By 9 pm on Wednesday June 2, please post a 600-word (min) response to the following prompt:
In "Resistance Through Charisma: Rita Hayworth and Gilda" and "Femme Fatale or Lesbian Femme: Bound in Sexual Difference" respectively, Richard Dyer and Chris Straayer argue that the genre of film noir offers potentials for queer gender and sexuality configurations that can resist the ideological work of genre conventions. What potentials are at work in Gilda (Dir. Charles Vidor, 1946) and Bound (Dirs. Andy and Lana Wachowski)? How do each of the films mobilize race and nation in relation to gender and sexuality, or how are the films’ queerness racialized?
Remember to link to at least 1 visual text and explain how it relates to the content of your post and the issues we've been discussing in class.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Whose History? Whose Knowledge?
Joan Scott provides a framework from which to think, interpret, and understand how visual culture can produce and communicate messages for the consumption of communities. It is in that production and communication that narrative are either legitimized into historical “fact” or delegitimized as lore. In discussing the relationship between vision and history, Scott says, “Experience can both confirm what is already known (we see what we have learned to see) and upset what has been taken for granted (when different meanings are in conflict we readjust our vision to take account of the conflict or to resolve it - that is what is meant by ‘learning from experience,’ though not everyone learns the same lesson or learns it at the same time or in the same way)” (Scott 409). It is in the historicizing of experience that determines who holds knowledge and it is in that knowledge that also determines who holds power, agency, and authenticity.
Yet, in acknowledging that differentiation, Scott particularly critiques the ties between vision and knowledge or evidence, asserting that in those visibility politics that subjects are inauthentically constructed through racialization and genderization. In particular, it is through visual mediums that this subject construction takes place. Further, it is not only the medium’s content and its production that exclusively informs that ways in which those subjects are constructed. Rather, it is also in the circulation and consumption of those subjects to particular audiences that further ascertains how subjects are developed.
One example of visual culture that proactively engages the relationship between vision and knowledge or evidence, ultimately also working to re-story “legitimized” narratives, is the 2007 film Persepolis, directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, an animated feature length film that told Satrapi’s autobiographical story as a product of the dictatorship of Iran and her journey growing up in the face of harsh regimes and the displacement of culture, religion, and geography. Satrapi’s identity as a women, one that has an empowered mind and voice, works toward that re-storying, yet it is completely filtered through her personal struggle and experience. It is in those personal ties that give live and energy to the news articles and stories in newspapers, yet they also further complicate collective narratives, fully illustrating many of Scott’s discussion points about the making and re-making of history.
In that construction of history, the filmmakers of Persepolis fully utilize cinematic references and techniques to stimulate the audiences’ imagination, particularly in ways that are subtle and aesthetically enjoyable. In making the film, Satrapi and Parannaud engage is various cultures of transnational cinema, particularly German Expressionism and Italian Neorealism, allowing those filmic genres to inspire and inform many of the scenes’ foundation and construction. Yet, as a film adapted from a graphic novel, Persepolis also has the opportunity to explore another question: What makes a film... a film? With heavy ties to the world of graphic novels, Persepolis is much more than an animated movie. By incorporating animated versions of other examples of mediums, specifically live-action motion pictures like Godzilla and Terminator, Persepolis exists in a reality that is relatable to a particular audience. Indeed, the audience must have a level of familiarity with particular pop culture texts. Yet, if that familiarity is there, the filmmakers are able to have a subtle, unspoken dialogue with their audience. Another good examples is Marjane’s Eye of the Tiger sequence that directly, yet never explicitly, references the 1979 boxing film Rocky 2.
In making Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud employ various techniques to give live to Satrapi’s story. It is in that storytelling that they are create history, a narrative that has never been seen by so many people around the world. That is, in affect, a demonstration of how experience reflects history and history reflects experience.
Yet, in acknowledging that differentiation, Scott particularly critiques the ties between vision and knowledge or evidence, asserting that in those visibility politics that subjects are inauthentically constructed through racialization and genderization. In particular, it is through visual mediums that this subject construction takes place. Further, it is not only the medium’s content and its production that exclusively informs that ways in which those subjects are constructed. Rather, it is also in the circulation and consumption of those subjects to particular audiences that further ascertains how subjects are developed.
One example of visual culture that proactively engages the relationship between vision and knowledge or evidence, ultimately also working to re-story “legitimized” narratives, is the 2007 film Persepolis, directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, an animated feature length film that told Satrapi’s autobiographical story as a product of the dictatorship of Iran and her journey growing up in the face of harsh regimes and the displacement of culture, religion, and geography. Satrapi’s identity as a women, one that has an empowered mind and voice, works toward that re-storying, yet it is completely filtered through her personal struggle and experience. It is in those personal ties that give live and energy to the news articles and stories in newspapers, yet they also further complicate collective narratives, fully illustrating many of Scott’s discussion points about the making and re-making of history.
In that construction of history, the filmmakers of Persepolis fully utilize cinematic references and techniques to stimulate the audiences’ imagination, particularly in ways that are subtle and aesthetically enjoyable. In making the film, Satrapi and Parannaud engage is various cultures of transnational cinema, particularly German Expressionism and Italian Neorealism, allowing those filmic genres to inspire and inform many of the scenes’ foundation and construction. Yet, as a film adapted from a graphic novel, Persepolis also has the opportunity to explore another question: What makes a film... a film? With heavy ties to the world of graphic novels, Persepolis is much more than an animated movie. By incorporating animated versions of other examples of mediums, specifically live-action motion pictures like Godzilla and Terminator, Persepolis exists in a reality that is relatable to a particular audience. Indeed, the audience must have a level of familiarity with particular pop culture texts. Yet, if that familiarity is there, the filmmakers are able to have a subtle, unspoken dialogue with their audience. Another good examples is Marjane’s Eye of the Tiger sequence that directly, yet never explicitly, references the 1979 boxing film Rocky 2.
In making Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud employ various techniques to give live to Satrapi’s story. It is in that storytelling that they are create history, a narrative that has never been seen by so many people around the world. That is, in affect, a demonstration of how experience reflects history and history reflects experience.
Experience and the Dangers of Essentialism
In “The Evidence of Experience”, Joan Scott presents her critique of the “hallowed” position experience holds in the study of history. In her discussion of the relationship between vision and knowledge/evidence, she delivers a critique of the privileged status held by the visible, whereby knowledge is (presumed) gained by vision, then reproduced via writing (Scott 398). Utilizing this methodology, knowledge of “difference” or “other” is gained by witnessing and/or making this difference/ other visible; however, this visibility then naturalizes the difference/other and fixes it as a subject. In doing so, the subject’s difference is accepted as natural; Scott wants us to question this difference and how it was established. As “subjects are constituted discursively” (Scott 409), and there exists within discursive systems a myriad of experiences, events, and conditions, to fix a subject with one “visible” identity based on one member of the subject’s demographic is to essentialize that subject (population), naturalizing it as “different” without exploring how that difference is constructed. The result of this is that what Scott terms “ the discursive character of experience” (406) is left unexamined, and the now naturalized difference masks the various power structures, events, etc. that went into creating it.
Scott’s critique extends to the recent trend within the field of history to utilize this visuality/these visibility politics for so called “rescue missions”, wherein certain groups deemed “hidden from history” can be revealed, made visible, and, thus, given a history. Scott is rightly wary of such “missions”, both for reasons given in her critique discussed in the previous paragraph, as well as concerns regarding the complex terrain that is identity formation- which these “missions” leave untouched. Simply “making visible ” reveals only a fixed subject, and does not allow for questioning the systems that created the subject’s identity formation (which has now been naturalized as simply “difference”); since identity formation itself is acknowledged by Scott (and many other scholars) as a contested terrain in and of itself, Scott wants us to question the formation itself. Without examining the various discursive systems that went into creating the subjects being “made visible”, we are allowing those same discursive systems to remain invisible, unchallenged- natural. As such, questions must be asked: Who decides what is history and what is not? What voices are heard, and whose silence is demanded by these systems remaining invisible?
This is an area of Scott’s critique with which we can critically view Satrapi and Paronnaud’s Persepolis, the movie adaptation of Satrapi’s graphic novels detailing her life in Iran and Europe from the late 1970s until her permanent relocation to France in the 1990s. While the film portrays some fairly significant moments in Iran’s history, it is pointedly autobiographical in nature and related in narrative from the perspective of the adult Satrapi. As such, while making the life of a young girl during the Iranian Revolution and Iran/Iraq War visible- and young women are certainly a group not widely “visible” in the historic narrative of any country- Satrapi runs the risk of being assumed to be relating the story, instead of a story (hers). Indeed, this is exactly what happened, in the case of at least one review (Hamid in Cineaste, Winter 2007). Not only did Hamid write portions of his review seemingly assuming that Satrapi’s portrait was of Iranian people (as opposed to being a portrait of Satrapi’s memory of her youth), he also indicates that his assumption is the “natural” reading of the film, and the one most audiences will walk away with. For her part, Satrapi has made no bones about this being her story, and hers alone; she has even gone so far as to attribute her usage of the graphic animation she chose to use for the film and the books it is based on as a conscious decision to limit the audience’s focusing on racial/religious aspects over the human story. While there are points within the film (crowd scenes, war scenes) where the masses of people seem to be generic- sometimes shown in profile only, sometimes with nearly identical faces- it seems one would be wise to remember that this is a memory, and the memory of a child, at that. The feel of these scenes is one of a story being told about events as viewed by a single person, rather than a revelation of the definitive history of a time and place.
One of the ways Satrapi reminds us of this is through very conscious use of framing, which cleverly removes us from the story via staged puppet shows, dream sequences, and fantasy/altered memory scenes that call attention to the fact that this is all coming from the mind of one woman, as opposed to being a definitive, “official” account. Her engagement of a puppet show to demonstrate her father’s lesson of the Shah’s “puppet regime” is an excellent example of this framing, as well as the visual we might expect a child to have given the explanation she receives from her father. The entire staging, although within Satrapi’s imagination, is clearly visible to us as a show- we see the curtain, the scenery, the flat marionette-like characterization of the Shah and the British government who controls him. In a similar scene, we see the theater curtains and columns as she and her grandmother watch Godzilla at the movie theatre- again orienting us to the idea that this is a personal memory, and not the collective story of an entire demographic. Below I have attached a link to a video by Sting (All This Time); at about the 03:15 mark, there is a similar interruption of the narrative (which reappears later) for a vaudeville type show. The stage, decoration, and lighting are all within our view, suggesting (like Satrapi’s work) that we are being given a glimpse of the protagonist’s view of a previously viewed episode (in this case, a metaphoric view of the folly that is the English education system and/or organized religion, depending on your reading).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LdUme7QZLY (Sting)
Scott’s critique extends to the recent trend within the field of history to utilize this visuality/these visibility politics for so called “rescue missions”, wherein certain groups deemed “hidden from history” can be revealed, made visible, and, thus, given a history. Scott is rightly wary of such “missions”, both for reasons given in her critique discussed in the previous paragraph, as well as concerns regarding the complex terrain that is identity formation- which these “missions” leave untouched. Simply “making visible ” reveals only a fixed subject, and does not allow for questioning the systems that created the subject’s identity formation (which has now been naturalized as simply “difference”); since identity formation itself is acknowledged by Scott (and many other scholars) as a contested terrain in and of itself, Scott wants us to question the formation itself. Without examining the various discursive systems that went into creating the subjects being “made visible”, we are allowing those same discursive systems to remain invisible, unchallenged- natural. As such, questions must be asked: Who decides what is history and what is not? What voices are heard, and whose silence is demanded by these systems remaining invisible?
This is an area of Scott’s critique with which we can critically view Satrapi and Paronnaud’s Persepolis, the movie adaptation of Satrapi’s graphic novels detailing her life in Iran and Europe from the late 1970s until her permanent relocation to France in the 1990s. While the film portrays some fairly significant moments in Iran’s history, it is pointedly autobiographical in nature and related in narrative from the perspective of the adult Satrapi. As such, while making the life of a young girl during the Iranian Revolution and Iran/Iraq War visible- and young women are certainly a group not widely “visible” in the historic narrative of any country- Satrapi runs the risk of being assumed to be relating the story, instead of a story (hers). Indeed, this is exactly what happened, in the case of at least one review (Hamid in Cineaste, Winter 2007). Not only did Hamid write portions of his review seemingly assuming that Satrapi’s portrait was of Iranian people (as opposed to being a portrait of Satrapi’s memory of her youth), he also indicates that his assumption is the “natural” reading of the film, and the one most audiences will walk away with. For her part, Satrapi has made no bones about this being her story, and hers alone; she has even gone so far as to attribute her usage of the graphic animation she chose to use for the film and the books it is based on as a conscious decision to limit the audience’s focusing on racial/religious aspects over the human story. While there are points within the film (crowd scenes, war scenes) where the masses of people seem to be generic- sometimes shown in profile only, sometimes with nearly identical faces- it seems one would be wise to remember that this is a memory, and the memory of a child, at that. The feel of these scenes is one of a story being told about events as viewed by a single person, rather than a revelation of the definitive history of a time and place.
One of the ways Satrapi reminds us of this is through very conscious use of framing, which cleverly removes us from the story via staged puppet shows, dream sequences, and fantasy/altered memory scenes that call attention to the fact that this is all coming from the mind of one woman, as opposed to being a definitive, “official” account. Her engagement of a puppet show to demonstrate her father’s lesson of the Shah’s “puppet regime” is an excellent example of this framing, as well as the visual we might expect a child to have given the explanation she receives from her father. The entire staging, although within Satrapi’s imagination, is clearly visible to us as a show- we see the curtain, the scenery, the flat marionette-like characterization of the Shah and the British government who controls him. In a similar scene, we see the theater curtains and columns as she and her grandmother watch Godzilla at the movie theatre- again orienting us to the idea that this is a personal memory, and not the collective story of an entire demographic. Below I have attached a link to a video by Sting (All This Time); at about the 03:15 mark, there is a similar interruption of the narrative (which reappears later) for a vaudeville type show. The stage, decoration, and lighting are all within our view, suggesting (like Satrapi’s work) that we are being given a glimpse of the protagonist’s view of a previously viewed episode (in this case, a metaphoric view of the folly that is the English education system and/or organized religion, depending on your reading).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LdUme7QZLY (Sting)
Evidence and Persepolis: experience and reality
Joan W. Scott’s the evidence of experience explains the relationship between evidence and (hidden aspect of) history in a critical way. Delany’s reaction to a bathhouse scene as described by Scott is significant with the sense of ‘visibility’ he experiences. Scott points out that seeing enables him to ‘comprehend his personal activities (particularly as a gay man) and politics’ (revealing the hidden in the society) (Scott, 398). Scoot further claimed that ‘seeing is the origin of knowing, writing is the reproduction, transmission and communication of knowledge gained through (visual, visceral) experience’ (Scott, 398). This is applicable to all individuals—we make sense of the world we are in and note our feelings and emotions and reactions to various events with language, written or spoken. When experiences rise to a collective level, such accounts usually serve as the ‘bedrock of evidence on which explanation (of differences) is built’ (Scott, 399). This has, however, failed to shed light on the nature and production of exclusion in the first place. What I like most about this critique is that Scott points out that the often seemingly orthodox history is subject to much personal intervention, rendering them unreliable. Instead of being the most uncontestable account, human experience itself is already a selective interpretation of his/her surroundings. On the second layer, manipulation is possible when such experience is reinterpreted in language as in recording.
Relating to the inadequacy of treating evidenced as the basis for history or explanation for the ‘difference’ in particular, it is interesting to note the several translation and representation in Persepolis and its role in ‘representing the hidden’.
As an autobiographic film, Persepolis has several characteristics that challenge how true it is a complete account of the past. The fact that Marjane’s family was privileged might explain her identification with revolutionist’s disappointment and exile (her uncle in particular), but it also exclude to a large extent the real living condition of the general public at war times. In addition, Marjane’s inclination to French (language, real life production and funding) also undermines the reliability of the film as a record of history, when considering the relationship between experience and history. It seems weird to me that on one hand Marjane is dedicating this film to the Iranians; on the other hand she allows the permeation western influence, both within and without the movie. To a certain extent I find Persepolis too much an embellishment of the reality. The point of view of a young girl might have fostered this impression for the most part, but the abstract black and white animation and the over-simplified plot has reproduced the stereotypical Iran (ethnic country) under western impression instead of presenting the real world of it. Hence though the film at times touch on issues as genders, politics and justice etc, I find little sense of her going on a ‘rescue mission’ or to speak for the hidden or suppressed, women or the mass. The association with other media—television, film and music are at most times ambiguous. It seems to suggest that western culture has empower Marjane to stand up and challenge the authoritative figure (teacher and nuns for instance), but at the same time these media challenges her own national identity.
http://www.timburtoncollective.com/bigfish.html
The idea of the unreliability of personal accounts reminds me of another movie, Tim Burton’s Big Fish (2003), in which a dying man deliberately intervene his childhood memory, embellishing it from failure and nightmares to fantastically joyful episodes, which he told as stories to his son. In the film, although the events themselves are twisted, the emotional truths in them are very much more the authentic. in this light, I might say that Persepolis seems to be an evident supporting Scott’s claim that experience do not represent History, particularly for the ‘difference’, but then to a certain extent its artistic achievement address human feelings, which might be more important than mere historical facts.
Universalizing Experience
Last semester, I wrote my senior thesis for my Women’s and Gender Studies major. My topic related to the employment of web-based resources and organizing tools by the feminist and women’s rights movements; or, rather, feminists underutilization of these resources. The centerpiece of my thesis was an essay written by Donna Haraway called, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Haraway, the foremost scholar on cyber feminism, wrote her essay in response to what she perceived as the very real inadequacies of the second wave of feminism. The Second Wave was conceived by Betty Friedan and others with the experience of a certain type of woman in mind, identified in the opening lines of Friedan’s canon, The Feminine Mystique:
"Each suburban wife struggled with it [Friedan’s famed ‘problem with no name’] alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night--she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—‘Is this all?’" (Friedan).
The Second Wave, and the organization and action that accompanied it, foregrounded this middle class, suburban white woman’s reality, and attempted to combat the “women’s problem” with her in mind. They created a movement that universalized one type of woman’s experience, and then went about agitating for policy and societal changes that would make life better for ‘women.' Feminists have discovered, though, that identity constructions are social constructions that have been forced upon us by a society attempting to categorize, organize, and sometimes repress; our affinity should come from conscious coalition, not from constructed identity categories because, as Haraway argues, “social reality is lived social relations […] a world-changing fiction" (Haraway 149).
While reading Joan Scott's, “The Evidence of Experience,” I could not help but be reminded of Haraway’s “Manifesto.” Haraway struggled against a feminism that relied upon strict identity categories for recruitment/coalition-building and essentialized one type of woman’s experience. Similarly, in her piece, historian Joan Scott laments the historical focus on experience as a representation of fact because, "it is not individuals who have experience, but subjects who are constituted through experience" (Scott 401). She problematizes historical narration that relies on experience as an indicator of truth. In their attempts to subvert mainstream representations of history, representations that typically ignore the experiences of non-white, non-male subjects, some contemporary historians have concerned themselves with exposing the stories of those who have been “hidden from history.” They presume that by making the stories and experiences of the ‘other’ visible, they can historicize their experiences. Scott asserts that the visibility approach depends on historical constructions that resulted in the initial exclusion of these voices; these historians fail to critically analyze the reasons these voices were ignored to begin with and why other experiences and other histories were deemed important, and thus represented in history. Furthermore, an experience-based approach to the study of history propagates an approach to historical understanding that universalizes experience by “tak[ing] as self-evident the identities of those whose experience is being documented and thus naturaliz[ing] their difference” (Scott 399).
Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's film, Persepolis, is the story of one girl’s experience during a dictatorship. The filmmakers seem to approach this story using narrative techniques of which Scott is critical: Satrapi shares her story of life during the Iranian Revolution and the subsequent dictatorship. Whether or not Satrapi intended to render a universalized depiction of gender imbalance and oppression in Iran, the movie has been criticized as portraying a very Westernized view of fundamentalism and oppression in Iran, a palatable illustration of womanhood in Iran that comports with Western understanding. In reality, Iranian women experience life in a diversity of ways, and extrapolating Satrapi’s story onto an entire population is misleading and perhaps dangerous. This movie is an apt example of the hazard of employing the visibility approach to representations of history in visual and communications mediums. Film is powerful; by making Marjane visible, by sharing her story, it is possible that her experience will become universalized and the differences and nuances of her story naturalized.
In the “making of the movie” videos that we watched following the film, Satrapi explains that she was attracted to animation for this film because it transformed her individual story about life in Iran after the Revolution into a story about life in a dictatorship. (Scott would be highly critical and skeptical of this position: inferring universal truth about dictatorships from Satrapi’s story is, Scott would argue, impossible and misrepresentative of reality.) She thought a movie in black and white would act to disassociate her characters from their nationalities, races, and ethnicities. Additionally, the graphic novel/animated movie composition allowed her to more effectively present a sequence of events that was not predicated on the racial or ethnic composition of the characters. She sought to present people and stories, not identity characterizations.
"Each suburban wife struggled with it [Friedan’s famed ‘problem with no name’] alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night--she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—‘Is this all?’" (Friedan).
The Second Wave, and the organization and action that accompanied it, foregrounded this middle class, suburban white woman’s reality, and attempted to combat the “women’s problem” with her in mind. They created a movement that universalized one type of woman’s experience, and then went about agitating for policy and societal changes that would make life better for ‘women.' Feminists have discovered, though, that identity constructions are social constructions that have been forced upon us by a society attempting to categorize, organize, and sometimes repress; our affinity should come from conscious coalition, not from constructed identity categories because, as Haraway argues, “social reality is lived social relations […] a world-changing fiction" (Haraway 149).
While reading Joan Scott's, “The Evidence of Experience,” I could not help but be reminded of Haraway’s “Manifesto.” Haraway struggled against a feminism that relied upon strict identity categories for recruitment/coalition-building and essentialized one type of woman’s experience. Similarly, in her piece, historian Joan Scott laments the historical focus on experience as a representation of fact because, "it is not individuals who have experience, but subjects who are constituted through experience" (Scott 401). She problematizes historical narration that relies on experience as an indicator of truth. In their attempts to subvert mainstream representations of history, representations that typically ignore the experiences of non-white, non-male subjects, some contemporary historians have concerned themselves with exposing the stories of those who have been “hidden from history.” They presume that by making the stories and experiences of the ‘other’ visible, they can historicize their experiences. Scott asserts that the visibility approach depends on historical constructions that resulted in the initial exclusion of these voices; these historians fail to critically analyze the reasons these voices were ignored to begin with and why other experiences and other histories were deemed important, and thus represented in history. Furthermore, an experience-based approach to the study of history propagates an approach to historical understanding that universalizes experience by “tak[ing] as self-evident the identities of those whose experience is being documented and thus naturaliz[ing] their difference” (Scott 399).
Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's film, Persepolis, is the story of one girl’s experience during a dictatorship. The filmmakers seem to approach this story using narrative techniques of which Scott is critical: Satrapi shares her story of life during the Iranian Revolution and the subsequent dictatorship. Whether or not Satrapi intended to render a universalized depiction of gender imbalance and oppression in Iran, the movie has been criticized as portraying a very Westernized view of fundamentalism and oppression in Iran, a palatable illustration of womanhood in Iran that comports with Western understanding. In reality, Iranian women experience life in a diversity of ways, and extrapolating Satrapi’s story onto an entire population is misleading and perhaps dangerous. This movie is an apt example of the hazard of employing the visibility approach to representations of history in visual and communications mediums. Film is powerful; by making Marjane visible, by sharing her story, it is possible that her experience will become universalized and the differences and nuances of her story naturalized.
In the “making of the movie” videos that we watched following the film, Satrapi explains that she was attracted to animation for this film because it transformed her individual story about life in Iran after the Revolution into a story about life in a dictatorship. (Scott would be highly critical and skeptical of this position: inferring universal truth about dictatorships from Satrapi’s story is, Scott would argue, impossible and misrepresentative of reality.) She thought a movie in black and white would act to disassociate her characters from their nationalities, races, and ethnicities. Additionally, the graphic novel/animated movie composition allowed her to more effectively present a sequence of events that was not predicated on the racial or ethnic composition of the characters. She sought to present people and stories, not identity characterizations.
Experiencing Persepolis
That which is visible bears a certain privilege, for in its visibility, it harbors the potential for publicity through its introduction into some realm of discourse. The result is newly produced knowledge, whose origins are derived from some aspect of the world that was once merely visible. Scott discusses the manners in which historians have used such knowledge as a basis of evidential foundation throughout their work. This has served as a traditional method of documentation within the disciplinary framework of producing historical knowledge. However, employing such means as a method of deriving evidence within this particular sphere of academia is not devoid of several notable criticisms.
Scott notes the limitations within such a means of this style of producing knowledge. The rhetorical treatment of evidence has been used to fabricate prevailing interpretations of the foreground of the evidence itself (Scott, 399). The representations of said evidence are therefore blurred, for the preceding social conditions that set the foundation for the construction of subjects that have stories cited as historical evidence are left invisible. The social and structural positions of the lives portrayed through conventional history go unaccounted, and representations are left devoid of analyses of the social conditions that foreground the individuality and collectivity of experiences. Reverting back to the notion of visibility, access into historical chronicles simmers in a place of privilege, for “knowledge is gained through vision; vision is a direct apprehension of a world of transparent objects…the visible is privileged; writing is then put at its service” (398).
Those denied such access to the chronological record are then left outside of the historical accounts laced through conventional discourse. However, those historians seeking to revamp discourse by making visible the lives of those who have been discursively marginalized. Embarking on such “rescue missions” is a political act undertaken by scholars seeking to uncover the stories of those “hidden from history”. However, this is not devoid of the politics of visibility outlined by Scott. The film, Persepolis engages with Scott’s critique of visuality in that it complicates notions of experience. Rather than attempting to “save” a group of people, Satrapi and Paronnaud tell the story of one girl through the juxtaposition of memories of the prevailing political climate of the temporality. By positioning the film through the story of Marjane as the point of reference, the homogenization of experiences is complicated by the very nature of the story told, for the framework underscores the individuality that permeates every level of experience. However, the social conditions in Iran resulting from the political turmoil cultivate a sort of solidarity among citizens, alluding to the notion that one’s experience is shaped through social construction. Rather than seeking to “rescue” the erasure of a collective body of stories shaped by the social conditions of the revolution, Persepolis flows through an individual account of a girl with a unique story. Marjane’s identity is complex, as it is woven through different places and rooted in a privileged socioeconomic position. Her experience is shaped by the factors that build the foundation for her own social positioning, but it is also carved out of the social conditions faced by her fellow Iranian citizens. Factors such as race, class, and gender are touched upon throughout the film, and in mentioning the relevance of such factors to the courses of lives, the diversification of experience is teased into the film.
Rather than taking for granted assumed notions of historical homogeneity, the positioning of the story along the lines of the course of one human life allows for the feelings, thoughts, interpretation, and memories that are so intrinsic to humanity to shine through. History is not portrayed as an objective site of “knowledge”, but rather, a multilayered phenomenon shaped through social conditions, but ultimately embodied by lives of real people. Real emotions, complex identities, familial politics, and love are interlaced into Persepolis’ account of history, therefore reflecting a more accurate account of how history is experienced through bodies and lives. This film does not try to tell the tale of an entire country of people, but rather, it explores the complexity of one story. This factor unifies the many stories sharing similarities with Marjane’s upon the point of exploration of the endlessly multilayered aspects overlapping throughout an individual’s experience.
The tactics of film emphasize the dynamism of the story through the employment of different mediums. In Persepolis, Marjane uses television as a means for escape during her moments of depression. Numb and off-center in her life, this easy escape from reality is reflected in her mindless watching of television. This medium enters the film once again when dissatisfaction brews within the marriage of the unhappy couple, and Marjane’s husband escapes the marital issues by watching Terminator play on the television screen. Desire for white hyper-masculinity is reflected in his gaze towards the television. Television therefore serves as a medium for expressing a monotony and discontentment at certain moments in an individual’s life.
Theater and drama play a role in foregrounding a platform upon which individual and collective experiences are played out. The explanation of the relationship between British and Iranian governmental relations way portrayed through a frame resembling a stage, and the governmental figures involved appeared as puppets. Satirically mimicking “puppet regimes”, this use of theatrical references also recount a brief background of some of the governmental relationships, impacting social conditions that shaped the political climate. These conditions are inextricably linked to the experiences that would shape, and be shaped by people.
The autobiographical graphic novel is a unique medium for telling a story, but it allows for mediums of multilayered emotions to shine through a story. This technique is also reflected in the tragicomic, Fun Home, which recounts the story of her childhood and family life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun_Home
Jeni Haines
Scott notes the limitations within such a means of this style of producing knowledge. The rhetorical treatment of evidence has been used to fabricate prevailing interpretations of the foreground of the evidence itself (Scott, 399). The representations of said evidence are therefore blurred, for the preceding social conditions that set the foundation for the construction of subjects that have stories cited as historical evidence are left invisible. The social and structural positions of the lives portrayed through conventional history go unaccounted, and representations are left devoid of analyses of the social conditions that foreground the individuality and collectivity of experiences. Reverting back to the notion of visibility, access into historical chronicles simmers in a place of privilege, for “knowledge is gained through vision; vision is a direct apprehension of a world of transparent objects…the visible is privileged; writing is then put at its service” (398).
Those denied such access to the chronological record are then left outside of the historical accounts laced through conventional discourse. However, those historians seeking to revamp discourse by making visible the lives of those who have been discursively marginalized. Embarking on such “rescue missions” is a political act undertaken by scholars seeking to uncover the stories of those “hidden from history”. However, this is not devoid of the politics of visibility outlined by Scott. The film, Persepolis engages with Scott’s critique of visuality in that it complicates notions of experience. Rather than attempting to “save” a group of people, Satrapi and Paronnaud tell the story of one girl through the juxtaposition of memories of the prevailing political climate of the temporality. By positioning the film through the story of Marjane as the point of reference, the homogenization of experiences is complicated by the very nature of the story told, for the framework underscores the individuality that permeates every level of experience. However, the social conditions in Iran resulting from the political turmoil cultivate a sort of solidarity among citizens, alluding to the notion that one’s experience is shaped through social construction. Rather than seeking to “rescue” the erasure of a collective body of stories shaped by the social conditions of the revolution, Persepolis flows through an individual account of a girl with a unique story. Marjane’s identity is complex, as it is woven through different places and rooted in a privileged socioeconomic position. Her experience is shaped by the factors that build the foundation for her own social positioning, but it is also carved out of the social conditions faced by her fellow Iranian citizens. Factors such as race, class, and gender are touched upon throughout the film, and in mentioning the relevance of such factors to the courses of lives, the diversification of experience is teased into the film.
Rather than taking for granted assumed notions of historical homogeneity, the positioning of the story along the lines of the course of one human life allows for the feelings, thoughts, interpretation, and memories that are so intrinsic to humanity to shine through. History is not portrayed as an objective site of “knowledge”, but rather, a multilayered phenomenon shaped through social conditions, but ultimately embodied by lives of real people. Real emotions, complex identities, familial politics, and love are interlaced into Persepolis’ account of history, therefore reflecting a more accurate account of how history is experienced through bodies and lives. This film does not try to tell the tale of an entire country of people, but rather, it explores the complexity of one story. This factor unifies the many stories sharing similarities with Marjane’s upon the point of exploration of the endlessly multilayered aspects overlapping throughout an individual’s experience.
The tactics of film emphasize the dynamism of the story through the employment of different mediums. In Persepolis, Marjane uses television as a means for escape during her moments of depression. Numb and off-center in her life, this easy escape from reality is reflected in her mindless watching of television. This medium enters the film once again when dissatisfaction brews within the marriage of the unhappy couple, and Marjane’s husband escapes the marital issues by watching Terminator play on the television screen. Desire for white hyper-masculinity is reflected in his gaze towards the television. Television therefore serves as a medium for expressing a monotony and discontentment at certain moments in an individual’s life.
Theater and drama play a role in foregrounding a platform upon which individual and collective experiences are played out. The explanation of the relationship between British and Iranian governmental relations way portrayed through a frame resembling a stage, and the governmental figures involved appeared as puppets. Satirically mimicking “puppet regimes”, this use of theatrical references also recount a brief background of some of the governmental relationships, impacting social conditions that shaped the political climate. These conditions are inextricably linked to the experiences that would shape, and be shaped by people.
The autobiographical graphic novel is a unique medium for telling a story, but it allows for mediums of multilayered emotions to shine through a story. This technique is also reflected in the tragicomic, Fun Home, which recounts the story of her childhood and family life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun_Home
Jeni Haines
Persepolis, memory and experience.
Scott’s critique is based, in first instance, in the relationship between the experience and the methodological ways in which scholars tend to ignore the fact that experience is a social construct. Relating knowledge with vision might validate the experience without actually questioning it. Taking the evidence as truth is ignoring the fact that experience is a reinterpretation made by the subject that produces the discourse, and that discourse is made within specific ideological foundations. So after the speaking subject makes the first reinterpretation, then the historian makes a second reinterpretation based on the first one. For Scott, historicizing “experience” means taking into consideration the socially constructed nature of it. As she says: “Subjects are constituted discursively, but there are conflicts among discursive systems, contradictions within any one of them, multiple meaning possible for the concept they deploy. And subjects do have agency.” (Scott 409) For the author, experience needs to be considered as a mobile entity, and the study of it should respond to analysis of the product of the discourse that leads to the experience. For her, one should “take all categories of analysis as contextual, contested, and contingent” (411), rather than just revealing the experience and considering it as knowledge.
The rescue mission marks the pursuit of making the invisible enter discourse, but it seems limited as it just ennounces without really taking difference into account. Discourse turns the invisible into something tangible, into words that carry meaning. The problem is that enunciation is not enough, in the sense that it just makes visible without really exploring the reasons why an event or experience was marginalized (or not) in the first place. Rescuing the hidden history must necessarily involve a comprehension of the production of the social construct of the experience. For instance, historicizing “experience” should take into account the mechanisms of discourse .
Persepolis seems like a rescue mission type of story. In first instance, the movie appears as a memory rescue made by the leading character. The movement of enunciation is marked by the use of colored scenes. Marjane recalls her personal history when arriving at Orly Airport; she is not trying to rescue the memory of her community. But, why should she do so? She is negotiating her new identity in exile, trying to conceal her past as an Iranian upper class citizen, and her new status as the Other in a French community. The movie marks this process with the colors, and that same resource has been previously used in movies to emphasis important moments. For example, Schindler's List uses the color to highlight the girl in red:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3XfmSs69Hw&feature=related
In both movies color is used to emphasis in an important event. Persepolis is in the realm of experience, because memory is involved. But Marjane seems to forget important details that conforms her identity. As Hamid says in the movie review: “Their money and class protects them somewhat from both regimes, a fact which Satrapi does not call much attention in either the film or the graphic novel.” (62) She is a privilege child, with parents that tend to be liberal in comparison to their fellow citizens. She looks upon western civilization and tries to share common references, as music groups (Iron Maiden).
She makes a personal recount of her history, not trying to portray a universal history. The previous argument seems to go against what she says in the Making of Persepolis, but her experience is in fact a personal account. Trying to look to her message as a carrier of universal truth might lead into a problematic interpretation of the movie, because she is telling her particular story. Persepolis also gives a message of personal growth. At the end of the movie, she says that freedom comes with a cost. Not ever returning to a country that she was born into and never seeing her grandmother again is a great cost. But also there is another important cost, that might reveal an important (and maybe universal) meaning: going into exile has the cost of becoming the Other in a society that has its own social constructs. The recognition of it might seem the result of a personal and introspective search, but it portrays a more general meaning of undergoing exile.
The film engages in the graphic novel aesthetics and transports the visual language of the particular genre into film. There are two different levels of artificiality that can be taken into consideration for the analysis: the usage of animated characters and the discourse created by the editing process. The film, regardless of its animated nature, constructs and tries to imitate camera movements with the usage of close-ups, tilts, etc. The aesthetics can lead to the identification of three different frames or diegetic levels:
1. The original moment where she is recalling her past, that is marked by the use of color.
2. The past, in which personal memories have a consistency in the way they are represented. For instance, they all share a similar construction as seen in the following extract:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlsE39cjHts&feature=PlayList&p=48BF52EE9E1CE5E0&playnext_from=PL&playnext=2
3. The dream sequences or the puppet show performance, in which a particular construction is made.
Regardless of aesthetic variations, it respects the particularities of the graphic novel, making a symbiosis between two different languages.
The rescue mission marks the pursuit of making the invisible enter discourse, but it seems limited as it just ennounces without really taking difference into account. Discourse turns the invisible into something tangible, into words that carry meaning. The problem is that enunciation is not enough, in the sense that it just makes visible without really exploring the reasons why an event or experience was marginalized (or not) in the first place. Rescuing the hidden history must necessarily involve a comprehension of the production of the social construct of the experience. For instance, historicizing “experience” should take into account the mechanisms of discourse .
Persepolis seems like a rescue mission type of story. In first instance, the movie appears as a memory rescue made by the leading character. The movement of enunciation is marked by the use of colored scenes. Marjane recalls her personal history when arriving at Orly Airport; she is not trying to rescue the memory of her community. But, why should she do so? She is negotiating her new identity in exile, trying to conceal her past as an Iranian upper class citizen, and her new status as the Other in a French community. The movie marks this process with the colors, and that same resource has been previously used in movies to emphasis important moments. For example, Schindler's List uses the color to highlight the girl in red:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3XfmSs69Hw&feature=related
In both movies color is used to emphasis in an important event. Persepolis is in the realm of experience, because memory is involved. But Marjane seems to forget important details that conforms her identity. As Hamid says in the movie review: “Their money and class protects them somewhat from both regimes, a fact which Satrapi does not call much attention in either the film or the graphic novel.” (62) She is a privilege child, with parents that tend to be liberal in comparison to their fellow citizens. She looks upon western civilization and tries to share common references, as music groups (Iron Maiden).
She makes a personal recount of her history, not trying to portray a universal history. The previous argument seems to go against what she says in the Making of Persepolis, but her experience is in fact a personal account. Trying to look to her message as a carrier of universal truth might lead into a problematic interpretation of the movie, because she is telling her particular story. Persepolis also gives a message of personal growth. At the end of the movie, she says that freedom comes with a cost. Not ever returning to a country that she was born into and never seeing her grandmother again is a great cost. But also there is another important cost, that might reveal an important (and maybe universal) meaning: going into exile has the cost of becoming the Other in a society that has its own social constructs. The recognition of it might seem the result of a personal and introspective search, but it portrays a more general meaning of undergoing exile.
The film engages in the graphic novel aesthetics and transports the visual language of the particular genre into film. There are two different levels of artificiality that can be taken into consideration for the analysis: the usage of animated characters and the discourse created by the editing process. The film, regardless of its animated nature, constructs and tries to imitate camera movements with the usage of close-ups, tilts, etc. The aesthetics can lead to the identification of three different frames or diegetic levels:
1. The original moment where she is recalling her past, that is marked by the use of color.
2. The past, in which personal memories have a consistency in the way they are represented. For instance, they all share a similar construction as seen in the following extract:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlsE39cjHts&feature=PlayList&p=48BF52EE9E1CE5E0&playnext_from=PL&playnext=2
3. The dream sequences or the puppet show performance, in which a particular construction is made.
Regardless of aesthetic variations, it respects the particularities of the graphic novel, making a symbiosis between two different languages.
Experience through the eye of the beholder
In this blog I will be discussing how a person’s experience can be seen as a firsthand source in history and its importance in a community in which their voice can be ignored or can be “hidden in history.” I will also be speaking of these topics in terms of the autobiographical film, Persepolis (2007).
Joan Scott’s, “The Evidence of Experience” explains experience as a first-hand primary source and emphasizes the importance of a firsthand experience especially in a community in which it is invisible. As a historian, Scott believes that an experience in a particular topic is one of the best and only ways to account for a history of a particular place and time. A personal narrative is a more crucial and substantial piece of information that gives historians a much clearer perception of the people they are researching in terms of history. However, in terms of visual perceptions and experience, Scott thoroughly indicates that like Cleary, what he saw in the bathroom he will take with him as an event that only he saw and one that he went through as an individual. He is a gay man that ultimately went through many things having to do with invisibility and being silenced. However, his vision consisting of masses of different bodies made him believe that this would help other people understand that gays should be accepted in society. A quote that stands out to me says, “When experience is taken as the origin of knowledge, the vision of the individual subject…becomes the bedrock of evidence on which explanation is built.” (Scott 399) Someone who lives through something so personal helps them to get across what they account for as something called experience. Scott’s main focus is experience and the relevance of experience depending on particular people; invisibility in history is a very difficult thing to get around because many people are ignored in history.
In terms of Persepolis, the main character, Marjane, is speaking of her Iranian past in this autobiographical film and is fighting against others and herself about her identity and what she has gone through. Many people believe that since they have gone through a lot more they deserve a lot more attention or that perhaps depending on the people listening to their experiences then they will or will not get the attention they deserve. Marjane was a young girl when the revolution occurred in her home and when everything changed; her identity was not fully formed, she was listening to the adults and basing her perspective on that of others. She grew up confused and resentful for many things that she knew she couldn’t change. The mere fact that the film made it to where it is now is very spectacular in terms of how this history has been ignored. Personally, I had never heard about the severity of this war until I saw the film and it made me question why it has never been given the fair amount of publicity it deserves. It made me question in whose hands this is; who decides what is in power of the things that are given attention? Persepolis, in particular, had a history as mentioned through the eyes of a young middle to upper class girl that seemed to be silenced if it weren’t for Marjane. As Scott mentions, “these conditions enable choices” (Scott 409) The choice Marjane had in expressing her experiences through these novels enabled her to get rid of herself and her experiences from the category of “hidden from history.” Marjane explicitly states her experiences and what she and her family have gone through and thoroughly talks about things that people wouldn’t expect her to talk about.
The film also explicitly criticizes different visual mediums throughout the film. However, the ones that we most explicitly recognize are those in Western societies. The one we saw in class was very funny. I remember watching both of the clips and seeing the similarity between Rocky and Marjane. They both take a while to “train,” or better said “make themselves ready” before they're metaphorically “back in the ring.” There is also a scene in which she and friends are looking through their music and Western music comes up between them. People sometimes assume that if some societies aren’t as Westernized as theirs, they are completely foreign. In the critique it says that they are “dying” to be Westernized, but they don’t have to even admire the Western culture in order to have similar tastes in music or films (the Godzilla movie scene). These scenes are incorporated in order to bring about that everyday aspect I like to look for in films. They attempt to reach out because of everyday things we, the audience, see or experience in life. This attempt grabs our attention more and makes their point very clear.
http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/his135/Events/Iran79.htm
Persepolis and Joan Scott; Blog response 1
In Joan Scott's essay, the "Evidence of Experience," Scott critiques the relationship between vision and knowledge/experience. Scott discusses how her discipline of history is engaged with that of experience. Scott states that the category of personal experience is regarded as the highest form of concrete evidence in history. "The challenge to normative history has been described, in terms of conventional historical understandings of evidence, as an enlargement of the picture, a correction to oversights resulting from inaccurate or incomplete vision, and it has rested its claim to legitimacy on the authority of experience..." (Scott, 399). Societies glorified perceptions of accounts of history through personal experience are expected to give light to the overarching image of history. However, Scott argues that individuals' personal experiences cannot fill in the gaps toward an accurate vision of history. Personal experiences of history are leaked into contemporary society few and far between with dependence on a variety of factors such as race, class and gender and one cannot speak for all. Scott is critical of the rescue mission approach, in which the job of politics is to bring visible that which has been concealed from history (Hannabach, 5/26). Becuase history is heavily mediated and controlled Scott historicizes experience rather than offering experience as truth (Hannabach, 5/26).
In Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's film Persepolis (2007) Satrapi presents her personal experience of her upbringing in Iran dealing with a discourse between family and politics. Persepolis presents a constructed representation of the war between Iraq and Iran, western colonialism in Iran, and gender relations (Hannabach, 5/26). Scott's critique of visibility politics and the "rescue missions" is paralleled with Persepolis in the multiple forms of translation provided in the film, such as language, social class, and politics (Hannabach, 5/26). While Satrapi gives a personal account that is unique and cannot be a definitive answer to those "hidden from history" becuase of these forms of translation, Satrapi does give a deliberate nod toward Persepolis being her narrative is not representative of that which Scott is critical of. Satrapi and Paronnaud provide the audience with countless reminders that the film represents Satrapi's memory, imagination, and interpretation of history in relation to her story. The artistic direction engages with various visual mediums such as graphic novels. The film Persepolis is based on two comic books also by Satrapi and Paronnaud and the images are very similar in the film to that of a graphic novel in terms of shape and color in animation. The animation aspect oft he film is impressive in that it resembles live action film through displaying images representative of camerca movement. In terms of photography, there is an image from the graphic novel that represents elements of realism that surpasses aspects of animation. In the link attached, Satrapi describes an image that represents a photo in which she is on the far left so the audience cannot see her. This depiction assumes elements of evidence through experience in that the audience assumes this is representative of an actual photograph. Persepolis has a number of deliberate representations of live theater such as when her father tells her the story of the Shaw and his son, an image of a theater and a curtain being pulled is shown representative of Satrapi's imaganation in terms of the story her father describes. Satrapi and Paronnaud critique the notion of television and its relationship with people in the film. Television presents a hypnotic manipulative manner of publicity that pulls characters away from actions in their lives. For example, in one scene Satrapi's husband has his eyes glued to the American action film, The Terminator, in efforts of ignoring and avioding needed confrontation with Satrapi. http://www.rand.org/international_programs/cmepp/imey/images/persepolis-page.gif
In Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's film Persepolis (2007) Satrapi presents her personal experience of her upbringing in Iran dealing with a discourse between family and politics. Persepolis presents a constructed representation of the war between Iraq and Iran, western colonialism in Iran, and gender relations (Hannabach, 5/26). Scott's critique of visibility politics and the "rescue missions" is paralleled with Persepolis in the multiple forms of translation provided in the film, such as language, social class, and politics (Hannabach, 5/26). While Satrapi gives a personal account that is unique and cannot be a definitive answer to those "hidden from history" becuase of these forms of translation, Satrapi does give a deliberate nod toward Persepolis being her narrative is not representative of that which Scott is critical of. Satrapi and Paronnaud provide the audience with countless reminders that the film represents Satrapi's memory, imagination, and interpretation of history in relation to her story. The artistic direction engages with various visual mediums such as graphic novels. The film Persepolis is based on two comic books also by Satrapi and Paronnaud and the images are very similar in the film to that of a graphic novel in terms of shape and color in animation. The animation aspect oft he film is impressive in that it resembles live action film through displaying images representative of camerca movement. In terms of photography, there is an image from the graphic novel that represents elements of realism that surpasses aspects of animation. In the link attached, Satrapi describes an image that represents a photo in which she is on the far left so the audience cannot see her. This depiction assumes elements of evidence through experience in that the audience assumes this is representative of an actual photograph. Persepolis has a number of deliberate representations of live theater such as when her father tells her the story of the Shaw and his son, an image of a theater and a curtain being pulled is shown representative of Satrapi's imaganation in terms of the story her father describes. Satrapi and Paronnaud critique the notion of television and its relationship with people in the film. Television presents a hypnotic manipulative manner of publicity that pulls characters away from actions in their lives. For example, in one scene Satrapi's husband has his eyes glued to the American action film, The Terminator, in efforts of ignoring and avioding needed confrontation with Satrapi. http://www.rand.org/international_programs/cmepp/imey/images/persepolis-page.gif
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Blog Prompt #1: Persepolis, Joan Scott, & Visual Culture
By 9 pm on Thursday May 27, please post a 600-word (min) response to the following prompt:
In Joan Scott's essay "The Evidence of Experience," what is Scott's critique of the relationship between vision and knowledge/evidence? How is Scott's critique of visuality/visibility politics and the "rescue missions" of searching for those "hidden from history" at work in Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's film Persepolis (2007)? How does the film engage with and/or critique various visual mediums (graphic novels, film, photography, live theater/drama, television, etc.)?
Remember to link to at least 1 visual text and explain how it relates to the content of your post and the issues we've been discussing in class.
In Joan Scott's essay "The Evidence of Experience," what is Scott's critique of the relationship between vision and knowledge/evidence? How is Scott's critique of visuality/visibility politics and the "rescue missions" of searching for those "hidden from history" at work in Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's film Persepolis (2007)? How does the film engage with and/or critique various visual mediums (graphic novels, film, photography, live theater/drama, television, etc.)?
Remember to link to at least 1 visual text and explain how it relates to the content of your post and the issues we've been discussing in class.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Welcome!
Welcome to GWS 111: Feminist Film Studies: Bodies, Genres, Politics.
This course offers an introduction to feminist film studies, particularly focusing on several recent sub-genres, directors, and themes that have become central to feminist film culture and scholarship. Utilizing a transnational feminist cultural studies approach, we will explore questions of what feminist media practices might be at the levels of production, circulation, consumption, and representation. We will explore constructions of sexuality, gender, race, and nation in a variety of media practices in an attempt to understand the stakes that institutions such as law, medicine, and film industries have in such productions. Particular attention will be paid to the role of medium in constructing meaning, as the films we will focus on include those made through celluloid and digital technologies, films critiquing visual surveillance practices, short films involving mixed media, and animated films adapted from graphic novels. As a whole, the course will encourage students to develop a critical understanding of the mutual imbrications of sexuality, race, nation, class, and gender in cinema, and explore the ways cinema cultures both reinforce and critique various hegemonies.
The course is not an introduction to film studies, but does spend time reviewing basic film concepts (editing, cinematography, mise-en-scène, etc.) so that students can apply them to the films we watch. In the course, students will learn to incorporate formal film analysis with an analysis of ideology, production, circulation, and consumption, and will develop the skills to construct compelling arguments about the politics of cinema.
Each week, students will post 1 blog entry about the week's course materials (each entry must reference both the week's film(s) and at least 1 of the course readings) by 9:00 pm on the date listed on the syllabus. Further, students will then post 2 comments on their classmates' blog posts by 1:00 pm on the next day. These comments should be thoughtful considerations, and are the place where you can ask questions about your classmates' posts, respond to questions they pose, link to other visual media, or evaluate what conversations your classmates' posts enable.
I encourage you to embed links in both your blog post and your comments to articles, definitions, and especially images, videos, and other web ephemera that you find relevant to the week's material. This is obviously a class about film and visual culture, and I encourage you to link the scholarly articles and films from class to other visual media you encounter in your lives.
If you are new to blogging, don't fear--we will discuss this assignment throughly on the 1st day of class, as well as go over what constitutes a good blog post.
This course offers an introduction to feminist film studies, particularly focusing on several recent sub-genres, directors, and themes that have become central to feminist film culture and scholarship. Utilizing a transnational feminist cultural studies approach, we will explore questions of what feminist media practices might be at the levels of production, circulation, consumption, and representation. We will explore constructions of sexuality, gender, race, and nation in a variety of media practices in an attempt to understand the stakes that institutions such as law, medicine, and film industries have in such productions. Particular attention will be paid to the role of medium in constructing meaning, as the films we will focus on include those made through celluloid and digital technologies, films critiquing visual surveillance practices, short films involving mixed media, and animated films adapted from graphic novels. As a whole, the course will encourage students to develop a critical understanding of the mutual imbrications of sexuality, race, nation, class, and gender in cinema, and explore the ways cinema cultures both reinforce and critique various hegemonies.
The course is not an introduction to film studies, but does spend time reviewing basic film concepts (editing, cinematography, mise-en-scène, etc.) so that students can apply them to the films we watch. In the course, students will learn to incorporate formal film analysis with an analysis of ideology, production, circulation, and consumption, and will develop the skills to construct compelling arguments about the politics of cinema.
Each week, students will post 1 blog entry about the week's course materials (each entry must reference both the week's film(s) and at least 1 of the course readings) by 9:00 pm on the date listed on the syllabus. Further, students will then post 2 comments on their classmates' blog posts by 1:00 pm on the next day. These comments should be thoughtful considerations, and are the place where you can ask questions about your classmates' posts, respond to questions they pose, link to other visual media, or evaluate what conversations your classmates' posts enable.
I encourage you to embed links in both your blog post and your comments to articles, definitions, and especially images, videos, and other web ephemera that you find relevant to the week's material. This is obviously a class about film and visual culture, and I encourage you to link the scholarly articles and films from class to other visual media you encounter in your lives.
If you are new to blogging, don't fear--we will discuss this assignment throughly on the 1st day of class, as well as go over what constitutes a good blog post.
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