From the readings this week I realised the importance of the change in what determines audience approval. At the very start of cinema, spectators were amazed and intrigued purely by the apparatus that permitted images to move across a screen, whereas nowadays we expect films to project an image of reality so real that we may become lost in it. As Williams mentions, “it seems to be that case that the success of these genres is often measured by the degree to which the audience sensation mimics what is seen on screen” (605), that is, if we are watching a ‘chick flick’ or a “weepie” (605) as Williams calls it, we expect it to make us cry, and we expect a horror to scare us or make us jump, and that is the bar by which films are now judged, I feel, by how close they are to reality.

I found it interesting reading Gunning’s point about how “the usually small scale of trompe l’oeil paintings and the desire to reach out and touch them contrast sharply with the “grandeur naturale” of the Lumière train film and the viewer’s impulse to rear back before it, as well as with the spectator’s physical distance from the illusions of the magic theatre.” (740). It seems to demonstrate a shift in audience participation from one of active to passive. I ask myself whether this is to our detriment. Bazin states that “photography is clearly the most important event in the history of plastic arts” (163) because it enables us to represent reality exactly, as “no matter how skillful the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity. The fact that a human hand intervened cast a shadow of doubt over the image (161)”, with which I entirely disagree. What about the discovery of linear perspective in the Renaissance? Or the sheer effort it took to make paints and pigments? During the Renaissance an artist’s studio would have been more like a science lab than the stereotypical well-lit room strewn with easels and sheets we see today. The subjectivity present in a work of art produced by a human hand is what makes it a work of art, I feel. It seems that the invention of the photograph has indeed enabled us to present an exact copy of reality, but in doing so we have also lost the ability to capture the viewer’s engagement, making them less likely to want to reach out and ‘touch’ a photograph, and also making it harder to impress an audience and elicit the desired response.

No one would deny that the painter has nothing to do with things that are not visible. The painter is concerned solely with representing what can be seen.

—Leon Battista Alberti, 1435

Halberstam argues that masculinity itself cannot be fully understood unless female masculinity is taken into account. I find this idea intriguing as we have grown up in a society that has found it difficult to acknowledge gender uncertainty and has been very ready to either ignore it, or acknowledge it in using pejorative terms such as ‘tomboy’ or ‘butch’. Empowering models of female masculinity have been neglected or misunderstood because of a cultural intolerance towards the gender ambiguity that the masculine woman represents. I agree when Halberstam says “that as a society we have little trouble in supporting the versions of masculinity that we enjoy and trust” (935) (think, Diet Coke ad all those years ago) yet a hint of “male femininity” (953) would be detrimental to the brand’s perception, I am sure.

Our perception of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ when talking about gender ambiguity I think comes down to our social conditioning. Halberstam addresses the issue of tomboy-ism, which is perfectly acceptable whilst a girl is still pre-pubescent, she maintains, yet any continued foray into the world of the tomboy and the child will more than likely find herself defeated or ushered to the sidelines of peer groups.

I think Halberstam is right to address the notion that female masculinity has been widely ignored by society, perhaps because it is considered a ‘taboo’ subject within sexuality as Foucault might claim.

Certain questions that have been bothering me revolve around the idea of when a woman is considered to be masculine (either by herself or by society)? What are the boundaries? Also is there anything wrong with female masculinity? Has it been repressed because males see it as a threat to their species? I think the media is largely to blame for negativity surrounding female masculinity, but I also feel like it can encourage female empowerment with things like the ever-growing popularity of CrossFit. Images are published of ‘strong’, that is, athletically capable women, lifting more weights than men, covered in sweat yet are still able to fulfill their ‘feminine’ duties; of procreation and nurturing a child. Though, as Halberstam mentions, “when female masculinity conjoins with possibly queer identities, it is far less likely to meet with approval” (954), and I entirely agree. Yes, it is inspiring to be confronted with the image of female empowerment, but what has society done to us that when confronted with this idea of female empowerment and homosexuality that we shy away and go back to admiring Bond’s Rolex Submariner and wondering “how he is going to get out of this one?”

I agree with Audre Lorde when she asserts that “it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes” (854). It is incredibly rarely that you encounter a straight man speaking out about gay rights, or a mother speaking out for Fathers for Justice! The role of the oppressor is incredibly passive in this sense, which reminds me of Cixous’ argument that maleness is associated with activity, and femaleness is associated with passivity. If the oppressor is guilty of being passive, surely the female is also guilty of the same charge? The readings this week have lead me to think about the relation of activity and passivity, and of writing and how it relates to feminist considerations. The act of writing is in itself active, and historically it has been incredibly hard for the female voice to be heard and listened to. It is funny to think about how many women writers have chosen to write under a male name, for example Mary Anne Evans writing as George Eliot, yet I wonder how many male writers have written as women? As I say, the act of writing is in this sense active, yet does publishing under a male name mean Evans was passive in her approach? In publishing under a male pseudonym ensured her work was taken seriously, but did she have a duty to feminism to insist upon a position in the literary world? It continues today – I think I mentioned in a previous blog post about how J.K Rowling has recently published under a male pseudonym of Robert Galbraith. I wonder what her motivation was for renouncing any association with feminine authorship. Gilbert and Gubar mention how “until quite recently the woman writer has had (if only unconsciously) to define herself as a mysterious creature who resides behind the angel or monster” (812), yet obviously the woman writer is still hiding behind something. The issue of self-definition is clearly not resolved, then, I would argue.

One final point I would like to pick up on is that, as Lorde points out, it is not our differences that separate us, but “our refusal to recognize those differences” (855). Differences in society, not just gender relations, can only be resolved if the participants are able to accept difference and work through it. Lorde also talks about “a fear of lesbians, or of being accused of being a lesbian” (858), and in a similar way, Cixous also talks about the inversion of the same fear in men who are “terrified of homosexuality” (352) and that man “fear[s] being a woman” (352). From this point of view then, perhaps we should also be talking about not the things that separate us, but the things (fears) that unite us.

Bakhtin’s Discourse in the Novel has been an interesting read, and has highlighted some aspects of the discourse we use in everyday life that I had not previously considered. I suppose I have already ‘unconsciously’ illustrated Žižek’s philosophy in accepting everything so unquestioningly!

Bakhtin’s notion of the hybrid nature of language; its intertextuality and the relation between each word really demonstrates the power and influence language can have. It can be used to educate or bring down entire systems, purely “through the medium of their specific concrete instancing” (675). The ‘stratification’ of language I think is very important when we think of relations and hierarchies within a society; each social group tends towards their own language, and thus each interpretation, utterance and meaning of an individual word will always be different.

Bakhtin has personified language for me; he speaks of it as having the ability “to infect with its own intention” (675) different semantic meanings. Also that “these languages live a real life” (676); “it exists in people’s mouths” (677) and it tastes of the context in which it has lived. These suggestions seem to point to language as some form of disease – which I don’t enjoy associating it with for one moment, but I suppose we could refer to it as such. It is resilient, and always evolving into new strands of other ‘language’ so as to ensure its survival. Each word we say has previously been someone else’s and we take it and ‘mutate’ it into our own; giving it our own meaning. Language is also “overpopulated” (677) with the intentions of others, therefore it is imperative that we make it our own so as to ensure our utterances bear some significance. Language also faces a constant struggle as it is fighting past social groups and stratification which continually evolve and form new dialogues surrounding their own specific belief systems. Furthermore the novelist must contend with this barrage of numerous systems and stratifications of language, and in turn create his own language, often resorting to “heteroglossia” (679) (which in itself sounds like something you wouldn’t want to catch!); incorporating “another’s speech in another’s language”, as Bakhtin explains. So the novel brings into the conscious mind the diversity and abundance of different social speech types. Also within this cacophony of other voices scrambling for the reader’s attention, the reader must contend with his own voice, which will again take on a whole different utterance and meaning, and so affecting his own interpretation of the novel and the language which lives within it.

I just have one issue with Bakhtin; he talks about “authoritative discourse”, which always remains a “dead quotation” (684) as it is a thing in its own right – I interpreted this to allude to ‘innate’ truths, such as (some may argue) the existence of God, as “its authority was already acknowledged in the past” (683). Bakhtin then goes on to talk about “internally persuasive discourse” (685) which I took to mean something that has been taken, developed, worked on, churned up and spat out in some sense, by our own and other’s interaction with discourse, but surely at one point all discourse has been internally persuasive? So I would like to know when authoritative discourse stopped being internally persuasive and got its promotion in the linguistic realm?

This week I am having trouble getting to grips with Freud’s take on things. WHY does everything have to revert back to sex, or childhood, or parents? I found it almost funny reading about the woman who had a dream about the beetles and being shocked when she was told it was OBVIOUSLY because she is concerned about relations with her husband. I think the fact that she had seen a drowning moth just before she had been to sleep was a more plausible explanation of animal suffering in her dream. Or maybe she had recently read Kafka, and the image of the beetle had stayed with her. I think there could be hundreds of possible interpretations and Freud should have commented on these instead of referring her dream instantly to sex.