Critical Investigation: Task #4

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Media Magazine: December 2008 Issue 26: Film 
 

·      "They seem to embody some core elements of intense masculinity and femininity which attract the global audience" P21 

·      "Men and women can identify with many characters during the spectacle of a film" P21 

·      "Tasker rejects the rigid idea of a male/female binary cinema spectator ship" P22 

·      "Can enjoy the pleasure of the cinema and identify with who we want to regardless of gender" P22 

·      "Angelina Jolie is as heroic and skilled as Brad Pitt"P22 

·      "Traditional film theory would use gender based assumptions to analyse the position of the audience in relation to this text"P22 

·      "Viewers can identify with either Pitt of Jolie, or both, a process she has termed perverse identification" P22 

·      "This extortionary twist allows for spectacular and violent action sequences, where the viewer could potentially perversely identify with either Pritt of Jolie" P22 

Media magazine 32

'The films of Cohen seem to have a slightly more positive representation of homosexuality.'

In the movie bruno it is about Sacha Baron Cohen playing a gay Austriann looking for fame in America. Sacha Baron has does many gay positive scenes in his movies like Borat and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby where he plays a gay character and kisses Will Ferrel character at the end.

'The wrestling match where Bruno and his assistant end up passionately kissing in front of a jeering, psychotic, angry crowd shows the awfulness of some American attitudes to homosexuality.'

The stereotype can be sometimes too much as for the celebrity want to show positive gay people he exaggerates the stereotype to much in the movie.

'Bruno, on the other hand, is not a very nice character. He is a highly-exaggerated stereotype of a fashion-obsessed homosexual. His sex life is portrayed as an exhibition of twisted creativity and shocking acts of depravity; an exercise bike with a dildo attached, a chair that catapults his midget partner into him'

Media magazine 53

'TV drama features multiple lesbians, or looks beyond explicit sexual behaviour. Indeed, studies show that in the 20 most popular TV shows watched by young people, only 4.5% of the total programme time includes LGBT characters. For this reason, when shows feature multiple lesbian characters they are seen as a TV ‘event’, and this may immediately estrange audiences.'

This represents the views on television  as to the type of characters they have used, the characters in the shows that are LGBT are very not common in Tv series but it is going to be pushed as to old TV shows like Ellen and Buffy the vampire slayer had Lesbians. Also the sitcom Happy endings had a gay character which lead for 3 seasons. This is to represent the percentage of a programme and it shows that it is not a big percentage but it will increase over time. 

Media magazine 36

• "I believe that Scorsese films have a lot to say about the ideological nature of the representation of masculinity."

• " I will argue that the switch in 2002 to working with DiCaprio marks an ideological shift in the representation of masculinity in Scorsese films."

• "He is the provider not the receiver, capable of love but not made vulnerable because of it. These are the qualities of a masculinity that was prevalent until possibly the late 1970s or early 1980s."

• "He is the provider not the receiver, capable of love but not made vulnerable because of it. These are the qualities of a masculinity that was prevalent until possibly the late 1970s or early 1980s."

• "Scorsese’s casting of De Niro is probably partly because he is a brilliant actor but also because he represents the kind of hegemonic masculinity he grew up with."

• "De Niro in a Scorsese film where he portrays a more contemporary masculinity, a masculinity that is more fluid, less traditional and less hegemonic."

• " Back then, questions of men’s relationship to housework and childcare were not on any political agenda. But since the end of the 1970s men’s roles as fathers and their domestic responsibilities have been widely observed and discussed"

• " In one scene he goes to visit Madolyn at her place when she is packing to move in with her boyfriend; as he stands in a doorway she looks at him and says ‘your vulnerability is freaking me out right now’. They then make love. This representation of masculinity is shown as flawed, vulnerable, troubled, tender and needy"

• "In terms of ideologies around masculinity, De Niro is the personification of traditional masculinity. He is handsome rather than pretty or beautiful; muscular and stocky rather than slim and toned; strong, both mentally and physically."

-in regards to physicality of men which reinforces their masculine representations 

Media Edu

Search: queer theory

Film Theory and Language-Nicole Ponsfors

Queer Film Theory (Identity Politics)

This is the term used to describe films 

• "which explore, discuss or portray some aspect or feature of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgender experience, or sexual identity." Although ‘queer’ is sometimes used as a term of abuse, it is used here as positive. It can be seen as part of the 

• "post-structuralist theory and emerged in the early 1990s, alongside Women’s Studies - although Queer Theory is seen to have started in the 1970s. The theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theory itself."

Queer Cinema was coined by B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992. It defined a movement in queer-themed independent movies in the early 1990s. It explored a fluid / changeable sexuality and 

• "represented LGBT protagonists "(lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender), 

• "normally living outside of ‘normal’ society, same sex marriage / domestic relationships or the rejection of ‘heteronormativity’ (heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation of men and women)."

Queer Film Theorists

• Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick (American, 1950-2009. See Epistemology of the Closet)
• Judith Butler (American Philiosopher, 1956-present day at time of writing. See Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity 1990)
• Lauren Berlant (American Professor, 1957 - present day at the time of writing)
• Adrienne Rich (American poet and essayist, 1929-2012)
• Michel Foucault (French 1926-1984)
• Michael Warner (American Professor. See The Trouble With Normal)

An Introduction to Postmodernism- John Lough

Camp queer transgressive sexuality Madonna popularises S&M imagery queer theory post 1970s HIV sexual identity as unstable socially constructed in flux reclaims past queer heroes Rock Hudson, Fassbinder in films such as Pedro Almodovar transgressive transsexuals John Waters, Derek Jarman 

Representation of Masculinity in Film- Rob Miller 

• "Film actors have an aspirational quality that makes passive consumption by younger male audiences much more of a possibility"

• "British films that were distributed by American studios tended to offer more one dimensional representations which appealed to mainstream audiences – Alfie (1966) "  

*An example would be the suggested "Young Soul Rebels"

• "Jude Law’s behaviour is seen in much more of a negative way (he questions his shallow, self indulgent lifestyle in a final monologue) reflecting changing representations in society. Instead of sex he needs and shoulder to cry of but even this is denied him and throughout the film is framed for the female gaze as a boyish, stylish but ultimately flawed anti hero."

• " In Teaching Men and Film (BFI 2008) Matthew Hall explores notions of challenges to the hegemonic construct of masculinity in the 21st century offering a more diverse, liberal pluralistic analysis of gender discussing a ‘crisis in masculinity’ focussing on Fight Club (1999) and the films of Todd Haynes as case study analysis developing ideas of 1990s ‘Queer Theory’."

• "a Brokeback Mountain in 2005 can be analysed using this theoretical framework...challenges audiences’ perceptions of masculinity by offering on a manifest level hegemonic representations of rough, touch cowboys but shocking audiences with explicit homosexual love scenes"

- "secured a wide, but not saturated release reflecting changes in society and the liberalisation of attitudes towards homosexuality (more and more US States are recognising same sex marriages although change is slow)."

e-Jump


Queer Film Classics review- Roxanne Samear

• "e. Word Is Out made its theatrical tour in the wake of Anita Bryant’s successful “Save Our Children” campaign in Miami, and the film first was first broadcasted on public television two weeks before Californians voted on the Briggs Initiative, which moved to ban gays and lesbians from working in California public schools."

• "In the chapters “F is for Feminism” and “T is for Third World Gay,” Youmans explores how the film engaged with some of the most heated controversies happening across U.S. gay and lesbian communities in the 1970s, including generational divides among lesbians around feminism and its relevancy or influence on their sexual lives. "

• "Queer Nation had mobilized activists across gender and sexual identities against the mass shaming of HIV-positive people and mainstream gay and lesbian organizations’ reactive politics of respectability. "