Seminar 4 Flashcards
Portrait de la jeune fille en feu
- Sciamma, 2019
- period drama, set in the 18th century in Brittany
- plot: Marriane has to pait a portrait of Héloise. Héloise
needs to marry a man that she never saw and
Marriane has to make a portrait that they can give as a
gift to this man. It’s not easy to be a female painter at
that time and the women get sexually involved. - writing women into art history, a lot of female painters
of that time are not acknowledged - imagining and representing same sex desire in history
–> you don’t see this is movies about this time but it
was there - according to Sciamma this is a manifesto about the
female gaze
– the male gaze (Laura Mulvey, 1975) in Holleywood
cinema: women were represented as sexual arousing
objects to be looked at, through the eye of men
(director, the men on screen and the imagined
audience)
– there was a lot of criticism because you universalize
all men and there are also different gazes but it was
also an import concept to make new concepts like the
female gaze
– female gaze: exploring the patriarchy without
dipicting men, erotic pleasure without objectification,
the painters female gaze and how the gaze is
returned
Sexuality
Weeks: People of the same sex have been having sex with each other through the whole history, in every culture. But how people look at it will be different in every context. In other countries now you still have sodomy-laws. People who have sex with someone from the same sex will end up in jail.
Sexual orientation
A person sexual or romantic attraction to another person
sexual behaviour
A variety of sexual practices or acts –> someone can choose not to but their orientation and behaviour on the same level –> you can know that your gay (orientation) but hide it for other people (behaviour)
sexual identity
Social construction of an identification with a specific sexuality
Construction hetero- and homosexuality
- hetero- and homosexuality are new concepts
- if we’re gonna look at homosexuality in ancient
history: same acts, different cultural meanings
Late 19th century: psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing
- 1886 Psychopathia sexualis
- he says that sex is a normal form of pleasure but only
for heterosexuals
- he discribes same sex desires as homosexuality but
he calls it bad and abnormal
- First attempt to organize a community: Hirshfeld
– he wants to discriminalize homosexuality
1950: changes in academia and society
- sexologist and biologist: kinsey
– sees sexulatiy as a continuum
– acknowlegde female pleasure
- homophile movement
– they want civil and equal rights
– they want to embrace the love and hide the sexuality.
they have the love in common with heteresexuals so
that’s why they want to embrace this
– they look for tollerence through assimilation
1960-1980: gay liberation movement
- they felt the necessity to highlight the difference
- pride in being gay (this is also when te pride marses
began)
- criticism because they exlcluded a lot of people and
it’s also not easy for everyone to come out as gay
- 1980’s: aids and backlash gay rights movements
1980-…: mainstream and grassroots movements
- mainstream groups are focussing on civil rights: same
sex marriage, adoption legislation…
- grassroots movements: critiquing mainstream society,
patriarchy institutions, heteronormative practices…µ
- new labels
- institutionalization into academia
- today: global and internation scope
researching mediated sexual diversity
- absence of homosexuality in media
- 2 dominant traditions:
1. Cultivation theory - Lary Gross
- there is no representation of gay people in the media
so gay people don’t have another choise to accept
the stereotypes and see them as their representation
and the hetero community is gonna think that all gay
people are the same like the ones on tv
2. queer media studies - queer theory
– why are sexual hierarchies so widely accepted as
normal?
– heteronormativity: if you were born with male
genitalia, the logic goes, you will behave in masculine
ways, desire feminine women, have sex in a norm
way, think of yourself as heterosexual, identify with
other heterosexuals, trust in superpriority of
heterosexuality and don’t change from this package
–> when you indentify as heterosexual and
masculine, that doesn’t make you heteronormative,
heteronormative are those who embody these
identities and look down on those who does not
– queer: referring to people and/or practices who do
not comply with or conform to heteronormativity –>
they are not against heterosexuality - queer media studies
– critical textual analyses of popular culture –> politics
of representation
– understand how a popular culture product is able to
challenge heteronormativity
– deconstruction: make explicit how a text engages
with heteronormativity
– qualitative audience studies: exploring audiences
sens making practices
friends illustration
How do you recognise heteronormativity in this video?
- ross embodies a man that thinks that if a man is a
nanny, he can’t be hetero –> he has difficulties to link a
gender expression with a sexual identity –> rachel is
going against this
- hyperstereotyping –> you have to see the difference
between what you see and what the series want to show
you
Representing sexual diversity in audiovisual culture
- absent and coded representations
- stereotyping
- negotiating queerness and heteronormativity
- negotiating commercial logics and inclusitivity
- increasing global production and intercultural
distribution
