Michelle Lin

[lin460-blog]

Ban the Ban or the Environment is Getting Cancelled

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What’s the big deal with banning plastic straws?

This past summer Starbucks, the Seattle-based corporate coffee conglomerate made an announcement that the company was moving to ban all plastic straws in its stores by 2020. In by fall, several other corporations had taken strides to join the anti-straw environmental train, such as Disney.

The anti-straw movement was largely prompted by a video released in 2015 that depicted a Ridley sea turtle choking on a straw lodged in its nose. It quickly went viral, racking up more than 30 million views. This video that was shared across media channels prompted action regarding environmental practices.

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As climate change intensifies, the issue of environmental sustainability becomes a huge issue with advocates. Plastic, in particular has posed a huge problem for the environment and oceans. Not only does it kill marine life because it poses choking hazards to animals who think the plastic is food, the plastic releases toxic chemicals like BPA.

(source: giphy)

In addition, plastic is not able to decompose quickly and ends up in landfills or the ocean, damaging marine life and natural ecosystems. According to Vox, “The World Economic Forum reports that there are 150 million metric tons of plastics in the ocean. And if we continue this trend, scientists predict there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050.” Clearly, the direness of the environmental situation is nothing to scoff at.

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As a result, Starbucks’ announcement to ban plastic straws was greeted as a positive force of action to combat environmental degradation. Banning straws was predicted to eliminate about one billion plastic straws per year . The move mirrored other anti-straw initiatives that resulted in similar bans from the city of Seattle, Vancouver, British Columbia, and prohibition initiatives in New York City, Portland, and San Francisco.

However, not everyone was particularly pleased with this move. 

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Directly opposing the environmental praise were critics who pointed out that the straw ban might not be as revolutionary as Starbucks was trying to market it. The first point of order was that straws made up very little of the plastic waste percentage. Additional points of criticism pointed out that Starbucks’ alternative to straws – plastic lids – particularly those used for their Nitro beverages required greater amounts of plastic to manufacture. 

(source: Reddit)

As a result, getting rid of straws would mean more plastic was being used. Other issues that critiqued the straw ban as a drop-in-the-bucket solution were that the U.S. exports a third of its recycling, environment waste was mostly due to non robust preexisting recycling practices, and was only a “feel-good” measure meant to lull consumers into a false sense of contribution.

Starbucks has since defended the ban as a starting point measure. They consider straws as a “gateway plastic” to address greater concerns about the environment and other environmental practices. The company’s other initiatives to provide sustainable practices has also helped the company maintain a green, environmentally conscious track record.

Other sides of the debate that further complicate the issue is the use of straws for disabled persons and specific drinks. The use of straws is needed for people to consumer drinks and as such, the banning of straws further erases disability rights. 

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Even more, non-plastic straw alternatives are often too expensive or dangerous. Biodegradable straws are seen as too expensive for companies to provide and alternatives like metal straws risk heating up or getting too cold and could harm consumers.

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Clearly, there are many sides to the plastic straw ban that have consumers up in arms about what to do. The environmental question is layered with many other concerns from political, social, and economic aspects. As we move toward greater environmental changes, looking at these policies will require a close, nuanced approach that will demand solutions that can balance both sustainability and consumer needs.

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The Litmus Testing of Art

Who gets to determine what is acceptable and what is criminal? Who gets to determine what is art? The exceptionalism of yarn bombing in public spaces rests on two main components: first, that yarn bombing is considered temporary and second, that it is associated with femininity and women’s work. These characteristics allow for the creation of a kind of “graffiti” that is not only accepted in public space, but regularly praised as beautiful and valuable to society.

Hahner and Varda discuss how yarn bombing becomes an aesthetic of “the middle class through a white, womanly body” (305). The idea of women’s domestic labor is incorporated into these public art displays and creates an association between yarn bombing and femininity. These practices help yarn bombing become a public art and “graffiti” that is acceptable but also compared to other graffiti.

This “litmus testing” juxtaposition of yarn bombing against other graffiti is similar to the comparison between different kinds of dance in public space. In particular, the use of dance in urban hip hop versus dance flash mobs shows how different kinds of art in public space can be legitimized or criminalized. Flash mobs were legitimized because “"it becomes a unique work of art, a properly organized performance" (Pavis, pg. 79*) that people associate as a “gratuitous” form of fun. Hip hop emerged from black artists as a way to create resistance against institutional power and to create a means of creative freedom. However, its association with black culture lead to criminalization where people viewed the music as inappropriate and explicit and the dance movement uncivilized. Hip hop was grown in the streets, in urban areas that were often also poor areas. Dance in hip hop was a means of demonstrating identity, resistance, etc.

In looking at flash mobs versus hip hop, flash mobs are “organized” instances of public art and disruption. Although flash mobs are also illicit in many situations for public disturbance, they have been generally accepted as public performance. On the other hand, gatherings of hip hop and urban dance were seen as public disturbances and risks of uprising. Although today hip hop is being re-understood for its intention of freedom, identity, and culture, it still faces comparison with other modes of dance as expression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8sRgwlEgE0 ( Flash mob by the Dutch National Ballet in Beijing's Parkview Green)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLcKX1f9tnM ( STREET BATTLE Les Twins VS. Bones The Machine+Pee Fly VS. Laura+Boubou | YAK FILMS)

This conversation also prompts discussion on art and appropriation. When yarn bombing can become a kind of “graffiti”, the intention of protesting things like labor and gender roles in a way becomes co-opted. This parallels dance and public spaces and how acts of resistance and culture can get buried. For example, the practice of hip hop cardio takes the dance form of hip hop and strips away the artistic and political intention to focus on the physical benefits of hip hop. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOkBrurM9G4 ( Fifth Harmony - Worth It | The Fitness Marshall | Dance Workout )

The medium becomes a means for people – mostly white women – to participate in hip hop and fitness. Other derivatives of hip hop have arisen in gyms, fitness studios, etc. that undermine the political intention of hip hop which grew from urban struggles. Yarn bombing as both a derivative but also “better, more aesthetic and clean” form of public art appropriates the medium the same way. The bottom line of these comparisons is that because there is a “right” way to do art, there is also necessarily a “wrong” way to do art.

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Playing with Power

In one of the most bare-bones way of thinking about the world, when it comes to “changing the system”, people often have two modes of thought: change within or change from out. Change within strategies come with people who feel that it’s necessary to speak the “language” of the system, to work from a mindset of the system, and then use that expertise to break down the system from within. Only by knowing something from the inside can you really find its weak points. The other idea that true change comes from outside the system which is based in the belief that working within the system results in being co-opted by the system.

For this reading, it seems like one of the issues with Blackspot is that it has “sold out” and deploys rhetoric that ultimately reinforces the same thing that they try to critique. This would fall into line with the idea that working within the system, in this case advertising (and hence, Baclkspot’s subvertising), results in co-options. Though Blackspot is a parody of other brands (Nike) its use of the language counters the work they do to appeal for fair wages, green consciousness, etc.

As Harold points out, Heath and Potter’s analysis is very black and white. You’re either in the system or out of it. There’s culture and counter culture and it’s either all or nothing. If this is the approach we must take, it seems tiresome because we’re always put back into the question of how to change consumerism truly. If the latter will result in backlash and the former can’t bring about thorough enough change, what kind of strategy should we be endorsing?

The analysis Harold brings up about boycotting pointed out an interesting idea, which is that with corporate entities you must “hit them where it counts”: profit. If something is thwarting their goal, they must confront what that thing is, and if the boycott points out that it is the fact that the company must bend to consumer want the boycott is successful. This idea is interesting, because Harold also mentions that strategies that appropriate power rather than trying to directly dismantle it are both complex and fertile. Corporate entities are indeed huge entities of power; instead of fighting against the power, why not use it to destroy the very thing it comes from?

One historical parallel to this kind of strategy is the emergence of jazz. The idea of being “hip” and “cool” is deeply associated with black America and jazz emerged from exclusion of black Americans from traditional music scenes. Rather than fighting against the music scene, jazz emerged and played off what was established. The music style twisted and reshaped the established norms of music and also brought in original ideas, such as new instruments, percussion, etc.

Another example of the re-appropriative strategy is the Buzzfeed video that has Asian identifying people re-creating well known magazine covers. The power in doing so is that it doesn’t challenge the status quo outright, but instead parodies the original covers. There isn’t as much anger and bitterness in the video, which might prompt anger with people who don’t realize that representation is an important issue, and instead pokes fun of the issue that engages internet audiences (particularly young audiences). As Harold phrases it, they “jam” with the culture to challenge power rather than directly fighting it and being silenced.

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So Real it Hurts

What is real beauty? It seems like companies these days have an answer for everything: what is real beauty, what is cool, what is healthy, etc.

In that sense, I strongly agree with Murray’s analysis of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign and that the strategy perpetuates a neoliberal drive to constantly self-improve. At the end of the day, because there is a corporate cause tied to consumption of meaning, the meaning is derailed and made into something hypocritical. Although last week, I questioned whether a company could ever create a kind of advertising campaign that was not hypocritical or self-serving, but this analysis has helped me realize that I don’t think there can be a product advertisement that isn’t also reliant on oppressive ideologies.

As Murray points out, the CFRB campaign was meant to “challenge the dominant ideology of beauty”. On the surface, there were many good things happening: challenging the idea that freckles are imperfections or wrinkles are not beautiful. It invokes images and emotions from consumers that make them feel good, confident, etc. But on the same token, it makes consumers feel that they need to do certain things in order to feel good, confidant, etc. The fact that they challenge an ideology that they’ve helped create and reinforce is problematic and pushes the campaign back to an oppressive one.

Another point that both Murray and Banet-Wiser bring up is the dependence of advertisements on myths. The myth of real beauty and the myth of the American dream/ west/ etc. The thing is, these myths are just that: myths. The fact that the advertisements are both dependent on them and also trying to subvert them creates a hypocritical campaign where the only thing clear is that there is a product to buy. In addition, because advertisements are meant to prompt action of purchasing something, they’re innately problematic because they reinforce that the individual’s ideology, confidence, perspective on beauty is not enough but that they must buy the product to finalize the ideology.

Additionally, I feel like the visual nature of advertising is that it’s one moment to explain everything. While Banet-Wiser points out that this is both the drawback and the selling point of advertisements, I think that it reinforces the idea of our society as increasingly visual. We are so dependent on having visuals for everything, it seems like without them an idea can’t be real. It creates a dependent on the material and seeable, thereby erasing everything else – invisible mental illnesses, internal confidence, love, etc.

For example, Nike’s advertisement with a ballerina relies on imagery of a ballerina and “modern”. It tries to subvert the pink-girly association for females, but in the same token it relies on the fact that people believe dance and pink are for girls. It also presents a model who is an idea of fit and thin; because Nike is a sports related company, any person’s image affiliated with Nike is seen as a representation of athletic/fit/etc.

Another examples is the Jennifer Aniston advertisement. It depends on an image of Aniston with “clear skin” - light, non-freckled skin that consumers are to associate with clear, moist skin. In addition, it relies on the imagery of “natural” by using soft, green and brown colors that remind people of earth. It’s problematic because it promotes a vision of healthy skin and at the same time tells consumers that they can only have healthy skin when it is clear, moisturized and more importantly, moisturized by Aveeno. Advertisements sell ideology with products, but more importantly they sell a CERTAIN kind of ideology -- one that sells their product.

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Go Green, Green Marketing

One of the important marketing topics that was discussed from the Sivulka reading was the subject of “Green Marketing”. A criticism that I have of the representation of Green Marketing, particularly in the context of the other sub-topics in the article is that it seems like (as with all the others), environmentalism or caring about the environment is not a genuine attitude, it is a marketing tactic.

As was mentioned in Sivulka, an example of this was the tactic by General Motors to plant 15,000 trees to promote caring for the environment. Because General Motors’ is part of the automobile industry, it’s easy to see why people were skeptical. Which brings up a question: can companies that create products consumer perceive as harmful to the environment ever create earth-conscious marketing campaigns consumers trust?

The reason this question comes up is because companies (particular car companies) seem to have a history of using advertisements that were problematic for various reasons. One of the biggest reasons is that many car companies use advertisements that rely on sexist assumptions, such as using women in submissive positions or situations that are objectifying for the purpose of selling cars. However, if car companies are inherently untrustworthy to consumers because they sell products that hurt the environment and therefor can’t create campaigns that support the environment, does that mean that companies can only create harmful campaigns? 

Another example of green marketing campaigns that has had more success are the marketing campaigns by Starbucks to use less plastic and get rid of straws. This topic is slightly different from GM’s campaign, as Starbucks’s products don’t pose a direct contradiction to the goal of environmentalism. Starbucks has created a visual culture around its environmentalism -- its incorporation of green in its online themes and in stores, the fact that Starbucks’ main color is green, the use of brown paper cups and soft colors that incorporates an environment-friendly feel to people who use cups, recyclable baked goods bags, etc. 

From these two cases, although consumer trust of brands plays a large role in their acceptance of an advertisement campaign, it seems that there is a greater likelihood that they will trust a campaign if the company and brand is already built around that concept. For environmentalism in today’s world, it is especially important, as the ecological crisis becomes more and more prevalent in the news and issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpVcYeGCpPY

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Food to Taste

A lot of what gets discussed in Food Porn applies to the use of images in today’s restaurant menus, particularly concepts like the voyeuristic gaze and sensations attached to viewing food images. With these images, it’s clear that they’re not just selling you the food, they’re selling you the idea of the food: something luscious, comforting, warm, friendly, etc. an idea that is, apparently, worth the extra money that people are expected to spend on food prepared outside the home. In addition to these images, there are often captions that accompany them with intricate descriptions that also invoke sensations that McDonnell applies to porn, such as the menu from TGI Friday’s. The menu not only has enlarged images, the menu itself is simple and appeals aesthetically.  

Another one of the interesting points that McDonnell brings up is that food images, with their appeal to senses and desires of what we can’t obtain, has drawn people away from food in the home to spending their money on outside food (242). The shift in spending for consumers to eat out more often is a trend that has been stimulated by aesthetic and sensual food images. However, one phenomenon that puts an interesting light on this trend is the use of food porn in Tasty videos. Tasty videos are a segment of Buzzfeed Media to display short, pleasurable videos of people cooking and preparing food. The characteristics of the videos highly align with what McDonnell talks about: food look luscious, colorful, appealing, and the way the videos are shot and edited keep the viewer in a trance-like hold. The videos include movements like the poplar cheese pull, spoon cutting into oozing chocolate filling, glistening butter on baking vegetables, and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe6ag34eMg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HFfSNEDyzo

Contrary to pulling consumers out of the household to spend money on food prepared outside, the videos seem to encourage people to make food at the home. The beautiful images used and the quickness of the videos tell viewers that they, too, can achieve a high-quality food prepared in the home. The quickness of the videos and the editing style also makes it seem like cooking is relatively easy and simple.

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We Bare Bearly Less Than the Cartoon Itself

Nowadays when we look at cartoons, we’re looking at so much more than cute animation. Cartoons bring in so much more than visual and a story, they bring in culture and interpretations of that culture. The cartoon genre, as Mittel points out, has even surpassed being a children’s genre thanks to things such as Adult swim programming. The discussion of The Simpsons and The Boondocks brings in questions of reflexivity and self-awareness that are integral in post-modernist visual culture. For many of these shows, they could not even exist without a post-modern awareness. They are no longer “just a cartoon”, as their existence as a cartoon is tied to more than just their being.

One example that we can look at is Steven Universe. The show airs on Carton Network’s daytime broadcast and is stylized in a way to appeal to younger audiences. The bright colors, young protagonist, fantasy elements, simple dialogue, and children’s themes are integrated to create a children’s cartoon-feel. However, a large majority of the audience for Steven Universe are older adults whose input toward the show holds a large consideration.

This brings me to the point that social media has been instrumental in forming post-modern awareness, especially in television shows and the entertainment world. With social media giving show creators and producers almost instantaneous feedback, the shows are able to directly change as a result. This creates a very intimate and deep level of reflexivity and self-awareness as the writers and crew for the show continue to create the story in real time.

In Steven Universe, the show initially had some reservations about including such “gender progessive” stances on public broadcast, but with fan support it started to deeply embed more and more gender concepts into its being. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOm7cNOJpxg

The clip featuring Ruby and Sapphire create stances on love and gender and how love transcends social expectations. The show and the relationship it has to its fanbase also make self-references to its existence as a show to also tie in concepts of love and gender.

Another example is We Bare Bears, which also applies many of the same concepts as Steven Universe. It is fun, colorful, and painted as a children’s cartoon, but appeals to many adults. For We Bare Bears, the interesting intersection with post-modernism shares characteristics more deeply with the analysis of the Boondocks. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3ypRWRZAtw

While the cultural elements of WBB seems more subtle than those of the Boondocks, it shares the ability to make users a part of the action and make meaning from what happens on screen. For example, in portions where the characters speak Korean, the show sometimes uses translations and explains the cultural references, while at some times it does not. This integration of culture mimics real-life situations of people navigating culture, where they might not always understand things that are happening around them but life goes on. As such, post-modern characteristics and the ability of the cartoon to make meaning with its audience are key in We Bare Bears.

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The Third Plane of Gaming

“Whereas the visual arts compel viewers to engage in the act of looking, video games, like a whole variety of digital media, compel players to perform acts” (Galloway 84).

It’s interesting that Galloway points out that the mechanics of games include play or action. For visual culture to engage its audience beyond the image and the viewer means that we have another component (literally) at play. Unlike any other medium, action or a relationship is demanded for the medium to exist; without it, there would be no gaming, only viewing. The third plane of realism that is referred to incorporates what I feel like is a “re-action”. It acknowledges that there is action that occurs after the initial point of viewing, which I think is important because it represents a point that we can analytically and literally enter the gaming experience.

The idea of entering the gaming experience has a lot of parallel to theatre therapy. For theatre and therapy, there is also a recognition that there exists a relationship beyond the viewer and the viewed. There is no screen between the players and the audience and it is understood that there is a third plan of action: the audience views the actors and are affected by them, then the audience affects the actors. When we integrate therapy, we understand that the third relationship is important because it allows us to turn players from passive spectators into active individuals.

I wonder if we can combine these two concepts to create therapeutic gaming systems or platforms. Gaming goes beyond the player and game and Galloway acknowledges this in that “[t]he problem of the Columbine theory is, to put it bluntly, one of directionality. Realism in gaming is about the extension of one’s own social life. The Columbine theory claims the reverse, that games can somehow exert “realistic” effects back onto the gamer.” When we use the moment that games exert effects back on the gamer, we can intervene and help direct the experience games have, so that it is more empowering, less violent, more entertaining, etc.

In addition, I think that the growing use of gaming in real-life situations to change the real life situation draws on these concepts a lot. For example, medical virtual reality systems engage players on a virtual level in order to change their real life experiences. One of the most prominent scenarios is a child patient who might be frightened to receive an invasive medical procedure. When we use the idea of gaming as a medium beyond visuals, we enter the gaming experience at the point where the gamer is affected and we can use this to make their actual experience less frightening.

At the same time, while I think that these visual mediums that have the ability to go beyond just the visual nature into the relationship with the viewer, there is a feeling of invasiveness or danger. What if someone were to exploit this “relationship”? We can already see companies delving into this research to make games more addicting and keep consumers purchasing games. If we are to incorporate this analysis into changing the gamers’ REAL LIFE experience for empowerment and greater good, we have to be wary of all the points of exploitation as well.

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Seeing Beyond the Surface

“There is a notion that these technologies are infallible, objective, and have a mathematical precision, without error or bias on the part of the computer programmers…” (Browne 115)

There is no shortage of biometric data collection in our everyday lives. We find biometrics at the airport, at theme parks, and schools. Beyond public spaces, we’ve even come to incorporate them into our personal lives, with phone-unlocking fingerprint capabilities, retina scanning password protection, and more. Even when we don’t seem to actively engage with these technologies, we find ourselves with them every day of our lives.

A lot of this usage seems reasonable. After all, things like fingerprint and retina passwords are meant to be extra barriers of security for our devices as well as a means of convenience. Who wants to punch in a 4 or 6-digit code when you can land your finger on a home button and be granted instant access? Another example of greater convenience brought by biometrics is the Facebook facial recognition tagging system. When you’re trying to tag individuals, the system’s automation makes the process a lot simpler, even more so with group photos. In fact, Facebook’s facial recognition extends beyond just tagging; it also uses this information to match back to gender, ethnicity, etc. and recommend friends you might know.

And who doesn’t want greater security, especially when it comes to more serious questions about national security? On top it making life more convenient and secure, it seems like technology is more consistent and dependable because they are removed from human error.

But what about the human error built into the technology? As Browne points out, the people involved in creating technology have incorporated their own understandings of those technology. All of these things come with their own bias, perceptions, etc. The limits of biometrics is outlined in artist Zach Blas’ project (taken from Monahan’s essay) that uses 3-D printed templates to demonstrate the limits of biometics. Humans are constantly changing; facial recognition is like trying to map an ever-changing terrain, to make rigid what is fluid.

Subjectivity involved in biometric technology becomes amplified as we recognize their role in “laying bare the previously unseen” of “scopic and microscopic regimes of seeing” (Browne 108). We might be talking about human error with technology, but in a sense, it’s no mistake that biometrics have racialized the human body. As Browne points out, the very beginnings of biometrics and involved epidermalization, the imposition of race on the body, emerged relationships to blackness so “blackness as property informs contemporary surveillance of the racial body (biometric past)” where the “body functions as identification” (91).

The implications for this can be seen in our categories of identification as they pertain to the body. For example, what a certain identity “looks” like. Oftentimes, visual components of what we now view as race and gender (I want to point out that I don’t agree that these can be accurately visualized) come into play, such as what a criminal looks like and how that ties into the criminalization of blackness and what a terrorist looks like and how that ties into islamophobia. When whiteness and preference for light-skin is the built-in normal that technologies use, any difference to whiteness becomes other and therefor dangerous, uncomfortable, inferior, etc. We have to be conscious of these biases and dangers despite the assumed convenience and security of biometics.

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Bodies Disembodied

What is the immaterial made visible? This theme seems to be a commonality between the two works, Stabile’s “Shooting the Body” and Thornton’s “The Rhetorical Brain”. Both point out a distinction between the actual object and conceptualizations of them, particularly in medical imaging. With these kinds of images that invoke a medical context, we trust, at Struken and Cartwright point out, a kind of “objective and trustworthy” lens (340). We see these corporeal images that are supposed to be based in science and immune to image manipulation or subjective filtering when, in actuality, the images are “partial data and require reflexive consideration”.

As Stabile points out, the introduction of visual imaging technology triggered a stark shift in ideology that served to separate women’s bodies from embryos/fetuses. The idea of fetal personhood also changed the woman’s body from that of a maternal landscape to a toxic, dangerous environment, thereby divorcing the role of the mother from the womb. Where the visual serves to become a “true representation” that hides beneath it social, historical, and political rendering, a dependence on the visual to legitimize a condition also emerges.

For both examples of the brain and the womb, the visual image supersedes the legitimacy of all else. In the case of women’s bodies, the ultrasound and doctor’s knowledge are emphasized over the woman’s own experiences and knowledge. As Stabile points out, imaging pushed out the perceived need for midwives, a clear signal that women’s roles and knowledge were delegated to “passive, reproductive machines”. In a similar fashion, Thornton points out that “the persuasive force of brain imaging technologies that purport to show the biological basis of all aspects of experience” (Thornton 12). This has had many implications for how mental illness is approached and also has the consequence of divorcing individuals from their experiences. The visual image becomes the ultimate, objective truth and its credibility overrides all others.

When the visual image creates this silencing effect, there are many dangerous implications for health and culture. One of the current day moves to challenge the assumption of objectivity in the visual when looking at the body is the photo movement “This is What Depression Looks Like”. While the initiative served to document what depression might look like, the more interesting aspect is that it also documented what depression might not look like, and still should be treated as legitimate. 

It brought in discussions of other instances when societal relationships to visual images may obfuscate the temporal, ever-changing nature of the body, such as high-functioning depression, anorexics who are not skinny, etc. In many of these situations, particularly in mental health, the doctor remains as the ultimate translator between body and illness, leaving out the person and their experiences. Doctors might prescribe medications, therapies, etc. that are not in line with the interests of the patient, not because they are medically inept, but because they’re taught to hold to images as the foundation for science and knowledge.

These images also reminded me of another discussion on the body and gender. For individuals who identify as trans*, the visual representations of their bodies and their inner experiences creates the same category for which they are put into. Drawing on Sturken and Cartwright, visual images create the ruler of what is “normal” for all other differences to measure against. Medical professionals who don’t understand gender and continuously use sex and genitalia as the end-all-be-all for medical recommendations again posit visual images over individual experiences. 

This has consequences for how individuals might conceive of identity and “perform” gender. Many today also feel pressured to transition physically so that their inner experience can align with their gender performance, as well society’s idea of what one’s gender performance should be (although that is another discussion and another can of worms). One example is the experience of people feeling that their gender wasn’t “real” until they had transitioned. Individuals shouldn’t feel pressured to make that transition to legitimize their gender experiences. Clearly, visual imaging technology has created the idea of an objective truth that blurs away the individual’s experiences and knowledge.

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There is power in looking.

For cinema, in particular, the question of image and representation have been key to understanding the relationship of power, race, and gender. It is important to recognize the intersection of race and gender in cinema. As pointed out closely by hooks, the black male gaze is distinct because it incorporates the male gaze. In this case, women are once again the objects of the male gaze and reconstructs a relationship of power and subordination.

In today’s world there are still many problematic images that incorporate a phallocentric  way of looking, but we also need to acknowledge the efforts to “rupture” that that have been made. As hooks describes, rupture allows complete resistance to identification with a piece of media. One of the most notable instances of rupture and oppositional gaze that dominates today’s media is the work of artist and musician Beyonce. In her Formation video in particular, Beyonce incorporates two very important oppositions to traditional power dynamics.

The first, of course, is the resistance to whiteness. The image that we see from the video uses a camera overlay that makes the image look like it was shot on a surveillance camera. Whiteness materializes in higher incarceration rates for black-appearing individuals and continues to pervade today’s society, such as the school-to-prison pipeline. Beyonce’s questioning (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/arts/dance/review-beyonce-dance-formation-citi-field-new-york.html) of the white gaze by using it as a counter gaze, almost like sousveillance, allows for people to question the relationship of whiteness to incarceration and discipline on black images.

Another instance of oppositional gaze that has recently launched complex and extensive discussions on race and gender is the Hollywood Reporter cover for the cast of Crazy Rich Asians. Not only does the representation of Asian faces on a mainstream cover create a celebratory resistance to the lack of representation in the past, but we can also understand the relationship to whiteness and the role of gender. For one, we should critique the very Western-shrouded representation of the way that the cast is laid out on the cover, and although it is celebratory for Asian and Asian Americans in Hollywood, representation, etc. it still maintains a fairly white gaze. If we compare these two images, we can also begin to graze the deeply complex difference between Asian Americans and black Americans in the fabric of American race relations. Antiblackness (https://www.teenvogue.com/story/crazy-rich-asians-black-panther-comparisons)  has existed in many Asian and Asian American communities and their positioning as the model minority further complicates this discussion.

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Tumblr Post #1 Mulvey & hooks

There is power in looking. 

For cinema, in particular, the question of image and representation have been key to understanding the relationship of power, race, and gender. It is important to recognize the intersection of race and gender in cinema. As pointed out closely by hooks, the black male gaze is distinct because it incorporates the male gaze. In this case, women are once again the objects of the male gaze and reconstructs a relationship of power and subordination.

 In today’s world there are still many problematic images that incorporate a phallocentric  way of looking, but we also need to acknowledge the efforts to “rupture” that that have been made. As hooks describes, rupture allows complete resistance to identification with a piece of media. One of the most notable instances of rupture and oppositional gaze that dominates today’s media is the work of artist and musician Beyonce. In her Formation video in particular, Beyonce incorporates two very important oppositions to traditional power dynamics.

 The first, of course, is the resistance to whiteness. The image that we see from the video uses a camera overlay that makes the image look like it was shot on a surveillance camera. Whiteness materializes in higher incarceration rates for black-appearing individuals and continues to pervade today’s society, such as the school-to-prison pipeline. Beyonce’s questioning (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/arts/dance/review-beyonce-dance-formation-citi-field-new-york.html) of the white gaze by using it as a counter gaze, almost like sousveillance, allows for people to question the relationship of whiteness to incarceration and discipline on black images.

  Another instance of oppositional gaze that has recently launched complex and extensive discussions on race and gender is the Hollywood Reporter cover for the cast of Crazy Rich Asians. Not only does the representation of Asian faces on a mainstream cover create a celebratory resistance to the lack of representation in the past, but we can also understand the relationship to whiteness and the role of gender. For one, we should critique the very Western-shrouded representation of the way that the cast is laid out on the cover, and although it is celebratory for Asian and Asian Americans in Hollywood, representation, etc. it still maintains a fairly white gaze. If we compare these two images, we can also begin to graze the deeply complex difference between Asian Americans and black Americans in the fabric of American race relations. Antiblackness (https://www.teenvogue.com/story/crazy-rich-asians-black-panther-comparisons)  has existed in many Asian and Asian American communities and their positioning as the model minority further complicates this discussion.