Concepts and Framework-building for Analyzing
Movies
Foucault’s
• The History of Sexuality
• Power : Biopower
: Disciplinary power
• Subjectivity
• Truth and Power
• Power-knowledge
• Discourse
Use Foucault’s Intellectual Tradition in building the framework:
Subject & Body are created by discourses, i.e., in the symbolic
systems in which they are embedded.
He focuses on the institutional representation of power: how power
operates while developing different discourses, e.g. madness,
medicine, punishment, sexuality.
Key is power impacts the Body:
How does power work to regulate bodies and control populations?
Ref for some slides: Whetstone on Fouc Ap 2012
• Discourse: The scope of the knowable and knowledge form what
we call consciousness – knowledges are categorized through
which we see the world – this is how power is organized
according to F
• Discourses can be negative or enabling
Discourse can be an instrument of power and an effect of
power, but It can hinder us or act as a hindrance
It may create resistance and a beginning of an opposing
strategy
• Discourses on:
1. Mental illness and the birth of “the clinic”
2. Punishment and the birth of “the prison”
3. Sexuality
Power/knowledge
• Power through institutions as mechanisms of power disciplines
individuals
• Power is not seen as a way of subjugating a person
• Power is the structure of force relations in a society, tied to
cultural modes of understanding – “discourse”
Rules of power/knowledge
• Power is decentralized: from “below” as much as “above”
• Power designates areas of life as objects of inquiry
• Power implies a limit on the freedom of ways of being
• Power is tied to change or transformation – implies contention
and sites of resistance
Biopower:
F’s theory of power: Power is not restricted to political
or economic elites, nor is it narrowly defined by
repression.
Power is productive, focused on the power to administer
and regulate life, rather than bring death
Not a fixed property held by certain groups
Decentralized, diffuse
Fluid and present in all interactions
Where power is exercised, resistance develops
The History of Sexuality
•
18th & 19th C: Sexuality became a target of research & an
object of scientific knowledge- social concerns were expressed
by the society
•
Emergence of Freudian Repressive Hypothesis – Victorian-era
– controls to repress human sexuality and desire
•
Foucault’s anti-repression argument was:
Repression led to “incitement” to sex
More focus on sex, more talk and desire
Restrict by laws led to sexual perversion
Sex is desired as it became hidden and secretive
It then became an obsession
Powerful categories of normal/abnormal emerged
Western society is a singularly confessing society:
Confessions – a double subjection
1. A subject or a person in society is unerr social
rules
2. A confessor’s narrative on own desires,
thoughts, actions and experiences to light
on:
Justice
Medicine, psychiatry
Education
Family relationships
Love relations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_KL92oBWcQ
Sexuality in control under power 1.23 min 2008
Confessions
The Roman Catholic tradition of Confession:
Typically the penitent begins the confession by saying, "Bless me Father, for I
have sinned. It has been [time period] since my last confession." The penitent
then must confess mortal sins in order to restore his/her connection to God's
grace and not to merit Hell.
Therapy and confession
Psychiatrist (Power) to Patient (subject) relations
Power is embedded in the Discourse when subjectivity is
established on normal-abnormal status
Confessions: The Oprah Show
Rihanna 2012 5 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoitLatLAXk
Whitney Houston 2009 5 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14O-cHb9DGY
• F: Power is the structure of force relations in a
society, tied to cultural modes of understanding –
“discourse”
Women stories, movies and the Oscars
feb 2011 5.11 min
http://www.feministfrequency.com/2011/02/womens-stories-moviesand-the-oscars/
LEGO & Gender Part 2: The Boys Club feb 2012 13.43 min
http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/02/lego-gender-part-2-theboys-club/
Movies on discourse of the power of love: Is it experts’
treatment or expression of bio-power?
• Mental Illness in Movies
http://www.squidoo.com/MentalillnessinMovies
As Good as it Gets (1996)
Shine (1996)
F: Power/knowledge and discourse on excluded women or
racialized persons
The Oscars and the Bechdel Test 10.30 min feb15, 2012
http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/02/the-2012-oscars-and-the-bechdel-test/
Statistics on the State of Women and Hollywood
Ref: http://womenandhollywood.com/factoids/
2009
FILM
Box Office
In 2009 there were 217 million moviegoers. The total
admissions was 1.4 billion dollars.
Women were 113 million of the moviegoers and bought
55% of the tickets. Men are 104 million of the moviegoers
and 45% of the tickets. Women made up 9 million more
filmgoers than men.
Women Centric Films 2009
2 of the top 10 grossing films are women centric;
9 of the top 50 grossing films (two of them are animated –
The Princess and the Frog, Coraline);
18 of the top 100 grossing films;
26 of the top 150 grossing films
Women centric Films, Their Rank and Total Gross 2009
4 The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($293,897,327)
8 The Blind Side ($238,430,210)
16 The Proposal ($163,958,031)
31 It’s Complicated ($104,782,080)
32 The Princess and the Frog ($100,352,358)
34 Julie & Julia ($94,125,426)
37 The Ugly Truth ($88,915,214)
39 Hannah Montana The Movie ($79,576,189)
42 Coraline ($75,286,229)
Women Behind the Scenes
Women directed 7% of the top 250 grossing films.
Women wrote 8% of the top 250 grossing films.
Women comprised 17% of all executive producers
Women made up 23% of all producers
18% of all editors were women
2% of all cinematographers were women.
Women & Hollywood
Sexism Watch: ABC New Pilot Title
by Melissa Silverstein on January 12, 2011
ABC picked up a new series entitled Don’t Trust the Bitch in
Apartment 23.
When Cougar Town acquired its title, it expressed the premise
of the show.
The story is about a naive young woman who comes to New
York City and ends up with a trouble-making party-girl
roommate.
A woman — Nahnatchka Khan — is one of the creator/writers.
http://womenandhollywood.com/2011/01/12/sexism-watch-abcnew-pilot-title/ (a rich source of films & commentary)
Equal pay:
Made in Dagenham Reflects A Current Reality
by Melissa Silverstein on November 17, 2010
in Advocacy Feminism. 4.21 min
http://womenandhollywood.com/2010/11/17/madein-dagenham-reflects-a-current-reality/
Michel Foucault Madness and Civilization: The
Birth of the Asylum; Foucault vs. Freud
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXCW6Ztkp7Y
Top 10 Movies That Take Place in a Mental Institution (Audience Choice)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzzktK6Gceg
The Truth about Mental Hospitals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-ERXsCo5ME
Inside Mental Hospital
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9wEvsg-nhA&feature=endscreen&NR=1
Madness
CHANGELING http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvHquOz-lDU 2008
Trailer 1 5.39
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edX09NFZ3oc trailer cont’d 2 min
- FILM REVIEW 10.03 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y41garIaTIY Aug. 2012
1928 woman (woman vote 1920)
Judyism: Judge Judy At Her Best
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH57MnJIjkc 3.36 min
BEST OF JUDGE JUDY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mV5jyBu0i8 11.30min