Notes from the lecture:

- identity is a construct, a performance, which gets formed by among others the help of the visual world
- how does the visual world set up identities?

- four different (problematic?) categories of identity: gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity
- divided into opposing pairs (= binary oppositions or binaries), e.g. white/black, male/female, etc.
- idea of 'marked' (= noticeable identification with a category, e.g. female characters wearing lipstick to separate them from male characters) and 'unmarked' binaries (= is seen as norm, you don't notice it) -> issue of power

• gender
• male/female is a sex you're arguably born into
• masculine/feminine are social structures and behaviour codes you're taught
• female is marked by giving it what we now see as typically female attributes and accessories, e.g. eyelashes 

• Stewart Hall
• Judith Butler 
• Gender is a performance
• We learn to perform the gender attached to our sex (e.g. body language, appearance, etc.)
• We can strategically play around with it
• Lauren Mulver
• 'the male gaze'
• 'women to-be-looked-at-ness'
• John Berger
• 'Men act, women appear.'

• sexuality
• heterosexual/homosexual - is that all?
• heteronormative society as demonstrated in film and TV
• homosexuality has to be marked, is being played at

• Judith Butler, 'Gender Trouble'

• class
• middle class/lower class - problematic: more classes? Classes at all?
• working class is marked and often seen through the eyes of the middle class, e.g. for comical purposes

• ethnicity
• white/black; British/other; Western/Eastern
• in Disney: villains are often darker skinned while heroes are fairer skinned
• normalisation of whiteness

Questions I ask myself/to ask:

- Where do I fit in? How do I identify myself within these categories?
- When I specifically look at the representation of one category, what happens to the others?
- What is my viewing position? What is the position the cultural text assumes me to have?#
- Young/old as binaries?