COM 327
January 22 2013
1. Quiz
2. Housekeeping
3. Group Presentation:
- “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
4. Short lecture: Doty & Queer theory
5. Queer readings of pop culture
Quiz!
Question 1
Mulvey describes her analysis as a “political use of”
which intellectual tradition?
a) Marxism
b) Psychoanalysis
c) Anger
d) Cinema
Question 2
Mulvey looks at the following gender formulation in
cinema:
a) women as passive / men as active
b) women as human / men as cyborgs
c) women as crazy / men as rational
d) women as men / me as women
Question 3
What movie does Doty use as an example of how we’ve
been culturally trained to assume that all nonstereotypically queer characters are straight?
a) The Princess Bride
b) Psycho
c) American Beauty
d) The Blair Witch Project
Question 4
What is the term Doty uses to describe academics who
combine rigorous critical work with autobiographical,
celebratory enthusiasm for the subject?
a) Scholar-fans
b) Academic wannabes
c) Invested critics
d) Subjectivists
Housekeeping
1. Group presentations
- January 29 volunteers?
2. Email Emily and/or I for any questions about
course material & assignments, including
assignment feedback & grading
- Emily is also available for 45 minutes after
each class!
Doty & queer theory
- What is queer theory?
- Implications of Doty’s approach
- Queer readings & “encoding / decoding”
Queer theory
• Roots in gender & feminist theory
• ‘Male’ & ‘female’ (sex) is not the same as
‘masculine’ & ‘feminine’ (gender)
• Maleness and femaleness are
oppositional concepts
• Maleness and femaleness are
constructed (for us) & performed (by us)
Hegemony & PATRIARCHY
The configuration of politics, law, economics,
technology and culture around the belief that
men and women are fundamentally
different…
This configuration generally favors (straight,
white) men.
“Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is”
“In the role playing game
known as The Real World,
“Straight White Male” is
the lowest difficulty
setting there is.”
“You automatically gain
entry to some parts of the
map that others have to
work for. The game is
easier to play,
automatically, and when
you need help, by default
it’s easier to get.”
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/
Hegemony & HETERONORMATIVITY
The configuration of politics, law, economics,
medicine, technology and culture around the
belief that heterosexuality is normal & natural...
...and that everything else is deviant / immoral /
unnatural
“Homosexual” and “queer” are not
the same thing
Just like “female” and “feminine”, or
“male” and “masculine” are not the
same thing!
Doty:
Queerness is “any nonnormative
expression of gender, including those
connected with straightness” (p. 18)
Queerness is a performance that
disrupts conventional ideas of
“normative” identity
Doty & “encoding/decoding”:
1.
there can be multiple readings of a ‘text’ (tv
show, movie, video game, etc) – texts are
“polysemic”
2.
even the most heteronormative texts can be
analyzed from a queer perspective
3.
because texts are polysemic, my reading
does not spoil the pleasure you get from the
text
Implications of Doty’s analysis:
1. Queer characters do not always
mean queer positive
2. Queer readings are possible even
when (especially when?) no
characters are explicitly queer
Vocabulary for “queer” readings
Homoeroticism
- Men take sensual pleasure from watching / being with
other men… but how to make this OK for straight guys?
Camp
- over-the-top portrayal of sexual identity (often to the
point of irony)
Essentialism
- Characterizing a group of people using limited
stereotypes
Heterocentrism
Homoeroticism
What makes homoeroticism “safe?”
- A gay(er) villain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmgRv2V_7P4
“What makes you think this is my first time?”
What makes homoeroticism “safe?”
- Victimization of women
What makes homoeroticism “safe?”
- Violence
Queer readings are possible with almost any text, whether or not they have
explicit queer characters/themes
A queer reading does not necessarily reflect on your own identity
(e.g. just like Marxist analyses don’t make you a socialist)
Reading a text as queer simply means not assuming that every nonstereotypically gay person is straight.
In other words, it means asking “what if” instead of “obviously they’re not”.
Form into groups of 5
Choose from one of the following:
-
Hunger Games
Harry Potter
Twilight
Anything you want!
Do a queer reading.