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English 301: Themes and Topics - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The Male Gaze by Lili Loofbourow The idea of an oppositional gaze can be similarly applied to the ideas discussed by Loofbourow. In this essay she highlighted how work's that heavily feature women are often looked over and not taken seriously. Women spectators might also come to experience "rupture" and cease to recognize and define themselves by the representations of women that are popular in film and media.
        
        The Ladies Complain by Marie De GournayIn this work some of the ideas Gournay expresses are similar to those expressed by Loofbourow. Gounay writes, "there is no man, however mediocre, who does not put them in their place with the approval of most of the company, when, with merely a smile or some slight shaking of his head, his mute eloquence pronounces, 'It's a women speaking'" (102). Gournay is suggesting that men often do not take women seriously. This is similar to Loofbourrow's message about how media that focuses on women is often not taken seriously. Gournay shares Loofbourrow's idea that women are often dismissed.
      - Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvaney This work describes how it is common in media for women to exist primarily as a source of pleasure for men. She argues that the men featured in film and the men who watch the film view women as objects of pleasure and use them as a being to project their pleasure on to. Similarly to Hooks, she highlights how a marginalized group, in this case women rather than black people, are dissatisfied and belittled by their representations in the media.
      - Nope by Jordan Peele This film is an example of media that transcends the issues that both Bell Hooks and Laura Mulvaney discuss. It heavily features black characters, but they are portrayed in positive light that black viewers might feel a kinship too. It also contains a main female character, who exists not as an object of pleasure for the men in the movie, but is fully fleshed out and productive to the narrative.
      - Surface Tensions by Judith Butler In this work Judith Butler discusses the exhibitions down by Diane Arbus, which featured photos of people that were not conventionally attractive or acceptable. She writies, "We are not supposed to make into spectacles human bodies that are stigmatized within public life or to treat them as objects available for visual consumption. As a result, one finds oneself wanting to see what one "should not" enjoy seeing, and now partly to test the thesis that these photos are nothing but spectacularization or objectification." Laura Mulvaney focused on how in a lot of media, women act as objects of pleasure. Arbus however, captured images of "stigmatized" people, making one less likely to view them as an object of pleasure or something they can project their fantasies onto. Despite this, as Butler highlights, people continue to view Arbus's work because people are still curious about what they "'should not' enjoy seeing." There remains a perverse desire to spectate, even if the viewer believes they will not enjoy doing so. Butler talks about how people often view her work to confirm their suspicion that it is just an "objectification," but with Mulvaney's work in mind one is forced to remember that a viewer's displeasure might arise from the fact that Arbus's work is not something than can be easily objected into a sexual object.
        
        The Willing Mistress by Aphra BehnThis poem describes a romantic encounter between two people in a grove. While the speaks talks about the kissing that occurs between them there is a lot it does not mention. The poem reads "Which made me willing to receive/
        
        That which I dare not name" (lines 15-16). It also reads, "And lay’d me gently on the Ground;
        
        /Ah who can guess the rest?" in its final two lines. The speaker is very evasive when it comes to the acts the two people perform. It leaves a lot up for the audience to speculate and invokes a curious desire to understand and imagine what went on between them. This is similar to how Judith Butler highlights how people were drawn towards what seemed like something they should not want to see, but desired anyway.