I'll probably put this in list format again, it helps me organize my thoughts a bit; so my apologies if it's weird. This section includes a lot of topics and issues that i'm passionate about, but mainly those revolving around feminism; however, psychoanalytic, gender, and queer studies are very important to get a good grasp on to help us understand, and sometimes overturn, the things that seem a little iffy about American culture.
Psychoanalytic Analysis:
According to Freud:
-We're basically always struggling between what we want, deep down, and what we should want, or what's acceptable.
-Babies are sexual, more sexual than all of us, even.
-Female children want their dads, Male children want their mothers, but both are shut down by the opposite parent.
I can't say I'm on board with Freud at all, but it's a significant contribution, nonetheless. (He's still kind of a creeper though).
According to Lacan:
-3 realms, we aren't in touch with the most real though.
-We form, or start to form, identities as infants through "mirrors".
-We'll never know our real desires.
-Desires relating to the parental are much more symbolic, as opposed to Freud's theory.
Other theories:
-Penises are still considered better, so much so that we want everything "masculine" to look like a penis.
-Apparatus theory "activates" our desires, so to speak (through film); and through this, movies can make us feel whole, as we so crave.
-Scopophilia lets us creep from a distance through movies; which keeps our desires alive. This leads to Fetishism, which objectifies people, or focuses on actual objects to distract us from our genitalia.
-The mal gaze basically explains that women are objectified through films and men get the advantage of being the onlooker...I would have never guessed (le sigh). (It's starting to seem like women never had a chance with some of these theories).
-I wasn't exactly sold on the "female gaze" bit. It's hard for me to legitimately take men being objectified seriously; sure, it can be done as a practice, but I don't care to discuss it. I do find it interesting though how women and gay males found texts that allegedly objectified men as something not for them. It's as if they displace the chance that something could be catered for them.
This definitely wasn't my favorite chapter, but I think it does provide a lot of insight on how much the media is catered to mena s sexual beings...and our tendency as a culture to accept that blindly because it's so engrained. Gender theories can better attack this problem.
Feminist Analysis:
-I'm not my hair.
-We're all sexist (see above, it's evident that I am).
-Stereotypes help us "organize", but it doesn't make it right.
-Men and women tend to be defined in a sense of binaries, whether as weak vs. strong, passive vs. aggressive, emotional vs. logical, sexual object vs. sexual subject...etc.
-We're still defined as just "stuff" as women; we're constantly defined as objects to cater to the sexual "needs" of men; but it's less obvious to everyone because of the patriarchal society we live in.
-I can be anything I want to be...and that's postfeminism...except Girls Gone Wild, that just doesn't count I guess.
So basically, the way women and men are represented in the media just reinforce the ideals of a patriarchy; which keeps women as "stuff" and sexretaries. I think it's valuable to note that anyone can be a feminist, it benefits both males in females, maybe just on a more level playing field. In American culture, men are forced to live up to a lot of things, too; feminism can help fight against those stereotypes and aid understanding of our performances of genders.
Queer Analysis:
-Seeks to disrupt our current understandings of human sexuality; it's not just a crusade for the gays as the general public might seem to think.
-Heterosexuality, like being Male, seems to be the normative in our culture.
-We need labels of gender in our society to feel comfortable; like when people ask the sex of a child (or rely on blue/pink).
-Like Feminism, Queer theory looks at the binaries created between heterosexuals and homosexuals, such as: natural vs. deviant, monogamous vs. promiscuous, gender clarity vs. gender ambiguity, etc.
-Homosexuals aren't even represented enough in the media as actual people, but rather just as coming out stories. This is problematic because it guides audiences to think that homosexuals aren't people beyond their one story of "discovering their identity". (I can't remember when I came out as straight...)
-Representations of Homosexuals are "normalized" to resemble heterosexuals. It's as if being gay is the problem, not the lack of acceptance or representations.
It was really eye-opening to read some of the analyses of current texts with a Queer Theory lens; "Daughter" is a song I've always loved, it's crazy to me that I never even considered the reinforcement of cultural norms it exhibits. That's the problem though, right? We aren't even noticing things like this. Like Feminism, it's something we MUST become privy to in order to avoid our creation of the poor associations with "the other".
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