• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

Systemic societal sexism: Sexism that is propagated by systems within society

The President of the United States, talks and thinks about women. This would be known as MISOGYNY. This is a term that derives from psychoanalysis and essentially means a fear and hatred of women, or put simply: SEXISM, a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society, otherwise known as PATRIARCHY.

Institutional Sexism: Within and perpetuated by institutions in society.

Individual Sexism

According to Michelene Wandor, ‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Defined simply, sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female‘

“the camera becomes the mechanism for producing an illusion” – Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema, 1975

The work of Laura Mulvey and specifically focus on her 1975 polemical essay: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘. Central to her thesis was the role of the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media. – In other words, media has a sexual imbalance – the women are presented as exhibitionists, something to be ‘looked at’ and therefore ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ , while the men are there to look and admire.

scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ ie OBJECTIFICATION)

 vouyerism (the sexual pleasure gained in looking)

fetishism (‘the quality of a cut-out . . . stylised and fragmented‘ – The focus of one particular thing [usually sexual])

Mulvey draws on the work of Jacques Lacan (‘this mirror moment‘), highlighting the parallel between the ‘mirror stage’ of child development and the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen – ‘a complex process of likeness and difference‘- This, she argues, affects how people see themselves. People define themselves through what they see, as argued by Lacan, so women and men can grow to define themselves based on the media presented through the “male gaze”. She also, discusses the position of the audience, categorising them as spectators who project their ‘repressed desire onto the performer‘. ‘Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like‘, thus, he must control the look, and thereby, the narrative. Made possible ‘by structuring the film around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify‘. Rules and conventions of mainstream narrative cinema, that appear to follow ‘according to the principles of the ruling ideology‘. In other words, the dominant look is always hetero, rather than homosexual.

Third wave feminism – “Raunch culture” – Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, coined by Naomi Wolf, it was a response to the generation gap between the feminist movement of the 1960’s and ’70’s, challenging and recontextualising some of the definitions of femininity that grew out of that earlier period. In particular, the third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism.

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s is the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344) and put forward the following recognisable characteristics:

• an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyberactivism
• the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity

Intersectionality:  Judith Butler, among others expressed doubt over the reductionist, essentialist, approach towards the binary oppositions presented in terms of: male/female; feminine/masculine, man/woman. Arguing, that this is too simple and does not account for the internal differences that distinguishes different forms of gender identity, which according to Butler ‘tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes . . . normalising categories of oppressive structures‘

More focus on individual agency in fourth wave feminism – About gender identity and how people present gender as different identities to others.

Jean Kilbourne – from the 2nd wave of feminism, she analysed how adverts sexualise women and reinforce gender roles in society. She claims that advertising

Also seen as ‘Raunch culture’. Which is a sexualised performance

• Pluralism
• Inter sexuality
• 4th WAY FEMINISM
• More focus on individual agency

systemic societal sexism, institutional sexism, individual sexism – misogyny, patriarchy, sexism

first, second, third and fourth wave of feminism. The first wave was from 1850 through to 1940, it focused on legal issues mainly women’s right to vote. The second wave was post wwII from 1960-1980, the slogan was “The Personal is Political”. It identified women’s cultural and political inequalities and encouraged women to understand how their personal lives reflected sexist power structures. The third wave began in the 1990s, the main focus was women’s rights to do what they want with their own bodies, including birth control and abortion. Fourth-wave feminism is a phase of feminism that began around 2012 and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women and the use of internet tools, and is centered on intersectionality.

Laura Mulvey speaks about the ‘male gaze’. By this she means the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer. In narrative cinema women are over sexualised and objectified.

scopophilia sexual pleasure derived chiefly from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity; voyeurism.

fetishism – a form of sexual behaviour in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, activity, part of the body, etc.

Jaques Lacan was a french psychologist who focused on child development, particularly the ‘mirror stage’. This is when a young child views themself in a mirror, it is said that this term can also be applied to to the mirroring process that occurs between an audience and the screen

Toril Moi set clear distinctions between these three terms:

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s is the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344) and put forward the following recognisable characteristics:

• an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyberactivism
• the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity

‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in the media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’ – Hendry and Stephenson

intersectionality – the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

Systemic, Societal Sexism

• Misogyny – hatred of women
• Patriarchy – a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership
• Level of institution – sexism or discrimination in companies
• Individual – operating at the level of women (poster, picture, music video etc)

1st Wave of Feminism

• Suffragettes
• galvanised by organisations such as, the British Womens Suffrage Commitee (1867)

2nd Wave

• Nevertheless, feminist critical thought became much more prominent and pronounced during the counter cultural movements of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which heralded, among other changes: the facilitating of birth control and divorce, the permitting of abortion and homosexuality, the abolition of hanging and theatre censorship.
• In contrast, ‘at the beginning of the 1970’s the Women’s Liberation Movement set great store by the process of consciousness raising’

Laura Mulvey

• ‘the camera becomes the mechanism for producing an illusion‘
• 1st wave
• Narrative Cinema
• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
• Male Gaze = pleasure is masculine – aimed towards man – woman as image, man as bearer of the look
• She argues that there is a sexual imbalance, there’s a split between male and female
• Women are exhibitionists (there to dance, move draw attention) men are there to look
•  female body are presented as something to be ‘looked at’ and therefore ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ – ‘close-ups of legs . . . or a face‘, of lips, hips, bums, tums, thighs, legs and breasts, etc. etc) which are exaggerated through cinematic conventions of ‘scale’, ‘size’, ‘focus’.
• Scopophilia – the pleasure in looking (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ 
• Vouyerism – the sexual pleasure gained in looking – skewed to the male experience
• Fetishism – when you focus on one specific thing over another (usually sexualised) – therefore objectifying women and de-humanises them.
• Also draws on Jacques Lacan – child development – proposes that when you are born you have no idea who you are and have no concioucness
• Lacan – The Mirror Stage = there is a moment where we recognize who we are = the moment we realise who we are
• The Other = we never see ourselves and we have only ever seen a reflection of ourselves – In media we are always looking at mirrors and that leads us to believe who we are.
• Not good for women as women are then going to grow up thinking themselves as ‘man wants a woman’ and will assume that the way women are on the screen is the way that women should be – this is unhealthy.

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

Sut Jhally

• Dreamworld- looking at music videos and how women are portrayed
• Female sexuality was used to portray and advertise brands and songs
• Shows how culture expects us to be men and women
•  At the centre of the dreamworld is the female body and drawing on the key concepts introduced by Mulvey (objectification, voyeurism, scopophilia, fetishism) it is clear both how the dreamworld is constructed and who it appears to be constructed for.

3rd Wave Feminism

• Sometimes known as raunch culture:

‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in the media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’Hendry & Stephenson (2018:50

• Old ideasof feminism became outdated and the phrase ‘Feminism’ seemed almost derogatory

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s is the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344) and put forward the following recognisable characteristics:

• an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyberactivism
• the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity

According to Ariel Levy, in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs raunch culture is ‘a product of the unresolved feminist sex wars – the conflict between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution‘ (2006:74). In other words, while on the one hand, the idea of liberation involves new freedoms for sexual exhibition, experimentation and presentation, on the other, it may well be playing out the same old patterns of exploitation, objectification and misogyny?

• Pluralism/Intersectionality – Initial critical ideas that looked at the plurality of feminist thought can be found in the early work around Queer Theory. In the UK the pioneering academic presence in queer studies was the Centre for Sexual Dissedence in the English department at Sussex University, founded by Alan Sinfield and Johnathon Dollimore in 1990 (Barry: 141). In terms of applying queer theory to feminist critical thought, Judith Butler, among others expressed doubt over the reductionist, essentialist, approach towards the binary oppositions presented in terms of: male/female; feminine/masculine, man/woman. Arguing, that this is too simple and does not account for the internal differences that distinguishes different forms of gender identity, which according to Butler ‘tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes . . . normalising categories of oppressive structures‘ (14:2004).
• Butler suggests that gender is fluid, changeable, plural a set of categories to be played out and performed by individual subjects in individual moments in time and space.

4th Wave Feminism

• States that you are able to be whoever you want whenever and wherever

• Systemic societal sexism – MISOGYNY. This is a term that derives from psychoanalysis and essentially means a fear and hatred of women, or put simply: SEXISM a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society, otherwise known as PATRIARCHY.
• Institutional, individual levels of sexism
• Michelene Wandor, ‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s
• Laura Mulvey – specifically focus on her 1975 polemical essay: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘. Central to her thesis was the role of the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media. another is fetishism (‘the quality of a cut-out . . . stylised and fragmented‘), the way in which parts of the female body are presented as something to be ‘looked at’ and therefore ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ 
• Scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ ie OBJECTIFICATION)
• Vouyerism (the sexual pleasure gained in looking)
• Jacques Lacan – highlighting the parallel between the ‘mirror stage’ of child development and the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen – ‘a complex process of likeness and difference‘
• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics
• Raunch culture – 3rd wave feminism

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s is the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344) and put forward the following recognisable characteristics:

• an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyberactivism
• the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity
• plurality

Intersectionality: Queer theory

• Initial critical ideas that looked at the plurality of feminist thought can be found in the early work around Queer Theory. In the UK the pioneering academic presence in queer studies was the Centre for Sexual Dissedence in the English department at Sussex University, founded by Alan Sinfield and Johnathon Dollimore in 1990
• More focus on individual agency – you can be whoever you want, whenever you want

SYSTEMATIC SOCIETAL SEXISM

The President of the United States, talks and thinks about women. This would be known as MISOGYNY This is a term that derives from psychoanalysis and essentially means a fear and hatred of women, or put simply: SEXISM, a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society, otherwise known as PATRIARCHY

SEXISM

• level of institution (institutional)
• individual

WAVES OF FEMINISM

• suffragettes FIRST WAVE
• 1960s Barry makes the point that although the women’s movement was not the start of feminism, ‘the feminist literary criticism of today is the product of the women’s movement of the 1960’s’ . In other words, the issue of women’s inequality has a history that pre-dates the 1960’s, see for examples: Mary Wollstonecraft, (1792) A Vindication of the Rights of Women; Virginia Woolf(1929) A room of one’s own; Simone de Beauvoir(1949) The Second Sex.

• 1970s SECOND WAVE,
• This period is often termed second wave feminism – after the first wave of feminism, which was galvanised by organisations such as, the British Women’s Suffrage Committee (1867), the International Council of Women (1888), the The International Alliance of Women (1904), and so on who, in early part of the 20th Century, worked to get women the right to vote.

• 1990’s THIRD WAVE
• coined by Naomi Wolf, it was a response to the generation gap between the feminist movement of the 1960’s and ’70’s, challenging and recontextualising some of the definitions of femininity that grew out of that earlier period. In particular, the third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class,
• religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism. an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyberactivism
• the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity

• FORTH WAVE
• also looked to explore these contradictary arguments and further sought to recognise and use the emancipatory tools of new social platforms to connect, share and develop new perspectives, experiences and responses to oppression, ‘tools that are allowing women to build a strong, popular, reactive movement online‘ (Cochrane, 2013). As such, from the radical stance of #MeToo to the Free the Nipple campaign, which Miley Cyrus endorsed and supported (which may encourage you to re-evaluate your initial reading of her video Wrecking Ball above), the use of new media technologies has been a clear demarcation for broadening out the discussion and arguments that are played out in this line of critical thinking.
• Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in the media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’

LAURA MULVEY

• Second wave feminist
• inspired by Freud
• ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘
• the male gaze
• ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look’
• women are objectified and sexualised
• scopophilia – pleasure of looking
• vouyerism – looking is sexualised
• fetishism – focus on one thing over another usually of a sexual nature
• dehumanises

JEAN KILBOURNE

• Second wave feminist
• In the media education foundation
• TED TALK – ‘the dangerous ways ads see women’
• secretary, waitress
• “babies can recognise logos from 6 months”
• BOOKS – Deadly persuasion (1999) – “if you want to get into people’s wallets first you have to get into their lives” (exploitation of human desires) creates a “toxic culture environment”
• So sexy so soon (2008) – “girls are encouraged to objectify themselves”
• Can’t buy my love (2012)

JACK LE CAN

• also inspired by Freud
• you aren’t born with consciousness
• mirror stage – moment when we recognise who we are (recognise they have consciousness)
• we only know the other, we can’t see ourselves, only see a reflection

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

INTERSECTIONALITY

more focus on individual agency (more power to individuals)

http://mymediacreative.com/feminist-critical-thinking/

SYSTEMIC SOCIETAL SEXISM

MISOGYNY derives from psychoanalysis and essentially means a fear and hatred of women, or put simply: SEXISM, a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society, otherwise known as THE PATRIARCHY

According to Michelene Wandor, ‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Defined simply, sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female‘

JACQUES LACAN

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM

INDIVIDUAL SEXISM

LAURA MULVEY

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed and their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact” – Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)

Laura Mulvey’s thesis was the role of the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media. Mulvey draws on the work of Jacques Lacan (‘this mirror moment‘), highlighting the parallel between the ‘mirror stage’ of child development and the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen – ‘a complex process of likeness and difference‘. She also, discusses the position of the audience, categorising them as spectators who project their ‘repressed desire onto the performer‘.

RAUNCH CULTURE

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s is the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344) and put forward the following recognisable characteristics:

• An emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• Individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• Fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• Cyberactivism
• The reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• Sex positivity

PLURALISM/INTERSECTIONALITY – MULTIPLE DISCRIMINATION

INTERSECTIONALITY

This developed from Queer Theory. In the UK the pioneering academic presence in queer studies was the Centre for Sexual Dissidence in the English department at Sussex University, founded by Alan Sinfield and Johnathon Dollimore in 1990 (Barry: 141).

Individual Agency = You can be whoever you want, you are able to perform whatever you want, whenever you want.

• Operates in 2 points – Institutional – sexism in companies, societies, and Individual – Poster, Picture, Text

• Laura Mulvey- The Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey talks about how woman are objectified and sexualised.

Mulvey draws of Freud: Looking is essentially sexualised. Fetishism, focusing on one particular thing over another, usually of a sexual nature

Mulvey also Looks at: Jack La Can- When you’re born you don’t have consciousness. There’s a moment called the mirror stage

Feminist- A Political Position

Female- A Matter of Biology

Feminine- A Set of Culturally Defined Characteristics

Sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female‘ (1981:13).

As a final part of this brief introduction, it is useful to draw upon Toril Moi’s (1987) crucial set of distinctions between: ‘feminist’, ‘female’ and ‘feminine’.

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

Laura Mulvey

Laura-Mulvey-Visual-PleasureDownload

A good starting point, in terms of key concepts, is to look at the work of Laura Mulvey and specifically focus on her 1975 polemical essay: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘. Central to her thesis was the role of the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media.

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed and their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact

Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)

As Mulvey makes clear, ‘cinema offers a number of possible pleasures’. One is based around Freudian psychoanalytic concept of scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze‘ ie OBJECTIFICATION); another is vouyerism (the sexual pleasure gained in looking); another is fetishism (‘the quality of a cut-out . . . stylised and fragmented‘),

the way in which parts of the female body are presented as something to be ‘looked at’ and therefore ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ – ‘close-ups of legs . . . or a face‘, of lips, hips, bums, tums, thighs, legs and breasts, etc. etc) which are exaggerated through cinematic conventions of ‘scale’, ‘size’, ‘focus’.

Mulvey draws on the work of Jacques Lacan (‘this mirror moment‘), highlighting the parallel between the ‘mirror stage’ of child development and the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen – ‘a complex process of likeness and difference‘. She also, discusses the position of the audience, categorising them as spectators who project their ‘repressed desire onto the performer‘.

‘Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like‘, thus, he must control the look, and thereby, the narrative. Made possible ‘by structuring the film around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify‘. Rules and conventions of mainstream narrative cinema, that appear to follow ‘according to the principles of the ruling ideology‘. In other words, the dominant look is always hetero, rather than homosexual.

To apply these concepts to a media text watch this video from feminist frequency. Their work mainly looks at video games, which again shows how this fluid theoretical approach can be applied to a wide range of media and cultural texts.

Sut Jhally

Sut Jhally‘s work at the Media Education Foundation (where Jean Kilbourne also produced much or her work) draws a connection between the aesthetics of pornography and the codes and conventions of the music video.

There’s no such thing as communication that doesn’t have something behind it, that it is always constructed by someone. And I want people to be active in the construction of their own world because if you’re not active in the construction of your own world then you’re a victim of someone else’s construction.

Sut Jhally, link to quote here

Dreamworlds 3 offers a unique and powerful tool for understanding both the continuing influence of music videos, as well as how pop culture more generally filters the identities of young men and women through a dangerously narrow set of myths about sexuality and gender. In doing so, it inspires viewers to reflect critically on images that they might otherwise take for granted.

Raunch Culture – 3rd Wave Feminism

Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, coined by Naomi Wolf, it was a response to the generation gap between the feminist movement of the 1960’s and ’70’s, challenging and recontextualising some of the definitions of femininity that grew out of that earlier period. In particular, the third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism.

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s is the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344) and put forward the following recognisable characteristics:

• an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyberactivism
• the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity
• pluralism/inter-sexuality

According to Ariel Levy, in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs raunch culture is ‘a product of the unresolved feminist sex wars – the conflict between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution‘ (2006:74). In other words, while on the one hand, the idea of liberation involves new freedoms for sexual exhibition, experimentation and presentation, on the other, it may well be playing out the same old patterns of exploitation, objectification and misogyny?

‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in the media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’

Intersectionality: Queer Theory

Initial critical ideas that looked at the plurality of feminist thought can be found in the early work around Queer Theory. In the UK the pioneering academic presence in queer studies was the Centre for Sexual Dissedence in the English department at Sussex University, founded by Alan Sinfield and Johnathon Dollimore in 1990 (Barry: 141).

In terms of applying queer theory to feminist critical thought, Judith Butler, among others expressed doubt over the reductionist, essentialist, approach towards the binary oppositions presented in terms of: male/female; feminine/masculine, man/woman. Arguing, that this is too simple and does not account for the internal differences that distinguishes different forms of gender identity, which according to Butler ‘tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes . . . normalising categories of oppressive structures‘ (14:2004).

Van Zoonen

Similarly, Lisbet Van Zoonen also highlights the idea that the concept of ‘woman’ is not a homogenous, collective noun. That students need to be aware of the differences between women, that ‘gender is not the defining quality alone for women, and intersects with race, sexuality and class.’ (Hendry & Stephenson 2018:52). Van Zoonen, develops and applies ideas of cultural hegemony (GRAMSCI) and interpellation (ALTHUSSER) towards feminist studies, which are explored in this blogsite on these pages: link1, link2). Van Zoonen, prioritises the realm of popular culture as the site of struggle, where identities are continually being reconstructed.

Hook: Multicultural Intersectionality

As Barker and Jane note, ‘black feminists have pointed ot the differences between black and white women’s experiences, cultural representations and interests’ (2016:346). In other words, arguments around gender also intersect with postcolonial arguments around ‘power relationships between black and white women’. So that ‘in a postcolonial context, women carry the double burden of being colonized by imperial powers and subordinated by colonial and native men’ (ibid).

As a way of exploring this notion of intersectionality ie the idea that an approach such as feminism, is NOT UNIVERSAL, SINGULAR or HOMOGENEOUS as this is a REDUCTIONIST and ESSENTIALIST way of seeing the world. Rather intersectionality highlights the way ideas and concepts such as ‘female‘, ‘feminist‘, ‘feminine‘ (Moi 1987) intersect with other concepts, ideas and approaches, such as, sexuality, class, age, education, religion, ability. A way of exploring these ideas is through the work of bell hook.

bell hook (always spelt in lower case – real name: Gloria Jean Watkins) advocates media literacy, the need to engage with popular culture to understand class struggle, domination, renegotiation and revolution. Put another, encouraging us all to ‘think critically’ to ‘change our lives’.ethnicity and race, see for example here work ‘Cultural Criticism and Transformation‘ which was another video production by the Media Education Foundation (MEF), directed by Sut Jhally – part 1 below, parts 2 & 3 at the end of this post.

Narrative within a music video is often the hook that will draw views in. It can also be claimed that narrative has a lot to do with the idea of “time” and how it is used within the space. In comparison of both Letter to the Free and Ghost Town; very alternating music videos themselves- there are different approaches to narrative that are used for both.

For example, in regards to Ghost Town; this high-energy, angsty video almost has the feel of teenage drama to it that could so easily draw viewers of that certain calibre in- no matter the lyrics. Also, with this tension and energy that is created, you could say that there is a lot to do with Tztevan Todorov and his approach on Narrative. Todorov speaks of a clear beginning, middle and end- something that Ghost Town with its underlying political messages and bustling streets it is enough to tell a story.

However, in terms of Seymour Chatman with satellites and kernels, a lot could also be said for Ghost Town. The way this video is filmed casts a spotlight on the band members and pays close attention to details; even irrelevant figures on the busy streets. Therefore, the kernels within this video could be the when the band are within the car and they are driving through the tunnel, and the satellites could be the contrasting coloured shirts that the member wear.

Furthermore, in terms of Letter to the Free, this is a music video that has a lot less of a structure and is not as easy to analyse within a narrative. However, although there isn’t a clear chronological order to the events of the music video; I could perhaps claim that the video has come together by many different theorists and narratives merging into one.