FEMINIST CRITICAL THINKING

http://mymediacreative.com/feminist-critical-thinking/
(SOURCE)

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/femaleThe 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

FEMINISM

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/femaleThe 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 reductionistessentialist, approach towards the binary oppositions presented in terms of: male/femalefeminine/masculineman/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: link1link2). 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 essay:

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.

Narrative Essay

How useful are ideas about narrative in analysing music videos? Refer to the close study products ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Letter to the Free’ in your answer. (9 marks)

Narrative theory is a structuralist approach to a story which focuses on a video or story having a clear beginning middle and end. There can be different forms of narrative theory and lots of different people have different views on what the theory consists of. The theory can be very useful when analysing music videos, as some aspects of the theory can be relatable to the story being told in the video. In general, music videos aim to either tell a story or make a point. In the case of the music videos for ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Letter to the Free’, the videos do not necessarily link with Todrov’s tripartite narrative structure and don’t have a clear beginning middle and end, however, they do link with some aspects of narrative theory. 

In ‘Ghost Town’, the main aim of both the song and the video, were to express the problems that were happening in society in the early 1980’s during Margret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister. Although the video doesn’t have a clear beginning middle and end, it does include Kernels and Satellites. The kernels of this video are the panoramic shots of the city and its empty and desolate streets. Without this scenery and gloomy feel, the images would not match up with the lyrics of the song. The lyrics ‘this town is looking like a ghost town’ wouldn’t make sense with a shot of the streets bustling with people, therefore, the kernel in this video is the empty streets. The satellites in this video are small things like the outfits the band members are wearing. 

On the other hand, in Common’s ‘Letter to the Free’, there is very few examples of narrative structure in the music video, as there is no clear storyline or chronological order. Every figure in the video is either a member of the band or a singer, aiming to portray the message that Common wants to get across about the issues surrounding racial injustice in the USA. Because of these factors, I would argue that narrative structure has not been useful in this music video as no theorists’ ideas are present within this video.

To conclude, in some ways it is possible to link narrative theory to music videos, as in general, those videos aim to tell some sort of story, and often do follow Todrov’s tripartite structure with a clear beginning, middle and end, however this is not always the case and sometimes there is no clear structure (like Letter to the Free). 

Narrative essay

How useful are ideas about narrative in analysing music videos? Refer to the close study products “Ghost Town” and “Letter To The Free” in your answer.

Narrative theory plays a big part in the music videos “Ghost Town” and “Letter To the Free” as both videos allow the audience to engage and understand the storylines throughout them. It is also important that the audience can understand what the videos are trying to convey, hence the narrative’s importance. 

Common’s “Letter To The Free” focuses on racism and the downfall of the prison system. The video displays the artist in an abandoned prison with other black musicians. This video particularly links with Props theory, which includes the idea of stock characters. Common can be seen as the hero in this video, as he is raising awareness to large racial issues still badly occurring today. The prison system can be viewed as the villain, leaving the audience to decide what to support and making them feel apart of the video itself. 

In the music video “Ghost Town”, the band members are shown driving through a run down city. The audience is made to feel apart of this video due to this specific action, as it is though the audience are being made aware of the damaged surroundings while the band are. This video links with Todorov’s theory – with a beginning, middle and end. The audience and band are passing through the ruined city and by the end are driving along empty roads.


FEMINISM

Feminist by definition is a political position. The Feminine refers to a set of culturally defined characteristics determined at feminine.

Systemic Societal Sexism:

  • misogyny – fear or hatred of women (subordination)
  • sexism – discriminatory technique 
  • patriarchy – male power 
  • institutional (groups, organisations) perspective and individual perspective

Historical contexts// key points

  • 3 Wave Feminism in the mid 90s
  • Barker and Jane (2016) >
  • an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion – pluralism/ inter-sectional 
  • individual and do-it-yourself tactics cyber activism 
  • fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
  • the re-appropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’
  • sex positivity was more prevalent
  • more active in cultural and pluralism – deveolopment on first 

MULVEY

  • draws on the work by:
  • Jacques Lacan – (identity- he was interested the first time a child recognises themselves in a mirror (mirror stage). He spoke about how we are socially constructed and that representation is constructed through the eyes of others another.
  • Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘ – written in 1973 and published in 1975.
  • Fetishism = ‘objectified‘ and ‘sexualised‘ parts of the female body.
  • scopophilia = the pleasure to be had in looking(used in the media as marking tool to increase profits)
  • vouyerism = the sexual pleasure found in looking
  • controlling and subjective gaze  = the male gaze(term brought to relevance by MULVAY.

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/female.”

Mulvey

Feminism CRITICAL Thinking

  • Systemic Societal Sexism:
  • misogyny – fear or hatred of women (subordination)
  • sexism – discriminatory technique
  • patriarchy – male power
  • institutional (groups, organisations) perspective and individual perspective

Feminism: critical articulation for equality

  • 4 waves of feminism
  • 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‘ (1981:13). – SECOND WAVE FEMINISM 60s, 70s – the pill, divorcee, sexuality
  • 1st Wave – Suffer-gets
  • fighting for the votes and parliamentary consideration
  • Feminist = a political position
  • Female = a matter of biology
  • Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

Theorists:

  • Jean Kilbourne – looked at magazines, saw structuralism in sexism – women in mass media – second wave
  • Laura Mulvey * – 1975 wrote essay – Visual pleasure and narrative cinema – second wave
  • 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.
  • ‘What is visual pleasure’?
  • Freud – scopophilia (‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze
  • Underpinned by Voyeurism (sexual pleasure in looking)
  • Structured around patriarchy – ‘male lookers, females are the looked at’.
  • Camera is representing male gaze – women exhibition
  • 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‘  – Freud-en idea – dehumanisng
  • 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‘. – Identify formation
  • If patriarchy control representation, children will grow up believing dominate ideology/representation
  • Sut Jhally‘s same as Mulvey but with Music Videos. Language of music videos linking to representation of women.

3 and 4 Wave Feminism:

  • 3 Wave Feminism – Raunch Culture*: mid 90s
  • Second seemed to disappear
  • Barker and Jane (2016) >
  • an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion – pluralism/ inter-sectional
  • individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics – change cultural – cyber activism
  • fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
  • cyber-activism
  • the re-appropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
  • sex positivity
  • 4 more active in cultural + pluralism – deveolopment on first
  • 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
  • Queer Theory – Intersectionality – multiple personalities/identities/representations
  • Bell Hook(black feminist) – Multicultural Intersectionality
  • 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’.

Feminist Critical Thinking

Key words:

  • Misogyny = the hatred of females (women or girls) expressed as disgust, intolerance or entrenched prejudice, serving to legitimate women’s oppression
  • Sexism = prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.
  • Patriarchy = a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property.
  • Feminist = a political position
  • Female = a matter of biology
  • Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics
  • Scopophilia = ‘taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and subjective gaze
  • Voyeurism = sexual pleasure gained in looking
  • 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

Sexism from an institutional perspective and at an individual level

Feminism

  • According to Michelene Wandor, ‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 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’
  • 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, and the Obscene Publications Act (1959) which led to the Chatterly trial.
  • 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),
  • In contrast, ‘at the beginning of the 1970’s the Women’s Liberation Movement set great store by the process of consciousness raising’ (Wandor, 1981:13), ‘influencing everyday conduct and attitudes.’ (Barry, 2017:124) and ‘exposing the mechanisms of patriarchy, that is, the cultural ‘mind-set’ in men and women which perpetuated sexual inequality’ (123).

Laura Mulvey

  • In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male passive/femaleThe 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
  • As Mulvey makes clear, ‘cinema offers a number of possible pleasures’.
  • 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
  • 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.

Sut Jhally

  •  Works 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.
  • Jhally, illustrates with specific reference to a wide range of music video clips how a dreamworld is created in music videos based around a range of predictable codes and conventions, many of which are borrowed from the genre of pornography.
  • 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. In much of the work from MEF, the theme links content analysis (what we see) to audience behaviour, for Jhally this is around violence towards women.

3rd Wave Feminism

  • Known as 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
  • 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)
  • 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’

4th Wave Feminism

  • Inter-sexuality
  • 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).

Judith Butler

  • Judith Butler counterpoints earlier ideas of gender representation, for example, some of the ideas presented by Laura Mulvey seem to suggest that gender is fixed – male/female – that it is structured by institutions and those powerful individuals who are able to exert power and control – Weinstein et al. 
  • 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.
  • Put another, it suggests that we have multiple identities that are performed to different people, in different social settings, under different social conditions. For example, look at categories such as lipstick lesbian, butch and femme, girly girl and so on, which illustrate the multiple, plural nature of identity, representation and performance with feminist critical thinking

Van Zoonen

  •  Lisbet Van Zoonen also highlights the idea that the concept of ‘woman’ is not a homogenous, collective noun. 
  •  ‘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
  • Van Zoonen, prioritises the realm of popular culture as the site of struggle, where identities are continually being reconstructed.

bell hook: Multicultural inter-sexuality

  • 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)
  • 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. 
  • 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.

Feminist Critical Thinking

  • Misogyny – a fear or hatred of woman.
  • Sexism – a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society.
  • Patriarchy – when a man is in charge.
  • Feminism – a critical articulation for equality.
  • Intersectionality – the belief that there is more then just two types (male/female, straight/gay) there can be blurs between them.

Toril Moi

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

  • Wrote an essay in 1975 called ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’.
  • Her thesis being the role of the male gaze.
  • Theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘women as image, man as bearer of the look’.
  • Active male (the one who’s looking), passive female (one who’s being looked at).
  • Scopophilia- pleasure in looking.
  • Vouyerism- sexual pleasure gained in looking.
  • Fetishism- erotic attachment to an inanimate object or an ordinarily asexual part of the human body – objectifying and dehumanising.

Jacques Lacan (the mirror moment)

  • Psychologist, specialised in child development.
  • Mulvey draws on his work on the mirror moment.
  • Mirror stage of development, realising you’re a human being and your own person, at a young age.
  • Mulvey highlights the mirroring process that occurs between audience and screen ‘complex process of likeness and difference’.

Sut Jhally

  • His 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.

Differences between 2nd and 3rd Wave 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 re-appropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
  • sex positivity

Raunch Culture – 3rd Wave Feminism

  • 3rd wave of feminism characterised as a reaction to 2nd wave feminists coined by Naomi Wolf . Fighting against the Anti-sexualised narrative of 2nd wave feminists. More aware of feminist divisions, gay, straight, black, white – less blanket terms across ‘all-woman’.
  • ‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in 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’ – Hendy and Stephenson.

Judith Butler

  • Applied queer theory to Feminist Critical Thinking.
  • Reductionist, essentialist approach towards binary oppositions, male/female, feminine/masculine, man/woman.
  • Suggests gender is fluid, changeable, plural.
  • She thinks you act/perform in a way that links to who we want to be perceived as.

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