Dorothy Arzner- Hollywood Changes

I was interested in doing my post about a prominent lesbian in the industry of visual art or film. Arzner was a woman in the 1930's who started off her career by being offered behind-the-scene positions that have everything to do with the production of media. It's quite significant that, although, she was not the first woman to be involved behind the lens, she has adapted plenty of parts of development within producing her own representations of women that beforehand were not exposed to the public eye.

The correlation between queer and feminist studies is great because both groups are highly misunderstood and misrepresented in our patriarchal society. They are sought after and given negative connotations equally. As a matter of fact, in class we have talked about how women who overtly admit to being feminist are ridiculed and brushed off as "butchy", "lesbians", "unsanitary", "mean", and "male-haters". Radicalism described this way can also give feminists names like "anarchists". In the case of Dorothy Arzner, she was recognized immediately as a woman who mixed her beliefs and depictions of women in her films. Her sexual orientation held great precedence over the plots of her stories and how active women are shown to be over their own fates.

Arzner's accomplishments relate directly to the philosophy and analysis of gender roles posed by John Berger, Jean Kilbourne, Shirin Neshat, and Bell Hooks in all of their forms and styles. They use people like Rachel Maddow, Katie Couric, and Hillary Clinton to demonstrate how women empowerment and equality can exist when there's more knowledge and exposure about how such a sexism began...



Come on now, do we need this? (Advertisements like the one above)
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/02/26/hideously-sexist-ads-of-yore/


A few pictures Arzner has directed are Working Girls, Dance, Girl, Dance, and The Wild Party. In The Wild Party, specifically, the young women are dressed more revealing than women were during that time period. Also, since the story is about young women who would much rather party and have fun than be at school or follow any code, it reflects anti-domesticity to a certain extent. All sorts of taboo was made sure to exist within Arzner's films because of her personal opinions about women and how they were viewed. The women in her films were permitted to have control, have fun, have the credit. Pulling together erotic scenes of prostitution and female-to-female sexual encounters could not have been easy for a good amount of the public to digest-other than, maybe, women themselves. They were allowed to see characters that, perhaps, held true to their individual desires. Even today, a lot of the gay and lesbian films are in the foreign film sections, predominantly in different languages with indie funds because it is still not completely a "norm" for Americans to accept.


http://filmnoirphotos.blogspot.com/2011/12/bevy-of-beauties-wild-party.html

The same goes with women in cinema, as we have seen critics spit back (feministfrequency with the Smurfette Principle) to the majority of filmmakers. It was drastic, necessary, and risky for Dorothy to develop this name for herself through a lens that in 2012 still isn't understood or accepted. In trying to find information about her art or how she developed these characters and scenarios based on her biography, it's easy to bump into articles about her "scandalous" ways. She was said to have been involved with a lot of women she cast in her films, or at least set up that way because she was out about lesbianism. The impact of her work is not only through what she decided to direct on, but that she was bold enough to send her messages through Hollywood and promote herself as a mainstream woman artist.




Cited:

http://www.glbtq.com/arts/arzner_d.html

http://www.filmdirectorssite.com/node/437

Post 5: J.K. Rowling

For my final blog post I chose to write about one of my favorite authors: J.K. Rowling. Even though her extremely popular Harry Potter series is written about a young boy exploring the wizarding world and finding himself, there are many positive images of women in the books that help Harry find his way through some particularly trying times. She has overcome great financial and marital issues in her personal life as well and has become not only wealthy, but one of the most popular authors, arguably, of all time. In the documentary “J. K. Rowling: A Year in the Life,” which aired on ABC in 2007 the author describes her self by saying, “I’m a tryer.”A New York Times article reviewing the ABC documentary about the popular author, the writer Mike Hale says, “Jo, as nearly everyone calls her, comes across as smart, funny and self-deprecating and also as a bit of a scold, someone whose dislikes and insecurities sit near the surface and can quickly turn things dark.” Part of Rowling’s appeal to her fans is her relatability and her personality. She makes snide remarks about some of her competitors such as Twilight author Stephanie Meyer, who is not particularly well received by many HP fans. When Rowling was asked about her artistic process and her critics, she said: ''I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity…There’s no formula.”

As far as her impact, Rowling has had a huge impact on people everywhere. One of those people was my sister, who grew up with Harry. She was the same age as him and as each book came out she become more and more involved in Harry’s struggle and his world. She was able to find comfort and relate to the stories within the series. 

I think that is why she is so popular and awesome. Rowling is a woman who could write about a boy’s coming of age and have that message transcend the gender barrier. Bell-Hooks stated, “To offer men a different way of being, we must first replace the dominator model with a partnership model that sees interbeing and interdependency as the organic relationship of all living beings." In Rowling’s work, I argue that Harry would not defeat the evil he faces without the dependency he has on his friends, especially his closest female friend Hermione. In my opinion, Rowling does offer an alternate way of seeing in her novel and the complex relationships and turmoil do not focus on love or lust, but on friendship and the greater good. That message remains strong in the movies and audiences that only have watched the films receive the message and attract new HP lovers to read the awesome series.

            

    

This is an AWESOME picture just for fun...

both HP and political. How could it go wrong? 

 Romney + Umbridge = ?

Works Cited

Bell Hook's Making Movie Magic

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/j_k_rowling/index.html

http://tv.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/arts/television/16rowling.html?ref=jkrowling&_r=0

A Year in the Life. ABC. 30 Dec. 2007. Television.

Reclaiming What It Means To Be A Women And/Or Person Of Color

The nuclear family amongst minorities has declined drastically over the past twenty-five years or so.  Single parenthood is rampant as fathers (and sometimes mothers) abandon their families or distance themselves before the child is even born. It’s almost impossible to look at this vicious cycle without an awareness of the media’s hand in it.  Women of color are oftentimes portrayed with what one would call a “double stereotype” in movies, music videos and advertisements.  They are subjected to typifying notions of race as well as gender.  Latinas are displayed as no-nonsense, firey, quick-witted, and passionate types.  Black women are shown as nagging, angry, sharp-tongued and sometimes overflowing with an insatiable sexual desire.  Lastly, Asian women are timid, submissive, coy and coquettish. But above all, these women are presented in a way that assumes that they are utterly of no value to themselves, men or society.

               So how do we change this?  Who can change this?  Frequently, it’s been a struggle throughout various ethnic groups over who has the right to create media about the Black experience, the Latino experience or the Asian experience.  Some African Americans feel that unless you’re black in America, you cannot and will not ever understand what it means to be black in America.  But when commenting on white filmmakers portrayal of blackness in their work, bell hooks suggests, “their representations of blackness, along with others, were the positive interventions providing concrete, interrogative evidence that is was not so much the color of the person who made the images that was crucial but the perspective, the standpoint, the politics”(ReeltoReal 5).

  We all have to recognize the urgency to reverse these double stereotypes. Women and minorities have to penetrate the mass media with a force strong enough for their voices to be heard.  I have discovered a website called BlackandMarriedwithKids.com that promotes healthy relationships for African American married couples, daters and parents. The creators of this site are aware of the rhetoric, music videos, movies and ads that are a danger to black family life. And they're even more aware of the fact that artists of our own race perpetuate the devaluation of our people. 

 

 However, there are rare instances where an artist does speak out against in.  In "Bye Baby", rapper Nas speaks out to the people who criticized his failed marriage, many of whom are men who refuse to marry the mothers of their children:

And all I seen was selfish cowards, under they breath
Saying “why did Nas trust her?”, but look at yourself, speak louder bruh
You live with your baby moms and scared to make an honest woman out of her
And make her your bride, fake pimps you ain’t even alive

 

 Through the strengthening of minorities, we are able to better destroy an identity that has been given to us against our will. But we have to bring awareness to the misrepresentation with the use of all forums available to us.  

I just wanted to share an excerpt from "For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" by Ntozake Shange, which was the inspiration to Tyler Perry's Film "For Colored Girls".  I think it calls out the need for media about women and minorities that holds true to how these people truly are and not how those in power view them

“somebody/ anybody
sing a black girl's song
bring her out
to know herself
to know you
but sing her rhythms
caring/ struggle/ hard times
sing her song of life
she's been dead so long
closed in silence so long
she doesn't know the sound
of her own voice
her infinite beauty
she's half-notes scattered
without rhythm/ no tune
sing her sighs
sing the song of her possibilities
sing a righteous gospel
let her be born
let her be born
& handled warmly.”

― Ntozake Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

 

Why are Boobs so marketable?

      This blog is a bit weird. I really didn't understand it. What I got from it was that I've to do research on a female artist. Now there’s ton of wonderful female artists out there, but I always loved Tina Fey for her humor and outspokenness. Even though Tina Fey isn't as relevant as she was in 2008 when her stardom peaked, she still is very out spoken and takes strong stances on her beliefs. Before her show, she was in SNL for 9 years, starting out as writer and then skits until she finally found a permanent position in Weekend update. This move is important for the Auteur theory because that’s when she really had freedom to say what she wanted.
       “I love to play strippers and to imitate them. I love using that idea for comedy, but the idea of actually going there? I feel like we all need to be better than that. That industry needs to die, by all of us being a little bit better than that. Tina Fey, Vanity Fair (2008) (thenewinquiry.com).  I love this quote because it shows that Tina Fey is willing to go to any measure for her job, but it also shows her disapproval for her job. When she mentions that the industry needs to die that’s her way of saying that there's need to be change, not every women is meant to be played as stereotype, in her case a stripper. This is one of the many examples of her outspokenness. She knows that as a woman in Hollywood they're only so much they can do.
Update: Women's News
(Just in case you can't see it.)
       In the clip above we see this segment called “Women’s News” and in the clip we see updates on “Women's news” and they were good and progressive updates for women, but then she mentions Sandra Bullock and Bombshell McGee. If people don’t remember, Sandra Bullock was married to Jesse James for five years and then divorce because he was having an affair with Bombshell McGee. The reason was the Oscar curse, but Tina Fey cleverly states that it’s not a Oscar curse, but a “Lady curse.” What makes this clip different is that Tina Fey is almost venting about the women that give women a bad name. She starts her segment by explaining the accomplishments of women and even starting that people don’t care about it which means that times are changing (which I agree with). But, now she mentions Bombshell McGee and rips her a new one. It may come out as a vent, but we see her passion and intensity while not breaking her character or jeopardizing the skit. We can see how strong her beliefs are.
       I love Tina Fey for a number of reasons. Shes an awesome actor, writer and mother. She isn't scared to speak her mind and doesn't shy from her beliefs. She uses her fame to get her message out. There's a million female artist I could've picked but I picked her because of many reasons, but shes also one of inspiration to get into media. I used to watch SNL just for her and I don't mind telling people that a women inspired me. And I told people that and they laugh, but I always respond by saying that she isn't scared of speaking her mind, wearing some sweet looking glasses and being funny at the same time.

Works Cited

BRESLAW, ANNA. "The Unfuckables." The New Inquiry The Unfuckables Comments. N.p., 10 May 2012. Web. 26 Nov. 2012. <http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-unfuckables/>.

Leo, Alex. "Tina Fey UNLOADS On 'Bombshell' McGee, Mocks Tiger's Mistresses (VIDEO)."Http://www.huffingtonpost.com. N.p., n.d. Web.

Alternative Media: Knowledge is Power

I think most of us can agree that when it comes to women and minorities, the media kind of sucks. When looking at various media sources, I think it is important to be eclectic with what you take in. To be informed in whatever way, it is imperative to look at different perspectives, which includes stepping outside of the box. This is one of the reasons alternative media is vital.  

Waiting to Exhale

In Making Movie Magic, Bell Hooks points out some hard, but true facts about film and our desire to watch it.  When you sit and think about wanting to go see movies, the idea is to our bogged down minds something else to think about. We like sitting in the theater to be entertained and to escape from our daily lives. But, Ms. Hooks points out that although this maybe true, we also go to maybe learn something. This idea is scary because then what that means is watching movies or television shows influences our ideas about society.  “Whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of many. It may not be the intent of the filmmaker to teach audiences anything, but that does not mean that lessons are not learned. It has only been in the last ten years or so that I began to realize that my students learned more about race, sex and class from movies from all the theoretical literature I was urging them to read.”  The scary question is how much are the ideas and visions of filmmakers influencing our perceptions of people? 

I found myself appreciating Art and Activism by Catherine Saalfield. When people take something they are passionate about and provide away way for others to see their perspective, it allows society to learn.  If media is a heavy influence in our identity, which it can be, then why not be open to other forms of media there are. I am a big believer in alternative news sources and independent films. I really try to read or watch media that is opposing to my viewpoints. I don’t want another rich white man to tell me what I should know about the world.

I am a big social media person. I generally get my news from either Facebook or Twitter and every once in a while, blogs. That is how I came across the blog, Feministing.org. This blog is on the top 100 female blog list and although it is very, very left wing, I read it to learn.  Their writers are all women and many of them are minorities. And even though I really, strongly oppose their approach to Middle East politics, I appreciate their approach to immigration. Last month, they highlighted a campaign called #ImHere. The premise of the campaign is to bring focus to an issue that many immigrant women have faced here in America. Yes, ideally, it would be great for people to immigrate to America legally. Unfortunately, for many nationalities, it is very difficult to become a resident or citizen. Coming from Texas, I am all too familiar with this. I know families who have come here illegally to leave Mexico because of the drug cartel and crime, but struggle to keep their families together. If a mother gives birth to her child here, but gets deported, what happens to the child? It is a harsh reality and a very sad one. 

Without alternative media sources, we will continue to get information from the same people saying the same thing.  If Bell Hooks is right in her approach to the idea of us somewhat being educated by the films or media we take in, then why not be aware and learn as much as we can. 

Documentary and Media Activism Presentation

Hello everyone. My group and I did a presentation about documentaries. For part I of the presentation, we highlighted an Indian filmmaker named Deepa Mehta and talked about The Elements Trilogy. The trilogy explores various themes and how they impact women. These themes include homosexuality, religion, and tradition among others. In addition, we also talked about other documentaries that deal with body image, the beauty industry and being transgender in Iran, among other topics.

In part II, we explored media acrtvism in the form of women voicing their opinions about political issues. For example, there is a video featuring Eva Longoria, Scarlett Johanson, and Kerri Washington that urges people to vote for Obama. In addition there are posts about other documentaries that highlight women making a difference in their community. There are also posts about documentaries and other sites that show the struggles that women go through in other countries.

For the final part of the presentation, we chose to highlight the positive portrayal of women in movies and TV. Some examples include female characters in shows like The Walking Dead and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. You can find our blog at the following link:

http://femaleactivism.blogspot.com/

Feel free to check out the blog and leave comments about other documentaries or any other media involving women that are worth a look.

Female Game Designers

          
             Most of the readings for class dealt with women in film. In Judith Redding and Victoria A. Brownworth's "Debra Zimmerman and Women Make Movies," the authors discuss how WMM help independent women filmmakers showcase/distribute their works. In the passage, Debra Zimmerman made a comment on the importance of getting men to realize that films about women are important. Zimmerman says that this problem still exists today. During a screening a man actually asked Zimmerman, "There are so many important things to make a film about, why did you make a film about women?" (How RUDE!) Zimmerman wants to change this way of thinking. She feels that men need to watch more female films. When men do watch the films, it cannot be a room filled with men it needs both genders, so that the men can hear the women's perspectives. The women can argue with the men and explain why films about females are important.
               In Reel to Real, bell hooks says we need to take films seriously. Films are actually teaching us things, and it's actually shaping society. bell hooks states, "Whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of many people. It may not be the intent of a filmmaker to teach audiences anything, but that does not mean that lessons are not learned" (2). In other words we learn a lot of things through television and film. (This is so true, the T.V was my babysitter, of course I would learn from it) At the end bell hooks says that she wants her readers to realize that television and films are shaping our culture and we need to learn to look at films in a different perspective. She explains that there is a time of submission, when a movie screens, and the audience is "seduced" by the images on the screen, and during this seduction the audience is absorbing all the "teachings" of the film. bell hooks on the other hand, uses this time of seduction to take notes and "critically understand and "read" what is happening at that moment, what the film tries to do to us" (4). She encourages her readers to do the same, she wants them to critique that moment where the film puts a trance on the audience, this way we won't get sucked in to the seduction. (You can critique a film and still enjoy it)
               Both bell hooks and Maggie Humm touch on the connection between literature and film. They both talk about how most films are made based on works of literature. As Humm puts it, "literature is the act of viewing." They discuss how, both literature and film shape society. Another form of media that helps shape society are games. Books, films, and games are different ways in "entering a world that is different from the one we know and are most comfortable with" (2). Games are another form of release, and they can seduce the player. Games should also be played with a critical interpretation. 
               Nowadays we have a type of game known as serious games. According to my "Concepts in Gaming" class (last semester), serious games are games that educate and bring awareness to it's players/audience, they are games with a mission to advocate. Recently two female game designers (Blair Kuhlman and Amanda Dittami) have developed a serious game called, "Gone From an Age: A Fitting." A Fitting is a serious game that touches on "the cultural and personal expectations of body image." 
               According to Kickstarter, the game play starts out with the player being a young woman standing in front of a mirror. The T.V screen is acting as the mirror, the player can see that the woman is surrounded by  a audience, that commands "demanding mumbles that manifest into a shadow casting over the young woman." Based on an interview with the developers, "the audience encourages the young woman to twist and contort her body in order to meet their expectations of her. The game challenges the player to contort the body of the young woman, along with their own, but at the cost of his or her own discomfort." This discomfort is suppose to help the player realize how immoral our expectations of body image is. It will also allow the player to question why we would conform to these discomforts.
                  The developers describe the game to be satirical. In their interview Kuhlman and Dittami state the reasons for the creation of the game, "The game revolves around issues with body image, which we believe is a very important conversation to have. It is an issue that a lot of people face, especially young women, and it is very unfortunate that it is so commonly accepted as the way things are."

Blair Kuhlman and Amanda Dittami

Sources:

Introduction to Making Movie Magic from Reel to Real by bell hooks

"Debra Zimmerman and Women Make Movies" by Judith Redding and Victoria A. Brownworth

Author/Auteur: Feminist Literary Theory and Feminist Film, by Maggie Humm

http://todayiconversedwith.tumblr.com/post/31516288031/blair-kuhlman-and-amanda-dittami#.UIgLo28xqSq

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1391208084/gone-from-an-age-a-fitting

https://mobile.twitter.com/amandaDittami

http://gonefromanageafitting.blogspot.com/