Category Archive
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Final Presentation- Cara G., Elizabeth, Cara W.
Our group exercised our ability to apply Althusser, Rubin, and Butler’s views to clips from the movie “White Chicks”. We chose to use: “This is Our Jam”, “$1000”, and the movie trailer to incorporate these theorist’s views effectively. In the process of applying these theories we noticed that there were many similarities and differences among our individual interpretations. Some of the most obvious similarities that we came across were our abilities to look at the movie in different perspectives. When Elizabeth applied Rubin, we found that feminist views caused us to notice the aspects of women’s oppression and the gender inequality and differences between men and women in “White Chicks”. Rubin’s views that women are often seen as gifts, “Women are given in marriage, taken in battle, exchanged for favors, sent as tribute, traded, bought and sold.” (Rubin 1673) can relate to “$1000” from “White Chicks”. Women are given demeaning labels by society and discriminated against for their gender role as a woman. However, when looking at it from Butler’s point of view as Cara G did, you may see that the movie can be interpreted through her gender performativity theory. Butler believes that in order to perform gender appropriately, one must perform sexuality appropriately. She also says that because gender is not a fact, and that it does not have a definition, the ways in which a person acts and performs their gender makes gender exist. Gender “humanizes” a person and if one does not perform it in the right way, they may be punished by society. Butler’s theories relate to the clip
“This is Our Jam” in “White Chicks” because the male cops that are posing as females, experience how important it is to perform their gender correctly and appropriately in order to be accepted in society. When Cara W. applied Althusser’s theory to the FBI present in “White Chicks” we see that both the Repressive State Apparatus and Ideological State Apparatuses are present. Seeing that the RSA makes sure these things are kept the way they should be in society by having the ability to use “violence”, causing society to conform to their ways. Yet while incorporating the ISA to “White Chicks”, we can also make the connections between the FBI agents and how they are being used away from the agency as a whole to carry out a task, where they are unified under the ruling ideology. “There reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills, but also, at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the rules of the established order” (Althusser, 1485).
By applying these theorist’s views to “White Chicks”, we realized that this caused us to examine and interpret the movie differently than we would have prior to learning about each theorist. Yet from all these similarities, we found that there was also one main difference that was evident. By looking at a movie or text with only applying one view, this may cause a bias interpretation of the text as a whole. After completing our individual interpretations we discovered that these three theorists could link onto each other. Rubin explains the oppression of women through their degrading gender roles in society. This links to Butler’s idea of performing the female gender role appropriately in order to perform sexuality appropriately. Therefore if one does not perform sexuality and gender appropriately the women may feel oppressed by society. Althusser’s idea of society as an ISA, along with the various components of the RSA tie smaller parts found through both Butler and Rubin’s ideas.We have learned that by studying each individual theorist, it has provided us with the knowledge and advantage of incorporating their work to various texts. This allows us to see different aspects of the material that one may not have been highlighted beforehand. After reviewing these clips we found that by incorporating these three theorists work each of us was able to view the movie in either a femist or marxist perspective. Doing this not only exercises your 
knowledge of the theorist’s work but also allows us to exercise our own personal interpretations in connection to everyday life. By using these techniques, we have realized that in “White Chicks”, the oppression of women and the pressure to perform gender appropriately are all contributing factors to society as a whole system.
Final Presentation
For our group’s final presentation, we decided to focus on the movie White Chicks. From this movie, we have all taken a different approach, focusing on 3 different clips. The clip that I will be using on is “$1000″. As you will see, two undercover cops take on the role of posing as two women. In this clip, the man that is dressed as Tiffany Wilson goes on stage to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. As the crowd starts calling out numbers, the highest bid is eventually reached and the winner comes onto the stage, in order to claim his “prize”. This clip illustrates my interpretation relating to Gayle Rubin. Rubin is a well known feminist, which focuses her ideas on sex and gender politics. This video clip exemplifies Rubin’s ideas that women are seen as “gifts”. It is a common fact that both men are women suffer from gender inequality. Men and women take on different roles and assume different positions in the workforce, household, and society in general. Rubin attempts to explain the explanation to the problem of women’s oppression. She uses the works of Levi-Strauss and Sigmund Freud as a basis for her argument. Throughout her argument, she explains the many attempts that have been made in order to explain female oppression. It has been argued that women’s oppression stems from the idea of capitalism. Although Rubin states that Marx does a great job in explaining a woman’s role in capitalist labor force, he does not explain anything that focuses on the oppression of women. Rubin’s views on a non-capitalist society help to illustrate my interpretation of this video clip. In a non-capitalist society, it is common for women to be extremely oppressed, such as women being traded, bought, sold, and shared among men. This argument shows the oppression of women in this clip. As the undercover cop goes onto the stage to be bid on, she enters this non-capitalist society where the buying and selling of the female gender seems very ordinary. The audience participates by placing their bids in order to win a date with her. This degrading act goes to show the “buying” of the female gender. Rubin states “Women are given in marriage, taken in battle, exchanged for favors, sent as tribute, traded, bought and sold.” (1673). the act of “buying” a woman seems so degrading because the only thing on stage is usually a female with a nice body and a pretty face. What about their personality? Do we get to see that? Do the women even get to say anything once they are one stage or do they just stand there and look pretty? This clip from White Chicks shows Rubin’s idea of the “exchange of women”. I do feel that the oppression of women will continue and the whole idea of auctioning women, ewww I hope it doesn’t grow in popularity anymore than it already has.
Cyborgs! Donna Haraway
Alright Donna Haraway, enough with the cyborgs!! First off, what is a cyborg? Throughout this piece, it seemed that she wrote about a cyborg having a million different meanings. Dictionary.com says a cyborg is “a person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device.” hmmm. The beginning of this piece starts out by defining blasphemy and cyborgs. A little way down the page, Haraway then goes into something that seems pretty interesting. She talks about the idea of modern medicine. She says that “modern medicine is also full of couplings between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices, in an intimacy and with power that was not generated in the history of sexuality.” I may be throwing this around a little bit, but to me, it seems that she is saying modern medicine can only be created with machines and human help? I might need some help on this one.
Another interesting/confusing section I found was on 2271. Here, Haraway talks about “the boundary between human and animal…”. She says this gap has been “thoroughly breached.” She then goes on to say that people no longer see a separation between the two categories. (this made me think of that commercial that’s always on…the one with the guy who lives with the wolves now and claims that he is “one of them”…who knows, I always change channels when that comes on). Well all in all, those were a few of the confusing parts for me.
As for a few parts that I think I may have understood a little more…
I liked the section “Fractured Identities” in 2275. From this section I think I saw some of Rubin, Butler and maybe even Althusser. Haraway says “There is nothing about being ‘female’ that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices.” From this, it seemed that although women have struggled to gain access to higher status and power (like that of men) they should be in the same category of men. They have struggled for equality but it seems like she is saying they shouldn’t be struggling, they shouldn’t even be in their own category…they should all be in the same category. I can see this relating to Butler because she talks about the “two biological sexes” and argues the feminist discussion of men and women in different groups. As for Althusser, I think this may fit in as well because he talks about the wages of different class/status/and gender roles (I think I’m thinking of the right theorist). This also comes up on 2276, “…a Chicana or U.S. black woman has not been able to speak as a women or as a black person or as a Chiano. Thus, she was at the bottom of the cascade…” as in class struggle maybe..?
“The Informatics of Domination” was pretty interesting. The list of objects that are “natural” and not-natural was pretty neat. As I read through them, some were pretty funny…like star wars, hehe.
As for all of this science and biology talk, I guess it makes me think of Deleuze and Guattari which really didn’t do much for me…
The last part that caught my eye was the Homework Economy. Although I didn’t get a really strong handle on this, I think it seems pretty interesting and hopefully the class discussion will help me out!
Jean Baudrillard
Alright so as for Jean Baudrillard, this was probably one of the most confusing pieces that I have read. There were a few sections that were really interesting but at the same time, for me, they didn’t all go together, hmmm. I remember in the beginning of the year that we talked about being able to understand one specific piece even if you aren’t able to understand the rest of it; I think that might work for me. I think there was one specific piece that really stood out to me. The role of science shows up a lot towards the middle and end of Baudrillard’s piece. On page 1737, it says “science never sacrifices itself: it is always murderous”. I think I actually understand this. From what I gathered, it goes back to the fact that science is continuously proving itself wrong. It’s a continuous cycle. After a piece of science is proven, it isn’t long until there are other experiments that are performed in order to prove that piece wrong, therefore, science “murders” itself by proving itself wrong.
Another part that I found interesting was on page 1734. Here, Baudrillard explains the idea of sickness and the different between someone who is faking it and someone who is faking it but is able to make themselves actually produce the symptoms that go along with the illness. “Someone who feigns an illness can simply go to bed and make believe he is ill. Some who simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms.” This then made me think of how someone is able to tell if an individual is really sick or isn’t. He then explains this situation in a later paragraph (argh, which I can’t find right now)
The section on religion, although somewhat interesting was also pretty confusing for me. On page 1736 Baudrillard basically says that if there is no sign, there is no god. Huh? Then he goes into saying “what if God himself can be simulated?” wait what? Maybe if I was more religious I might understand this, who knows. I hope the class discussion will help me better understand this section.
The last section of this piece was probably the most interesting part for me. I thought the idea that he talked about Disneyland was very interesting. Although I have never been, I almost feel as if I have, only because of the millions of commercials about vacationing there and all that other crazy stuff. I liked the one section where he said “Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest if real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation” (1741). He then goes on to say “the real is no longer real” hmmm? Maybe this goes back to the idea of Derrida of “the center is not the center”. I sure hope not, I still don’t understand that. All in all, this was definitely a confusing piece for me and I’m sure the class discussion will help me better understand it.
Dialectic of Enlightenment
From Dialectic of Enlightenment, I think I found a lot of interesting pieces throughout the reading. Before I read, I googled Horkheimer and Adorno just to get a little information about them. After reading a little bit about each Horkheimer and Adorno, I jumped into the reading. I found this piece actually pretty interesting and it seemed easy for me to follow, yay!
From this piece, I got a sense that the idea of film and life continue to run in a cycle. Life imitates different films while films are recreating events from everyday life; and this cycle continues to go on and on. On 1226 it is stated “Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies.” To me, it seems that movies used to be an idea based around the imagination. They were “make believe”. They had superheroes, monsters, and scenarios and situations that would let an individual explore their imagination. Sure, there were movies that were based on actual stories and real life but to me, the idea of a movie used to be seen as “make-believe”. Now, I feel that movies and everyday life have become so close that they are becoming intertwined and its not so much hard to tell which is which, but they relate to each other so much that they are almost becoming…hmm, a whole (if that makes any sense). “Now the lucky actors on the screen are copies of the same category as every member of the public, but such equality only demonstrates the insurmountable separation of the human elements” (1233). Members of society are depicted in movies with their personality, characterists, personal traits, jobs, etc. while actors and actresses are played out by the individuals that make up a society. (These always sound so much better in my head). Although it may seem a little…all over the place, that’s basically what I gathered from this piece. One section that I found interesting was on 1225. This might be a little out there so please, bear with me. This page states “…depend not so much on subject matter as on classifying, organizing, and labeling consumers.” When I first read this, I thought about the idea of labeling society. Women and men and said to be labeled by their gender, because different roles (such as housewife) go along with different genders (relating to a bunch of theorists we’ve read…Cho, Foucault, Rubin). Sometimes gender is the only thing that is seen and what’s on the inside isn’t seen. I’m not sure if Horkheimer and Adorno are talking about movies in this section, but it seems that they are talking about only what is on the outside. People don’t care what is on the inside; they are only concerned with putting a label on someone or something, and placing that person or thing into a specific category. That might be a little over the top hehe.
As for relating this to some theorists that we have studied, no concepts here really jumped out at me. I did find a small relation to Jameson on 1231 with the idea of parody. “Such a laughing audience is a parody of humanity.” Although I can’t put much explanation behind it, it was really the only thing that caught my attention when it came to the theorists. Although I seemed to understand this a lot when I read it, I realized that it’s a lot harder to understand what I’m writing down, than it is to understand what’s in my head. I’m excited to see what the class has to say, I think the discussion will help me out a lot here.
Margaret Cho!
Ohhh goodness, why can’t everyone be like this? I think if every theorist we have dealt with had a comedy skit; it would have made it a million times easier to understand haha.
Well first of all, Margaret Cho is hilarious. I had no idea what she was going to be about before I started watching it but I was pleasantly surprised. I think Margaret Cho does a great job of incorporating her ideas of sexuality with all of her stereotypes and stuff. As for the theorists that fit with her, I think Jameson fits in very well. I think it’s safe to say that there were signs of parody and pastiche pretty much everywhere! Also, Rubin fits in here very well too. This fits in obviously because Margaret talks about mainly sexuality, gender and stereotypes throughout her skit. She also mentions the idea that the producers forced her to lose weight and to go on diets. This fits into the category of women having a specific image that they should fit into. Sorry this blog is so short and brief; my computers being weird and wont let me type what I want to, argh!
Judith Butler
Alright, so usually I like to say that I understand a lot of key points after reading a piece that we are assigned but I’m not going to lie, this one really threw me for a loop. I started reading Gender Trouble by Judith Butler and stopped after the first few pages. I decided that since I wasn’t understanding it so far, I might want to research her a little bit. After doing a little googling, I found only a few sites that even mentioned her. Although there weren’t a lot of sites about her, I did find one that was really interesting. I found out that in the UK, she has her very own trading card lol, neat huh?! Considering I can’t get the little linky thing to work on here for some reason, here’s the site to check it out: http://www.theorycards.org.uk/card02.htm
(Sorry if you can’t click it on it either, you’ll have to copy and paste it into the tool bar thinger)
So anyway, from this site it explains that she argues “the idea of two ‘biological’ sexes is just as socially constructed as gender is” it also mentions that she argues the feminist discussion of men and women of separate groups-and all women as one coherent group. I’m glad I read this because it helped me put a little more meaning to her writing before I really dove into it.
As for the piece itself, I honestly didn’t gain much. I found myself looking back plenty of times seeing if I had maybe missed something important that I highlighted. After doing that I realized…I didn’t really have much highlighted in the first place, I guess nothing really jumped out at me that screamed theory. One thing I was very happy about was the fact that she kept relating back to Foucault. I’m glad we just worked on his work so it was fresh in my mind, so that was a plus. I guess from this piece, I understood the fact that Butler was focusing on the fact that we are immediately designated with a sex. Even before a name in most cases. In this section she wrote “How are the contours of the body clearly marked as the taken-for-granted ground or surface upon which gender significations are inscribed, a mere facility devoid of value, prior to significance?” Hmm. Although I had this highlighted in my book, I’m still not really sure what it means. I guess I kind of saw it as…we take away peoples values by assigning them a gender?! It seems a little far fetched so I’m hoping the class discussion will help out a lot. As for relating this to other theorists, I guess it can relate to Rubin only because it focuses on sex and gender. This is definitely one of my shorter blogs only because my mind is too jumbled with information that I’m not really understanding yet. I really hope the class discussion will help and I’m sorry if you read this blog and realized that there’s not much here! hehe sorry!
Symposium
Alright, so this is my blog based on the symposium. I attended the segment that talked about the different positions a person can fill with an English degree. For this section of the symposium, there were three speakers. The first one focused on the idea of going into Law school and the different job opportunities that are associated with a Law degree along with an English degree. The second speaker spoke about the aspects of becoming a librarian along with the school/education that is needed and the different areas that can be explored with this career path. The last speaker sort of summed up the whole presentation. He did not focus on one job that is associated with an English degree, but instead he spoke about all the different job opportunities and career choices that an English graduate can achieve. Okay, so that’s the first thing. Oh yeah and one more thing, this might sound a little silly but…what?! I had noooo idea you had to go to school to become a librarian! Where have I been?!
From the segment I went to, I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to use this to relate to the theorists so please stick with me, it might be a little patchy but here I go hehe. Alright so for this, I decided to use Jacques Derrida and surprisingly enough, as much as I didn’t understand them at the time, I will also use Deleuze and Guattari.
With Deleuze and Guattari they talked a lot about the idea of a rhizome (which I still don’t really understand). On 1595 it explains that “Ferdinand De Saussure should choose ‘tree’ as his example of a sign…” D+G decide to replace this idea of a tree with that of a rhizome, hmmm, lets just stick with tree, it works better for me. Alright, to relate this to the symposium…here we go. I think this example of a tree relates to that of an English degree. The base of the tree represents the degree itself while the branches show all of the different areas you can explore with this degree. I think it’s safe to say that without the base of the tree (the degree itself) the branches will not be able to grow (the job opportunities).
As for the rhizomes, I don’t want to leave those out. D+G explain that these rhizomes are “a network of threads that can send up new growths anywhere along their length, not subject to centralized control or structure.” Okay so this pretty much goes against my idea of center because they say here that a center is not needed. But at the same time, in order to network between different jobs and careers, don’t you need somewhere to start from? Ummm..?
I guess a few specific examples from the symposium that relate to this theory would be based on all the different jobs that were brought up. Walking into that room today, I really had no idea that these jobs related to English at all. It was surprising to see that someone with this degree can become a librarian, go into law school, become a journalist, work for the CIA, do Government work, work for a radio station, work for a newspaper etc. Although I was aware that a few of these jobs related to my major, I really had no idea how many actually did. It definitely makes me feel a little bit more comfortable with the major I decided to choose. I think this theory reveals that a center is needed. In order for something to grow and expand, it must start somewhere. Somewhere, obviously being the center. Everything has to begin somewhere right?
I think in order to look at this as a larger significance; you must look at the important of a college degree. Not just an English degree, any degree. I think that by putting yourself through years of hard work and dedicating, a college degree gives you a base that you can work you way up from. In my opinion, it lands you that much closer to the job that you wish for and makes it easier to achieve that position.
Although this post might seem a little bit all over the place but this is what I gathered from this segment of the symposium and I hope it makes at least a little sense!
Foucault
Alright so I thought this reading went pretty well for me. Although it seemed like a long reading and I had to come back to it a few times, it was alright I guess, not my favorite but not my least favorite either.
First if all, I’m really glad that www.dictionary.com exists, I found myself there a few times with this reading. For the first idea I picked out, I went and I looked up the definition for Censorship. Here it gave me a brief definition which in the long run, really didn’t help too much. “The act or process of censoring”. This beginning section kind of scared me because I was afraid I wasn’t going to understand the reading because I felt a little lost on the censorship area. I thought it was neat how Foucault used this word in his writing. To me, it almost seemed like a completely different idea than I would have usually though of it as. hmmm, where am I going with this? Anyway, this whole idea kind of threw me off and I’m sure we’ll go over it in class and I’ll be able to understand it a little better.
Throughout the whole piece, I thought of the idea of definition. The idea of defining something, anything, an object, a person, a word…anything. On 1648 I think this idea begins to take shape, for me anyway. “things appear in a very different light: around and apropos of sex, one sees a veritable discursive explosion.” To me, this made me think that everyone has different definition of things. Everyone sees something in a different way, in their own way which here, relates to the idea of sex (relating back to Rubin I think it was). I guess the idea of censorship comes in because it’s explained that a society provides guidelines for some aspects…? Such as, again, sex. “But more important was the multiplication of discourses concerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself: an institutional incitement to speak about it, and to do so more and more; a determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken about and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and endlessly accumulated detail.” Meaning…in some places sex is able to be spoken about but in other places it may be an idea that is forbidden or inappropriate. An example of this is on 1654 where it says “one can have the impression that sex was hardly spoken of at all in these institutions.” Another word I found myself looking up was discursive. Discursive: passing aimlessly from one subject to another; digressive; rambling.
Another area I found interesting was in page 1653 where it says “each individual made use of his sex.” Again, this made me think back to Rubin. I guess it made me think that you have to use your sex to your advantage. Women are seen as being the housewife type so they able to grab those jobs that entail similar work while the men are seen as taking the “tougher” jobs and are required to “bring home the bacon”. I think it will always be this way. There will always be some sort of sex inequality and men and women must be able to use their gender to their advantage and use it as much as they can. Anyway, this is what I gathered from the reading, a whole lot of talk about sex and definition, woo!
End of Disgrace
Wow, first of all, this book had a very unexpected ending. I think it’s really neat to see how the characters have changed throughout the book, of course mostly David. He is a very unique character. I was really surprised to read that David went back to see the student’s family even after everything that happened between the two. Not only was it surprising but to me, it seemed that he was very calm. Even as he was talking to the dad in his office, things got a little tiny bit heated but the way the book was written; to me it seemed that the situation was still really calm. Oh yeah and umm…why would he go to dinner at their house?! I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who was thinking this but ummm, wouldn’t that be incredibly awkward?! “Hey, I brought this guy home, ya know…the guy that pretty much raped our daughter, and he’s here for dinner honey!” Anyway yeah, what a weird thing to do. If I was in David’s position I don’t think I would ever have the courage to visit their family and none the less, stay there for dinner. weirdddd. As for the characters, Petrus is also another really weird character. Although I can’t really go into explaining why…he just…is! I didn’t find anything to me that really stood out in this section that related to the theorists ideas but I think there were a lot of good examples throughout the book and I’m really glad we got to read this book, I loved it!
