DreamWorlds 3

This documentary uses perspective by incongruity to highlight the role of women in music videos, and to draw parallels between this and the way women are viewed and treated in the real world. The author of the documentary employs several filmatic techniques to further his point, and these serve to change the audience’s perspective on the ideas present in the documentary.

            The first important step the author took in preparing his argument was to gather clips from hundreds of well-known music videos. It is important to note that he did not show any of the full videos; he instead used only the clips of the videos that specifically demonstrate the ideas he puts forth throughout the film. This helps the reader to forget that these videos usually contain other scenes, which sometimes serve to cover up the blatant mistreatment of women in the videos. If the viewer is seeing the video as a full narrative, they will be less inclined to notice the things that the author is trying to point out in this film; showing only specific parts of the videos limits this quite a bit.

            Another technique the author used to draw his point was to take the actual music out of almost all of the videos (he left it in only when the music itself is making the very point the narrator is talking about). This served to help the viewers to see these clips not as entertainment, like we might see on VH1 or Fuse, but to see them as supporting points in the argument that the author is making. He also inserted his own music throughout the documentary. This music sounds very much like something we would expect to hear in the background of many types of documentaries; this served to further help the viewer see the subject matter not as entertainment. At times, this music becomes very ominous, and starts to resemble something that one might expect to hear in a slasher movie, just before someone on screen gets attacked. I think at several points in the film, this served to drive home the striking points that the author was trying to make about the treatment of women in music videos and the worrying results this treatment might have on real life.

            The author also presents the events in many of the videos as though they were not entertainment, but real life. In doing so, he asks the viewer to read the events as though they were taking place in the real world, rather than the world of fantasy entertainment. This really makes the treatment of the women in these videos much more alarming and shocking to the viewer, as we are forced to imagine a world (which the author hints might not be far away) in which women are viewed and treated in this terribly degrading way as the norm.

            The most effective technique the author used to drive home his points in this film was the juxtaposition of shots from music videos (showing men disrespecting women, using them like objects, and stripping them of their humanity [and their clothes]) with both shots from real life news reports and interviews with college-aged men. The images of the women in Central Park who were stripped down by men and had water thrown on them were strikingly similar to the images of women in music video. The obvious difference, of course, and the thing that most strikes the viewer, is that the women in the real life situations are not smiling and rubbing their hands down their bodies like the women depicted in the videos; they are crying and running, and they look horrified. This was the most shocking moment in the film (which the author rightly saved until near the end, when his argument became much more focused and streamlined), and the juxtaposition of these two similar but clearly not the same images served to really get the viewer’s attention.

            The interviews with the young men talking about how a woman is to be treated in their eyes was juxtaposed with images of extreme violence from the music videos. This made some of their statements much more shocking and, for a young woman, terrifying. The image of a young man saying that his friends might say something along the lines of, “I thrashed her; I did it till she was crying” in regards to a woman became sickeningly more intense when juxtaposed with an image of men in a music video swarming around a woman, an object of their desire. The author used this juxtaposition to drive home one of his major points: that the ideas inherent in these videos, which some of us see as so incredibly shocking, are already seeping their way into our everyday life. They are already affecting the way women are seen in the real world.

            As a young woman, I found this video fully disturbing and somewhat terrifying. The idea that the views of women presented in these videos may soon become the accepted narrative in our culture is hard to grasp. The notion that we interpret a story (in this case, the story of ‘woman’) a certain way, and quickly disregard other possible versions of the story is incredibly scary in this instance. I think this film did a good job of pointing out the dangers of this tendency, and the author clearly knew what he was doing and used very effective techniques to make his point.

            (I want to apologize to my classmates for posting this blog late. I thought I had posted it a few nights ago; however, our internet at home has been rather finicky lately, and I [because I am so smart] did not check to make sure it actually posted properly until this morning. I am sorry for the inconvenience.)

Ghost in the Shell

Carl Silvio, in his essay “Refiguring the Radical Cyborg in Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell,” provides two different ways to read the film. He also describes how these two possible readings relate to/embody the ideas put forth by Donna Haraway in her essay “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”. Though I understand and agree with both of Silvio’s readings of the film in this article, I tend to agree more with the second. 

Silvio’s first reading asserts that the film successfully inverts traditional gender roles in its representation of Major and that it echoes Haraway’s theories on how “technology can enable one to transcend the prescriptive limits of our contemporary social environment” (Silvio). He observes that the way in which Major is represented through most of the film (that is, having extraordinary strength and being able to perform feats of great athleticism and power) strips her of the traditional characteristics given to females. Haraway states in her article that “there is not even such a state as ‘being’ female” (pg 155) but alludes to the fact that instead, ‘females’ are a collection of characteristics and limits that society has placed on them. She asserts that the cyborg allows us to transcend these traditional limits placed not only on gender but also on humans in general; and Silvio argues in his first reading that Ghost in the Shell demonstrates this very idea by allowing Major to do things that no human could do.

In this first reading, Silvio also argues that The Puppet Master “represents a truly technologized, posthuman subject, an example of a non-human cyber-consciousness whose computerized existence enables rather than limits”. This echoes Haraway’s assertion that the cyborg (that is, the “hybrid of machine and organism”) allows us to escape from contemporary power structures (most specifically sexual power structures). Haraway claims that “cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms” (chief of which are “self/other, mind/body…[and] male/female”); and Silvio points out that both Major and The Puppet Master embody this idea of escaping from the norms of these dualisms.

In his second reading of the film, however, Silvio argues two main points. The first is that the cinematic aspects of the movie itself and the way that the characters of Major and Botau are represented undermine any chances the film had of serving to deconstruct gender norms. Major and Botau both serve as idealized members of their genders; however, as Silvio notes, “Kusanagi’s body spends much more time in a state of nakedness [and]…none of the male characters ever disrobe or appear naked.” Throughout the film, Major is constantly seen in the nude, and the camera spends a lot of time focusing on the most ‘female’ aspects of her form. This fully undercuts the significance of the fact that she embodies many male gender characteristics, and causes her to appear instead “as [a] passive, eroticized object”. Silvio notes that if the male cyborgs in the film were focused on in a similar manner as Major, this undercutting might not be so severe. The nature of the cinematography and the constant nudity of the character of Major reverse any attempt to use this character to deconstruct gender norms; these things in fact turn her into the familiar paradigm of “woman as sexualized object for the enjoyment of the male gaze”. 

The second argument that Silvio makes in his second reading of the film is that Major and The Puppet Master embody conventional gender assumptions that have been around throughout history. The Puppet Master is representative of the mind, reason, and consciousness. These things have all, according to Silvio, been traditionally attributed to the male gender. Inversely, Major’s character is clearly linked to the body, and Silvio states that this echoes the traditional belief that women are more connected to the body and less to the mind. Silvio further asserts that the very language of The Puppet Master’s statement, “you will bear my offspring onto the net itself” places onto Kusanagi the traditional gender stereotype of “the female body as the bearer of life”. Silvio says that associating her with the idea of reproduction (although this language was not necessary, as she is not physically bearing offspring) further undermines any attempts to have this character reconstruct gender norms. Furthermore, Silvio points out that The Puppet Master cannot surmount traditional male stereotypes, because he is “occupying the position of one who enters the female body and enables it to bear its cybernetic fruit”. 

Though I agreed in part with both of Silvio’s readings of the film, I think it would be hard to watch the film in keeping with the first reading without by necessity admitting the validity of the second. I agree with Silvio’s statement that the film seems to present to us a “destabilization of binary sexual difference” (emphasis on the word ‘seems’). However, I more fully agree with his assertion that “the sudden activation of this trope [that is, the gender normative stereotypes in the preceding paragraph] within the film’s climactic scene” makes this destabilization almost entirely moot.

The WWE as a Pop Culture Artifact

(You'll have to bear with me; I've never done any sort of blogging before (and, in truth, have never had the slightest desire to).)

The artifact of pop culture I have chosen as the focus of my papers this semester is World Wrestling Entertainment. The WWE (formerly known as WWF) has been around since the early 1950s, and has become an unmistakable icon of pop culture. The company has moved beyond its two weekly broadcasts and now also regularly produces (somewhat less than blockbuster) movies, monthly pay-per-views, and mounds of merchandise. Over the past year, the "superstars" and "divas" of the WWE have also been heavily promoted through Twitter and Facebook. The last time I checked, WWE programs were being broadcast in nearly 150 countries around the world.

I chose this artifact for two main reasons. The first is simply that I have been watching WWE programming for the past thirteen years. (This statement has warranted me more snickers and mockery than I'd like, but I find no shame in it.) I find the entire institution fascinating; and one of the major goals of my life is to work in the company's Creative Writing department. The second reason I chose this artifact is because I think it will be interesting to look at the WWE from all of the different perspectives described in our class textbook. I think it will be very enlightening to explore how consistently engaging in the "WWE Universe" affects one's views, opinions, and actions. (I am certain that it does, else I never would have gotten in trouble for walking around my fourth grade classroom telling other students to "suck it".)

Well, now, how do you like this? As I typed that last sentence (while watching WWE Monday Night RAW (which I can now claim as the best homework I've ever done, thank you Herndon)), a commercial aired informing the general public that beginning next year, the WWE will have its very own television network. All wrestling, all the time (and, effectively, all I've ever wanted). That's a turn of events I did not expect.

Well, I suppose that's all I've got for now. I look forward to the revelations and lessons that this semester is sure to bring.