My Academic Interest On Gender And Kinship Studies

Over the past 200 years sexual liberation and freedom have become topics of discussions prevalent within western culture and society. With the recent exploration of sexuality a new concept of sexual and gender identity has emerged and is being analyzed in various fields of study. The ideology behind what defines gender and how society explains sex beyond biology has changed at a rapid pace. In response various attempts to create specific and catch all definitions of growing gender and sexual minorities has been on going. This has resulted in the concept of gender becoming a multi- layered shifting hypothesis to which society is adapting. Since the 19th-century, philosophers and theorists have continued to scrutinize gender beyond biological and social interpretation. Margaret Atwood 's The Handmaid 's Tale captures the limitations and social implications forced upon a set gender based on societal expectations. Gender is a social construct that limits the individual to the restrictions and traditions of a society, or if it’s an individually formed self-identification of sex and sexuality that is formed autonomously. Evidence of gender establishment can be seen within literary works and supported by various schools of gender and sexuality theory.

The concept of gender is evolutionary and difficult to define, though it can be argued that traditionally females have been predominantly defined by their desirability, and males by their masculinity. The way a director presents gender in film can either inspire social change and conversation, or alternatively it can further reproduce social norms. In the case of the film’s discussed in this essay, it is clear that Baz Luhrmann captivates a younger audience and intentionally uses actor selection and the presentation of gender to transform a well-worn Shakespearean story into something new and evolved to inspire a younger audience. On the other

Judith Lorber’s idea of gender meaning both sameness and difference is the key concept in Night to His Day, an excerpt from her book The Paradoxes of Gender. In Night to His Day Lorber’s main goal in this piece is to show how gender is socially constructed. She does this by stating the many components of gender within society that could be perpetrated either as a social institution (sameness) or what gender is composed of at an individual level (difference). This paper will use examples from Marilyn Monroe’s The Seven Year Itch to demonstrate these components of gender.

In order to deconstruct how well Danganronpa functions with its narrative structure as a visual novel, this paper will be using both feminist and gender theory as a lens, namely those ideas from Judith Butler. As a narrative, Danganronpa initially sets up various stereotypes and constructed spectrums for its characters to play off of. Both these stereotypes as well as spectrums are black and white in nature, with characters often falling on one side or another at various points in the story. However, as the narrative continues many characters begin to break out of their stereotypes and bend the rules of the created spectrums, specifically those spectrums of gender and sexuality. As Butler suggests, “a relation among socially constituted subjects

Cinema is taken by feminists to be a cultural practice representing myths about women and femininity, as well as about men and masculinity. Many characters in the novel break the boundaries of traditional male or female gender roles. Sofia’s strength and sass, Shug’s sexual assertiveness, and Harpo’s insecurity are major examples of such disparity between a character’s gender and the traits he or she displays. This blurring of gender traits and roles sometimes involves sexual ambiguity, as we see in the sexual relationship that develops between Celie and Shug. Disruption of gender roles sometimes causes problems. Harpo’s insecurity about his masculinity leads to marital problems and his attempts to beat Sofia. Likewise, Shug’s confident sexuality

It would be fit that the first comprehensive and widely influential feminist study of recent times should focus on the simple task of defining what a woman is in modern times. De Beauvoir provides her readers with a highly logical exercise in examining some generally accepted statements by scientists and theoreticians such as Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Engels, whose combined efforts shaped the image of women during the first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, she establishes her own concept of women as not significannot

Chinese cultures notably favor the classic tales of “chaste scholar-beauty (caizi-jiaren) romance”(Martin 119), which idealizes the marriage between a talented man and a beautiful woman. Martin interprets the typical heterosexual romances as “socially progressive”(118). In addition, he claims that the old patriarchal society reiterates and values feminine virginity and moral virtue. It is appropriate to fall in love and have sex for cross-gender couples, but homosexual sex is largely tabooed and inferiorly viewed. Martin mentions the “universalizing model of the homosexual lover” to reaffirm that the only possible outcome for homosexuals is family-arranged cross-gender marriages, which follow the mainstream of society(102). Furthermore, social norm in China believes that gay-themed movies more or less advocate violence and arbitrary sex behaviors, which may establish abnormal values and value concepts for immature next generations. Hence, the traditional anti-gay Chinese culture leads both Lan Yu

Because the outgrowth of the modern liberated women coocurred with the boom of cinematic productions, it was inescapable for filmmakers to make use of women’s new image in most of works. In reality, producers and directors exploited this deliberate rebellion against social norms in most of cinematic works in which women appear to be young, beautiful and strong. They moved further to overwork on women’s ostentation of their sexuality through images that bring them back to the same circle of objectification and exploitation by the male gender. In fact, this depiction was the groundwork of contemporary Hollywood popular movies which work at promoting and dissipating what was agreed upon as the easy insertion into eroticism and sexual consumption.

For this week’s discussion, I chose a video that discusses feminist criticism in literature. As the text states, feminists seek to identify strategies used in text to contribute to patriarchy (Brummett, 2015, p. 182). The video clip I’ve chosen describes how even the use of subtle figures and symbols can be used to create an anti-feministic tone in literature and film. Tim Nance, the creator of this video, emphasizes literary criticism; however, the symbolism he discusses is present in popular culture texts, which provides additional support for the undermining of females in society.

In consideration of these ideas, it becomes apparent that women are objectified in film for the pleasure of the male viewer. Two films warrant discussion in light of the aforementioned notion. In The Ballad of Little Jo (1993), independent film director Maggie Greenwald explicitly challenges Hollywood’s typical and mainstream representation of women and the “male gaze” by employing an innovative and valiant plot structure, as well as a reversal of gender roles. By contrast, Michael Curtiz’s mainstream Hollywood production Mildred Pierce (1945) stands in stark relief, reinviting the traditional gender representations and the underlying production techniques associated with such works. The purpose of

French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser defines the term ideology as ‘a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to the real conditions of existence’ (White 1992, p.168). This definition suggests that ideology isn’t a reflection of reality but rather a constructed representation of how individuals view society. These constructed representations often present itself in such a covert manner that we dismiss it as natural (CITE). Adopting Althusser’s definition of ideology, Claire Johnston argues in her essay Woman’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema (1973) that the portrayal of female characters in films is not reflective of reality, but is actually reflective of myths constructed under the influences of the patriarchal ideology.

Human body has always been a profound symbol. In modernist writing, body, as it was, is a gendered theme. Female body has long been viewed in subtle connection with primitivism and sensuality. In patriarchy, corpulent female body is defined as and related to fertility symbol as traditional female role in the society is linked with reproduction. In this regard, corpulence becomes a part of femininity as well as a part of what Simone de Beauvoir calls “the eternal feminine” that is primitive and sensuous under male gaze; this in turn legitimizes woman’s immobility and shackle in domestic role under patriarchy. Female body is actually used against female by forcing women’s subjectivity into norms of body shape determined by men in a horrible

Raise the Red Lantern (1991) by Yimou Zhang and The Wedding Banquet (1993) by Ang Lee specifically demonstrate perceptions of gender identity through a Chinese narrative. Zhang’s film examines the persecution of women and its harming effects. While Lee aims to create an accepting story of homosexual characters Yet, he progresses in his portray of women. This paper will examine the issues of gender identity (specifically female identity ) and discuss the aspects of modernity in the films.

Simone de Beauvoir talks about women through the eyes of an existentialist in her book The Second Sex. Specifically, de Beauvoir’s views on how woman is “man’s dependent” shows the Subject and the Other relationship, a solution she gives to abolishing the oppression of women is that we need to abandon the idea that women are born feminine, second, weaker and not made, and the responsibility that she puts on herself and women for accepting the roles given to them are all very existentialist ideas.

People automatically draw a clear borderline in between when hearing the words men and women. Simone de Beauvoir, in her most well-known literature work The Second Sex, describes them, correlatively, as “two types of individuals within a species for the function of reproduction”, but the division of two sexes “is not always a clear-cut” (29). Contradict to common sense, fixed entities cannot determine given characteristics. This is to say, sex exceeds the boundary that we normally perceive. This paper aim to analyze the flexibility of sexuality and the idea of androgyny revealed in two literature works, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, and The Twyborn Affair by Patrick White, the connections with the notion of otherness, and the reflections of reality within the two works.