Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Film

Stills from Otto Preminger's Laura, 1944

"Woman as image, man as bearer of the look."

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"

‘Men dream of women. Women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at. -John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Jill Soloway, the creator of the TV series Transparent and  I Love Dick (based on the Chris Kraus novel of the same title about having a crush on cultural critic and author Dick Hebdige which some of you might have read in previous classes). This is a talk she gave on 'The Female Gaze' at the Toronto Film Festival. We will be discussing this in relation to Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire next week.

Textuality: Semiotics

To complement our discussion, the screening of Codes of Gender and the other readings, here are three different takes on 'semiotics' and semiotic analysis and their use for cultural studies and the analysis of media representations. These are not required readings if you have encountered 'media semiotics' before. I would however suggest, to those of you who are encountering 'semiotics' for the first time or need a refresher, to treat these readings as required readings: your work in class, your ability to grapple with the other required readings and your final project would certainly benefit from a familiarity with the concepts presented here.

Mieke Bal, Semiotics for Beginners
Scott McCloud, from Understading Comics: Chapter 2, Semiotics
Jonathan Bignell, Media Semiotics: Introduction + The Cinema

Construction and Performance I: Privilege and Representation

Cultural Studies & Representation: Ideology and Hegemony

Douglas Kellner, "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture"
James Lull, "Hegemony"

Power, Privilege and Discrimination

Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" - new link

all readings (except the online Peggy McIntosh) are from Dines and Humez (eds), Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader; 2nd Edition(Sage, 2003)

As an introduction to the methodology that we will be following in the course please read the Kellner and the Lull.

The Peggy McIntosh 'invisible knapsack' article is an additional quick read, for your own reflections. As McIntosh thinks through the concept of 'white privilege' in society, forcing us to consider the question of privilege and the way it links to questions of power in society as well as the existence of hierarchies, please think of other forms of privilege that exist on the basis of social differences. ie. male privilege, hetero privilege, cis privilege. Can you make a list, even just a mental one, that works in similar ways to McIntosh's? In other words, that starts from the 'I can...' premise as you put yourself in the position of the privileged subject? Can you also think of what privilege means, how it is in contradiction to the values of open and democratic societies as well what forces ensure that the social relations and the meanings to social identities are reproduced so that privilege itself is maintained and perpetuated?

Welcome to SUMMER I 2020/Race and Gender in Media - The Online Edition

Paul B. Preciado on the 'Rona

PAUL B. PRECIADO

LEARNING FROM THE VIRUS

Find here an earlier article by Paul B. Preciado from the outset of the Covid- 19 pandemic, "The Loser's conspiracy"

If you're interested in interesting takes on what is going on you might want to read this article bysci-fi author and literary critic Kim Stanley Robinson:

The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations

What felt impossible has become thinkable. The spring of 2020 is suggestive of how much, and how quickly, we can change as a civilization.