation Music Video Analysis

For my panel discussion I will be analyzing Christina Aguilera’s “Can’t Hold Us Down” music video which ignores the power of the images within its video and the power that Aguilera has in relation to the cultures she is adopting and representing. I will also be analyzing Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby”, which I believe attempts to provide an alternate look at stereotypes, not through a commitment to “actuality” or “positive images”, but through the experimental heightening of contrasting stereotypes about the black gay man that reveal their contradictory and arbitrary nature.

Christina Aguilera’s “Can’t Hold Us Down” music video was produced as part of her Stripped album, which was centered around a more provocative image. The song is focused on feminism with the echoing lyrics of “this is for my girls all around the world”, yet by focusing just on feminism, it markets the experiences of all women as the same, when race and other factors affect experiences. Christina Aguilera, a white passing Latina woman, fails to acknowledge the difference in her experience as a women from all the “girls around the world” while the representation within her music video, particularly her own image which is constructed from ghetto stereotypes of black or Latino womanhood.

(from Left to Right) at 00:20 establishing shot shows men in front of mural mentioning crack. Grocery cart filled with trashbags (implied homelessness or poverty) are in foreground. The foreground and background of this shot simplifies and established the nature of these characters- ecliped by their identity of poverty with the possibility of illegal activity always hanging over them.

At 00:06, Christina Aguilera is introduced on the steps of the dirty curb (objects are literally being thrown down) while surrounded by Latina and Black women. Aguilera is passing herself off as one of the community, but as the star of the video and a pop star she holds all the power in the following representation of these women.

The music video starts out with establishing scenes of the urban setting filled with graffiti, dilapidated buildings, and people lounging/playing around ever corner. The assumption the audience is supposed to reach plays upon stereotypes and ideas already implemented by hegemonic culture [1]. This is a portrayal of the ghetto or the gritty and unkempt. This setting allows the later behavior we see, particularly that of the men, which is supposed to represent a particular uninhibited nature, that one may not expect to see as unmasked in a suburban (read white) area.

Aguilera is using these stereotypes, of the unruly and over sexualized black man in the ghetto, and her own hyper-sexualized image of herself residing in the ghetto to give herself and the overall music video a sense of grittiness or provocativeness. Its supposed to come as a jarring departure from her previous work, as if stepping closer to Black pop-culture allows her to claim an edge which she can (and did) leave behind when the image is no longer as monetarily valuable.

Compared to her earlier works, one can see that she adopts the stereotypes and culture of Black and Latina women to appease a certain "spectatorial fascination" audiences may have [2]. There is- as seen in many films, TV shows, and also the attitudes of certain people online- a fascination with the ghetto- a place that is the intersection between minority races and lower class (as in economic) status. There is a power in watching the ghetto while allowing the distant image of the ghetto to be relegated to perversion and unseemliness.

The way that pop culture portrays the ghetto can be compared to Edward Said's example of the studies and portrayals of the Orient or Ella Shohat's and Robert Stam's many elaborations on films about the Third World. The assumptions about the ghetto have eclipsed the social reality of it, and it is paradoxically admonished and then revered (out of fascination for what has been admonished). Stuart Hall defines this as the "modernist construction of primitivism, the fetishistic recognition and the disavowal of the primitive difference" [3]. There is the fascination with a supposed primitive or simpler nature, but the underlying admission that it is inferior or unpractical. Aguilera's power in terms of identity politics places her in a position that allows her to benefit from fascination from the scene she is portraying while always letting the audience know that this isn't who she is; she never faces the admonishment. Meanwhile, opinions of the other background characters in the video may be generalized and due to the weight that minority representations have, contribute further to negative images of certain groups.

Question:

While it is clear that Aguilera's urban setting is a selective appropriation of culture and stereotypes, it can't be denied that it is somewhat connected to a social reality, one that is steeped in imposed social, political, and economic difference. If "positive images" potentially ignore realities and obstacles to the black experience, how is meaningful representation created? In your opinion, how much meaning is their in 'truthful' representation and to what extent is that possible?

One of the groups that suffers immensely from this video is that of Black men. The video is centered around feminism and the sexual harassment that women face. It is, however, hard to separate this message from the identity politics and racial power that Aguilera has over nearly everyone in the video. The person who gropes her in the beginning is a black man, thus perpetuating unseemly stereotypes that come from the caricature of the sexually and racially intimidating "buck" [4]. It is the unruly and extremely sexualized Black man who assaults the white women and who must be admonished.

The particular choice of who is the assaulter and the assaulted plays into already created social schemas due to the (American) audience living in the inescapable context of the dominant cultural hegemony- which continues to refract itself. Through the groping it is suggested that the man is dominating the woman, but through the larger meta lense of this video, Aguilera is dominating the representation of the Black man.

Question:

What is the responsibility of Aguilera and the creators of this music video when acknowledging the harmful stereotypes it perpetrates from Black men? How could the intersectionality of identity politics have been better addressed while still maintaining its message about the sexualized or inferior role imposed upon women?

In regards to the Latina and Black women that Aguilera is supposedly upholding, they are for the most part relegated to the background. There is a power balance that is communicated through this [5]. Through this diminishing of their importance and the centrality of Aguilera (who is then hyped up by other women), Aguilera becomes this mediating presence who is meant as a stand-in (immediate representation) for the audience but also as the confronter of the power dynamic the men have over the (other) women [6].

At 1:50: When other women are put in the foreground, facial expressions or seeming characteristics (sassiness, sexuality, or being a good dancer) are highlighted. This plays into racialized stereotypes of the sassy hyper sexualized Black women (something that Aguilera is trying to portray herself as) or the passionate Latina dancer [7].

There is the particularly troubling scene with Lil Kim (who I noticed is not credited in the video title as featuring unlike the video in the queue that credits Redman). While Aguilera is adopting blackness and the characterized sexiness, tanned skin, and style of it, Lil' Kim. After being front and center, Aguilera essentially gives up some space to Lil' Kim- a sign of reverence. Lil' Kim's outfit stands out as more sexualized than the rest with more skin showing. She is portrayed as the epitome of stereotyped ghetto blackness- sexually confident (perhaps aggressive) in skimpy clothing. Unlike Aguilera, who is protected by her whiteness so that the audience distinguishes her character in the video from reality, Lil' Kim's representation becomes not only who she is, but who all urban Black woman are.

In the scenes where Christina uses the hose on the men, it is a symbolic power move where the hose plays the role of the penis. It should be noted, however, that Aguilera continues to be the one to take action against the men, as afforded by her stardom but also her role within the racial hierarchy. Someone else gets the hose only when she finally steps away. The video is ending and she gets to leave the ghetto, but the representations of Latino/a and Black women/men does not get to leave.

In contrast, Lil Nas X's "INDUSTRY BABY" provides an opportunity to focus less on images than that of discourse. Simply by Lil Nas X existing and making this video there is the relaying of a unique voice and perspective that is typically sidelined. Additionally, Lil Nas X's intersection of identity is never forgotten since it is intrinsically tied together that he is black and gay.

What makes this important representation (not a 'positive image') isn't that what is displays is some kind of authenticity, but rather the prompting of discourse it provides [8]. It fights stereotypes through subversion or even nodding to them, causing the audience to reckon with the naturalization of the original stereotypes. This can be seen by setting the video in prison. Clearly, what is shown in the video is not the reality of prison (such as the costumes), but it takes what is the reality combined with assumption to create subversion.

Lil Nas X takes what is expected to be a very masculine place and is able to portray it as a queer place of joy and camadarie. Usually, when there is queerness in prison it is assumed to be an act of violence that enforces heteronormativity. The isolation of the prison as well as the criminality of prisoners supposedly drives them to homosexuality. Meanwhile, there is also the obvious visual fact that Lil Nas X and many of his companions in the video are Black. The violence (particularly sexual) that is characteristic of Black caricatures comes to forefront in the prison. If the Black men were bad in the ghetto they will be terrible in prison.

There is the complex intersectionality of multiple caricatures- the violent man in prison who resorts to homosexuality, the violent black man in prison who resorts to homosexuality, and the gay black man- who is supposedly feminine and meant (in a prison setting like this) to be dominated.

Stuart Hall talks about the potential trap of black pop culture, which often packages commodified stereotypes as "the arena where [they] find who [they] really are" since "it is only through the way in which [they] represent and imagine [themselves] that [they] come to know how they are constituted and who [they] are" [9]. It is difficult for a black man to overcome pop culture's image of him by over-attributing lived experience as a homogenous representation [10].

Yet Lil Nas X has always had to face his own personal rupture of the masculine identity of the black man because of the feminine identity of the gay man. It is this rupture that makes him a unique voice to listen to as he is not as trapped by the constraints of the dominant hegemonic view because of how it particularly carved out the identity (and exclusion) of the black gay man. He does not have to be made aware of the positionalities because he has always resided within a precarious intersection.

The prison can be seen as a metaphor for the very masculine world of hip hop that Lil Nas X inhibits- which matches the lyrics of his song which condemn those who sun him or believe that he can't make it in the industry because of his identity (adding the queerness on top of the hip-hop accepted blackness).

From 0:36; This scene takes a particular setting that refers to the sexual violence of prison and turns it into a performative stage of dance, a use of the body which Hall says is "the only cultural capital we had".

While many of the background dancers in scenes are black, they are not put into the background because of Lil Nas X's own identity as a black queer man. There is no inherent power dynamic besides that of Lil Nas X being the singer. The racial positionally and dominance of Aguilera's video is not present here [11].

There is perhaps the question of the misrepresentation of women because of the lack of women except for one scene where Jack Harlow seduces a warden. Shohat and Stam mention how Do the Right Thing runs into a similar representational issue with its absence of a feminist voice [12]. Hall notes the importance of diverse voice because of the impossibility of the homogenity or universality to any discourse. Since the video is such a analysis of masculinity, women have no place except to establish Jack Harlow's (assumed) powerful positon of a white heterosexual male. This is then subverted when it is Lil Nas X who electrocutes Harlow on the chair, as, in reality, the amount of black men sentenced to death is larger than others.

Question:

What does the video say about performative gender? Is there an intersection between performative gender and performative racial stereotypes? Or is there more of a social economic basis for the latter?

At 1:52; The sequence where a security guard is watching Lil Nas X's "Montero" video (which he is sent to this jail in this video for) right before Lil Nas X knocks him out plays with the idea of media consumption and commodification of the black rapper. It is very important this guard is white, because his dominant positon (as a white male and as the prison guard) allows him to look down upon Lil Nas X while also using him for enjoyment. To this guard (and to many audiences) the black (gay) man is a source of entertainment or a threat.

Overall, the "INDUSTRY BABY" does a better job with representation, not because it conforms to positive images that are palatable to mainstream moral conscious, but because of Lil Nas X's identity and how the video stays true to the intersection of his identity rather than trying to commodify certain stereotypes (especially ones that aren't true to him).

QUESTION:

What is the responsibility creators from dominant cultural positions of power have when promoting or working with people within marginalized groups?

Citations

[1] Edward Said, "Knowing the Oriental", in Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 34.

[2] Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, "Stereotype, Realism and the Struggle Over Representation", in Unthinking Eurocentrism (London: Routledge, 1994), 188.

[3] Stuart Hall, "What is this 'black' in black popular culture?", in Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), 470.

[4] Shohat and Stam, 195.

[5] Shohat and Stam, 208.

[6] Shohat and Stam, 189.

[7] Shohat and Stam, 196.

[8] Shohat and Stam, 214, 215.

[9] Hall, 476, 477.

[10] ibid.

[11] Hall, 471.

[12] Shohat and Stam, 214.

[theuncannyprofessoro]

Reading Notes 9: Halberstam to Hall

Jack Halberstam’s “Looking Butch: A Rough Guide to Butches on Film” and Stuart Hall’s “What is this ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” link our inquiries into gender and sexuality with race and representation.

What examples of “positive images” of marginalized peoples are in film and television, and how can these “positive images” be damaging to and for marginalized communities?

In what ways is (popular/visual) culture (performance) a complicated and political site where various identities are negotiated, and how can cultural strategies make a difference and shift dispositions of power?

@theuncannyprofessoro

[janeindamembrane]

Introduction

Both Jack (published as Judith) Halberstam and Stuart Hall analyze the idea of representation (and its history/trajectory) through the lens of being a minority who has to be accepted and allowed to have higher levels of representation (the lifting of production codes for lesbians and appropriation for black pop culture). Halberstam analyzes the history of butches in film which includes, after the end of the production era codes, the proliferation of ‘positive images’ and the shunning of the coded images that previously were the only representation of lesbians. Hall’s analysis of ‘black’ pop culture also talks about positive images or culture (Black American) derived from social realities that have been co-opted (and subsequently made more positive) by ‘higher’ (European) culture.

Question One

Positive images are often seen as good or true representation. For instance, when it comes to lesbians, a positive image can be contrasted to prior modes of representation- such as the stereotypes of the predatory butch who preys upon the feminine and/or straight girl. The idea of positive or negative images don’t speak to actual representation; “positive images are no more realistic than negative ones… positive and negative are simply not standards that are productively applied to representation”[1]. Rather these terms measure how palatable representations are to the mainstream conscious while carrying some bit of the marginalized or previously maligned. Positive images can bring about acceptance, instead of the derision caused by representations which only paint minorities (such as lesbians) as violent, immoral, doomed, or strange. Yet, as Halberstam notes, these images “too often depend on thoroughly ideological conceptions of positive”[2]. Halberstam refers to Fried Green Tomatoes a heavily awarded film praised for ‘positive’ representations of lesbians, yet feminine aspects have been drawn out to appeal to the mainstream while maligning the butch[3]. The original novel was coded a certain way that was determined to be too negative, so to make the image positive, the butch/masculine nature of one of the characters was erased[4]. Thus, the dominant cultural hegemony which previously owned the representation of the lesbian or the black must be appeased in order for the minority to feel accepted and that the representation was positive. The praising of positive images and the shunning of negative hides nuance and history of the representation of the ‘other’ by trying to make it appeasable to the hegemony.

[1] Judith Halberstam, "Looking Butch A Rough Guide to Butches on Film", in Female Masculinity (Duke University Press, 1998), 185.

[2] Halberstam, 185.

[3] Halberstam, 185.

[4] Halberstam, 217.

Question Two

There is the uniqueness of the ‘popular’ in that it does allow more space for the marginalized than the comparative high or elite culture. There could be a connection of popular with the ‘carnivalesque’ as it is something enjoyed, coveted, and yet acknowledged in difference or lack of supposed high value[1]. Popular culture also has an assumed authenticity as it is seen to represent the community, the social , or whatever “resists its being constantly made over as low and outside”[2] The popular is not fixed but rather a ‘war of positions’ since the popular (or the cultural hegemony) is never about pure victory or pure domination… it is always about shifting the balance of power in the relations of culture”[3].  This shifting means that there has come to be an ordering of cultures, and when they are brought into the global culture (what popular culture can transcend into), stereotyping and formulaic images of certain cultures are propagated due to the expropriation and then distortion of culture by other (higher ordered) cultures. A spectator who witnesses their own stereotype that is created by another culture has to reconcile with the bit of experience that stands behind that representation all while seeing its inauthenticity. Hall concedes that he can’t imagine that spaces in popular culture would have been given without the use of stereotype and the appropriation to culture. The question he poses, is what cultural strategies can be used to change this power balance (which he insists is changeable) and whether this is the right cultural/historical context to do so (since all culture exists because of context)[4].

Strategies could be the refusing of their position of difference, a movement beyond the essentialism of us vs them through an understanding of culture politics. This understanding could result in the logic of binary opposition: the refusing of a stereotype and thus the refusion to be othered. It may also come as the logic of coupling which seeks to replace or with and, acknowledging the intersections of identities between ‘others’[5]. Positionality must be seen as an intersection between many different kinds of difference, otherwise stereotypes or breaking of the serve to only position one group in a relation of dominance over another[6].

[1] Stuart Hall, "What is this 'black' in black popular culture?", in Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), 472.

[2] Hall, 472.

[3] Hall, 471.

[4] Hall, 474, 475.

[5] Hall, 475.

[6] Hall, 476.

[janeindamembrane]

Analytical Application 5

Within the Sandman comics, there are many upholding and subversions of gender and looking relations. The comics embrace unnatural characters, among them characters who flout gender roles or are ambiguous, to begin with (or become more ambiguous). The evilness of other characters eclipses any unnaturalness of lost gender norms providing good representation (not a positive image) while also portraying a reality of the unfortunate targeting of the marginalized. There are many power dynamics between characters, which additionally exhibit the power of looking at which gender relations is a facet of.

Gender Norms

Neil Gaiman, "Into the Night", in The Sandman Book One, 397.

Definition:

Gender norms are what dictate the divide between perceived genders- male and female. To be recognized as the gender one identifies with, the subject is commanded to 'hail' or 'interpolate' through behavioral conformity to gender norms. If not, there is “the fear of punishment” or “reprimanding utterance”[1]. Gender norms are additionally edited and changed based on other identifiers such as race, age, and class[2]; “race and racism determined the construct of gender”[3].

While gender is arbitrary in that “there is no subject prior to its constructions”, there are “cultural and political discursive forces” which “produce a set of consequences which exceed and confound what appears to be the disciplining intention motivating the law”[4]. In summary, while it is hard to rebel against gendered norms because of the set consequences, there is no inherent attitude toward gender that allows disobedience or reworking at the price of being denied recognition by the powers that force or uphold norms.

[1] Judith Butler, "Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion", in Feminist Film Theory, ed. by Sue Thornman (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 337, 339.

[2] bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators", in Feminist Film Theory, ed. by Sue Thornham, (New York: NYU Press, 1999), 310.

[3] hooks, 313.

[4] Butler, 337, 338.

Analysis:

From their very first introduction, it is established that Barbie and Ken are a very normal couple. Their names are a reference to one of the most famous couples of all time, and a toy series that has been seriously critiqued over time for its upholding of gender norms- that being the hyperfeminine woman. The introduction also references (unknown to us at the time) Hal's drag name, showing that while they claim to be ok with it, they are both products of environments that would look down upon the 'disobedience of gender norms' that Hal participates in. Rose later writes to her mother how "terrifyingly, appallingly, normal"[1] they are, which may lead the audience to believe that this is their only purpose in the plot. Yet, Barbie will come to be a more significant character. Once she breaks away from Ken who in himself represents the gender norm and how women tie themselves to it for legitimacy.

Neil Gaiman, "Moving In", in The Sandman Book One, 279.

The cataclysmic event that severs Barbie from Ken is the combining of their dreams when Rose acts as a vortex. On the surface, both of their dreams enact gender roles of what is appropriate for a guy and a girl to enjoy: Ken dreams of the trio of money, sex, and power while Barbie dreams of fantastical creatures and princesses. There is much more depth to Barbie's dreams than just fulfilling a gender norm. Ken's dreams represent the life and power dynamics that he can exhibit in real life. This is why when the vortex is over he is unperturbed. His dreams show women as sexual objects and when he wakes up he has an expectation that his desire will be fulfilled. Any repression that is showing itself in his dream is only because morality or properness stands in his way. Meanwhile, Barbie's dream is a world where she dictates her fate and her side characters are deeply loyal to her. Rose acknowledges that it is "more valid and true than anything [Barbie] feels when waking" [2]. Barbie, by enacting gender roles and limiting herself to the role of Ken's girlfriend, has limited herself in her own desires and has had to repress them into her dream. She does not desire money, power, and sex rather she desires freedom. When the barriers between their dreams crash, she is forced to confront the dominating male gaze/patriarchy which has dictated her waking life to invade her dream life. Eventually, we learn that this is the end of Barbie's relationship with Ken and the beginning of a new chapter where she explores her own desires/adventures. Realizing that even her dreams could be invaded by the gender norms and the relationship of a woman to a man, she simply decides to stop.

[clockwise] Neil Gaiman, "Into the Night", 403, 407, 409.

[1] Neil Gaiman, "Moving In", in The Sandman Book One, 283.

[2] Gaiman, 406.

Gender Performativity

[from left to right] Neil Gaiman, "Beginning to See The Light", in The Sandman Book Two, 370; Gaiman, "Slaughter on Fifth Avenue", in The Sandman Book Two, 299.

Definition:

Since gender norms are behavioral conformity, “there is no subject prior to its constructions, and neither is the subject determined by their constructions”[1]. Society’s strictness with what is appropriate behavior for each gender is a result of norms which have come to represent “more than it ever meant to be”, hiding under the veneer of naturalization[2]. This façade can be revealed through looking at gendered disobedience like the “imitative structure” of drag which reveals that “the effect of realness is the ability to to compel belief”[3]. If one performs the norms well enough they come to embody them and thus become what that norm entails (“a figure of a body which is no particular body”)[4]. By performing to subvert norms, drag performers become what the norm coincides, revealing that “’imitation’ [or performance] is at the heart of the heterosexual project[‘s] gender binarism’s… hegemonic heterosexuality is itself a constant and repeated effort to imitate its own idealizations”[5].

[1] Butler, 338.

[2] Butler, 337.

[3] Butler, 341.

[4] Butler, 342.

[5] Butler, 338.

Analysis:

As seen in the "Gender Norms" section, the infiltration of Barbie's protected Dream World is a turning point for her character. In that world, while she was feminine presenting, she wasn't subjected to the expectations of Ken and the larger white male patriarchal system he represents. When we return to Barbie in "A Game of You" series, her life has entirely changed and also she has become one of our main characters whom we view the story from (very different from how the audience originally perceived her when looking from Rose's point of view). She now lives in Manhattan and has gone "sort of seriously wild" [1]. We first see her sleeping, though apparently, she does not dream anymore perhaps showing her discontentment with both her waking world and the illusion of the dream world. When she wakes up she goes to get ready, but instead of dressing up in a way we expect the Barbie we knew to dress, her makeup is checkerboarded across her face. This isn't the only way she doesn't comply with the norms she previously had. She reveals to Wanda, her neighbor and friend, that she didn't have sex with Ken anymore and that he left her. The sexual relationship between the two was defined largely by gender roles and how males desire and females are to be desired. In addition, Barbie keeps company with a large host of people who defy gender roles in comparison to the more reserved attitude she had at the house with Ken (concerning Hal). Wanda is a Trans woman, Hazel and Foxglove are lesbians, and Thessaly is a witch.

[from left to right] "Slaughter on Fifth Avenue", in The Sandman Book Two, 306, 308

Barbie's wild experiments in her appearance is a chance for her to rebel against the seeming permanence of gender norms that was imposed on her by the males in her life (first her father and then boyfriends like Ken). It is these experiments that blend the dream and real world for her, allowing her to embrace the agency she had desired in her real life. She is still performing in a sense (with the exaggerated makeup), but she is no longer performing in the ways that were long expected of her and other (white) women.

[1] Neil Gaiman, "Lost Hearts", in The Sandman Book One, 432.

Looking Relations

Neil Gaiman, "The Collectors", in The Sandman Book One, 380.

Definition:

Looking relations has to do with the pleasure of scopophilia, the desire to view “other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze”[1]. There is power in who is looking- the spectators in the technical sense and the protagonists in a narrative sense- and who is being controlled/subjected by their gaze. The looking relations of cinema are an extension of these relations in society. In society, power has always belonged to the white male, so it makes sense that the gaze entertained in cinema has mainly been for that man and through characters who look like that man[2]. This is why there is often a spectacle attached to women’s’ bodies, even with the thinly imposed narrative it is clear the character is meant to be looked at by the protagonist and therefore by the audience[3].

While the screen surrogates may be male, others can still look unlike in real life, and not be admonished for doing so. bell hooks exemplifies the punishment that black men in real life often have for looking at white women or men as a reason why they might feel a pleasure previously limited when watching cinema[4].  It is important to not solely define looking relations in terms of male and female because of the various intersections of power dynamics and therefore looking relations.

[1] Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", in Film Theory and Criticism, ed. by Leo Braudy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 713.

[2] Mulvey, 716.

[3] Mulvey, 715.

[4] bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators", in Feminist Film Theory, ed. by Sue Thornham, (New York: NYU Press, 1999), 309.

Analysis:

What is interesting about many of the 'collectors' convened is how they act out violent versions of looking relations. The man introduced in the panels above is never named. He only appears briefly to talk to Fun Land about why he kills. His killing is about dominance and shame. For him, it started with the pleasure of looking at the female spectacle in porn magazines. But this is not enough for him since he understands that the power in looking here cannot be turned down; anyone can look at a skin rag, and while he's ashamed of his lust he also wants there to be even more power within this looking relation. For him going outside and realizing that he could look at real women the same way as the magazine women and submit them unwillingly to his gaze was tantalizing. He wanted to know "how it felt" to follow these women knowing he was dominating them visually and that he had the ability "with a knife in [his] pocket" to dominate them physically. He is additionally enabled somewhat by society since as a white man (which is implied through his shared skin tone with Fun Land and Rose) he already has the power of looking relations and may not be as shunned or confronted about his staring than if he were a black man. Ultimately, looking and knowing he could hurt women wasn't enough for him. By killing them he exerts the most power over them- he looked at their bodies, used their bodies, and then got rid of them as soon as he no longer needed them. He dominates their image and then ends their lives- their own agencies and stories- because of his own needs thus, at least in this moment of their lives, completely subjecting them to his narrative.

Butch

Neil Gaiman, "The Collectors", in The Sandman Book One, 375.

Definition:

The butch historically represents “the only way of registering sexual variance in the repressive environment of Hollywood cinema” [1]during the Production Code era which censored “sex perversion” out of fear of normalizing it[2]. Thus, the butch was a way of covering explicit references to the LGBTQ community through code. As a counterreaction during the age of independent lesbian cinema, the butch came to be seen as a ‘negative image’ one that caused homophobia and had to be excised, even to the detriment of certain realities/identities[3].

Butch is centered around the idea of female masculinity and has come to represent a couple of different categories/stereotypes of masculinity as identified by Jack Halberstam: Tomboys, Predators, Fantasy Butches, Transvestites, Barely Butches, and Postmodern Butches[4]. The tomboy is the girl who, prior to the maturity of embracing her femininity, is raised outside of “seemingly concrete and rigid societal structures”. A straying away from the tomboy film or representation for film is because of how the public quickly connected these youths to potential queerness. The tomboy is connected to the lesbian; “the not-girls who struggle to make gender fit” with their “angular and flat bodies” instead of “the curves of naturalized femininity”, whose failure to assimilate casts a “queer future for her butch body”[5]. Predators are meanwhile the aggressive “full-blown lesbian who seeks out naïve young women for sexual companionship”[6], and fantasy butches connect the destruction of femininity within the butch body/person to the conventions of fantastical (not focusing on the real/normal) genres[7]. Transvestites (within the category of butch) are “women [who] appear cross-dressed as men in mainstream cinema”, perhaps seen as “flawed women” rather than “perfect men” (whom they would rather identify with)[8]. Barely butch is a product of the 1860s which due to the self-conscious representations of independent cinema replaced the stereotypes of “dykes, bulldaggers, cross-dressers, and butch perverts”[9]. Barely butch is lesbianism under softened or feminine surfaces; lesbian desire under this is “shown to desire sameness, not difference”[10]. Postmodern is a reconciling of the barely butch and the earlier depictions of butch, realizing that stereotypes aren’t inherently bad and can represent a variety of experiences (as long as nothing specific is generalized and nothing generalized is assumed to be specific).

[1]Judith [Jack] Halberstam, "Looking Butch A Rough Guide to Butches on Film", in Female Masculinity (Duke University Press, 1998), 186.

[2] Halberstam, 177.

[3] Halberstam, 187.

[4] Halberstam, 186.

[5] Halberstam, 190.

[6] Halberstam, 194.

[7] Halberstam, 203.

[8] Halberstam, 206.

[9] Halberstam, 217.

[10]Halberstam, 218.

Analysis:

I mention all the different stereotypes within the butch identity, particularly the tomboy, because of how I believe one of the central characters of the issues I read, Rose Walker, is coded in a way that hints at queerness or at least at her being one of the “not-girls” who does not inhibit “naturalized femininity. The reasons I believe this are because:

She is consistently mistaken as looking younger than she is. She is viewed as a girl and not a woman.

Her closet often has her wearing shirts or tank tops and shorts rather than dresses or other more feminine outfits.

(From left to right) Neil Gaiman, "The Doll's House", in The Sandman Book One, 267; Gaiman, "Moving In", in The Sandman Book One, 293, 290.

The sequence of panels from page 375, affirms Rose's butch role through the perverted character of Fun Land, a child predator akin to the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood". Like a couple of the 'collectors' that we meet, Fun Land's perversion comes from an inability to cope with sexual deviance combined with the power of being a white male (see the section on looking relations). Fun Land is not attracted to (or perhaps unable to interact with) what is considered 'naturalized femininity' which causes him to be interested in children- who he views as innocent, naive, and easily exploitable. While Rose is not actually a child, Fun Land's pursuit of her is done because she appears younger or does not seem to be in tune with her female sexuality- something which Fun Land is opposed to.

Gaiman, "The Collectors", 374, 383.

Fun Land is not to suggest that any attraction not to the norm is instantly perverse, or that child predation is the same as being attracted to more masculine women or other LGTBQ relations. Simply it is to confirm that Rose falls into his predation because of her butch presentation. This itself is somewhat of a subversion of the final girl who, Jack Halberstam suggests, is protected from violence through her more masculine traits- not attracting violence earlier and being able to fight and resist that violence[1]. Yet this trope is later unsubverted through Rose's continuos survival (even against Morpheus).

[1] Halberstam, 204.

Sex/Gender Binary

(From left to right) Neil Gaiman, "The Dolls House", in The Sandman Book One, 254;

Definition:

As established, there are a set of norms one must identify and comply with in order to be recognized with a “gender under contemporary regimes of power” (339). This binary- the divide between two groups- serves as “to see human differences in simplistic opposition to each other”[1]. What defines the binary are symbolic actions or features, which within the world of gender norms “assumes the primacy of sexual difference”[2]. In extension to the focus on sexual difference is oppression based on difference: “institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as a surplus people… those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion”[3]. Even within the oppression of sex, where a white woman realizes the distortion and abuse of her difference by white males, there is the oppression of black women and within there poor and rich and old and young or any order. Binaries serve to separate and to subject.

[1] Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House", in Sister Outsider (California: The Crossing Press, 1984), 114.

[2] Butler, 342.

[3] Lorde, 115.

Analysis:

One of the 'endless' (godlike beings ruling over parts of mortals' lives), Desire, defies the binary categories of man and woman. Unlike Wanda or Hal, there is no suggestion as to any gender orientation. Desire simply has "never been satisfied with one sex". They appear feminine in some aspects while masculine in others. They could change certain aspects to appear more of one or the other, potentially appealing to anybody and everybody. Their representation as desire itself has bigger ramifications. Human desire is not binary but is fluid and different for different people. If Desire is nonbinary, then it is humans that enforce and require the defining of difference. Desire sits in the intersection of the binary, or perhaps outside of it entirely.

Yet, humans control aspects by giving them narratives. While Desire in its form is not gendered, in reality, it becomes gendered- the male's desires trump those of the women and are often allowed to be more aggressive and demanding.

Desire's deviance could be seen as a slandering of nonbinary characters- such as the predator butch- but this does not seem to be the intent of Gaiman. Allowing Desire to be nonbinary and also grey within morality may not be a 'positive image', but it is one which can (along with other contributions to nonbinary representations) flesh out a large world of differences and humanity.

[theuncannyprofessoro]

Reading Notes 8: Lorde to Butler

In our continued discussions, Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” and “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” and Judith Butler’s Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion” provide further introspection into systems and definitions of gender and sexuality.

How do power and privilege impact the relations people have with each other and with institutions, and how can we acknowledge, examine, and remedy oppression and marginalization using oppressive and marginalized systems?

How do cultural, societal, and media representations support gender performativity and in so doing complicate gender norms, and in what ways is heterosexuality a performance?

@theuncannyprofessoro

[janeindamembrane]

Introduction

In Audre Lorde’s and Judith Butlerwritings, the topic of gender and sexuality expanded to discuss how the system of patriarchy can repeat and legitimize itself even through its opposition due to the performance of constructed norms.

Question One

It is easily acknowledged that we all live within the system of oppression or (white male heterosexual patriarchy). It can also be acknowledged that all feminist theory is limited by the world that females live in, which is subjugation. This is by alluded to by Laura Mulvey (who talks of the challenge to feminists "caught within the language of patriarchy")[1] and affirmed by both Audre Lorde and Judith Butler. Lorde refers to this system as the “Master’s house”[2] and Butler talks of how “heterosexual privilege” attempts to naturalize itself as the “original and the norm”[3]. It is because the marginalized live in the masters house and has been taught to think of the masters privilege as natural that they have only been taught the “masters tools”. One of the main tools is the misnaming and distortion of difference since the profit economy “needs outsiders as surplus people” so that the non-outsiders can be empowered[4]. This tool of viewing human difference as “human deviance” creates an issue where someone who has been marginalized is still distorting their relationship to others who have been marginalized in different categories of identity. A white woman may see her oppression as a woman in relation to the white man and diagnose gender as the main system of oppression[5]. What she doesn’t see because she is so focused on her difference from the master is that on the other side of her are those oppressed due to age, class, sexuality, and/or race. The master’s house exploits difference and enables certain people to enjoy some privileges of the master through a certain degree of identification with the white male heterosexual who has been established as the norm. When they are able to recognize their difference and oppression they still continue to do so in a way that normalizes and centers the ‘master’ through its misunderstanding or ignoring of the other oppressed[6].

It is not possible to use the tools of oppressive systems to free all from oppression, since these tools have within them “old blueprints of expectation and response [that are part of] old structures of oppression [which] must be alter[ed] at the same time as we alter the living conditions with are a result of those old structures”[7]. Lorde particularly addresses the feminist movement and its inconsideration of black women which ultimately harms its goal by threatening joint power. Through the intersectionality of a white woman’s identity, they can acknowledge their oppression as women but still maintain privilege through their whiteness and their ability to somewhat blend into the white man’s world. The women’s movement thus is not true to the experience of the black woman, something that bell hooks also lamented on. Movements, Lorde argues, that the feminist movement needs to include other differences into what it means to be oppressed as a woman; “[women’s] future survival is predicated upon our ability to relate within equality. As women, we must root out internalized patterns of oppression… recognize differences among women who are our equals, neither inferior nor superior, and devise ways to use each other’s difference to enrich our visions and our joint struggles.”[8] Looking not to the oppressor, but to each other can help reestablish definitions of power.

[1] Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", in Film Theory and Criticism, ed. by Leo Braudy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 712.

[2] Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House", in Sister Outsider (California: The Crossing Press, 1984), 112.

[3] Judith Butler, "Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion", in Feminist Film Theory, ed. by Sue Thornman (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 339.

[4] Lorde, "Master's House", 115.

[5] Lorde, "Master's House", 116.

[6] Lorde, "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference", in Sister Outsider, 122.

[7] Lorde, "Redefining Difference", 123.

[8] Lorde, "Redefining Difference", 122.

Question Two

Cultural, societal, and media representations support gender performativity by naturalizing and idealizing the norms constructed by the systems of oppression. Judith Light uses the concept of drag to point out the phantasmic (arbitrary) nature of attributes to heterosexual gender norms. Drag contests, such as the ones seen in the film Light consistently refers to, Paris is Burning, are often judged on the idea of realness- who can blend in the best with whatever category is judged whether it be trying to “out woman the women[1]” or portray themselves as businessmen. Despite the inherently defiant nature of drag to the system, “there is also a kind of reiteration of norms which cannot be called subversive”[2]. Parodying norms does not displace them, but rather affirms their realness or the “phantasmic promise of rescue from poverty, homophobia and racism”[3] if only one can pass as the norm. In drag, realness is the goal meaning that these constructive norms are not being read (taken down) but rather desired. In short, media representations are all gender performances whether it is what is typically accepted or in opposition. Defiant performances against the norm reveal the performative nature of norms, but also sometimes uphold the norm as the norm thrives on repetition. The performances that cosplay norms or try to claim power associated with identities they do not have are building a fragile identity propped upon the prim ordinance of norms and the current structure[4]. In Lorde’s view, this is using the tools (the norms) of the master’s house (the structure that prioritizes certain identities through identification with the norms). Yet, through this imitation that attempts to produce the “naturalized effect”, the performance of gender is called out; “it exposes the norms that regulate realness as themselves phantasmicly instituted and sustained”[5]. The supposed norms that differentiate gender or sexuality are the distortions of difference that Lorde refers to. Differences are symbolic and symbols are arbitrary. Thus, adherence to these norms (heterosexuality) is itself a performance; “all gender is like drag… ‘imitation is at the heart of the heterosexual project and its gender binarisms”[6].

[1] Butler, 344.

[2] Butler, 338.

[3] Butler, 342.

[4] Butler, 343, 344.

[5] Butler, 342.

[6] Butler, 338.

Conclusion:

Audre Lorde and Judith Butler helped develop a more nuanced view of feminism and the oppositional gaze developed by Laura Mulvey and bell hooks. There is the consistent presence of the tools of the patriarchy through the performance of norms (whether in support or opposition) and the division between the oppressed through distortion/misrecognition of difference. Both authors stress the need to not accept the norms that define our current living conditions, and the need to not refer to what is known to remedy what is

[theuncannyprofessoro]

Reading Notes 7: Mulvey to hooks

Shifting our visual analysis and critical inquiries to gender and sexuality, we will begin our explorations with Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” and bell hooks’s “Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.”

How does the spectacle of the female image relate to patriarchal ideology, and in what ways do all viewers, regardless of race or sexuality, take pleasure in films that are designed to satisfy the male gaze?

How do racial and sexual differences between viewers inform their experience of viewing pleasure, and in what ways does the oppositional gaze empower viewers? 

@theuncannyprofessoro

[janeindamembrane]

Laura Mulvey and Bell Hooks both explore the impact that patriarchal ideology has had on film and how patriarchy has become instilled within the mechanisms of film and the framing of male versus females in the narrative. While Mulvey addresses the voyeuristic eroticism of subjecting the female to the surrogate screen character of the male, Hooks introduces an oppositional viewing that allows pleasure to be specifically tailored to audiences previously objectified, ignored, and/or violated through the white male gaze. 

Question One

The spectacle of the female image is related to patriarchal ideology because cinema, through the camera lense on a visual sense and the main (male) character on the narrative sense is just a technical extension of the power of the gaze and who gets to look and therefore judge/control whom. In a male patriarchal society, this power has always belonged to the male, so it makes sense that the gaze entertained through cinema is that of the man. Cinema has a voyeuristic nature to it, as it provides the pleasure of scopophilia , the desire to view “other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze”[1]. The spectator has power as the characters on the screen exist within their own world while the undetected spectator gazes upon them. In film, women provide a visual spectacle that entices the male characters. This again is a patriarchal power structure within film since it is the male character who forwards the story and thus controls the world within the film[2]. The woman provides merely a provocation and “in herself… has not the slightest importance”[3]. 

The spectator, through their voyeurism feels a dominance over those on the screen (providing scopophilia, but is also through the male character able to align themselves with and idealize an onscreen character (another source of pleasure from cinema). The audience, through the screen surrogate of the main male protagonist, has the control of perception so that all the women characters (who are only important in so much as they affect him) are subjected to his gaze/power.

It is also suggested that the spectacle of the female on screen is not only due to the eroticism and desire she provokes, but also the fear or the uncanny. Freud presents the uncanny of the vagina as it serves to remind males of castration (the castration complex)[4], and thus women are, in cinema, objectified and gazed upon (demystifying her) in order to undo whatever uncanny effect she may have[5]. To subject her to the gaze of the male character and the spectator is to undo any power or fear she might provoke. It objectifies her for the male’s enjoyment and reasserts the order of male dominance.

Other audiences are able to gain pleasure through cinema by either finding a screen surrogate in the active white male character, passive white female character, or the maligned black characters. For the first, this is ego libido to the highest form of denying/rejecting your identity while watching[6]. The voyeuristic nature of cinema means the black audience is able to look or able to self-identify with these characters without the usual consequences of gazing at white power [7]. White female audiences are able to see themselves on screen and either accept or reject (identifying with either the perpetuator or the victim), but they can still derive pleasure through this[8]. the oppositional gaze is rebellious, voyeuristic, and confrontational in nature, allowing pleasure to be brought through gaze as well as interrogation[9].

[1] Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", in Film Theory and Criticism, ed. by Leo Braudy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 713.

[2] Mulvey, 716.

[3] Mulvey, 715.

[4] Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”, in Collected Papers, vol. 4, ed. By Ernest Jones (London: Hogarth Press, 1948), 398, 399.

[5] Mulvey, 718.

[6] Bell Hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators", in Feminist Film Theory, ed. by Sue Thornham, (New York: NYU Press, 1999), 312.

[7] Hooks, 309.

[8] Hooks, 313.

[9] Hooks, 316.

Question Two

As touched on in the previous question, the sexual and racial differences of the spectator affect their viewing pleasure by causing a disconnect between their viewing gaze and the gaze of the (should be) onscreen male main character surrogate. Through the narrative and the technical elements, the audience is compelled to align themselves with this character and see their gaze as theirs and their control as theirs. This is direct pleasure for the white male audience who can seamlessly connect their reality (their ego) to that of the screen. The black audience experiences ‘rupture’, the “spectator resists ‘complete identification with the film discourse”[1] since they are fully aware “that mass media [is] a system of knowledge and power reproducing and maintaining white supremacy”[2]. The intersectionality of race and gender means that the white women do not identify with the white male and the black male also does not, but they’re critical gaze hardly concerns the dynamic of the other gender/race. The black male can derive pleasure from the rebellious unnoticed gaze that allows them to “enter the imaginative space of phallocentric power” created for the white male audience[3]. Meanwhile, the white women get to affirm their desirability through phallocentric spectatorship that identifies them through their relation to men[4]. This is where the othering of the black women comes in, and often on screen it is them who are most ignored/violated. They are unable to identify with the phallocentric power or desire that black men and white women can respectively. Hooks uses the example of the character of Sapphire from the radio sitcom Amos ‘n’ Andy as a character meant to unite the white (male and female) and black male audience at the expense of the black female[5].

The black female spectator is forced into the oppositional gaze as they are excluded and marked as different in both race and gender. The oppositional gaze can be pleasurable on two separate planes: either ego libido (the abandoning of difference through voyeurism) or through interrogation. The first is a “masochistic victimization” that required them to forget their skin color and gender, willingly putting themselves in a position of subordination in order to fulfill a desire to belong within a powerful position in the patriarchal structure[6]. They identify themselves with what they see on the screen not in a direct way but in a way that desires this more complete and better identity[7], which ultimately makes it “hard to go home”[8] (a la the writings of Frantz Fanon). The other gaze, the oppositional gaze, is how one can have pleasure while fully being aware of their identity and the separation of that from the ones characterized on screen. It is the “pleasure of resistance, of saying ‘no’: not to ‘unsophisticated’ enjoyment, but to the structures of power which ask us to consume them uncritically, and in highly circumscribed ways”[9].

[1] Hooks, 309.

[2] Hooks, 308.

[3] Hooks, 309.

[4] Hooks, 313.

[5] Hooks, 311.

[6] Hooks, 311, 312.

[7] Mulvey, 716.

[8] Hooks, 312.

[9] Hooks, 313 from Anne Kuhn, The Power of Things.

In conclusion, Laura Mulvey and Bell Hooks offer us insight on the construction of the female body (particularly a white female) on screen which upholds patriarchal structures and the subordination of those who are not the white male. Through the accepting of this position, or the oppositional gaze (which the black female is forced into as a starting point being neither white nor male), pleasure can still be achieved for audiences who are not the white male.

[jclemuss]

Psychoanalysis and Subjectivity

"Thriller" by Michael Jackson, released in 1983, is not just a song but an iconic cultural phenomenon, with its music video setting new standards for the industry. Directed by John Landis, the video is a mini horror film featuring Jackson as a charismatic young man transformed into a werewolf alongside his love interest, played by Ola Ray. The video showcases Jackson's unparalleled talent as a performer, with his electrifying dance moves and mesmerizing presence. Its groundbreaking special effects and narrative storytelling revolutionized the music video medium, becoming an instant classic. "Thriller" remains a timeless masterpiece, captivating audiences with its fusion of music, dance, and cinema, leaving an indelible mark on pop culture for generations to come. 

Sigmund Freud's essay "The Uncanny" explores the concept of the uncanny, or the eerie feeling of discomfort or unease experienced when something seems strangely familiar yet simultaneously foreign or unsettling. Freud delves into various aspects of the uncanny, including its connection to repressed desires, the repetition of specific themes or motifs in literature and art, and its association with the return of the repressed. He ultimately suggests that the uncanny arises from the revival of primitive beliefs and fears, often related to death, castration, or the supernatural, which have been repressed into the unconscious mind. This reminds me of the entire motive of the music video, which is the aspect of death. Sigmund said, “the primitive fear of the dead is still so strong within us and always ready to come to the surface at any opportunity”(Freud, 369). Death is the main factor that spikes an uncanny feeling. Our conscious mind feels eerie when we can not define whether something is animate or inanimate. This can also be viewed through the lens of Fenon’s theory because of the transformation, performance, and cultural appropriation that happens in this video. A transformation can be seen as a metaphor for the way Black individuals have been historically portrayed as "other" or different in Western society, often associated with fear and negativity. However, it also ties into Lacan’s theory of identity and self-representation. The transformation can be interpreted as a commentary on the pressure for Black individuals to conform to white standards of beauty and behavior, which makes them see themselves differently because of social interactions. 

Question: How often do you see the black community transform into something other than being black, and how much of an impact do you think it has?

"Black or White" is a groundbreaking music video by the iconic artist Michael Jackson, released in 1991. Directed by John Landis, the video captivates audiences with its innovative visual effects and powerful message of racial unity. Opening with a diverse array of faces from around the world morphing into one another, the video symbolizes the interconnectedness of humanity. Jackson's electrifying dance moves and charismatic performance are showcased against a backdrop of vibrant sets and dynamic choreography. The video's climax features a montage of people breaking through barriers, emphasizing diversity, acceptance, and equality themes. Through its striking imagery and infectious rhythm, "Black or White" remains a testament to Jackson's unparalleled talent and a timeless anthem for social change and harmony.

Frantz Fanon's essay "The Negro and Psychopathology" delves into the psychological impact of colonialism and racism on Black individuals. Fanon explores how the experience of oppression and discrimination leads to a profound sense of alienation, identity crisis, and psychological trauma among Black people. Frantz Fanon said, “The Negro recognizes the unreality of many of the beliefs that he has adopted with reference to the subjective attitude of the white man”(Fanon, 115). He implies that Black individuals have internalized certain beliefs or attitudes, possibly about themselves or about the world, that are based on the perspective or viewpoint of white people. However, they have come to recognize that some of the beliefs held by white people are not grounded in reality or are false. This means that things that are said about the black community usually is said to make them feel bad. The saddest part is that it is so engraved in our system that naturally, it just reproduces.

One aspect that correlates with Fanon's ideas is Jackson's own experience of racial identity. Throughout his life, Jackson grappled with questions of race and belonging, facing scrutiny and pressure to conform to societal expectations of blackness. His changing appearance, particularly his skin color, sparked speculation and debate about his racial identity and self-image. Fanon would likely view Jackson's transformation as a manifestation of the internalized racism prevalent in societies where lighter skin is often associated with beauty and success. This also makes me think about how his skin transformation can be perceived as uncanny. The transformation can be perceived as uncanny due to its combination of familiarity and strangeness, its psychological implications, the public reaction it elicited, and its broader cultural significance. It made him seem familiar but also unfamiliar. 

This scene of the music video resonates with Jacques Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I” through its exploration of identity, diversity, and unity. Just as Lacan explains that the mirror stage marks a pivotal moment in the formation of the self, the video showcases individuals from diverse ethnic backgrounds, highlighting the complexity of identity formation in a multicultural world. Lacan said, "Whence it is that the relation of the individual subject to his own images is apprehended, prior to any grasp of it by the self, in a specular relation of the organism to its reality, and that, whatever may be the degree of elaboration of the imaginary function, its mediation is necessarily situated in the intersubjective dialectic"(Lacan). This statement explains that individuals have an inherent, perhaps unconscious, relationship with their mental images or representations, which reflects their perception of reality. This relationship is influenced by interpersonal dynamics and interactions, highlighting the interconnectedness between self-awareness and social experiences. Social interactions really change the way one views oneself, which sadly becomes subconscious critiquing.

Question: Do you guys view transformation as uncanny, and why do you think some people do? Do you think when you first understood your image was the only time you fully saw/respected yourself?

Sources

Freud, Sigmund. "The Uncanny." The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by James Strachey, vol. 17, Hogarth Press, 1955, pp. 219-256.

Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I." Écrits: A Selection. Translated by Bruce Fink, W.W. Norton & Company, 2002, pp. 75-81.

Fanon, Frantz. "The Negro and Psychopathology." Black Skin, White Masks, translated by Charles Lam Markmann, Grove Press, 2008, pp. 99-127.

[janeindamembrane]

How often do you see the black community transform into something other than being black, and how much of an impact do you think it has?

I wanted to answer this question by expanding on what we talked about in class: Michael Jackson's transformation from a black man into a pop sensation/superstar. Simultaneous to this transformation there was his physical transformation (due to vitiligo) that caused a lot of unease and spectacle.

By becoming a superstar he transcended his blackness in character and through his vitiligo he started to transcend his blackness physically. This is uncanny and causes anxiety because of the idea of breaking down these structures within society. Fanan talks about how the black man can think white but never become white. Michael Jackson, with an intense public spotlight on him, was threatening this notion and so from the white dominated perspective became uncanny, creepy, and somewhat inhuman. This might be some stretching, but considering that we just read Freud I think theoretical stretching is totally in the ball park.

[janeindamembrane]

Analytical Analysis: Psychoanalysis and Subjectivity

00:22:00. The scene where Toom's supernatural ability is confirmed and the larger confirmation within the series of the existence of the supernatural.

Introduction

The third episode of the first season of The X Files exemplifies the uncanny as its main villain is seemingly a normal person who is hiding a supernatural evil. This episode was a huge setup for the rest of the series and is focus on the supernatural- many monsters of the week inspired by myths deriving from the collective unconscious or the fears of our childhood and ancestors.

By using several terms developed by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Frantz Fanon, we can analyze several key moments within the episode and why they are effective at creating horror and suspense by building on human fears of the unnatural lurking within the familiar.

Term: Uncanny

00:20:35. Appearance of Toom's eyes right before we see him commit another crime after being released.

(from left to right) 00:23:24 Toom's committing the crime. Toom's eyes from investigation scene 00:17:00 - 00:18:17. Toom's eyes from introduction at 00:01:00.

Defintion:

Freud describes the uncanny as the anxiety that arises from one’s interaction with the canny (the familiar or homely). This interaction causes anxiety because it brings out repressed fears from the unconscious belonging to the “phase of individual development corresponding to the animistic stage in primitive men”[1]. These fears stem from one’s childhood or the beliefs of our forefathers[2] that, in theory, should be set aside as one matures but can be reinstated through something that challenges one’s beliefs of what is real and what is unreal. Something that is uncanny feels familiar, but also has an element to it that causes unease as it triggers these repressed feelings[3].

[1] Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”, in Collected Papers, vol. 4, ed. By Ernest Jones (London: Hogarth Press, 1948),394.

[2] Freud, 401.

[3] Freud, 376.

Analysis

Throughout the episode we keep on getting shots of the villain’s eyes poking out from shadows. There is undoubtably something eerie about his stare, though eyes themselves are supposedly normal. In the opening scene at the one-minute mark, we get our first barely visible look at Toom’s. By placing him in the sewer, the appearance of these eyes becomes uncanny, provoking inner fears of being unknowingly watched or of someone not being where they are supposed to be. The eyes also seem to glow from the shadows, suggesting an unfamiliar or supernatural element. This is the perversion of the canny to provoke fear. Additional productional elements like the tense score and voyeuristic camera angles (from Toom's view) drive a sense of dread.

We see Toom’s eyes again in the lie detector scene. While his eyes lack the amber glow seen in other shots, there is still something eerily off about them- his cold stare that lacks human feelings. The audience is given a conflict of having a seemingly normal man, but also the unease of being reminded of the first shot of Toom's eyes. Toom’s facade of normality (especially towards the end of the lie detector test where he finally displays a different expression) causes a greater feeling of uncanny because the audience has already begun to recognize his evil and feels fear at his ability to mask it from the characters in the show. Toom’s effectiveness as a villain stem from the conflict between the real and the unreal. Through science and logic, the supernatural should not exist and throughout the episode Detective Mulder experiences ridicule because of his idea that Toom’s is a 100-year-old mutant that can stretch himself (like after the lie detector test at 18:17). The idea that this abnormality which seeks to harm others can mask himself as normal is the one which causes the uncanny as it takes what is normal and insinuates that something sinister is hidden underneath. Tooms is the direct confrontation of the contradicting reality and supernatural. The scene after the lie detector test, where the audience first sees Toom’s stretch and commit a murder is the official breaking of any belief that Tooms is a normal human.

Term: Misrecognition

Around 00:18:17. The other agents, Scully, and Milder (offscreen) looking at the results of Tooms' lie detector test, which he passed except for questions about him being over 100.

00:18:48. Mulder tells Scully that the other agents "can't open their mind to the possibilities that sometimes the need to mess with their heads outweighs the millstones of humiliation".

Definition

Misrecognition is when someone doesn’t allow themselves to view/access their true self and its desires due to the creation of a new identity that has culture and convention imposed on it. It is additionally accompanied by an underlying aggression at the denial of one’s narcissistic self by the mediation of society. The “whole of [one’s] human knowledge” is “mediated by the other’s desire”[1]. The I formation, developed during the early years or the mirror stage, “establish[es] a relationship between an organism and its reality”[2], but this I formation (the id or the spectacular I) turns into the social I which links “the I to socially elaborated situations”[3]. This transformation can be proved by the fact that babies exemplify the spectacular I but lose this connection once more connected to the existence of others. Desires and beliefs become repressed and superimposed by more logical, conventional, and socially aware identities as society tends to view maturation as one’s acceptance and organization of the world through the reality principle[4]. 

[1] Jacques Lacan Écrits, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function”, in The First Complete Edition in English, trans. by Bruce Fink (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 79.

[2] Lacan, 78.

[3] Lacan, 79.

[4] Lacan, 80.

Analysis

While Mulder and eventually Scully can recognize that Tooms is both a threat and that he is abnormal, their peers (like Detective Colton or the other agents in the lie detector scene) are unable to come to that conclusion. The other agents are restricted by their understandings of the real world and the mortality of regular humans. They’re beliefs make them more accepting of Tooms’ play at normality and they easily brush off Mulder’s observation that Tooms lied when denying he was 100 years old (18:17). If one operated under the rules of science or adult maturity, it seems ridiculous to suggest that the man in front of them could have been 100 years old or committed previous murders decades ago. The other agents are projecting a mirror image onto Tooms, assuming that he works under the same rules of living that they do. Yet he doesn’t, and this misrecognition (the recognition of him as human) leaves them blind to his monstrous nature. This causes a bigger sense of dread as it furthers the feeling of uncanniness and drives up the fear that supernatural denying logic or presumptive understandings are blinding us from monstrosity.

The agents don't necessarily misrecognize their own identity like Lacan describes, but rather misunderstand the larger possibility of the supernatural by using their self image as non supernatural beings and the social conventions of believing in science over the supernatural (aka the reality principle) to understand Tooms. They believe him to be like themselves and subject to their (and society's) ideas of their own human limitations.

Term: Collective Catharsis

From 00:36:45 - 00:39:00. When the Genetic Mutant Tooms attacks Detective Scully in her own home and then Mulder arrives and saves her.

(from left to right) 00:38:40 Muller arrives with a gun to save the day. 00:38:29 the intimate nature of the attack which could be viewed as an allegory to fears of rape.

Defintion

Collective catharsis is a way to alleviate the anger that Lacan speaks of that accompanies the repression of one’s primitive and narcissistic desires and beliefs, in favor of the social I that is restricted by the conventions of society. Fanon suggests that the society, for its own good through promoting the sustainability of the social I, offers a channel for this aggression through things such as “games in children’s institutions”, “psychodramas in group therapy”, and “illustrated magazines for children”[1]. It is important to provide this catharsis to the youth because of their newfound aggression as society and conventions are increasingly forced on them[2]. The channel for catharsis is a way for society to normalization of the transition from the spectacular I to the social I. Different societies and groups will need to provide different forms of catharsis as different groups will have different understandings of the social I and where they fall within that society[3]. In general, collective catharsis potentially provides a representation of the violence and death that the repressed sexual and economic desires of the id craves but denies due to individual’s “perversion” through the social (moral) and economic structure[4].

[1] Frantz Fanon, “The Negro and Psychopathology”, in Black Skin White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (London: Pluto Press, 1986), 112.

[2] Lacan, 79.

[3] Fanan, 113.

[4] Fanan, 113. From G Legeman, “Psychopathologie des Comics,” in Les Temps Modernes, French tran. by H. Robillot (May, 1949), 919.

Analysis

G. Legman provides two possible ways of thinking about collective catharsis: as the channeling of a “forbidden sexuality” through a “maniacal fixation on violence and death” or as the channeling of “both the child’s and the adult’s aggression against the economic and social structure”[1]. If one is considering the definition of collective catharsis to channel one’s repressed violent and/or sexual thoughts, the way that the audience (in particular the male) achieves this is through Tooms and the violence he enacts against Tully. It should be noted that there is an intimate nature to this violence, as Tooms climbs atop and pins Tully down, gestures associated with the rape of women. Freud suggests that the fear of others harming us comes from the projection of wanting to harm. A man may be fighting a more animalistic or primitive sexual desire, but his conscious channels that into a fear of others being able to do that. There remains, however, an underlying desire that drives the “maniacal fixation on violence”[2], and which creates a fascination in the tension and fear that this depiction of violence creates. There is, however, the issue of the conscious, which does not enjoy openly admitting its violence. That is where Mulder’s  heroe comes in. G. Legman talks of the catharsis provided to the white audience by the archetype of the “bad injun”, and then the “uneasy [American] conscious” that is “averted only by denying responsibility and throwing the blame on the victim” and the creation of “the historic figure of the Noble redskin”[3] (who has become allies with the whites). In the example of the x files, the male audience has to deal with the uneasy conscious of entertaining the violence against a woman. Mulder allows them to continue to “always identity with the victor”[4] while maintaining their ego. Mulder is able to save Scully and defeat the monsterous ‘other’. Tooms provides catharsis for a violent craving audience, but in the end allows them to project their own unconscious desires onto another (alienated) figure both channeling and denying their aggression. This attitude is similarly applied to the black man, who is portrayed as providing a sexual threat to white women[5] and therefore a target to the heroic white man.

The issue of this catharsis is its portrayal of women. Scully is the victim of this situation; she is the women that males wish to enact violence on (perhaps because of their fascination with tor aversion toward the vagina as the point of origin as Freud suggests[6]) and she is the damsel that additionally allows this same audience to avoid their guilt. Women do not get to align themselves with the victor, as society will always remind them of their womanhood (similar to how a Black man will always be Black in the white man’s Europe). There is the suggestion that this also might bring about a catharsis for women as a channeling against the system and its gender roles. Through watching the violence against women, a woman can channel their aggression at not having been a man under this system. Through this representation they can project a separation between themselves and the victim, witnessing the violence as an attack not against the woman that they are but the woman that society frames them as being. This portrayal is hazardous because as stated before a woman will always be reminded of their womanhood which under this social structure of the white man equates to victimhood. Aggression towards the system can easily be translated into aggression against women such as Fanon hypothesizes[7]. Fanon’s call about the importance of media for all groups to provide their own specific catharsis rings true for woman as well.  

[1] Fanon, 113.

[2] Fanon, 113.

[3] Fanon, 113.

[4] Fanon, 113.

[5] Fanon, 121.

[6] Freud, 398, 399.

[7] Fanon, 138.

Term: Heimlich

(from left to right) 00:36:45 Detective Scully preparing to take a bath from the comfort of her own home. 00:38:00 Tooms appearing from one of her vents.

Definition

Heimlich is the German word which Freud deconstructs to define the uncanny or unheimlich (its opposite). Heimlich is the ‘familiar’, ‘native’, or homely[1]. Freud goes on to examine multiple definitions of the word that all fall within this broader area of comforting peace or security “as in one within the four walls of his house”[2]. There is however some definitions which describes Heimlich as secretive or behind someone’s back to the point of cruelty or sin. This probably stems to the connection of familiar security for oneself turning into an outward distrusting of the security of others (and the inability to see what they might be concealing). This definition of Heimlich, and the definitions of unheimlich as being something eerie or something which has been revealed that should have been kept secret establish a relationship to each other. They are not necessarily opposites, as the Heimlich can easily become the unheimlich. Too much familiarity (Heimlich) sets up the ability for something uncanny to come to light[3].

[1] Freud, 371.

[2] Freud, 372.

[3] Freud, 376.

Analysis

The attack scene also literally embodies Heimlich, as it takes place in the personal (and supposedly) secure location of Scully’s own house. This is something that adds to the horror and tension of the sequence. The idea that something so private and secluded can house (pun not intended) horrors is a terrible idea which forces us to think of how our own repressed desires can surface in anyone else who might do us harm. Perhaps the security of the house even causes harm as it falsely shields one from the reality of being safe from harm. The notion of security is challenged, as Mulder reminds us at the end of the episode. The scene going from something that should be intimate to violence is a representation of how the Heimlich can hide the unheimlich. The fear we feel for Scully is the fear we feel for ourselves at the possibility of the reveal of the unheimlich within one’s Heimlich (which we unconsciously recognize in ourselves and thus fear).

Tooms himself is also a representation of this as he presents as a normal nam (Heimlich), but hidden within is an evil which seeks to harm others. One’s inability to detect this abnormality (as previously discussed in relation to the investigation scene) is a deep cause of fear and the anxiety of the uncanny.

Term: collective unconscious

00:40:00 - 00:42:00

Definition:

Fanon references Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious which is “inherited cerebral matter”, or as Fanon restates, not one’s genes, but “the sum of prejudices, myths, collective attitudes of a given group”[1]. It is the continuous myth/archetype of the danger or sexual prowess[2] of a black man taught to white men, white women, and even black men themselves when attempting to assimilate into a white man’s society; Fanon references René Maran as a black man who has “breathed and eaten the myths and prejudices of a racist Europe”[3]. Freud speaks of how “repressed desires and archaic forms of thought belonging to the past of the individual and of the race” are part of the unconscious and can be brought to the conscious by the uncanny[4]. Some of these archaic (yet still present in some form) thoughts have to do with a society’s view of minorities or gender roles. Fanon points to the archetypes of the “extra-fragile woman”[5], “the intellectual danger”[6] of the Jew, and the “biological/danger”[7] of the Black man (sexual aggression that threatens women and men).

[1] 145.

[2] 128, 130.

[3] 145.

[4] 399.

[5] 128.

[6] 127.

[7] 127.

Analysis

The fear of security and the unheimlich hiding among the Heimlich that Tooms represents refers to a larger generational theory. Within the suggestions about origins of society, there are many references to the constant need for security and shielding from violence that people would otherwise be subjected to. The primitive fear of the destruction of constructed security thus goes back to our forefathers. Through the modernization and improvement of technologies and governments, the constant stress of security may be somewhat removed to the unconscious, but (as Mulder reminds us at the end) the depiction of Tooms (someone who can destroy the privatization and peace of the Heimlich by disguising himself within) reminds us that this fear is still very relevant. Not to mention that the episode hints that Tooms will be able to get out (his smile at the realization of the existence of a food slight he might be able to stretch through). This succeeds in enacting the anxiety and horror of the uncanny, by building upon a fear that is seemingly innate to human history. 

MULDER: All these people putting bars on their windows, spending good money on hi-tech security systems, trying to feel safe. I look at this guy and I think, "It ain't enough". (00:40:49)

Conclusion

In conclusion, the episode “Squeeze” is an effective horror and fascinating watch because of how it allows the audience to experience the fear of representing repressed fears such as the monster hiding in plain sight, while also, through its depictions of violence, allowing the catharsis for certain audiences so that they can continue in real life to live with a good conscious. This episode allows the repressed to come out, but only for the little while the tv is on.

[theuncannyprofessoro]

Reading Notes 6: Freud to Lacan to Fanon

We look to Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny,” Jacques Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I,” and Frantz Fanon’s “The Negro and Psychopathology” for our inquiry into the functions of psychoanalysis and subjectivity when examining visual texts.

Why do people call an experience or event uncanny, and what makes an occurrence that appears to be uncanny but is not uncanny?

What is the relation of personal neurosis to social passions?

In what ways are oppressed and marginalized viewers alienated when they are not or rarely represented?

@theuncannyprofessoro

[janeindamembrane]

Question one:

Freud, through an analysis of the German root words unheimlich and Heimlich concludes that an event is uncanny when it becomes overly canny.  Something that is canny is familiar, but this familiarity can be developed to a point where, though it originated from something familiar and is still recognizable, has a eerie sense to it as if something that “ought to have remained hidden and secret… [has] come to light”[1]. The uncanny (or the perversion of the canny) is a morbid anxiety that derives from the recurrence of something that was repressed- an infantile belief that belongs to the “phase of individual development corresponding to the animistic stage in primitive men”[2] or the vestiges of the narcissistic ego before its social reconstruction via the conscious[3]. In addition to having been repressed, the trigger of the uncanny could also be something that confirms a previous belief that has been surmounted, such as the beliefs of our primitive forefathers in the “omnipotence of thoughts, instantaneous wish fulfilments, secret power to do harm, and the return of the dead”[4].

For something to be truly uncanny, it must create a conflict between real and nonreal, new beliefs and surmounted beliefs. This contradiction leading to uncanniness is why Freud explains that many things in literature which aren’t uncanny (like fairytales) would be uncanny in actual life.[5]

[1] Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”, in Collected Papers, vol. 4, ed. By Ernest Jones (London: Hogarth Press, 1948), 376.

[2] Freud, “The Uncanny”, 394.

[3] Freud, 387.

[4] Freud, 40.1

[5] Freud, 403, 404.

Question two:

Society is the creator of personal neurosis, as the latter results from the fracturing of the self- the alienation of the spectacular I (the id) from the I because of societal pressures and cultural intervention[1]. Ego defense is the result of the isolation of the spectacular I and unleashes feelings and behaviors (anger, jealousy, and aggression) associated as more primitive and without the social mediation of desire[2].

Fanon expands upon this and talks specifically about hos society’s power structures within the context of race and colonialism dictate the neurosis (or rather abnormality) of anyone deemed the other (the non-white or non-Christian), as the mirror stage that Lacan proposes as the creator of the spectacular I is doomed to become fractured for the other when it is pointed out to them that their reflection is not in line with the white man. This causes an extreme inner conflict when the other has been raised on the collective catharsis (a channeling of the id) and signs of the white man[3].

[1] Jacques Lacan Écrits, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function”, in The First Complete Edition in English, trans. by Bruce Fink (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 79.

[2] Lacan, 79.

[3] Frantz Fanon, “The Negro and Psychopathology”, in Black Skin White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (London: Pluto Press, 1986), 112.

Question three:

The marginalized and oppressed will undoubtably have their mirror stage broken, yet suffer the consequence of having formerly thought they belonged only to be othered by the white man and eventually themselves. Fanon summarizes the process of this self-realization in black scholars such as himself. The childhood of the young black child raised upon the media meant for the young white children ends with the “formation and crystallization of an attitude and a way of thinking and seeing that are essentially white”[1], but since the young black child is black he will learn that “he is a Negro… once he goes to Europe. It is here that this black youth will encounter the myth of his blackness and will from this point onward carry “the whole weight of his blackness”[2]. This is like when Lacan mentions the fracturing between the spectacular I and the social I, but there is a heavier weight in the social plane for these others (Fanon also continuously references Jewish myth and hatred) as an oppressive social myth is thrust upon their self-image. Since the youth grew up associating with whiteness, and yet the white structure insists upon their blackness, the black youth ends up hating blackness (or the White myth of blackness). A black youth who wishes to “climb up into society- white and civilized- tends to reject his family” as a black family structure is not viewed within white society as a good basis to become subjected to the white national structure[3]. The problem is that the youth is black and will never be allowed to transcend the myth (a betrayal of the white society) resulting in him being “forever in combat with his own image”[4]. This youth has chosen to ignore their skin color or project the myth of it onto others as the author consistently did in his youth onto the Senegalese[5]. There is the alternate path of absorbing the myth and oppressing oneself. He “selects himself as an object capable of carrying the burden of the original sin… He enslaves himself”[6]. The final solution to this imposition of oppressive culture on identity is to “rise above this absurd drama that others have staged”[7].

This anger, self-hatred, and self-oppression could be lessened or mitigated if one were to remove the original trauma of the deep fracturing of the image the youth created upon white media since this media not only betrays them when they are not allowed by white society to identify with the white heroes meant for white youth but perpetrates the black myth that will impose itself into their lives and cause their hatred of themselves for being unable to be the hero and forced to be the black man.

[1] Fanon, 114.

[2] Fanon, 116.

[3] Fanon, 115.

[4] Fanon, 150.

[5] Fanon, 114.

[6] Fanon, 148.

[7] Fanon, 153.

[janeindamembrane]

Barbieland as a Hyperreality

Introduction

To this essay:

For this analysis, I will be addressing how the theorists Stuart Hall, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard would discuss semiology (the connection between a signifier and signified) and the motivations behind the construction of signs. The first section will discuss the similarities and agreements of the theorists, particularly the idea that signs can have hidden motivations that are a departure from reality. The following section will further analyze this similarity to discover the differences of opinions in the theorists in the degree to which signs are a departure from reality, and the power dynamics or ultimate reasoning behind the motivation of signs. The theorist that provides the biggest departure from the others (and who also provides an ordered system to explain the differences) is Jean Baudrillard, who’s order of simulacra will be used to view where the other theorists stand on the connection between signs and reality. 

The final section will analyze a scene from Barbie that contributes to the larger context of establishing Barbieland as a mirrored reality (a hyperreality) of the real world, yet the distinction and power dynamic between Barbie land and the real world and how these things ultimately lead to the finale of the movie will be analyzed through the lens of the theorists.

A conclusion regarding the film analysis and how the concepts that the theorists agreed on and disagreed on were used to analyze the film will be provided at the end.

To the theorists:

Throughout this analysis, the four writings I will be referring to are:

Stuart Hall’s “Encoding, Decoding” which discusses the linked process of how messages are produced by encoder-producers and then disseminated by decoder-receiver. This includes the misunderstandings at the connotative level, where due to situational ideologies, an encoded message will take on a multitude of interpreted readings beyond just that of the dominant or preferred meanings (those which have become institutionalized). These other readings include the negotiated code (when a decoder grants a level of legitimacy to the hegemonic definitions but adds on their own understanding at a more restricted situational level) and the oppositional code (when the decoder intends to interpret in a way opposed to the hegemonic position). 

Louis Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” evolves the classical Marxist term of the state apparatus that means the specialized apparatus that executes, and the supplementary repressive force needed to maintain this government power. Althusser’s additions to this definition include the distinguishing of the classical terms state power (the seizure or maintenance of power), state apparatus (the tools employed for state power), and the state (whose acceptance as a legitimate authority is both a tool within the apparatus and a function of state power). Althusser also cements the ideological state apparatus (ISA) which differs itself from the classical definition in that repressive force is not employed but rather certain specialized institutions that pump out beliefs that make the general masses more accepting of the state and their ownership of state power. Althusser defines the beliefs taught by ISAs as the Marxist defined ideology: a system of dominating (in mind and culture) ideas and representations. Ideology itself has no history but instead serves a social situational purpose. In the current and persisting age of capitalism, ideology can be used to distract or to persuade.

Roland Barthes’ “Mythologies” is the spiritual predecessor of Ferdinand de Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics”, as Barthes extends the idea of the linguistic sign (the signifier, the signified, and combined product the sign). Barthes introduces a mythical system where the signified of the linguistic system (which Barthes terms the meaning) becomes the signifier of the mythical (termed the form). The final term of the myth system is called the concept. The third (correlative) term for the language plane remains the sign, but for the myth, Barthes calls it the signification. Barthes’ discusses how myths have come to dominate our understanding and point us to action through imposed meaning or social usages that have been proliferated to the point of seeming natural, logical, or inherent. Throughout the writing, Barthes exemplifies several myths such as a universal human nature/origin that blurs the importance of history and additionally promotes the eternality of human establishments such as capitalism. 

Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulations” analyzes the relation that signs have to reality, providing a challenge to Marxism and structuralism that put an emphasis on signs obscuring or perverting the real. Baudrillard concludes that the role that signs have played in our society have evolved in successive phases of the image that marks a transition to favoring and replacing the real with simulacra that claims to represent the real but has blurred the line between real and non-real (in a state called hyperreality) to the point where the real has been replaced by simulation and emptied of depth. It is the hyperreal, the simulation’s insistence on deriving its and the real’s legitimacy through the reproduction of itself and subsequent blending of the real and fake (such as in Baudrillard’s example of Disneyland) that obstructs the first three order of simulacra and leaves a system (of symbols) deprived of depth and removed from reality, of which there is none.

Section 1: Stepping Away from Reality with Reason

To set up my later analysis around the Barbie movie, its important to establish the similarities between the four theorists I have chosen to focus on (Louis Althusser, Stuart Hall, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard). These similarities are a belief in the existence of signs, an arbitrary nature to those signs, and the need for discourse to discuss the signs of more arbitrary nature. Some of the theorists additionally agree on the role of people in power in distributing and dictating the message of the signs.

Despite these four theorists having focused on different aspects, there is a general agreement in the existence of signs if not in name in practice as something outside of reality that people have come to understand. Althusser does not explicitly talk about signs, save for one brief mention of the “sign of the cross” in reference to the material rituals/practices of Ideological state apparatuses[1]. This one reference is enough to connect signs to the ideological state apparatuses. If ISAs are meant to make the general public more open to the ruling class (allowing this class to maintain state power), than the weapon of choice of ISAs are signs that operate on the mythological plane that Barthes conceptualizes. The sign of the cross is encoded/produced by those in power, propagated/spread through ISAs such as the church or the school, used via the public, and then consumed when the public uses their own understanding to decode it and then apply what is decoded back to their own understanding. This is the process detailed by Stuart Hall, and when he mentions the “institutional structures of broadcasting” and “networks of production”[2], Althusser would come to understand those terms as euphemism for the ideological state apparatus. Barthes details the motivation behind myths, as ones that are profitable. Specifically, he talks about the “great unity of man” or how certain attributes have been accredited to nature, such putting working equivalent to the life events of being born and dying. This myth is profitable in the literal way, but it is also profitable to the people in power. The economy and the job market are also parts of the state apparatus. Barthes additionally writes that Adamisms purpose is to “give to the immobility of the world the alibi of wisdom”[3]. Who benefits from immobility? Althusser, as a Marxist, would surely say the ruling class. Hall agrees that while audiences do decode the message and apply their own understandings to them, these understandings are heavily influenced by a dominant cultural order and that misunderstandings between encoder and decoder are mediated by society (read as ISAs)[4]. These three theorists seem to, if not explicitly, agree on the existence of signs and that there are producers and benefiters within this system.

Baudrillard’s work differs heavily when coming to understand the state apparatus or rather the power/force behind the creation of signs (which I will discuss in section 2), but he does accept the existence of signs especially on the mythological plane and in fact hinges his argument on the overpopulation of them. 

All of the theorists accept that certain signs, the ones on the mythological plane especially, have an arbitrary nature to them that means that the linkage between the signifier and the signified does not occur naturally. Once more, Althhusser does not specifically address signs, but he does address ideology which he defines as the “representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”[5]. Signs are a relationship between real conditions (a form) and a signified meaning or the concept. Althusser emphasizes that ideology doesn’t have a history, meaning that it is arbitrary and is not natural. Barthes lamentations are similar though paradoxically he says that the concept of myth do have history or rather they are intended to absorb/assume a history (as with the myth of the great unity of man); “Unlike the form, the concept is in no way abstract: it is filled with situation. Through the concept, it is a whole new history which is implanted in the myth… What is invested in the concept is less reality than a certain knowledge of reality… made of yielding, shapeless associations.”[6] Hall states that all signs and interpretations have a complex set of codes and conventions behind them, despite human tendency to believe that signs (visual and verbal) are rather than represent. He says that the “iconic signs” that are vulnerable to being read as natural since it is “less arbitrary than the linguistic[7] sign” or codes that have become “naturalized” through wide distribution[8]. When Hall mentions the linguistic sign, it is referencing that discourse (a verbal or written language) is needed to create these signs by mediating a supposed relationship between the reality and concept through language[9]. Each of the theorists directly or indirectly assume the important of discourse and discursive knowledge. 

Again, Baudrillard provides a challenge as to write about his similarities requires acknowledgement of his differences, which will occur in the following section. In the effort of succinctly mentioning similarities, I believe that Baudrillard’s conception of signs as completely removed from reality is the totalization of the arbitrary nature of signs and the reliance on discourse for sign production as further proof of this since discourse provides an actual other step that further separates reality from the sign.

[1] Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", in The Anthropology of the State, ed. Sharma and Gupta (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 103.

[2] Stuart Hall, “Encoding, Decoding”, in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (London: Routledge, 1993), 509, 510.

[3] Roland Barthes, “Mythologies”, in Mythologies, trans. Anette Lavers (New York: The Noonday Press, 1972), 102.

[4] Hall, "Encoding Decoding", 513.

[5] Althusser, 100.

[6] Barthes, 117 - 118.

[7] I believe Hall uses linguistic here as signs that exist only within discourse thus resembling Barthes’ mythological plane over Barthes’ linguistic (verbal/language) plane.

[8] Hall, 512.

[9] Hall, 511.

Section 2: What is reality? Who dictates perceived reality?

Baudrillard provides the starkest point of difference, but through looking at his differences and his order of simulacra, we can also infer differences between the other theorists on the existence of reality and how much signs differ from said reality.

Baudrillard’s major difference is his belief in the emptiness of reality. He agrees that signs do exist (and are actually in abundance) as a representation or exchange of reality, but instead of differing on the degree of the existence of reality like the other theorists, Baudrillard says that the system (reality) that signs originally drew from has become empty. None of his fellow theorists go this far. Instead, they each fall somewhere in Baudrillard’s Order of Simulacra. Baudrillard is on the fourth order, as images to him “bear no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum”. This fourth order trumps the others through the destruction of the reality the other phases believe exists[1]. The first phase is the belief that the image is a “reflection of a basic reality”. The second is the “mask[ing] and pervert[ing] of a basic reality” while the third is the masking of an “absence of a basic reality”[2]. The other theorists assume multiple of these orders or fail to conclusively deny a level. 

Hall struggles to take a definitive view on the first phase, with his argument that certain signs can be closer to reality or at least “less arbitrary” than others. This suggests that there is a reality (he also explicitly says “reality exists outside of language”[3]), but his conception of encoding-decoding and the role of people in the creation of codes suggest that Hall sees images more on the second phase. He may argue with the terms masking and perverting as they seem to strongly emphasize the role of the producer over the decoder. Perversion and masking, however, gel well with the idea that there is some reality, perhaps an oppositional code or a local or class interest, that is pushed aside by the dominant hegemonic position promoted by the culture and the producers[4]. Hall may be convinced of the third order, if this reality or oppositional code is nonexistent, and the hegemonic position was created to distract from that. Yet, Baudrillard would argue that Hall’s suggestion that the degree to which something is less arbitrary is indistinguishable due to signs need to be articulated[5](and thus something can easily be articulated as “the real”) is support for Baudrillard’s argument that the inability to distinguish simulation from reality proves the lack of the latter. 

Barthes laments about myths removal and displacement of history, in an argument that somewhat resembles what Baudrillard believes images and simulation do to reality. To Barthes there is no eternal myth[6] and even no nature[7]. Through this, Barthes understanding aligns somewhat with the third phase. There is one catch, and it’s through Barthes’ strong connection to another author, Ferdinand de Saussure. Barthes’ argument about the creation of myth is largely an extension of Saussure’s work, and Saussure claims that there is an existence of a reality parallel to language and that for signifiers that involve a “psychological imprint”[8] there is a very strong connection to the real. Saussure designates the symbol, as a more real sign since it relates to a visual of the real[9]. Barthes never negates Saussure’s claims, suggesting an agreement. Barthes work, through Baudrillard’s eyes, then suggests the parallel existence of a real but also a removal of the real from myths, preventing Barthes from seeing the fourth order of simulacra. 

Althusser can be understood through the second or third lens, like Hall. Althusser’s focus on the power dynamics of signs leads him to neglect discussion of whether there is a reality. Yet, his Marxist alignment suggests he believes in the ability of class struggle to bring about a new set of ideologies or ISAs that better serve the working class currently subjected to the ideologies. Whether or not the ideologies of the working class have been created and proliferated (through different mechanisms than the ruling class) determines whether Althusser’s theory would realize the second or third phase of the image.

It is through Baudrillard’s insistence on the absence of real that we fall on another implied but major difference. In Baudrillard’s world, events like Watergate are publicized to (like Disneyland) make something else seem real. By promoting Watergate as a scandal, its opposite, some supposed moral order, is promoted. In a sense, Baudrillard’s work does not negate the power of the state or ISAs in promoting views. Instead, he suggests, that the public is more willing to subscribe to these ideologies than his other theorists are willing to say (especially someone like Althusser). Baudrillard talks about the “panic of production” or the desire to impose moral structure on a structureless world. There may be politicization in who has state power and the ability to produce views, but people are more willing to subscribe to ideology than live in a world without and may even derive comfort from this as proven by our fascination and love of simulation. Meanwhile the other theorists are more politicized in their claims of symbols being weaponized for the purpose of state power.

The theorists’ agreement on signs as a step removed from reality, but differing opinions on reality and the motivation behind obscuring it will come in handy for the analysis of Barbie where the real is represented by the real world and Barbie land is a manifestation of a simulation or symbolic world that derives from the real.

[1] Jean Baudrillard, “from ‘Simulacra and Simulations”, in Modernism/Postmodernism, ed. and with Introduction by Mark Poster (New York: Routledge, 2014), 162.

[2] Baudrillard, 152, 153.

[3] Hall, "Encoding Decoding", 511

[4] Hall, 513.

[5] Hall, 511.

[6] Barthes, "Myth Today", 108.

[7] Barthes, "Mythologies", 100, 101

[8] Ferdinand de Saussure, “The Object of Linguistics”, in Course in General Linguistics, ed. Bally and Sechehaye (New York Toronto London: McGraw-Hill Book Company), 66.

[9] Saussure, 68.

Section 3: From Barbieland to the Real World

The scene I will be analyzing starts around the 26-minute mark and follows Barbie’s and Ken’s journey into the real world which starts with a car ride down the pink brick road with a sign pointing the direction to the “real world” and a rainbow with “Barbie land” underneath in the other direction. Their journey includes several other sequences of bright colored transportation that mixes 2d and 3d elements until they land in the real world where the last few cutouts from the skiing sequence remain in the Venice beach boardwalk. All the travelling sequences are also brightly colored and provide a heightened sense of reality versus the duller real world. Barbie instantly feels self-conscious (around the 27-minute mark), and the two of them are abruptly faced with the differences in the real world and Barbie land (particularly in how they treat women). The travel sequence and the heightened color palette and costuming of Barbie land establishes it as the hyperreality, or the world whose symbols are taken from the real world. Thus, all the sets (the empty cups, open but impractical houses, and the beach wave that Ken crashes into) in Barbie land are emulating the real world. 

Baudrillard provides the most formfitting analysis, as one could replace his Disneyland example with Barbie land. Barbie land is the colorful fun perfect symbolic taking of everything of the real world which carries none of its real depth. Even when Ken tries to take the patriarchy from the real world, he only takes with him symbols (horses, cars, and etc). The continuing interaction of the two worlds with each trying to take from or influence the other damages the barrier between the two the point where real ceases to have any depth itself with an audience who prefers simulation over reality. Afterall the executives themselves (real world versions of Ken) don’t know whether Barbie land is an alternate reality or an imaginative world.  It’s also hard to determine which world influences which, as surely the execs have a role in determining what exists in Barbie land (like with Gloria’s illustration affecting Stereotypical Barbie), yet Ken’s actions affect the real world (with the selling of the Mojo Dojo Casa Houses). Then again, Ken’s actions come from the real world’s influence. 

Additionally, we could think about Baudrillard’s reasoning behind the motivation of signs. Panicked production suggests we attach ourselves to this idea of Barbie and female empowerment (or even the patriarchy as shown in both worlds) as actual things because we are so afraid of a world without any order. 

This removes the influence of the ruling class, which could be represented by Mattel. Althusser and Barthes may argue that there is a more sinister reason for the existence of Barbie land. That by creating a fake world that symbolically has everything the real world does not, it is a way of placating the public (particularly female) into believing that their being given power to prevent them from making attempts to seize state power. Gloria seems to be somewhat content to live or rely on the Barbie world to ease her issues with the real world. Though, in the beginning, this doesn’t seem to be working very well and her ideas (Barbie land) are actively being corrupted by the complexity of the real world, something that Baudrillard would chalk up to the absence of reality or authority while Althusser, Barthes, and to some extent Hall may assign to some larger dynamic (and misalignment) between Gloria and the ruling class which dictates the real world.

Barthes would also investigate the myth of Barbie and how it connects to the feminine ideal and capitalism. At some point in the history of Barbie, there came to be a prevalent ideology around her as representing the feminine ideal and while this may not have been Ruth Handler’s founding idea, it was co-opted by society and the ruling class (a patriarchy). Hall would be interested in this misalignment as the dominant hegemonic position has changed over time (particularly in my lifetime where Barbies of color and of differing weights and careers started appearing). There is a large difference behind what little girls (I say little girls because of the focus of the movie) versus adult men and women think of when they see Barbie. During the travel sequences to the real world and right before, Barbie is the leader and Ken is just tagging along. This is very much what a little girl would think of with Barbie. When they enter the real world, Barbie is immediately subjected to the thoughts of the adults which are lewder and more critical. She because of sexualized symbol. Hall, Barthes, and Althusser could then discuss what the motivation behind these different interpretations are and whether ISAs or some form of power is promoting the sexualized signs over the girl power ones. Sasha is an interesting character for Hall as she provides an oppositional code that stands entirely against this sexual understanding of Barbie, but in the process dismisses the original girlhood interpretation of Barbie. Sasha’s character suggests that it is some point in growing up that we adopt a different set of cultural values and a different position. 

In terms of the existence of ISAs and ruling class in the movie, both the examples in the real world and the hyperreality of Barbie land seem to flounder. Let’s look at the way to easy adoption of patriarchy into Barbie land. Althusser knows that state power is achieved through ideology as well as repressive force. Yet Barbie land has no ISAs that would’ve promoted patriarchy, and it’s not suggested that the Kens used force to achieve power. It may be suggested that the Barbie’s trust in the Kens and their friendship provided ISA like structures, but this discredits that the Barbies already did seem to have established state power with their own apparatuses that they likely would not have given up. Brainwashing is a good go to excuse, and the idea that giving voice to a cognitive dissonance solves everything is this simulation world agrees with the theorists view of myth and symbols only existing through discursive action.

There is also a lot to critique about Mattel and the portrayal of the executives in the movie. They are in a sense the ruling class, as they control the simulated world of ideology that is then propagated to the public. They are a state apparatus in line with promoting the ideology of the ruling class, only shifting their views slightly if profitable. This is seen near the end of the movie where Will Ferrell’s character approves of Ordinary Barbie because the idea would make money. Yet, it can’t be ignored how these executives are very much the opposite of the ideas they promote and benefit from the immobilization of a society that embraces patriarchy. The movie never commits to the framing of the executives as a ruling class or as producers of Barbie land, perhaps because of the growing inability to distinguish the two.Mattel through set design, seems to be some kind of bridge between the two worlds with a stark office that leads into a very colorful room reminiscent of Barbie Land. It is itself a hyperreality: a place where the lines are blurred between the real world and Barbie land. This is confusing to interpretations as Mattel as the ruling class. Baudrillard would de-emphasize the importance of the ruling class and more so emphasize how Mattel and Gloria both seem to be more willing to engage in the simulation of Barbie land than the real world (notice how Barbie land is fixed but the real world is not). 

Due to the continuous blurring of the two worlds, the movies focus on the simulated world of Barbie, and the real people’s fascination with Barbie land, I believe the theorists would be critical of Barbie’s choice to join the real world. In Baudrillard’s view, it makes no sense for Barbie to pursue some kind of authenticity in the real world. She lives in simulation and everyone in the real world tries their best to as well. The film leaves too much ambiguity of what is real and lacks explaining in the motivation behind the differences of the two worlds. The message of girl empowerment feels lost when Barbie land (the ideological fake world) is fixed through giving voice to cognitive dissonance, but the immobility of the real world remains because discursive action is only one layer against a state apparatus which has additional repressive forces. There is a lot of irony about how the movie only briefly criticizes the Mattel execs and the capitalistic tendencies of Barbie with how much money this movie made Mattel furthering capitalism and our desire for simulation (such as this movie). This movie finds itself having issues establishing what is real, much like the array of theorists who establish the idea of symbols but can’t quite shake the role that the ruling class has on controlling the symbol of Barbie and its role in our lives.

Conclusion

Through analyzing the four theorists and thinking about the idea of reality and how signs are related to it, I was able to analyze the relation between Barbie land and the real world in Barbie and found several interpretative issues around the motivation behind the existence of the symbols within Barbie land (assuming they were created by the producers in Mattel), the line between real and simulation, and why we should want the real if it is so hard to distinguish from simulation.

[janeindamembrane]

Analytical Application 3: Poststructuralism and Postmodernism

Postmodern: The Intro Scenes

Tykwer, 1998, 0:01:40 - 0:02:53

Tykwer, 1998, 0:04:38 - 0:04:45

Postmodernism is a reaction against modernism or what is, through mass, popular, or high culture, considered the establishment and therefore even the enemy[1]. Postmodernism is hard to define as it is defined by what it is reacting against and has multiple versions. To expand on the last part, postmodernism experiences a phenomenon where with an emergence of postmodernism comes the changing of the tide of what is considered establishment and hence a change in reaction against that establishment and the formation of a new postmodern. The old postmodern becomes the modern and a new postmodern (which may even resemble the old modern in a rebellious act of nostalgia) is formed. To be succinct, postmodernism is a challenge to what we consider good and true.

We as audience members have come to expect a certain significance from the opening scenes of a film. Something that clues us in on our main characters and main conflict. The opening scene of Run Lola Run is a challenge to this structure, and a larger challenge to the idea of truth and importance. It is postmodern in style as it challenges cinematic manners like a kid refusing to give a proper introduction. We do not see our main characters, save for there brief photo introduction in the opening credits of all the cast. We do see our side characters, who with a traditional analysis lenses do not have that much impact on the plot. For example, Lola merely bumps into the first lady with the baby while running. This lady through traditional narrative lenses can be summarized to merely an obstacle, yet it is she along with several others who the camera focuses on in the frenetic crowd of people. This opening scene, paired with the subsequent scene zooming in to Lola from the birds eye view of Berlin diminishes the importance or singularity of the main character and thus challenges the modern film notion of main character and the modern ideology of singularity. How can we view Lola the same as any main character when we know her place in the world is so small and rubbed against so many other people with potential stories of their own?

This opening scene is not only postmodern in style but postmodern in ideology challenging the things we collectively tell ourselves (that there is truth, reason, and destiny) in order to quell the overwhelming mystery of human nature. The narration at the beginning of the film, a subversion of narration that usually gives us insight to the main character or plot, asks us to question everything and accept the futility of answers. “Why do we believe anything at all?” (2:12) Cheekily our narrator, a referee, says that the only thing one can be sure of is that “the ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes… Everything else is pure theory” (2:40). The only thing in life we can be sure of is its game like quality. It lasts a certain amount and yet it is always rolling. The other rules (modern structures and beliefs) we impose on the game (on life) are merely theory.

Postmodernism is the challenge of the norm, and the opening scene of Run Lola Run challenges what we have come to expect from opening narration scenes as well as prods us to challenge certain ideologies about structure and truth.

[1]Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”, in Modernism/Postmodernism, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (New York: Routledge, 2014), 164, 165.

Hyperreality: the “And Then” Montages

Tykwer, 1998, 19:11-0:19:17

Baudrilliard uses hyperreality to describe what we think is real in a world that is not real. His example of Disneyworld discusses how Disney attempts to paint itself as imaginary to enforce that the world outside of Disney is real. Hyperreality is this “real” world; “deprived of symbolic substance, it doubles back upon itself, draws its energy from its own reflection and its disappointment with itself”[1]. Disneyland mimics the “real world” and thus gives it a certain legitimacy that it is only able to gain through its reflection. Hyperreal is the resemblance/construction of a sense of realness that is created through the manipulation of the ever increasingly indistinguishable perceived imaginary and real. Disney crafts a hyperreality for the outside world, while also providing an immersive enough capitalistic experience that it becomes its own form of hyperreality (a “third-order simulation”)[2].

During each of Lola’s runs, the side characters she bumps into interrupt the narrative with quick flash montages of images showing their supposed fates. In a sense, these montages are confirming the reality of Lola’s situation while paradoxically making the audience question the reality principle’s tenets of destiny and fate.

By imposing this fullness of life on these characters that Lola only briefly interacts with, the projected lives of others create an illusion of reality about us and the wider world. A hyperreality is created because our own experiences are supposedly mirrored in that of others even if we aren’t privy to these experiences. If the other people we interact with all have full lives and fates awaiting them, then we ourselves do and there is a larger order to the world which we belong to. 

There is, however, no certainty to the fates of the characters in the montages. It is uncertain the first time around if this is projected or if there is any truth to it. Additionally, through the subsequent runs, these montages change. This goes with the narrative idea of how different choices have different outcomes, but it also calls to question the idea of truth or destiny. If all these side characters can have such different fates, how can there be any truth to what one is supposed to experience. And if all these side people in life’s fates are uncertain, so is the supposed humanity and realness we have imposed on ourselves or on Lola. The hyperreal is exposed as a falsification of real drawn from simulation: there is no reality or truth in these projected futures of others and thus we are drawn to question the source which the hyperreal mirrors.

Through the several and then montages, a hyperreality about the fullness and realness of the world Lola presides in is created and then questioned through subsequent alternate montages that questions the solidity of fate in others and in oneself.

[1]Jean Baudrillard, “from ‘Simulacra and Simulations”, in Modernism/Postmodernism, ed. and with Introduction by Mark Poster (New York: Routledge, 2014),  161.

[2] Baudrillard, 154.

Pastiche: the Animated Running Sequences

Tyler, 1998, 0:02:53 - 0:04:01, 0:55:00 - 0:55:22

Pastiche, although like parody, is an imitation of something that lacks the intent to ridicule or criticize what it is replicating. Many a times, parody is criticizing because one has the notion that what it is discussing does not measure up to reality or derails from reality in a laughable or even punishable way. Pastiche does not carry this notion and is in a sense an empty parody.[1] It accepts what it is copying as either the truth that parody would compare it to does not exist (like in Baudrillard’s theory) or has become invalid (such as when postmodern becomes the new modern).

The first time we see Lola is in animated form during the credits. In these credits she is running forward and dodging many elements including a clock counting down time. This is reminiscent of many early video game platformers where the objective is merely to go forward (run) and avoid obstacles in a timely manner (a time challenge). In each of the animated sequences when Lola runs out of her home, there is the neighbor with the dog who provides an early obstacle (like the goombas in Mario). In the third run, Lola expertly leaps over the dog a la the world’s favorite mustached overall wearing plumber. Additionally, I want to point out the similarity between Lola’s character design and that of Lara Croft. They both have blue-ish tank tops and cargo like bottoms with a belt. The techno music playing in the background confirms that these choices and imitations are done consciously. 

The style of videogames is imitated in the movie, but this means that it must be determined if the movie is doing pastiche or parody. The movie never mocks the genre of video games or suggests that what happens in the animated sequences is unimportant to the story. For example, in the second one she trips over the dog guy’s leg in the animation and we see her limp after she fell at the bottom of the stairs in the physical film world (0:35:19 - 0:35:41). To be a parody of video games, the movie would have to suggest the video game world or a character’s habit of viewing the world in a video game style is a laughable derailment of reality. This film, however, uses the video game style to reveal something about reality rather than comment on video games dissimilarity or failure of reality. Videogames are like Baudrillard’s Disneyland: a way to reflect the real in a way that justifies its realness and saves the reality principle. Run Lola Run suggests that life and the arbitrary choices we all make are like a video game. There are desirable outcomes in this world, but there is no truth. Who’s to say whether Lola died or succeeded? Who’s to say which is the truth? Aren’t they all as equally likely? A parody of video games would stick to enforcing the reality principle, while this pastiche of video games breaks down the reality principle.

This pastiche of the video game style in the film doesn't parody the style in comparison to reality but rather breaks down the hyperreality we have created between game and life, thus revealing the true game like nature of life.

[1] Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”, 167.

Parody: the Casino Scene

Tykwer, 1998, 1:05:10 - 1:08:37

Parody, as stated before in my definition of pastiche, is imitation that through its imitation highlights the discrepancy of the thing being imitated from the real or what should be real. Parody has a satirical impulse, and a latent belief in a possibility of discovering the real by imitating and thus mocking the false[1]. 

The serious and stoic nature of the others in the casino feels misplaced and odd within the world of Run Lola Run. Despite Lola being the outcast (by her hair and her standing while everyone else is sitting), we the audience have spent enough time with her to feel that the oddness belongs to everyone else. The music also decreases its frenetic techno nature and becomes more in line with a traditional drama score. The way that the other characters hold themselves, the more dramatic pauses in place of fast paced shot editing feel like they are from a different movie. The table is shown from a bird’s eye view with several close ups allowing the audience to see the bets being made and the chips being given out. The last roulette round uses a slow motion shot to reveal Lola’s win. It’s tense, mesmerizing, and a lot slower than most of the very fast movie. For the most part the scene is way more serious until Lola wins her second round by emitting a piercing scream that breaks glasses, catches everyone’s attention, and causes the ball to land on her number. 

This provides a first level of parody, where Lola’s scream is a subversion of what is expected and thus makes us believe in the real- where these tense scenes should be won sheerly by luck or perhaps by some cheating. This is, however, reveals another level of parody, or perhaps more accurately reveals the similarity between Lola’s ridiculous scream winning her fortune and the usual results of gambling scenes. The parody and the real are indistinguishable. Lola’s scream is a ridiculous move of willpower forcing the hand of luck, which is exactly what everyone else in the casino is trying to do (especially the cheaters). They may hide their desperation to the arbitrary nature of fate better than the disheveled Lola, but they too are playing the game and sometimes being played by the game. The expected outcome of this gambling scene due to its imitation of other movie gambling scenes is subverted in a parody that compares Lola’s fantastical win to reality and realizes the similarity of the two, thus discarding the idea of what real is and replacing it with the truth being the game and everything else being theory. 

Parody is a more viscous intent of imitating, that can sometimes become indistinguishable from a perceived truth and thus shedding a light on one’s inability to determine truth[2]. The casino scene in Run Lola Run is a parody of the tense and serious nature of casinos in film and in theory. Her win through a ridiculous and supposedly unreal force causes one to look at what is perceived as the real way to win at casinos which ultimately, because casinos are the ultimate game of chance, causes one to see the game nature of the world with its arbitrary nature and consequences. 

[1] Jameson, 167.

[2] Baudrillard, 156.

Nostalgia Mode: the Second Conversation in Red

(left) Tykwer, 1998, 0:52:29 - 0:54:23

(right) Blizzard Entertainment, 2012, Diablo 3

Nostalgia mode, different from the nostalgia film, is something that gratifies a deep need/desire to return to something before, perhaps an older time through reliving its aesthetic rituals[1]. Jameson’s idea of the nostalgia mode focuses on movies that either relive the past with factual detail or recall some kind of past longing or experience even if it itself did not exist in historical reality like Star Wars[2].

The movie, during its cut scenes tinted red after the death of either Manni or Lola, cast a nostalgic light on the events that have already happen and created a strong desire to go back and get it right. The second and third runs are a nostalgia mode for the first run. The cut scenes do more than just separate the runs but provide motivator for the next. Specifically, the second cut scene, after Manni has died, provides Lola a strong motivation to prove her love (and her unwillingness to let him die) through her third and final run. As stated before, this is very reminiscent of a video game death screen and in certain games cut scenes that then motivate the player to not get it wrong. During these chats, which are a slow moment unscored by the frenetic pulses of the runs, the characters question choice and fate. If he died, was it always her fate to be with someone else? Who is to say that there is even a fate that put them together in the first place? These questions, placed right after a death of a character, create this deep longing for a controlled world or at least one where, if only for a moment, one can hold the reins of chance. 

Nostalgia mode is the use of aesthetic replication to gratify a need to go back and reexperience a time or feeling. The post death scene chats create this desire in Lola (and in an audience that is rooting for her) to go back and relive the circumstances leading up to this point in a different matter. The subsequent runs which are similar enough to the first satisfy this need to go back. In consistency with its similarity to the video game world, Run Lola Run also satisfies the desire to immerse oneself in the simpleness of video games where the arbitrary nature of the world is kept at bay through multiple chances at getting the best outcome.

[1] Jameson, 170.

[2] Jameson, 169.

[theuncannyprofessoro]

Reading Notes 5: Baudrillard to Jameson

To further our studies in visual analysis, Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulations” and Fredric Jameson’s “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” offer guidance to understanding the roles of poststructuralism and postmodernism.

What are the four successive phases that break down an image?

What is the relationship of parody to the object it mocks, and at what point does parody become impossible and pastiche appear?

@theuncannyprofessoro

[janeindamembrane]

QUESTION ONE:

The four successive phases of the image are that it “is the reflection of a basic reality”, “masks and perverts a basic reality”, “masks the absence of a basic reality”, and “bears no relation to any reality whatever”[1]. To first phase means that the image (the sign) represents the truth. The sign is in line with reality with no signified depth of meaning. The second phase has more of an evil nature than the first, as there is an obscuration of the truth, and the signifier has been attached with an arbitrary (meaning unnatural not unmotivated) signified concept which is not part of nature. The more difficult distinction comes from the third and fourth phases. Baudrillard differentiates in that “in the third [the image] plays at being an appearance… In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearance at all, but of simulation”[2]. To further understand this explanation, the terms simulation and simulacrum (both attached to the fourth step) must be defined.

A simulacrum is the replacement of (or rather what we perceive as) reality. Since there is no reality, all the perceived signs and symbols are weightless and arbitrary[3]. The truth they refer to is not truth but simulacrum, a hyperreal entity that exists within the simulation[4]. The simulation is this world of signs and symbols which we have attributed as underlying truth, whether or not one perceives them to clash with the popular images/media distributed). Simulation is hyperreal because it has become so pervasive that we believe (and want to believe) that it provides truth.

In summary, the third phase suggests that while the image’s sign has been filled with an underlying depth, this is merely a distraction that hides the disappearance of a basic/true/good reality. It insinuates that there was something and now it is gone. The fourth phase meanwhile obliterates the notion of a basic/true/good reality and replaces it with the nihilistic notion that there is no truth at all and that everything is “already dead”. Myth and images only exist to allow people to hold onto the threadbare hope of truth in a world where there is none. Even in the second and third phase of the image, people are gifted the belief that images and myths hide the truth or the absence of it. There is the gift of a belief/hope in order and truth that through awareness or restructuring might be able to come to the forefront again. Perverted and false truth is still safer than the idea of no truth or law and order[5].

QUESTION TWO:

Baudrillard defines parody as the challenge to the difference of perceived law and the reality that there is no law. Parody believes there is a possibility of discovering the real by making fun of the false, but it is through its own indistinguishable nature that parody proves the absence of reality[6]. In his example of a bank robbery, a parody of the bank robbery will always be perceived as reality if the parody is to replicate an actual robbery. Thus, law and order have no way to differentiate falseness and truth, leading to the dissolution of both. A parody should make it “impossible to isolate the process of the real”[7].

Jameson describes parody as something that like pastiche involves imitation, but unlike pastiche is motivated by highlighting the “idiosyncrasies and eccentricities” of unique styles (like those of the high modernism era) in a way that mocks or casts ridicule on the original[8]. Parody is the insistence that the replicated medium differs from a norm. Parody is in line with the second phase of the image, the belief that the replicated image is a perversion of some truth, and thus, through another replication, the original medium is called out for its perversion.  

Pastiche, not mentioned in Baudrillard’s writing, is akin to parody within the third or fourth phase of the image. It is an empty parody, since truth has either been erased (and replaced with what pastiche is trying to imitate) or was nonexistent all along (and the pastiche is just one of a long line of narratives gripped to hide from the fiction of truth). It erases the intent to ridicule since it sees the replicated image as a pervasive truth. It is “without the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal”[9]. Parody becomes impossible when one goes from the second or third phase of the image that believes in the possibility of a “linguistic norm” and enters the fourth phase of the image where there is no truth and thus a variety of equally valid/nonvalid stylistic diversity[10]. Parody is impossible in a world where there is no motivation to ridicule a stylistic flourish or mannerism, because there is no norm that this flourish is defying.

[1] Jean Baudrillard, “from ‘Simulacra and Simulations”, in Modernism/Postmodernism, ed. and with Introduction by Mark Poster (New York: Routledge, 2014), 152 – 153.

[2] Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations”, 153.

[3] Baudrillard, 152.

[4] Baudrillard, 152.

[5] Baudrillard, 155, 156.

[6] Baudrillard, 156.

[7] Baudrillard, 157.

[8] Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”, in Modernism/Postmodernism, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (New York: Routledge, 2014), 166, 167.

[9] Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”, 167.

[10] Jameson, 167.

[theuncannyprofessoro]

Reading Notes 4: Metz to Deleuze

Christian Metz’s “Some Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema” and Giles Deleuze’s “Introduction: Repetition and Difference” transitions our inquiry from semiotics and structuralism to poststructuralism and postmodernism.

How are connotations used to signify style, genre, symbol, or poetic atmosphere in film?

How is repetition different from generality, and how is repetition different from resemblance?

@theuncannyprofessoro

[janeindamembrane]

Question 1:

To understand how connotation signifies style, genre, symbol, or poetic atmosphere, knowledge of connotation, denotation, and myth is needed. These concepts work together so that a connotation leads to one recognizing and assigning these things to a film. Metz splits the semiotics of cinema into the semiotics of connotations and semiotics of denotation. Denotation is the signifier of connotations, since denotation is the technical visual choices made and the perception of those choices on the most literal sense for the recipient of the media[1]. Both the signifier (the individual choices and technique of shooting) and the signified (the scene represented) of denotation contribute to the signifier of connotation (the representation of the intended scene using the totality of technical choices). The significate (the end sign) of the connotation is the impression of the scene- what the audience perceives/sees[2]. This impression can include, thanks to filmic narrative conventions or repetition of myths, an instantaneous (though not to be confused as spontaneous) recognition of the style or genre of the film from the denotative significate. The connotative impression can also include interpreting the presentation of a scene or visual aspect as a symbol representing something else, again encouraged by the myth of connecting a visual impression (an intermediary sign) to a larger meaning or insinuation at large[3]. The same can be said of poetic atmosphere- which is created through a multitude of symbols and languages (audio, visual, etc.). Connotation is used to signify style by providing an impression that combined with a recipient’s knowledge and cultural context creates certain impressions of style, genre, symbolic meaning, and poetic atmosphere.

Question 2:

Deleuze takes painstaking time and detail to clarify what he conceives (and interprets from previous writers) as the difference of repetition from generality as well as resemblance.

Generality is the “qualitative order of resemblances and the quantitative order of equivalences”[4]. I think that this quote can be explained to be that many items have enough of the same qualities to be put in a large category that will continue throughout time in a long line of equal things (equivalences). This can be further explained by expanding on the example of the hard rock softening that Deleuze presents when describing that generality “belongs to the order of laws”[5]. Even over time as the individual rock experiences natural changes, it still belongs to the broad and permanent category of a rock. The individual changes are only those of “an empty form of difference”[6]. Thus, belonging to a permanent and broad category, a rock cannot be repeated as it has little individuality. One rock is not an exact repetition of another rock, they are both just rocks.

There is an “economic difference” between generality and repetition[7]. Repetition is to behave in imitation of something that is unique and has no equivalent. This kind of thing defies the broad category of generality, and thus avoids the order of laws. A repetition is not equal to an original as it is trying to repeat certain qualities of something which is unrepeatable (think of festivals celebrating or memorializing an unrepeatable event). Something that is lesser than does not belong to the qualitative order of equivalences.

Resemblance is used by Deleuze when describing generality. Thus, resemblance is the similarity (the ability to swap out one or another) between two things that follow the same broad law of order. As established, repetitions resulting in repeats cannot be swapped with the original so thus resemblance and repetition have the same economic difference that generality and repetition have. A repetition is made based off of something that is truly unrepeatable, while things that resemble each other are not necessarily made with each other in mind but are simply following the same natural law.

Additionally, Deleuze goes on to explain the difference between repetition of the same and repetition of difference. He argues that singularity and repetition are not found in generalized concepts but can be found in the particulars of the concept. When one items repetition resembles that of another there is the broadness of generality. He goes on to state that one theorist believed resemblance to be displaced repetition, highlighting the similarity and difference of repetition, generality, and resemblance[8].

[1] Christian Metz, “Some Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema”, in Film Theory and Criticism, 7th ed., ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 67.

[2] Metz, “Semiotics of the Cinema”, 68.

[3] Roland Barthes, “Mythologies”, in Mythologies, trans. Anette Lavers (New York: The Noonday Press, 1972), 26.

[4] Gilles Deleuze, “Repetition and Difference”, in Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 1.

[5] Deleuze, “Repetition and Difference”, 2

[6] Deleuze, 2.

[7] Deleuze, 1.

[8] Deleuze, 25.

[janeindamembrane]

Analytical Application 2: Structuralism and Semiotics

Meta language: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Metalanguage is needed to fully interpret The Rocky Picture Horror Show poster since a key part of the symbols used on the poster are the way they reference the cultural zeitgeist to egg on public discourse (metalanguage).

Metalanguage is not the first language within semiotics which is the connection between a language-object and concept, but rather it is a second language “in which one speaks about the first”[1]. It is an imagining conscious rather than the image conscious. This plays into the film world because without discourse film is a technological reproduction method that allows denotation (visual transfer). It is discourse that allows film as a language to have a connotation[2].

On the level of denotation (visual observation), the Rocky Picture Horror Show poster can only tell us so much. There is a black background and floating lips that are starkly contrasted from the background using its bright red lipstick. The title, done in a font imitating dripping, is done in a similar red. Underneath the title there is a tagline: “a different set of jaws”. For this poster to be “actualized with their total meaning”[3], one must enter the discourse around the poster and the context. We must explore the metalanguage (discourse) used to discuss the visual appearance of the poster. Contextually, the poster was released before late summer 1975 (when the film was released). This follows the release of the first summer blockbuster, Jaws, hence the tagline. Additionally, the lip's triangular upward facing position is supposed to resemble that of the mouth of the shark in the Jaws poster. Through exploring the discourse around the visual elements of the poster we can properly analyze the marketing tactic of trying to market the movie off the immense success of Jaws, while also teasing its camp/alternative elements with its promise to be different than the blockbuster formula and the perceived flirtatious nature of the lips.

Metalanguage or in this situation the general public’s discourse and cultural zeitgeist around the time of the poster for the Rocky Picture Horror Show allows us to further analyze the intention of the poster beyond what the first language (that of visual reciprocation) can or even the other language of symbols (since the publics discourse and culture affects their interpretation of the lips).

[1] Roland Barthes, “Myth Today”, in Mythologies, trans. Anette Lavers (New York: The Noonday Press, 1972), 114.

[2] Christian Metz, “Some Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema”, in Film Theory and Criticism, 7th ed., ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 68

[3] Metz, “Semiotics of the Cinema”, 74.

Connotation: Poltergeist

Connotation, or the implied associations and meaning of the visual media, can be used to analyze the Poltergeist poster because of the effect the visual choices of the poster (background, positioning, etc.) have upon the impression: that it is a horror/spooky film. The semiotics of cinema can be split into the semiotics of connotation and denotation. Denotation in film is what one sees, or (put more poetically) “literal (that is perceptual), meaning of the spectacle reproduced in the image”[1]. Meanwhile, the connotation’s signifier is the denotated material which includes style, symbols, and other technical visual choices. Connotation is what the recipient of the media thinks. It is the impression of those choices: the genre, style, or atmosphere). Those impressions then help the recipient create further assumptions about the film by using metalanguage (discourse) and knowledge of filmic narrative conventions. In the Poltergeist poster, the signifier of the connotation is the denotative choices made. The poster's background is dark (like that of The Rocky Picture Horror Show), but instead of eye-catching and bold red, this poster only uses greyscale. Additionally, the main image of the poster, a young child pressing their hands onto a TV with a strange glow emitting around her, is relatively small on the poster, seemingly being swallowed by the darkness of the background. The name of the movie along with the tagline “It knows what scares you” is below a medium-sized gap of space from the image of the child. Directly above the tv is the quotation “’They’re here’”, which implies that this might be what the child is saying at the moment of the image. The connotative sign of these choices (since alone they are only visual choices) is that of an eerie horror movie, one where this child pictured is interacting with something strange and unusual. Since the child is doing something not typical of children, surrounded by an unusual glow, shrouded in darkness, and lacking all color, there is a strong sense that something is wrong and that there is some other strange force at work (the they in “they’re here”). The impression (connotation) of the denotative signifiers of the colors (or lack thereof) color in the poster along with the strangeness of the central image not only informs us of the genre of the movie (horror) but hints at a plot where there is a mysterious entity that has some kind of weird draw over this child.[1] Metz, “Semiotics of Cinema”, 67.

Myth: Geronimo

The Myth, according to Roland Barthes, is a semi logical system where a myth endows a sign (an already complete combination of image object and concept in the language plane) with significance[1]. The signification of the myth is arbitrary having no permanent connection to reality and being motivated by humans and their history[2]. Often myths will attempt to present themselves as spontaneous, a “pompously christened nature”, while they are invented for the occasion[3].

In the Geronimo: An American Legend Poster, there are four characters on the poster. The three at the top are all in color and are diagonal in order. They are all posed in what feels like historical portraits/headshots. The fourth character, the titular Geronimo, is to the left of the other characters and is in a sepia tone, matching that of the plains and sky in the background. Geronimo is also riding a horse with a sense of urgency as indicated by the body positioning of the horse and Geronimo’s face. He also holds a gun in one hand. These images and the difference in coloring perpetrate a myth about Native Americans, placing them as an image in the past belonging to the history books rather than having descendants and true impact on the current day. By washing out Geronimo, they make him more historical seeming than the three other white characters who, thanks to their attire, are presumably generals. It also differentiates them from these three other characters, reflecting that in modern days ones visual idea of Americans is more likely to look like the three generals than Geronimo. By putting Geronimo in action alongside the tagline “He Would Never be Forgotten”, one is reminded of the constantly pumped symbology of Native Americans in battle (their horses and storied fierceness) and perhaps the longstanding unfortunate narrative of the inevitability and tragedy of their lost. Afterall, on the poster, Geronimo is pit against three generals in what might be seen as portraits resembling more professionalism. Thus, the lone Native American attempts to take on three more experienced and colder “Americans”, and thus, in tragedy, will become a figment of the past. The movie poster celebrates Geronimo as a legend, but one as stuck in the past as the idea of the American frontier.

The poster for Geronimo: An American Legend, references several myths by first of all putting its central character (who is notably last in the billing at the top) in a position reminiscent of the archetypical Native American warrior (fierce yet overpowered), while also using color to implicate the longstanding myth of the historic rather than modern nature of the Native American.

[1] Barthes, “Myth Today”, 109.

[2] Barthes, “Mythologies”, 101.

[3] Barthes, “Mythologies”, 26.

Parole: Guilty by Suspicion

Analyzing the Guilty by Suspicion poster through the lens of the term parole presents a barrier: Saussure defines parole as the executive side of speaking, particularly that of which cannot be photographed in detail since it is a moving action[1]. The expanded definition, however, that parole is the executive side of language (versus the system of language itself or the psychological interpretation), allows us to look at the different text bylines of the poster and how that text is produced. After all, these were executive choices in how the language would be presented, thus having a similar analytical effect that the speech form of parole would have in the physical world.

Parole is the executive side of speaking and is defined by its individuality (or at least belonging to a creator of a medium)[2]. This differs from the system of language (langue for linguistic language) which is distinct and well-defined by collective approval to the point of being classified as homogenous; the system and unification of object-image and concept is the same versus the interpretation of different speech[3]. Parole also differs from the psychological interpretation (the connotation) of language which belongs to the recipient. Saussure defines Parole as the physical act of speech, but I would argue that parole can include written text. Does the creator of the text not have individuality over their choice of words? Is writing and typing not just the reproduction of what an individual would have spoken? With the conclusion that parole is the individual executive action of speaking or putting words that would’ve been spoken into physical text, the idea of parole can be used to analyze posters.

In the Guilty by Suspicion poster, the first text that the audience is confronted with is Robert de Niro’s name, which is placed on a white background in-between two sections of what appears to be a photo of de Niro torn at the top. By placing de Niro’s name at the top in large writing (as large as the title itself), the centrality of the actor and the character is put into focus. The white background directs ones eye instantly to the name which is a lot less busy than the rest of the photo. I would also argue that the white background represents what isn’t in world within the film or (as I will argue) what isn’t known by the world. What I mean by this is that de Niro is the actor, and within the world of the film he is the character. The other large text on the poster that is on the white background is “Suspicion” which is under “Guilty by” which is at the bottom of the image of de Niro looking serenely and contemplatively out. The audience knows that he is innocent because of the presentation of the text and also by the choice of word. Suspicion insists that something has not yet been proven and is doubtable. Paired with de Niro’s face, the audience assumes the position he is innocent, and unjustly accused. Yet in the movie world, there is no “by suspicion”, it seems that the words (and thus view) they accept in the world of the movie is that de Niro’s character is guilty. This is affirmed by the other smaller text on the poster to the right side of de Niro that states a summary of the creative censorship by the US during the Cold War and the red scare. The text and choice of presentation informs us of the time period and scenario in the world of the film as well as the centrality of de Niro’s character along with the insinuation of the position he finds himself in and therefor the plot of the movie. In the Guilty by Suspicion Poster, the choice of what is written mixed with the choice of how to present the written text and other visual signs conveys the plot of the film and the central innocence of and focus on de Niro’s character.

[1] Ferdinand de Saussure, “The Object of Linguistics”, in Course in General Linguistics, ed. Bally and Sechehaye (New York Toronto London: McGraw-Hill Book Company), 15.

[2] Saussure, “The Object of Linguistics”, 13.

[3] Saussure, 15.

Filmic Narrative: Nuns on the Run

Filmic narrative are the sequences or plot structure of the film. Shots of the film are composed in a structure that tells the story and throughout time, have become somewhat stable in genre conventions (think of the similar plot structure of horror movies or Marvel movies)[1]. Of course, with the formation of fixed/stable forms there has also been the development and evolution of other forms (though development is not an overnight or singular change).

For Nuns on the Run, the poster gives very large hints at the filmic narrative of the story and to what conventions it will keep to. It seems to be a comedy that takes certain plot elements from robbery/crime films. The two main characters are most likely thieves as indicated by the wanted poster, and in the beginning of the film will commit the crime (the “robbery of $1,000,000”). They will be forced into the comedic situation of going to a nunnery and pretending to be nuns in order to hide from people hunting them down (for the reward on the poster) and in order to hide the money. There may also be conflict between the two characters as indicated by the first tagline, “from now on, it’s every nun for himself!”. This conflict may have to do with the pressures of being wanted, disagreement over the nun lifestyle, or even a romantic plotline as both of our fake nuns are men. To last guess is do to the created convention within this subgenre of characters forced into cross-dressing by circumstance falling in love with or being attracted to someone of that same sex they are dressing as thus creating confusion and jokes galore. Think She’s the Man, certain scenes in the Big Mama’s House movies, or even Mulan (not a comedy but has the same convention).

The elements on the Nuns on the Run poster indicate its comedic genre (the taglines and even the faces of the two characters dressed as nuns) as well as showing through symbols certain elements of the plot. Using one’s knowledge of filmic narrative and certain conventions within comedic films, robbery films, and films that involve forced through circumstance cross dressing films, one can surmise some of the expected plot elements as well as the structure of the film. It can be assumed that by the end of the film, the two will be buddies, will get the money (despite most likely being caught), or will live a better life with their new nun friends.

[1] Metz, “Semiotics of the Cinema”, 69.