This movie truly changed my perspective on the media, books, TV, newspapers, advertising, etc. forever, as dramatic as that sounds, but it truly shed light on what it means to be gendered as a woman in society. It made me ask question, who controls this gendering? How do woman and men let this power of gendering control values in society? More importantly who controls this gendering, and how do we as citizens of the massive culture of America, let it have so much control?
Some key terms/ideas/phrases emphasized in this presentation:
Male, sexual fantasy world- female sexual stories told by men. Story telling: male fantasies, what makes a fantasy? Female sexual desire “devouring” men, men having “easy freedom” Woman being desperate for men, must find “substitutions” Waiting for me to save the day, a bleak world for woman without men. Who’s dream is this really? Men’s Dreamworld?
Two main arguments I found in this presentation:
It is a mans’ Dreamworld, therefore they, they being woman, act, dress, and show their “real desires” in wanting to rip their clothes off all the time.
Female artists are still in a very men-dominated Dreamworld, but he pressure to fit into the men-Dreamworld is too great to over power in our society. An example that really spoke to me was Madonna’s music videos.
How do these concepts presented intersect with gender, power, sexuality, and race?
Woman are even stuck in the Dreamworld in their own world, still in a man dominated society, men still have the power. It is perfectly legitimate to watch, explore, analyze woman, woman are now just body parts to be watched and used. None of these concepts presented makes these woman human, and these values that are portrayed essentially rip woman of intellectual and spiritual needs as basic inhabitants of this planet.
When it comes to this presentation and how it involves me directly at my social stand point, being a woman on a college campus, these ideas of needing and wanting to be desired as a physical object is extremely prevalent in the culture and world a woman lives in at a public university.
Knowing that people have been raped, and the amount of guilt it has caused them (the victim) because they felt it was their fault because they were dressing inappropriately, or sent the wrong message, or did not say “no”. It really blew my mind how acceptable our rape culture is in the US media, we really have taken the time to acknowledge that we do live in a rape culture, but the fact that we accept that in our every day society is so dangerous.
Image from: http://musicremedy.com/webfiles/artists/PussycatDolls/PussycatDolls-10-big.jpg
First of all, the image of The Pussycat Dolls, was an incredible opener and insight into this Dream World that exists in our culture. I wanted to look at how you spoke of rape and how it is accepted in our culture, and I completely agree. Rape has become almost a right of passage, where it happens to a young woman, and then she gets through it and WHAM! she's a better person through it. You talked a little bit about women in a public university, and the link between sexual violence and the college campus. It is ludricous how in almost any college television show, or movie, there is some depiction of a male taking advantage of a female classmate. While WSU is not filled with too many threats, the acceptance of rape in our culture scares me those nights when I am at the library late and walking home alone at midnight.
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