Pola Weiss's Effect On Women

In A Mexican Self-Portrait, written by many authors, this article focused on the different lifestyles of the poor and rich woman in Mexico. The representations of women in Mexico for both high and lower classes in Latin America were very different. For lower class they were considered “tortilleras’’, however, one of the most well known was referred to as “La China”. La China was one of the most notable types portrayed in the “Mexican Self Portrait”. She was considered to be an unnamed independent woman of the popular class.

Edited by several scholars such as Gabriella F. Arredondo, Aída Hurtado, Norma Klahn, Olga Nájera-Ramírez, and Patricia Zanella, this book in particular highlights the development of Chicana identities in the twentieth century by showing “how Chicana feminist writings move discourse beyond binaries and toward intersectionality and hybridity” (Arredondo e.al. 2). What is interesting is how the feminist scholars in this book used different epistemologies and methods in capturing the experiences of the Chicanas which include oral histories, poetry, theatrical performance, painting, dance, music and social science survey. Some of the contributors also combine “analytical tools and cross disciplinary boundaries” (5). The approaches used are very unique as they enables to unravel the Chicana experiences thoroughly and disrupt “the notion of Chicana identity as monolithic and homogeneous” (6). Also, the format of the book which presents articles and then the responses by another activist or scholars offers a very distinct way of presenting critical and provocative analysis. Such format allows the editors to “reaffirm the tensions and creativity of individual and group consciousness that underlie Chicana feminism and scholarship” (Salas 122). From this edited volume, I choose three articles along with their responses. Those articles are Cartohistografía: Continente de una voz/Cartohistography: One Voice’s Continent by Elba Rosario Sánchez (response: Translating Herstory: A Reading

The choreographic intention of “Emergence” was the exploration of merging diverse elements together to see what comes from it, like the emergence in relation to arrangements and structures made in nature. The choreographic intention expanded from the idea of concealment. This was clearly identified in the beginning trio where the female dancer is shown trying to escape from her hiding place. In appraisal, the choreographic intention of “Image” was a more simplistic interpretation, one that explored identity and how it is made up of personal experiences we endure and that along the way we are influenced and sometimes inveigled, which can make revealing who we really are at the core oppressive. In comparison to “Emergence”, the movement in “Image” was more vague and indefinite in relation to linking movement to the choreographic intention. Through manipulation of structural devices such as groupings, stillness, tempo and dynamics, the

While the speaker has succeeded in providing an enhanced image of the performer, the act of assigning meaning to the performance and the representation used holds the capacity to limit the experience. As the speaker continues to reconfigure her strip tease into a “[graceful] and calm” artistic dance, he makes a simultaneous attempt to distance himself from the crowd, making no mention of his gender or race directly (5). However, the speaker’s attempt to portray the dancer from objective eyes falters as his

The experience of existing as a woman is a universal one, only experienced differently as discrete colors that separate one woman from the next. With these different colors, characterizations, of what it means to be a woman, it is however, easy, to find a plethora of shades between works that enlighten another meaning. In Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2014 film, Beyond the Lights we get a glimpse into a singer’s life at the top, and in Josefina Lopez’s Real Women have Curves we get a glimpse into a group of hard working Hispanic women who work at the heart of Estela’s success, her factory, the Garcia Sewing Factory. Although life as a superstar is promised with complete riches and happiness, Noni shows the inaccuracy of that notion. On the other hand, life as newly legal residents in America living paycheck by paycheck is promised towards adversity and unhappiness, yet Estela and her family and friends prove that notion is not as accurate as the aforementioned notion. Through Noni’s mother, Kaz, and Kid Culprit, Noni becomes a presence in the music business, and through Estela’s mother, sister, and friends, Estela ultimately comes to own her own boutique. These two works are analogous in their exploration of the expectations from Noni and Estela’s mothers, and the influence of those who surround Noni and Estela have over their lives, but are different in the types of love that affect their drive in life. These similarities and differences are evident through the contrasting nature

Anzaldua identifies as a part of an emerging new mestiza consciousness and community, which strives to move beyond simple dualistic thinking and endeavors to “act and not react” This important contradiction lies at the heart of Anzaldua’s analysis. “From this racial, ideological, cultural, and biological cross-pollicization, an ‘alien’ consciousness is presently in the making — a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands.” (Anzaldua, 1987, 420). Anzaldua’s proposition of the new consciousness mediates social relations, revolutionary social change, and its wider relevance to feminist theory through discussions of the Borderlands and its implications for ‘identity.’

The characters Sherman portrays, lighting, clothing and expressions are cliché of what is present in cinema, so much that viewers of her work have told Sherman that they ‘remember the movie’ that the image is derived from, yet Sherman having no film in mind at all.[iv] Thus showing that her word has a pastiche of past cinematic genres, and how women are portrayed in cinema and photography and how Sherman has manipulated the ‘male gaze’ around her images so they become ironic and cliché.

The Awakening Essay 1 In the novella of The Awakening by Kate Chopin we are introduced to Edna Pontellier and the kind of person she is rebellious. She enjoys doing fun activities with her friends. One of the female stereotypes Pontellier fits is friendly/outgoing since she likes spending time with her friends.

No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman's photography is part of the culture and

Cléo from 5 to 7, directed by Agnes Varda, is a film about one woman’s struggle to come to terms with the possibility of her potential illness. Not only is Cléo struggling with her physical health, but she is also dealing with her beauty and the consequences of being an attractive woman in the modern world of the 1960s. When examined through the lens of Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” theory, another aspect of the film comes to light. The film seems to objectify Cléo and thus trivialize her struggles with others’ perceptions of her throughout the film by adhering to the construct of the male gaze. Although Cléo from 5 to 7 appears to play into the construct of the male gaze through the repeated objectification of Cléo, it actually subverts this idea and instead confronts the viewer, and the notion of women as passive objects to be viewed.

The male gaze puts his fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled, in a unique sort of way. In this traditional exhibitionist, role women are continuously being looked at and their appearance is delivered to the male gaze in such a way as a strong visual and erotic impact and provides male desire. The presence of a woman in a normal narrative film is the key of the movie. However, the key of the narrative film works against the development of the story-line and stops the action due to the erotic gaze. Butt Boetticher said: “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance”.

In this essay I will be looking into the work of Marina Abramovic in relation to the Feminist movement. By looking at her work, I aim to emphasise her influence on this movement. In this essay, I shall also briefly examine the works of Abramovic, particularly Art is Beautiful, Artist must be Beautiful (1975) and four of her performances from her Rhythm series (10 (1973), 0 (1974), 2 (1974), and 5 (1974)). I shall describe the history of the Feminist movement and its influence in order to develop an understanding of Abramovic’s influence.

Collier Schorr is an artist who has consistently worked at making visible the protean structure of identity, so that conventional assumptions about its stability, especially with regard to gender, are often provocatively unmade by her pictures. Indeed, it is key to her work that these are pictures, that is, representations of particular individuals who perform – or conspicuously fail to perform – the roles that are expected of them on account of a particularly gendered form. Schorr is by no means limited to a specifically photographic practice; she has freely included collage and other media into her projects, for example. But exploiting the fundamental ambiguity of the photographic image, its capacity to appear at once as a complex of visual

Levin uses the novel as a way to draw attention to this process and to the overall problem of idealization. The novel itself could be taken as a piece of propaganda that alerts people to the dangers posed on women and the worldwide phenomena of triumphant patriarchies. Modern commercial societies continually bombard and incentivize women to turn themselves into the “ideal” in terms of body type, skin complexion, etc. Is this not “Disneyfication” of a sort? If the concept is applied not only to the town of Stepford, but also to its inhabitants, Levin must be critiquing the societal tendency (especially in marketing) to target women and unconsciously elicit a desire in them to change. Scholars have also examined the “Disneyfication” of certain

There is some disparity between the way critics and philosophers like Judith Butler view Cindy Sherman's work and the way that Cindy Sherman speaks of her photographs. It may be the disparity that exists between many modern artists, who often operate on an intuitive level, and the philosopher critics who comment upon them from a theoretical perspective or a pre-established framework. On one level, Cindy Sherman may only be playing "dress-up" (as she herself admits) in her famous History Portraits (1989-90) (Berne, 2003). On another level, however, her "dressing-up" may be indicative of a deeper problem in modern gender identity theory which is the problem of "becoming" woman (Butler, 1994) or, as Judith Butler sees it, the problem of performativity. In the History Portraits, Sherman may certainly be said to be "performing" and perhaps even attempting to "become" the male and female characters she represents in her work. Indeed, it is upon such a premise that philosopher critics and gender theorists find her work so engaging. This paper will examine Cindy Sherman and her History Portraits in relation to Judith Butler's gender theory, the portrayal of the self, and how gender identity has changed throughout the course of modern history. It will examine representations of womanhood from Romantic Idealism to Post-Modernism and will also