-Laura Mulvey,
Screen 16 (3), 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'

Draft 1

When starting to think about the design and layout I wanted my poster about my cultural text 'Feminism in Star Wars: The Force Awakens' to have I instantly knew two things I wanted it to have:

1) A relatively simple, minimalistic design that wouldn't distract too much from the content while still provoking interest.

2) A picture of Rey since she was my main focus in my analysis.

A quick Google image search left me with two pictures I wanted to include.

from http://www.vogue.com/13380323/star-wars-hair-daisy-ridley-rey-triple-bun/

from http://www.adweek.com/prnewser/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/10/SW-THE-FORCE-AWAKENS.jpg

I experimented with a few things until I had two relatively similar but different drafts.



Both include the same photo of Rey and the title, have a black background, colour scheme, etc. but in the end it all came down on how I wanted it to look.

I asked myself: Do I want it to look like the Action Sci-Fi film it is or do I want to focus on my analysis of the female and use more female fonts?
I chose the ladder since I felt it agreed more with Rey's character.

I recently watched the new Star Wars film and remember being impressed with their change in direction when it comes to gender roles and stereotypes as well as ethnicity. Since I have only watched the film twice so far, I asked myself if a closer look would support my first impression or if there was much more to find in the films than I first noticed.

I was more intrigued by possibly proving myself wrong and seeing in how far specific social constructs such as gender roles and white-normativity have influenced my views and opinions and decided to analyse Rey's representation in 'Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens'.



We were giving a few questions and important points to keep in mind while looking at and choosing a cultural texts, so I went ahead and tried to answer as many as possible with my choice in mind.


Looking at a ‘cultural text’ in context:

• Consider who made/produced it, and when and where it was produced/made.
J.J. Abrams, USA, 2015
It's a new story set within the old Star Wars universe from George Lucas's six films (1977-2005).

• Consider the site or space in which it is viewed/consumed. Is there an intended audience?
Right now it is viewed in cinemas around the world and will move on to home appliances such as TVs and computers soon enough. The intended audience is fans of the old films as well as possible new fans of all ages and generations.

• How does the context impact upon the ways in which we ‘read’/understand the ‘cultural text’?
We instantly compare the new film to George Lucas's original six, especially when it comes to reappearing characters, concepts, settings and storylines. This instinctive comparison makes the progress of female protagonists in film much more obvious.

Reading a ‘cultural’ text:

• Consider which theories, themes or ideas from the lecture programme come to mind when looking at this ‘cultural text’? 
• John Berger, Ways of Seeing - I'd like to put his words 'Men act, women appear' to a test in the context of this film
• Judith Butler, Gender Troubles - Gender as a performance? 
• Masculine/Feminine are taught behaviour codes - Rey as typically feminine/masculine?
• Issues of power: Men over women: Relationship between Rey and the men around her (Finn, Han Solo, Kylo Ren?)

• Think about specific lectures that you could talk about in relation to this ‘cultural text’ 
• Intersectional Self

For your next seminar:

• Locate and peruse journal articles, books and book chapters relevant to your area of interest, and do the following…
•  Find one journal article and one book/book chapter that either deals directly with your ‘cultural text’ itself or with themes that you think are relevant to your ‘cultural text’/its maker or producer. 

• List the following information for each of your sources: 
• Name of the source (journal title and article title / book title and chapter title) 
• Screen 16 (3), 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'
• Name of the author (and editor if relevant) 
• Laura Mulvey
• Publishing information (publishing company, place of publication and date of publication) 
• Oxford University Press, 1975

• Seeing comes before words
• a child sees before it speaks
• seeing establishes our place in the surrounding world
• the way we see is affected by our knowledge
• seeing can never be completely covered by words (there's always something indescribable)
• we only see what we look at
• looking is a choice
• we always look at the relation between ourselves and our surroundings
• seeing and being seen form a dialogue that we constantly try to put into words
• an image is a reproduced sight, an appearance detached from the time and place it was made in/for
• everyone embodies a way of seeing 
• even photographs are a careful selection of the photographer's sight
• a photographer's way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject
• our perception and understanding of an image in turn is based on our personal knowledge and experience
• assumptions concerning
• Beauty
• Truth
• Genius
• Civilisation
• Form 
• Status
• Taste, etc. 
• art is the best way to learn about history because it allows a somewhat personal placement in it to view and learn
• we accept what we see in images as far as it corresponds with our own observation of people, gestures, faces, institutions
• it is not a painter's/photographer's skill to 'seduce' the viewer
• Mystification is the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident
• in order to avoid it, one must examine the relation between present and past; if one can see the present clearly, one shall ask the right questions for the past
• we see art like it has never been seen before; our perception is different
• e.g. perspective when it was first used consciously it was called 'reality'
• the camera momentarily captured appearances and in that destroyed the idea that pictures were timeless
• what you see is relative to your position in time and space: where you were when 
• paintings' perspectives suggested the viewer as the centre, photos revealed that there was no such thing
• it changed the way men saw, which, in turn, was reflected in newer paintings
• it has also changed the way men see art that had been done before the invention of the camera
• when a painting is reproduced by a camera and instead of being viewed in its designated locations is looked at in a different surrounding its meaning multiplies and fragments into many different meanings
• it is no longer what the image shows that strikes 'one as unique' -> its first meaning is no longer to be found in what it says but what it is
• I definitely see truth in this particularly, it reminds me of the time I saw Van Gogh's Night Café and I found I was more excited about having seen it than the painting itself
• its impressiveness increases with the market value (if it's worth $$$, it is a better piece of art)
• Gursky's photograph 'The Rhine' 
• museums: who goes closely relates to privileged education; the majority feels the paintings convey some kind of holy relics that excludes them
• the mystery of the rich, who they believe the art belongs to
• 'The meaning of paintings is no longer attached to them; their meaning becomes transmittable', it becomes information that can be accepted or ignored
• 'To whom does the meaning of the art of the past properly belong? To those who can apply it to their own lives, or to a cultural hierarchy of relic specialists?'
• the art of the past no longer exists, it has lost its authority. Now there's a language of images; important is who uses that language and for what purpose 

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?

• Cultural Capital: refers to non-financial social assets that promote social mobility beyond economic means, e.g. education, intellect, style of speech, dress and physical appearance
• insufficient or the 'wrong' cultural capital can prevent you from realising your aspirations and dreams

• Subcultural Capital: the cultural knowledge and commodities acquired by members of a subculture, raising their status and helping differentiate themselves from members of other groups
• Self-policing and elimination, 'deploying their own versions of subculture as a rationale for their own exclusion' (p.2) 

• Self-efficacy: an individuals belief in his/her capacity to execute behaviours necessary to produce specific performance attainments; reflects confidence in ability to exert control over one's own motivation, behaviour and social environment

• How can self-efficacy be developed?
  -> representation! 

• 'Awkward' questions to ask about the social and institutional structures that support and maintain hierarchies of taste according to Eleonora Belfiore: 'If the debate on cultural value is to go beyond an empty rhetoric of self-celebration then it needs to  be an occasion in which awkward questions are asked of the sector as a whole. '
• 'For whom does the sector generate value?'
• 'What do organisations big and small do to live up to their status as public cultural organisations?'
• Amadasun adds:
• 'Do we want to encourage cultural omnivores by diversifying taste and/or do we want a radical overhaul of the very values that make distinctions between 'high' and 'low' culture?'
• 'How do we survive and make some progress in our day-to-day lives?'

‘For Bourdieu the body, how we carry ourselves, how we dress, how we feel, was key to how the game of power within any field was played out. When there is a fit between us and a particular social field there is ‘ontological complicity’; we are like fish in water.’ - page 1

'It does not feel the weight of the water, and it takes the world for granted.’ (p.127) - Pierre Bourdieu 

When reading this text, I could not help but think about all these classic American teenage high-school films and
 Questions I ask myself now:

All of us are media creators, consumers and multipliers. What are you?

I found this quote from today's lecture on Participatory Culture to be incredibly true and intriguing. I create media through my artwork, photography, Youtube channel, even by blogging on this blog. I consume it by watching Youtube videos by other creators, reading blogs, online magazines, and by being part of various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. And whenever I enjoy something made by someone else, I share it, multiply it on those platforms.

Jenkins firmly believes that in order to achieve "a better Participatory Culture", which is his main goal, we need to move past our history of conflict and aim for an era of a constructive, mutually respectful dialogue. To do that we constantly have to reflect on our own thoughts and what influences them and build up awareness of hidden constructs of society and capitalism that influence us subliminally.

Participatory Culture itself is heavily influenced by developments in technology and our thrive towards free thought and self-expression. In fact, if you look back on its history it opens up the question of where we will go in the future. According to Delwiche and Jacob Henderson, Participatory Culture can be divided into four phases. I have included a graph to visualize and summarize them. In the lecture we discussed a fifth phase to see where we are now.