Psychoanalytic, Feminist, & Queer Analysis

I’ve liked that this book has done a good job setting a foundation for the class so far—especially in terms of providing definitions and broad ideas about how to analyze media with different lenses.  The chapter on Psychoanalytic Analysis did a good job giving an overview of terms and how they could be used in analysis.  I did find myself wondering at points about more of the details in some of the studies mentioned.  Almost all of the examples lacked some really detailed information about the findings however, including the ethnographic study mentioned on page 168.  I found myself curious, but ultimately left without the information about the outcome.  I don’t think it would have been necessary to do this for all the examples, but I would have liked to see at least one study fleshed out more.

The Feminist Analysis discussed a lot of the ways that men and women are “gendered” in the media, and I was glad that it included things such as the belittling of sexual harassment policies and the glass ceiling in the work place.  I also found the list of suggested reading really interesting and worth looking into further.

I don’t know how I felt about the Queer Theory chapter.  While I liked that it discussed terms and issues about heteronormativity that are often not discussed outside or inside the classroom, I felt like some of the information was lacking, and I was unsure how to take the gender performity section.  It seemed…out of context?  I feel like a lot of information was left out, and the idea of gender identity in the LGBTQ community is complex, and it seemed simplified to the point where I felt like it might have been better to just leave this out.  They also really only talk about it in the context of homosexuality, disregarding transgender/transsexual experience, and voices and people that are silenced even more so than those of homosexuals.