Notes on 'The Gaze'

Daniel Chandler
Laura Mulvey on film spectatorship
Whilst these notes are concerned more generally with the gaze in
the mass media, the term originates in film theory and a brief
discussion of its use in film theory is appropriate here.
As Jonathan Schroeder notes, 'Film has been called an instrument
of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good
life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view' (Schroeder
1998, 208). The concept derives from a seminal article called
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey, a
feminist film theorist. It was published in 1975 and is one of the
most widely cited and anthologized (though certainly not one of
the most accessible) articles in the whole of contemporary film
theory.
Laura Mulvey did not undertake empirical studies of actual
filmgoers, but declared her intention to make political use of
Freudian psychoanalytic theory (in a version influenced by
Jacques Lacan) in a study of cinematic spectatorship. Such
psychoanalytically-inspired studies of 'spectatorship' focus on
how 'subject positions' are constructed by media texts rather than
investigating the viewing practices of individuals in specific social
contexts. Mulvey notes that Freud had referred to (infantile)
scopophilia - the pleasure involved in looking at other peoples
bodies as (particularly, erotic) objects. In the darkness of the
cinema auditorium it is notable that one may look without being
seen either by those on screen by other members of the audience.
Mulvey argues that various features of cinema viewing conditions
facilitate for the viewer both the voyeuristic process of
objectification of female characters and also the narcissistic
process of identification with an ideal ego seen on the screen.
She declares that in patriarchal society pleasure in looking has
been split between active/male and passive/female (Mulvey 1992,
27). This is reflected in the dominant forms of cinema.

Conventional narrative films in the classical Hollywood tradition

not only typically focus on a male protagonist in the narrative but
also assume a male spectator. As the spectator identifies with the
main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like,
his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as
he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic
look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence (ibid., 28).
Traditional films present men as active, controlling subjects and
treat women as passive objects of desire for men in both the story
and in the audience, and do not allow women to be desiring sexual
subjects in their own right. Such films objectify women in relation
to the controlling male gaze (ibid., 33), presenting woman as
image (or spectacle) and man as bearer of the look (ibid., 27).
Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at. The
cinematic codes of popular films are obsessively subordinated to
the neurotic needs of the male ego (ibid., 33). It was Mulvey who
coined the term 'the male gaze'.
Mulvey distinguishes between two modes of looking for the film
spectator: voyeuristic and fetishistic, which she presents in
Freudian terms as responses to male castration anxiety.
Voyeuristic looking involves a controlling gaze and Mulvey
argues that this has has associations with sadism: pleasure lies in
ascertaining guilt - asserting control and subjecting the guilty
person through punishment or forgiveness (Mulvey 1992, 29).
Fetishistic looking, in contrast, involves the substitution of a
fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so
that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous. This builds up
the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something
satisfying in itself. The erotic instinct is focused on the look
alone. Fetishistic looking, she suggests, leads to overvaluation of
the female image and to the cult of the female movie star. Mulvey
argues that the film spectator oscillates between these two forms
of looking (ibid.; see also Neale 1992, 283ff; Ellis 1982, 45ff;
Macdonald 1995, 26ff; Lapsley & Westlake 1988, 77-9).
This article generated considerable controversy amongst film
theorists. Many objected to the fixity of the alignment of passivity
with femininity and activity with masculinity and to a failure to
account for the female spectator. A key objection underlying many
critical responses has been that Mulvey's argument in this paper
was (or seemed to be) essentialist: that is, it tended to treat both

spectatorship and maleness as homogeneous essences - as if there

were only one kind of spectator (male) and one kind of
masculinity (heterosexual). E Ann Kaplan (1983) asked Is the
gaze male?. Both Kaplan and Kaja Silverman (1980) argued that
the gaze could be adopted by both male and female subjects: the
male is not always the controlling subject nor is the female always
the passive object. We can read against the grain. Teresa de
Lauretis (1984) argued that the female spectator does not simply
adopt a masculine reading position but is always involved in a
double-identification with both the passive and active subject
positions. Jackie Stacey asks: Do women necessarily take up a
feminine and men a masculine spectator position? (Stacey 1992,
245). Indeed, are there only unitary masculine or feminine
reading positions? What of gay spectators? Steve Neale (1983)
identifies the gaze of mainstream cinema in the Hollywood
tradition as not only male but also heterosexual. He observes a
voyeuristic and fetishistic gaze directed by some male characters
at other male characters within the text (Stacey notes the erotic
exchange of looks between women within certain texts). A useful
account of 'queer viewing' is given by Caroline Evans and
Lorraine Gamman (1995). Neale argues that in a heterosexual
and patriarchal society the male body cannot be marked explictly
as the erotic object of another male look: that look must be
motivated, its erotic component repressed (Neale 1992, 281).
Both Neale and Richard Dyer (1982) also challenged the idea that
the male is never sexually objectified in mainstream cinema and
argued that the male is not always the looker in control of the
gaze. It is widely noted that since the 1980s there has been an
increasing display and sexualisation of the male body in
mainstream cinema and television and in advertising (Moore
1987, Evans & Gamman 1995, Mort 1996, Edwards 1997).
Gender is not the only important factor in determining what Jane
Gaines calls 'looking relations' - race and class are also key
factors (Lutz & Collins 1994, 365; Gaines 1988; de Lauretis 1987;
Tagg 1988; Traube 1992). Ethnicity was found to be a key factor
in differentiating amongst different groups of women viewers in a
study of Women Viewing Violence (Schlesinger et al. 1992).
Michel Foucault, who linked knowledge with power, related the
'inspecting gaze' to power rather than to gender in his discussion
of surveillance (Foucault 1977).

Bollywood, Indias Hindi language film industry, is often used as a means of escape and fantasy
for the over 11 million cinemagoers per day. Almost every movie has songs interspersed
throughout the entire plot. Every song is not created the same, however. A special genre of songs,
called item songs, is often included in huge blockbusters. These songs often star an actress,
famous or just a mere starlet, who appears in the film just to dance in this number. Item songs of
late have contained actresses wearing skimpy outfits and are characterized by skimpy clothing
and suggestive choreography and lyrics. These songs are often played constantly on television
and the radio and become nationwide sensations, where debates are not focused on the sexual
nature of the songs, but what the Top Item Song of the Year is.
Veteran directors, such as Ramesh Sippy, have said that item songs instantly attract attention,
musically as well as visually this increases the recall value of the film and also helps push the
music sales. These often boost the careers of the actresses who continue to star in these
numbers, earning them the title of item girls. The terminology itself degrades these women
below human beings to inanimate objects who are simply there for the pleasure of the viewer,
presumably male. The ad takes notice of this, writing out the transliteration of 10 of some of the
most popular item songs from the last three decades.
The ad was targeted towards a more educated public in India who has knowledge of mainstream
Bollywood cinema. Since the Delhi rape in December brought up several issues regarding city
versus village life, it can be said that this ad targets mostly the city folk. The message fails to
impact villages where English is not spoken and where many presumed sexual violence cases go
unreported. The audience is also presumably directed towards males, who would have women as
their fantasy. The use of the word you makes it seem as if the producers of the ad are speaking
directly to the men of India; calling them out on an entire culture of chauvinistic popular culture.
The newspaper also includes its name at the end of the ad before the tagline Respect Women.
Full Stop. It clearly wants to be associated with the respect women movement that has risen in
India; so it is much as an ad for itself as a progressive newspaper as well as an ad movement to
respect women.
Another aspect to note is the lyrics chosen by the newspaper. They are all lyrics from popular
item songs from the last 25 years with suggestive lyrics. These lyrics are transliterated into
English, though many of these songs have English words in them already.
The first song, Jumma Chumma De De (Hum, 1991), which means Give us a kiss is sung by
a group of men, including the hero of the movie, to an item girl, who is just dancing in this
song, situated in a bar. Many of the songs used in this ad take place in clubs or bars, where the
hero is intoxicated. Two other phrases used, Chammak Challo (Ra.One, 2011) and Chikni
Chameli (Agneepath, 2012) are euphemistic slang for prostitutes, especially ones who dance,
and from the countryside. The words refer to the color of their skin as well as their jewelry and
ornaments, not to the woman herself.

This deconstruction of women plays along the male gaze, viewing the female in parts rather than
a whole. This plays on the notion of taking advantage of uneducated women for the use of
pleasure. Another interesting aspect to note about the lyrics is the use of English. To a non-Hindi
reader, the words that jump out are sexy, fantasy, and darling words that clearly have a
romantic and sensual connotation for a male audience. The word sexy does not have a
counterpart in the Hindi language but shows an aspect taken from globalization and increased
interaction with Western culture.
The lyrics also have a sense of commercialization beyond attracting viewers to films. Songs such
as Munni Badnaam Hui (Dabangg, 2010) and Fevicol Se (Dabangg 2, 2012) have references
to actual commercial products within them, a pain reliever and Fevicol glue, while another song
was popularly used in chips commercials for quite a while. This shows that the item in these
item songs refers not just to the woman, but often the product she is trying to promote within
the song. This parallel that the song draws between the woman and the product is striking, using
one to sell the other.
The black and white nature of the quarter page ad is also striking. Despite the fact that the Times
of India publishes in color, the creators of the ad chose to simplify the message into two colors so
that there is quite literally, no gray area. This symbolizes the stark nature of what the producers
are trying to convey. Even though that some say these item songs are to be taken lightly and are
not an explicit sexual degradation of women, they clearly think that the use of these lyrics does
send subliminal messages that highlight the nature of women in popular Indian culture. The
black background clearly draws attention to the ad without being too jarring, while the white
writing plays to the simplicity of the ad.
Given the wide circulation of the newspaper, it is clear that a quarter page of ads is a significant
loss of ad revenue. They obviously thought it was important enough to warrant not just one, but
two separate ads relating to various reasons why Indian culture seems to lack respect for women.
The ad, however, is clearly not on the front page of the paper. Therefore, presumably, only
people who would read the entire newspaper cover to cover would see this ad. This perhaps
narrows down the audience from English speakers to those who would be interested in reading
the entire paper.
In analyzing this image, it is also crucial to note that there is no actual image accompanying this
ad. Its textual simplicity draws attention to it. If an image were added, the message that it would
get across would be more about the image. Regardless if the image was a Bollywood item girl or
not, she would be associated with the ad, which would be extending the commercialization and
objectification of the woman, much like item songs themselves. Any image of a woman that
would be alongside the ad would be objectifying the woman even further. When confronted with
just the lyrics in such bold and simple print, the reader is forced to deconstruct his or her thought
process with the songs.

At first, the reader may be curious as to why these lyrics were chosen. As they get to the second
half of the ad, the reader begins to realize the point of the ad: that the popular Bollywood culture
that is so intrinsic to Indian ways subliminally subjugates women. By being a consumer of this
mainstream media, the reader perhaps internalizes many of these attitudes of songs that are
popular across the spectrum of age, region, gender, and class. It is the kind of ad that gets the
public talking, which can be seen by the explosion of blog posts and conversation of Facebook
and Twitter that erupted after the publishing of this ad and the previous one.
The lack of an image with the ad increased the shock value as well as the staying power of the ad
in readers mind.
The writer is a senior at the University of Virginia studying foreign affairs.

The Patriarchal Gaze

To What Extent Women Are Controlled And Guided by the Look As Is Reflected In Mainstream
Culture

Understanding the role of women as defined by the male gaze is central to understanding
womens position in society. Though this may not necessarily be common knowledge, we can all
buy the argument that a womans place in societys stratification is defined by the outward
manifestation of her person, and that person is identified first and foremost by her gender.
Simone de Beauvoir claims that women are defined as others or as not male. This
differentiation would not be possible if women were not recognizable by sight as not male.
Considering this, it is logical to look to film, a major form of visual popular culture, and its
associations with visual representations and the gaze. The gaze in film is basically the outlook of
the camera. Because the outlook of the camera fosters identification with the audience, the gaze
can be used as a powerful discourse. Beginning with the Laura Mulvey article Visual Pleasure
and Narrative Cinema, the representation of women in culture, and popular culture in particular,
has been dissected. In her opening paragraph, Mulvey outlines, ...the way film reflects, reveals
and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference which
controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle (Mulvey 57). This dissection in film
allows women to realize the extent to which the controlling discourse flows over from popular
culture and effects everyday issues. According to Mulvey, women are always the objects of the
gaze, never the possessors of the gaze. In the case of film, control of the camera and therefore the
control of the gaze is almost always firmly settled in the male sphere. However, as Mulvey
understands, the camera, not just cinematic technology, can be thought of as a symbol and
applied to patriarchal control in society at large. It is in this light that the camera can be
considered an instrument of patriarchal subjugation. For example, many aspects of life that
women accept without thought (high heels for instance) are actually part of, or results of, very
definite stereotypes about and concerning women. To bring Freud into the bedroom, so to speak,
is to recognize that all aspects of our lives, even the private and personal, are affected by the
extending arm of film and popular culture; generally classified as harmless, but psychologically
significant. Mulvey writes, ...unchallenged mainstream film coded the erotic into the language
of the dominant patriarchal order. In the highly developed Hollywood cinema it was only
through these codes that the alienated subject, torn in his imaginary memory by a sense of loss,
by the terror of potential lack in fantasy, came near finding a glimpse of satisfaction: through its
formal beauty and its play on his own formative obsessions (Mulvey 59). Consciously or not, as
Mulvey and her followers assert, a standard of normalcy and acceptability is presented and
perpetuated through these mainstream manifestations of popular culture. Therefore, who controls
the popular discourse and what they have to gain from its perpetuation become important.
The dominant popular discourse, for instance, only accentuates the fact that women, in the
majority of societies around the world, live lives of spectacle. Mulvey categorizes women as,
the bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning (Mulvey 58). As Mulveys statement suggests,
unlike males, females seldom find themselves in the role of spectator, or in the case of film, in
the role of control. Women form the spectacle. They are the objects while males are generally the
subjects. In film, the camera almost always assumes the gaze of the male. Therefore it is he who
moves the action while women have little access to the camera and/or control of the narrative.
The camera seems to constantly watch women as it does not do with men. Almost always the
camera assumes a male perspective and a male gaze in the narrative. It is the male that the
audience, whether male or female, relates to because it is a male gaze that moves and controls
the camera. Mulvey explores the reasons for this strident male control by delving into Freud and
physchoanalytic discourses.

Psychoanalytically, Freud termed and explained the voyeurism that is attached to the
predominant male gaze as fetishism. Because there are little to no instances of male
objectification in popular culture or everyday life (Mulvey 63), the burden of scopophilia, the
active pleasure of looking (Mulvey 58), falls squarely on the male gender. The exclusive male
control of the medium of film requires that any pleasure derived is in a male context. If women
are to gain pleasure from film, they do so by assuming the male gaze and accepting themselves
and other women as objects. Freud postulates that scopophilia and fetishism originate from the
Oedipal Complex. The young male child is exceptionally close to the mother. However, he soon
becomes aware of a lack in her, meaning the penis (Mulvey 57). He also feels competition with
the father in his desire to return to the perfect utopia of the womb. Because of this purposed
threat of the father, the male child grows to regard females in the light of the desire for the
mother and the paranoia of the lack. But, because women do not have a penis, the male child
must fetishize a particular aspect of women in order to center his desire on the correct object.
From hence develops the male obsession with female legs, for example, and the phallic standins, high heels. Following this line of thought it is easy to see why men seldom shrink from
obvious visual perusal of the female body and why gazes along the same lines are seldom
directed back by women. Mulvey goes on to say that, the paradox of phallocentrism in all its
manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning
to its world (Mulvey 57). Like Freuds theories, the spectacle of film as it is recognized today,
cannot exist without its female instrument of spectacle. Without women to provide a counter
weight to phallocentrism and give the male gaze something to control, neither could exist. If
women in film, and in society as a whole, are to escape the patriarchal objectification of the male
gaze a new neutral gaze must be developed.
The creation of a new form of cinematic pleasure and non-gendered look cannot be
accomplished without following the path of Mulvey and others. Everyday accepted images must
be dissected in order to advent new roles of spectator and spectacle. It is crucial to understand the
processes of male gaze and female spectacle. Without a comprehension of the forces at work
beneath dominant popular culture and the realization that women really are represented as
objectified spectacles, there is little hope of developing a non-objectified female subject.

Reading Guide to Mulvey on

Cinema and Psychoanalysis
by Dave Harris
(NB see the linked critical discussion in the file
relating to the Screen 'special' on difference -here)
Three pieces are summarised here, ranging
over a decade, and featuring some important
changes in perspective...

Mulvey L 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative

Cinema', Screen, 16, 3, Autumn 1975
NB this piece is collected in several
readers as well, including Screen (1992),
and Bennett et al (1981) Popular Film
and Television, London: BFI Publishing
( in an abridged version). Page numbers
for quotes below refer to the version in
Thornham, S (ed) Feminist Film Theory: a
Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press
The particular fascinations of film may be
'reinforced by pre-existing patterns of
fascination already at work within the
individual subject and the social formations
that have moulded him' [sic] (page 58),
especially by considering sexual difference.
'psychoanalytic theory... [becomes]... a
political weapon, demonstrating the way the
unconscious of patriarchal society has
structured film form' (58).
Phallocentrism relies upon the image of 'the
castrated women [sic]' (58). Woman as lack
produces the phallus as symbolic presence.
Recent material in Screen has shown how the

female form 'speaks castration' (58). Women

symbolise the castration threat through the
lack of a penis, and raise children so they can
enter the symbolic order. Women do not enter
the symbolic themselves, (and can have no
desires of their own) 'except as a memory ...
memory of maternal plenitude and memory of
lack' (59). Both of these options are found in
nature, or anatomy, as in Freud [a hint of the
old biologism here? -- see the file on Screen
theory]. Women bear 'the bleeding wound',
existing only in relation to castration. When
women bear children, these are desires to
possess a penis -- the child has submitted to
the law of the symbolic order, or '[kept] down
with her in the half light of the imaginary' (59).
Women thus stand as an Other to males: men
live out fantasies and obsessions 'through
linguistic command by imposing them' on
women (59).
This expresses very well the frustrations for
women in phallocentric societies. It helps
women articulate the problem, and presents
them with a major challenge -- how to fight
while still caught within the language of
patriarchy. Alternatives are unlikely, but
patriarchy can be analysed, especially via
psychoanalysis. However, even psychoanalysis
has not developed very far and actually
exploring female sexuality and its relation to
the symbolical order.
Despite the emergence of alternative cinemas
and new developments in technology,
Hollywood still dominates, mainly because of
its skill in manipulating verbal pleasure -'mainstream film coded the erotic into the
language of the dominant patriarchal order'
(60). Thus erotic pleasure and the central
place of the image of women needs to be
analysed. Such analysis deliberately sets out
to destroy naive pleasure in watching the

narrative fiction film. The past is to be left

behind, or transcended, 'in order to conceive a
new language of desire'.
A major source of pleasure for the viewer is
scopophilia -- the pleasure in looking and in
being looked at. Freud suggested scopophilia
was an important component of sexuality,
although he restricted this to childish activities
in seeing, especially other people's genitals.
Scopophilia can develop into a perversion,
obsessive voyeurism, which involves gaining
satisfaction from 'watching, in an active
controlling sense, an objectified other' (61).
Scopophilic pleasure is available in the cinema,
since the viewers watch in an enclosed world,
where images appear apparently regardless of
who is watching. Thus the spectators seem to
be looking in on a private world, and can
project their desires on to the actors.
Conventions of mainstream film also focus on
the human body, and 'Scale, space, stories are
all anthropomorphic' (61) . This provides the
pleasures of recognition.
Lacan described the mirror phase as a crucial
stage in the development of the ego. The child
sees an image in the mirror as a more perfect
and idealised version of himself ( as in
narcissism) -- hence recognition is combined
with a misrecognition, and a mirror image gets
taken as an ideal ego, and the basis of models
of others. This is an alienating moment, but it
also marks an entry into the social symbolic
order. It is no coincidence that an image
provokes this phase, not the perception of the
real object, such as the mother's face. The
tension between image and self-image is
established too, and this leads directly to film
and the processes of recognition in the
cinema audience. The film is fascinating
enough to 'allow temporary loss of ego while

simultaneously reinforcing the ego' (62). The

images presented by the film enable a
temporary sense of forgetting and also the
observation of 'ego ideals as expressed in
particular in the star system'. The whole
process is 'nostalgically reminiscent of that
pre-subjective moment of image recognition'
[in Lacan].
Thus we have a contradiction between two
kinds of pleasure -- scopophilic and
narcissistic. Scopophilic pleasure involves
seeing others as objects of sexual stimulation.
The second kind of pleasure comes from
recognising or identifying with the image, a
narcissistic pleasure, to do with the
constitution or maintenance of the ego. The
subject himself is split in pursuing these two
kinds of pleasures -- there is an erotic identity,
arising from sexual instincts, and (ego)
identification, more to do with ego and their
energies. This contradiction is a major aspect
of the perception of the subject -- 'the
imaginised, eroticised concept of the world'
[the Lacanian Imaginary]: this subjective
perception 'makes a mockery of empirical
objectivity' (62). Cinema offers a particular
version of reality which enables these
contradictory pleasures to co-exist. However,
pleasure is accompanied by threats to the ego
-- images of women crystallise this tension.
Pleasures in looking have been split between
active/male and passive/female. The male
gaze is 'determining', and female figures
appear in accordance with male fantasies -they 'connote to-be-looked-at-ness'(63) , as in
conventional erotic spectacles like strip-tease.
In mainstream film, there is both spectacle and
narrative, and here, the presence of women
can threaten the flow of narrative, by freezing
the action in 'moments of erotic
contemplation'. This means that women have

to be reintegrated into the narrative -- indeed,

their role in narrative is almost entirely to
make the hero act in the way he does. An
exception here involves the development of
the 'buddy movie'-- Mulvey cites Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- where the
'active homosexual eroticism of the central
male figures can carry the story without
distraction' (63) [and without any threat to the
conventional sexuality of the male audience?].
Traditionally, though women are erotic objects
for the characters and for the spectators,
leading to a combination of looks -sometimes, when women are performing as
showgirls, the two looks can be unified, and
this is also commonly achieved in conventional
narratives. Women performers can add extra
pleasure of a sexual nature. However,
occasionally, the 'sexual impact of the
performing woman [can take] the film into a
no-man's-land outside its own time and space',
and can destroy perspective, appearing as a
'cut-out or icon' (62). [Examples here are
'Marilyn Monroe's fist appearance in The River
of No Return and Lauren Bacall's songs in To
Have and Have Not' ( 63)]
The split between active and passive stances
also dominate conventional narrative. '... the
principles of the ruling ideology and the
psychical structures that back it up... [mean]...
the male figure cannot bear the burden of
sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze
at his exhibitionist like[ness]' (62). As a result
there has to be a split between spectacle and
narrative, and men have to be given the active
role of forwarding the story [as a kind of
excuse, or pretext, or because of the extra
demands of patriarchal ideology?]. Men control
the 'film fantasy', and also gain power by
representing the look of the spectator. This
follows because the spectator 'identifies with

the main male protagonist' [in an aside,

Mulvey acknowledges that there are female
main protagonists in films too, pleads lack of
space to discuss these, and suggests that
these main protagonists are not as strong as
they appear -- but see below]. This
identification enables the spectator to enjoy
the controlling power of the male performer -the latter becomes the more powerful ideal
ego as in the mirror phase. Camera
technology, including deep focus, unobtrusive
movements and editing [i.e. realist technique]
lend support to this idea of male control of a 3D environment, and the action.
Thus one look involves the spectator 'in direct
scopophilic contact with the female form',
while another enables identification with male
performers who are in control of the action and
the woman. However, women also signify lack,
and thus pose a threat of castration. [ The lack
of a penis is again seen as 'visually
ascertainable...evidence on which is based the
castration complex' (65) -- biologism, again].
Thus women as icon also threaten and cause
anxiety. Men respond by re-enacting the
trauma ( via investigation and demystification
of women); [less healthy?] by punishing 'or
saving' the guilty object ('the concerns of the
film noir' ( 65)); by substituting the threat into
a fetish, 'so that it becomes reassuring rather
than dangerous' (65) ('overvaluation, the cult
of the female star'). The first two reactions
lead to voyeurism, and sadism, asserting
control and subjugating the guilty person. 'This
sadistic side fits in well with narrative. Sadism
demands a story...' ( 65), and linear time.
Fetishism can go on outside of time, ' focused
on the look alone' (65).
Only Angels Have Wings, and To Have and
Have Not are cited of examples of how
narrative delivers the main female character

into the hands of the main male protagonist,

and thus delivers pleasure to the identifying
spectator] Hitchcock and Sternberg also offer
examples of variation. Sternberg, in creating
images of Dietrich, 'produces the ultimate
fetish' (65), almost dispensing with the
identification mechanism in order to provide
direct scopophilia pleasure for the viewer.
There is almost no controlling male gaze, but
concentration upon Dietrich directly as an
erotic image. There is 'cyclical rather than
linear time' (66), as plots revolve around
misunderstandings: Dietrich offers maximum
erotic meaning 'in the absence of the man she
loves in the fiction' (66): the man
'misunderstands and above all does not see'
(66).
In Hitchcock, by contrast, the male hero
always sees what the audience sees. There are
scopophilia moments, 'oscillating between
voyeurism and fetishistic fascination', and the
male heroes usually lose their respectability
('His heroes are exemplary of the symbolic
order and the law'(66)) by succumbing to
erotic drives. Sadistic subjection, and
voyeuristic gaze are both directed at women,
thinly justified by acting in the name of
legalised power, or because the woman is
classically 'guilty' -- 'evoking castration,
psychoanalytically speaking' (66). Viewers are
encouraged to identify, through devices like
'liberal use of subjective camera from the point
of view of the male protagonist' (66). [A more
detailed discussion of Vertigo ensues -- it
demonstrates an interesting opinion that the
viewer in Hitchcock films can feel uneasy,
complicit, 'caught in the moral ambiguity of
looking' (67), almost as if the sexual pleasures
are too blatant, and too thinly disguised by the
apparent morality of the film, its 'shallow mask
of ideological correctness'].

Thus psychoanalysis is relevant to

understanding pleasure and unpleasure in
traditional narrative films. The mechanism of
looking supplemented by more active forms of
male control 'adding a further layer demanded
by the ideology of the patriarchal order as it is
worked out in its favourite cinematic form -illusionist narrative film' (68). Psychoanalytic
analysis argue that women can only signify
castration, and this threat is countered by
'voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms' (68).
None of this is intrinsic to film, but film
happens to be able to illustrate them perfectly
by manipulating the look. Cinema can add the
pleasures of looking to narratives about control
and these become part of the spectacle too
'producing an illusion cut to the measure of
[male] desire' (68). The relation between
cinematic codes and 'formative external
structures' needs to be understood before this
dubious pleasure can be challenged. [It has
been assumed so far].
A beginning might involve breaking down the
look into three stages -- the camera, the
audience, and the characters. Films conceal
the effects of the first two, in the interests of
achieving 'reality, obviousness and truth' (68).
However, the threat of castration connoted by
the female image requires constant work if it is
not to 'burst through the world of illusion' (68)
[and there is the danger of freezing the
narrative into fetishism]. In such
circumstances, some direct identification by
the spectator takes the place of the more
narrative based forms of involvement. [I don't
think Mulvey is recommending this as a way to
break the hold of the narrative, of course,
since women would still be fetishised I do think
some female stars to have this power to stop
narratives -- Marilyn Monroe springs to mind -but I am not all sure this needs to be
fetishistic. When she sings in close-up in Some

Like It Hot, we become interested in her not

only for her body, but because we see the
actress as well as the performer? In other
words, this is more like an identification with
women performers as well as with men? See
Stacey on homosexual identifications as well -in this file]
It becomes important to oppose these
conventions, as radical film-makers do -- to
make us aware of the look and how it is
produced by the camera, and break the
detachment of the audience [ see MacCabe on
this too]. This may end the conventional
pleasures of film, but women in particular
should not regard these changes 'with
anything much more than sentimental regret'.
[NB bell hooks in her account of black women
reading film says this sentimental regret is
typical of white feminists -- black women never
identified so strongly with film narratives,
always felt uneasy and unable to locate them
selves in them, and soon developed a critical
ability to resist the pleasures of the film -- see
her piece in Thornham).

Mulvey, L 'Afterthoughts on "Visual

Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" Inspired
by King Vidor's Duel in the Sun (1946)' in
Thornham, S (1999) (Ed) Feminist Film Theory
A Reader, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
NB This essay is published in a number of
other places as well. Its original location was
the journal Framework, 15-16-17, summer
1981, pp 12 -- 15. Page numbers for quotes
refer to this version in Thornham
The original essay (see above) focused on the
'masculinisation' of spectators (who might be
men or women). It is a matter of identifying
points of view, and spectator positions. This

essay follows up an interest in melodrama and

in the woman spectator in particular: is the
female spectator dominated by the text, and
how does having a female character central to
the narrative affect the analysis? Female
spectators may simply dissociate from the
masculine pleasures of film. However, they
may also identify with the hero and enjoy a
certain freedom as a result, and this is the
option that will be explored here. Films to be
discussed are chosen which show 'a woman
central protagonist is shown to be unable to
achieve a stable sexual identity, torn between
the deep blue sea of passive femininity and
the devil of regressive masculinity' (page 122).
These dilemmas relate to the dilemmas of the
female spectator -- both display and
'oscillation...a sense of the difficulty of sexual
difference' (123). Freudian theory will help
clarify this again.
Freud suggests that femininity is complicated,
since both sexes share a masculine phase.
There may be a simple process of repression of
the masculine tendencies in female sexuality,
accompanied by the occasional regression or
alternation between masculine and feminine
tendencies. Finally, Freud suggests that the
libido, the 'motive force of sexual life' serves
both masculine and feminine functions and
has no sex of its own -- but it happens to be
more constrained 'when it is pressed into the
service of the feminine function' (Mulvey
quoting Freud, her page 124). These
conceptions still have problems, such as
seeing femininity in terms of masculinity, even
as opposition or similarity, but it. describes the
shifting process which confronts women as
they try to be either active or passive,
although the active is increasingly repressed
for 'correct' femininity. When female
spectators identify with male-oriented films,
they 'rediscover that lost aspect of...[their]...

sexual identity... [but it is in the form of a]...

never fully repressed bedrock of feminine
neurosis' (124).
Cinema has inherited these traditions from
earlier forms of folk and mass culture, which
did not rely particularly on cinematic looks [so
this is now a much more deep-seated and
widespread phenomenon affecting a lot of
women's experience, and it helps draw in
some other resources for analysis, as we shall
soon see]. Freud's work expands this cultural
dimension himself, with references to
daydreams and stories which 'describe the
male fantasy of ambition, reflecting something
of an experience and expectation of
dominance (the active)' (125). Conventionally,
the erotic place of women is to be passive, to
wait, to close the narrative. However, Freud's
work can be read as supporting habitual 'transsex identification' for women, based on their
residual masculinity, the ease of logical
identification with narratives stressing activity,
and their ability to fantasise in an active
manner. However, this is still not an easy form
of identification for women.
We can now begin to analyse films such as the
Western. [Having made the connection with
wider cultural contexts, Mulvey can begin her
analysis by drawing upon some classic
'structuralist ' analysis. She intends to define
the Western for her purposes as films which
convey best the 'primitive narrative structures
analysed by Vladimir Propp in folk tales'
(126)]. Westerns offer male fantasies of
invulnerability, and women occupy a
classically passive function. As with folk tales,
marriage helps close the narrative in the
Western, but this time as an option -- the hero
can remain alone, in a 'nostalgic celebration of
phallic, narcissistic omnipotence' (126). Strictly
speaking, this does not fit a classic Oedipal

trajectory.
The hero is often split between narcissism and
social integration. Women are invariably
associated with the latter, [adding a gender
dimension to the classic dramatic conflicts
between good and evil in a folk tale?]. The
spectator is also able to fantasise in both
directions, rebelling and conforming. An
analysis of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
confirms these double pleasures and tensions.
There seem to be two heroic protagonists out
to defeat the villain, one a symbolic
representative of the law, and the other a
wilder but more personal representative of 'the
good or the right'. The former receives official,
symbolic power at the expense of personal
submission, while the one possessing 'phallic
attributes... has to bow himself of the way of
history' (127 ).The straight gets to marry the
girl too, it seems, in a classic 'closing social
ritual'. Since this ritual is sex-specific, a
narrative function is offered for women, in
addition to offering visual pleasure when they
are looked at. Marriage is an acceptable,
symbolic way to signify the erotic.
Introducing a woman in a narrative can also
shift meanings, as Duel in the Sun indicates.
This is also a Western, but it focuses on a
woman caught between two conflicting
desires, corresponding closely to the oscillation
described above between passive femininity
and regressive masculinity. This enables a
whole new narrative to be opened up -- there
is no need to symbolise woman as erotic, 'the
female presence at the centre allows the story
to be actually, overtly, about sexuality: it
becomes a melodrama' (127). Here, the
heroine has to decide whether to legitimate
the symbolic by marrying the straight. The two
main male characters offer the same options
as in Liberty Valance, but here they signify

different aspects of the heroine ('Pearl'). Pearl

can only oscillate between them, however,
unable to find passion with the straight or
acceptance in the 'world of misogynist
machismo'-- she is 'unable to settle or find a
"femininity" in which she and the male world
can meet' (128). She is still dominated by the
male world: it all ends unhappily in mutual
death with macho man. The straight guy
eventually marries a 'perfect lady... [who]...
represents the correct road' (128), so
patriarchy and the symbolic triumph in the
end. [For my simple 'reading' click here]
A very similar plot is found in another Vidor
film Stella Dallas. These narratives show shifts
in 'Oedipal nostalgia', since none of the
personifications can really be seen as parental
figures. Instead, 'they represent an internal
oscillation of desire, which lies dormant,
waiting to be "pleasured" in stories of this kind'
(129).
Female spectators [might? must? should?]
experience a reawakening of a fantasy of
activity, normally repressed by correct
femininity, but this is only possible through a
'metaphor of masculinity' (129). As such, there
is no real way out for femininity -- there is the
romance of the rebellious last stand against
patriarchy, or a periodic masculinity followed
by repression. Pearl also demonstrates the
'sadness' of masculine identification, which is
never fully acceptable even by macho men.
'So, too, is the female spectator's fantasy of
masculinisation at cross-purposes with itself,
restless in its transvestite clothes' (129).

Mulvey, L (1985) 'Changes', Discourse,

Fall, 1985: pp 11 -- 30.
Page numbers here refer to the original.

Gender politics have moved on and something

new is required [and something new in
academic terms?]. Conservatism in Britain has
taken hold, with a new narrative of its own,
announcing a new beginning and thus being
able to 'catch public popular imagination by
clothing complex political and economic
factors in binary pairings around an old/new
opposition' (11). It seems necessary to revive
feminist avant garde struggles, and also
approach the wider context, especially 'the
interaction between narrative and history,
contradiction and myth...' (12). Thatcherite
closures of narrative must be resisted, and
new thinking undertaken by radicals, rather
than just nostalgia. Mulvey examines her own
principles first.
The original article [above] is 10 years old, and
some of its formal aspects might be related to
the specifics of the women's movement at that
time. Oppositional culture has changed, and
the symbolic order might have changed -psychoanalysis may be less relevant [and
Cultural Studies on the ascendant?].
There is an awareness that the notion of
difference can be domesticated by
representing it as a system of binaries or polar
oppositions. In Freud, metaphor plays an
important role, and the early ambivalence of
psychic drives is disciplined by the Oedipus
complex, which organises them around
appropriate notions of gender. But the drives
themselves were only 'back - named' in
gendered terms by Freud, recognising the
endpoint, the 'grammar of sex roles in myth,
folk tales, cinema, in fact in popular cultural
representation in general' (13). In those forms,
they get filled out with other binaries
--'public/private, nomadic/stable, sun/moon,
mind/body, the law/sexuality, creator of
culture/close to nature, etc' (13). But there is

still a gap between these mythical

representations, and lived experience,
between domesticated and stable distinctions
and 'uncertainty, difficulty and confusion' (13).
[Getting to sound pretty gramscian here?]
Myths tend to reduce complexity to binaries,
as in Levi-Strauss. They can be between or
outside these binaries -- they can only be
inverted. The early work, using active/passive
and masculine/feminine binaries [politically]
requires another stage, alternatives which
break out of the 'double bind of binarism' (14).
The original article was a polemic and
challenge. This excitement compensated for
the loss of pleasure in viewing conventional
films. It might also explain the excesses of the
Mulvey films made with Peter Wollen --'a
scorched earth policy or return to zero' (14).
Wollen drew on Godard [see file] in his
attempts to invert the values of conventional
cinema, and Mulvey and Wollen did the same
[in their film Penthesilia]. [I have not seen this
one, but I have seen their Amy, and it looks
similar in form -- disruptive camera work, not
allowing any female characters to be the
subject of a prolonged gaze, breaking the
barriers between film and audience, telling
the story as episodes rather than as one
continuous conventional narrative]. However,
such inversions rely on the audience knowing
the conventions and dominant codes already,
and thus risk being domesticated into a binary
again.
Their film Riddles of the Sphinx tries to
develop a more positive questioning at the
symbolic order, by looking at motherhood as it
appears in patriarchy [and not as attempting
to '[replace] the phallus as signifier with the
body of the mother' (14), as some critics have
alleged]. The idea was to recapture the

excesses of motherhood, beyond that which is

described in patriarchy.
Patriarchy never completely dominates
language. Psychoanalysis can change what
can be spoken, and so can feminist and black
power resistance movements, as in
consciousness raising, bringing new areas of
experience into language. Speaking [out] itself
might therefore challenge the symbolic order,
even if restricted to a 'discourse of negation'
as a starting point (15).
Lacanian work has ended in impasse. There is
an unfortunate 'retreat into the intricacies of
theory', which devalues the activist wing of
feminism, but also his concepts have reached
a logical limit, as exposed by Stephen Heath
[see file for a brief resume of Heath's critique
via Merck]. Basically, we need to move from
formal binary oppositions between men and
their Other, to more concrete and historical
specific relationships between men and
women. Men have not always had total 'access
to symbolisation', for example (16).
The attempt to confine femininity to mere
Otherness may represent an impossibility in
practice, and only raises the question of
female desire: however, Lacan's work makes it
impossible to enquire any further. Hence there
is a 'blocked relation between woman and the
symbolic' (16), which Lacan cannot unblock.
However, this excess of femininity, stretching
beyond the symbolic attempt to confine it, can
become 'the site for struggle, confrontation
and changing history' (17). Such struggle
would refuse to be confined within a binary,
and this refusal would clearly weaken the
conventional notion of 'masculinity' too.
Those who do not have access to
symbolisation are seen as 'non-creative'.

Feminists can struggle by negating this

negation itself, as in avant-garde practice,
especially with feminist challenges to male
artists' monopoly. However, politics also
involves other oppositions, including ones
based on racial terms or class terms [well
nearly -- Mulvey uses the strange opposition
'peasant/noble in feudal society' -- page 17].
Here too, Others embody in appropriate
qualities are, which also 'link the oppressed to
nature, and the dominant to culture' (17). After
feudalism declines, women come to be the
main representatives of nature. Binary
oppositions like this appear immediately
sensible, acting 'to mean something by
themselves' (Mulvey, quoting Barthes'
Mythologies, her page 18).
For Lacan, there can be no alternative
language, but Kristeva argues that there are
aspects that cannot be contained by the
symbolic -- the semiotic -- that arise in the preOedipal stage, and act as a source of a whole
poetics and a 'discourse of otherness' [that is,
about the experience of otherness]. Kristeva
on the primary bond with the mother helps
valorise motherhood too. There may also be a
link with colonial revolts drawing upon the old
mother goddesses. The Mexican example of
such a revolt drew upon a religious tradition
that was not incorporated into a binary by the
symbolic order, but offered 'fantastic hybrid
culture'. Kristeva was impressed by the social
upheavals in medieval carnivals (via Bakhtin,
apparently). Carnivals inverted the usual
binaries, but also celebrated excess, and the
comic. Bakhtin's examples are not identical
with, but 'reminiscent of women's cultural
sphere' (19): feminine cultures can become
transgressive, asking their own questions
about tradition and history.
However, Mitchell suggests that these

apparent exceptions to psychological and

social order may exist within a tolerance
established by the law anyway: somehow,
transgression has to try to establish a whole
new law of the symbolic. The need is to go
beyond metaphor and gesture into language.
However, even inversions could have a
destabilising effect. What is required to
investigate this is a 'tripartite structure...
[focusing on]... process rather than mythic
image... metonymy rather than metaphor...
linked chains of events rather than polar
opposition' (21).
Propp emphasises the narratives of myth
rather than static binaries. The classic
narrative has three stages [usually rendered as
equilibrium (quiet western town ) - disruption
(bandits ride in ) - new equilibrium (townsfolk
quell the disorder and learn about
themselves)]. Mulvey has a more formal
definition [not sure I know what it adds] ,
noting that only the first and second stages
are static, and adding that 'the second...
[stage]... causes the third' (21). The middle
section adds drama and pleasure in disrupting
the laws of normality, and celebrates
transgressive desire. This structure can even
be found in the Oedipus story. The social
context of the Oedipus story was also a period
of social instability and class struggle, which
the story also represents symbolically.
Social rituals can also be analysed in this way,
as participants escape at stage two and are
reintegrated at stage three. Rights of passage
illustrate this structure, with the initiate
occupying a separate 'liminal' state, often
embodied by a physical journey across
boundaries. Indeed, journeys are often
metaphors for social transitions, beginning and
ending with a state of being at home. Sexual
maturation also follows the structure.

Hitchcock films often do as well, as an ordinary

hero encounters 'a world turned upside-down'
(24).
The political point is to ask whether the
second, liminal state can resist subsequent
reintegration. Analysts of carnivals differ here.
In analysing Roman carnivals, Ladurie argued
(apparently) that the periods of disorder could
be learning experiences, spaces for thinking
out progressive political forms. Carnival can
also provide a language of resistance (25) [and
there is even a link with the work on
subcultures as resistance through rituals -- see
file on the famous gramscian stuff]. Here too,
'symbols... [can act]... as a primitive language
for the oppressed' (27) [the actual example is
provided by Cosgrove in a piece in History
Workshop Journal -- Mulvey's page 25, and see
note 23, page 30 --'for many participants...
[spectacular street styles]... were an entry into
the language of politics, and inarticulate
rejection of the "straight" world and its
organisation']. Thus liminal moments can at
least supply symbols, and even 'a language
that speaks for the oppressed' (26) [albeit a
limited and localised one].
Thus symmetry and dualistic opposition, as in
the first Mulvey piece, have little political
potential, and also block theoretical advance.
Binaries were already breaking down, in fact,
by reference to the notion of sexual difference
and castration -- strictly, castration anxiety
provides different experiences of disruption
and prohibition for males and females. Now,
this non equivalence is seen as 'a mechanism
for distributing power' (26): boys merely have
to undergo transitions, while girls have to
switch genders, or move into 'masquerade and
inversion, into politics and desire', which
options are never closed or integrated.

There is a shared dimension to the

unconscious, and this affects both culture and
politics. Feminism has politicised
psychoanalysis, and this has led to cultural
criticism, especially film theory, 'But there is
still a missing link or term... [to]... describe the
contribution the unconscious makes to the
political and social structures we live within'
(27). If we see the Oedipal myth as an
example of the classic model of the narrative,
the middle phase might be a special source of
excess and the carnivalesque [Mulvey says
this could even help to explain Freud's findings
that the Oedipal experience often ends in
failure, especially for women].
We're still not in a position to offer a whole
alternative symbolic, but there is more space
'on the threshold, the liminal area between
silence and speech, the terrain in which desire
merely finds expression' (28). There are
different possibilities of carnival as a model
here as we have seen. However, it is admitted
that 'the liminal phase is closely linked with
closure' (28), and this produces symptoms [of
repression?] which appear 'most clearly in
popular culture, whether folk tale, carnival or
the movies' (28).
Finally, cinema is primarily a narrative form.
The challenge is to try to develop an ending
that is not a closure, to express the state of
liminality as an instrument for 'maintaining
heterogeneity within the symbolic, and
subjecting myths and symbols to perpetual reevaluation' (28). It can at least provide images
'which simultaneously express collective
desires and impose coherence on the infinitely
numerous and infinitely varied data of
experiences' (Mulvey quoting Nash Smith, her
page 28).
Feminists especially 'should insist on the need

to prolong the middle phase, that so easily

becomes masked or telescoped behind binary
opposition, the point of disruption and
contradiction, the point at which politics can
be inserted into both cultural and psychoanalytic terrains' (28).
[I think Mulvey heard the siren call of British
activism and its critiques of Screen theory -see file -- in writing this piece as well as the
specific demands of feminist activists and
those tired of the theoreticism of Lacan. The
piece also marks the emergence of a new
successful academic division of labour -'Cultural Studies' -- to replace or contain Film
Studies per se? That would have been very
helpful for those seeking to widen out from
film into other more popular aspects of culture,
essential to close the gap between Hollywood
and patriarchy in general, as is foreshadowed
in the second piece above?]
files and notes on other people and topics

tem Songs In Hindi Films Dont Do Women Any Favours

With skimpy clothes, explicit moves and lascivious camera angles and suggestive, vulgar
lyrics, the item song routinely objectifies women and suggests to men that they are fair
game. While a movie maker should be free to make such a depiction we are a free country
the fact is that the Indian man is just not mature and evolved enough to view this purely as
entertainment. The item song cements in his mind, his view that women are of two types the
devi and the fallen woman and the latter is fair game for anything.

1. Laura Mulveys Male Gaze theory

2. Laura Mulveys Male Gaze theory Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema was an
essay written by Laura Mulvey An essay which coined the term Male Gaze which
soon went on to become a very well know and discussed theory In film, the male gaze
occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may
focus on the curves of a woman's body, putting you the viewer in the eyes of a male
However it is only the Male Gaze theory if these curves are highlighted with specific
conventions such as slow motion, deliberate camera movements and cut aways.

3. The theory suggests that the male gaze denies women human identity, relegating them
to the status of objects to be admired for physical appearance The theory suggests
woman can more often than not only watch a film from a secondary perspective and only
view themselves from a mans perspective Remember the stat from mis representation,
only 16% of media creaters are female. Laura Mulveys Male Gaze theory The
masculinisation of the viewer

4. Laura Mulveys Male Gaze theory However the presence of a woman in mainstream
film texts is something that is vital Often a female character has no real importance
herself, it is how she makes the male feel or act that is the importance. The female only
exist in relation to the male

5. Laura Mulveys Male Gaze theory The male gaze leads to Hegemonic ideologies
within our society Hegemonic = ruling or dominant in a political or social context

6. Visual Pleasure Mulvey states that the role of a female character in a narrative has two
functions 1.As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view 2.As an
erotic object for the spectators within the cinema to view

7. Gender roles in film The characters that look at others are seen as the active role (male)
The characters that are to be looked at are passive (female) They are under control of the
males gaze and only exist for visual pleasure. Females often slow the narrative down,
they act as inspiration for men to act. Males on the other hand, push the narrative
forwards and make things happen and are seen as active

8. Mulvey also discussed the term Scopophilia

9. Female Objectification Objectification is related to the gaze The persons gazed at are
objectified, treated as an object whose sole value is to be enjoyed or possessed by the
voyeur Objectified characters are devalued and their humanity removed.

10. Patriarchal society = Men dictate the rules Mulvey argued we live in a patriarchal
society in which men set the majority of the rules and construct and represent the ideal
visions, roles and male dominance over woman. The worry is a passive audience will be
influenced by this representation of reality and copy it and it will actually become
realityif it hasnt all ready.

11. The mass media were once thought of as holding up a mirror to, and thereby
reflecting, a wider social reality to what you the individual would see in your local
environment. However in the past it was thought TV reflected reality. The Theory of Post
modernism says yes. Traditional media representation of reality

12. - Now reality is only definable in terms of the reflections of that mirror. - It is not a
question of distortion since that implies that there is still reality, outside the influence of
the media, which can be distorted. -Now we are copying copies of reality and
representing hyper reality as reality and thus being influenced by a fake constructed
representation of reality, - The actual reality seems to have been lost, so what actually is
reality now? Post Modernism representation of reality Pure reality is thus replaced by
the hyperreal where any boundary between the real and the imaginary is eroded. What we
see on television, we see as the real and thus copy it within our lives, so the real is being
lost unconciously. This influenced the film the Matrix.

13. So are we being influenced by a hyper reality? Has Hyper reality become reality?
Does the Male Gaze influence and serpress females? Is there a lot of evidence of female
objectification via male controled technical conventions?

14. The Male Gaze is very common in James Bond films

15. List 3 elements from the scene you think prove the statement below is correct. The
James Bond franchise is a clear example of film objectifying females and forcing the
audience to view females via the male gaze. The scene within, Die Another Day when
James Bond meets the character Jinx demonstrates my previous statement by

16. A constructed representation of reality The female character has been coded The
post production of the film has edited Vignette Hyper reality A masculine voyeuristic
position Objectified female Representation Hegemonic Scopophilia Patriarchal
society

17. This applies when the character Jinx enters the text. Jinx has been swimming in the
sea and is coming onto shore. Bond picks up binoculars to watch jinx swim from a far
from a beach side bar. As Bond picks up the binoculars and looks through them, the
camera takes up the binoculars vignette forcing the audience to look at the female
through Bonds Gaze. Male or female, the audience has been forced to objectify the
character via a masculine voyeuristic position. The female character has been coded to
ensure she has a strong visual and erotic impact, with large breasts, flawless skin, fully
make uped when swimming and a tiny waste, which draws in To be looked at ness (1)
The shot then shows Jinx walking to the bar on the beach dripping wet in a bikini. The
post production of the film has edited Jinx into slow motion. Her body movements are
racy and exaggerated her hips sway side to side and her facial expression is somewhat
sexually suggestive. This slow motion edit represents the intense scrutiny and
examination Bond is giving the female form. We at this point could argue that this racy
and suggestive body language is not how she is actually moving, it is how Bond sees her

move in his mind. The character of Jinx has been objectified before we even know her
name or narrative role. The objectification is not discreet and is confirmed, with Bonds
first words when meeting Jinx, Magnificent View playfully tricking and making fun of
the female character into believing he is talking about the landscape, when the audience
knows he is referring to her body. This is also an issue of female representation as Bond
is ridiculing her intelligence, and she is oblivious.

18. 1.Define the key features of Mulveys theory. 2. What effect could this theory have
upon woman viewers? 3. What effect could this theory have on male viewers? 4.Why
do we believe the male gaze is present in films/adverts and T.V today? 5.What effect
can this have upon society?

wanted to do a camera-conscious blog post because I think the relationship between

blogger, camera, and (mostly) unknown audience is a new sort of "to-be-looked-at-ness"
that has emerged in full force over the past decade. Ever since the upstart Myspace
(thankfully fading) and the overwhelming presence of Facebook in our everyday lives
(not mine), and now, perhaps especially, with blogging of the personal-style variety, there
is an opportunity to shape our own images--to usurp the power of the human gaze (not
necessarily, and not even mostly, male) and funnel it through more favorable channels.
We are given an opportunity to take advantage of our "to-be-looked-at-ness"--and, to
some extent, to control it. The verdict is still out on whether or not this is a positive thing.
While photographic film is still a pretty superficial medium, at least the self-portraiture of
most style bloggers is a reflection of the ability of a modern woman to determine her
identity, and the "to-be-looked-at-ness" originates with her own inward gaze.

This has been seen in critical discussions as a prime example of gendered

looking. Theoretical discussions emphasize how the camera lens is a
surrogate of the male gaze. Notice how the image would not make sense if
the smiling (leering?) Jimmy Stewart character was replaced by the Grace
Kelly character. Or imagine changing the object of Stewart's attention from
the female dancer to...

In her influential essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Laura

Mulvey has written: "In a world ordered by sexual unbalance, pleasure in
looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The
determining male gaze projects its fantasy unto the female figure, which is
styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are
simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for
strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be seen to connote to-belooked-at-ness." Mulvey argues that modern film is constructed assuming a
heterosexual male observer. The pleasure in looking (scopophilia) and desire
fulfill the sexual needs and pleasures of a heterosexual viewer. Women can
find pleasure in watching, but their pleasure is gained by them watching as if
they were men. This gives to women the status of being the passive object
of the male heterosexual observer while the male is the active subject. In
the Rear Window still, the dancer in the camera lens is in a constructed pose
that assumes that she is being looked at by the male gaze. Her pose
displays her body for the male's visual pleasure. The pose accentuates her
long legs, skimpy outfit, her slim but well-endowed figure, her long, blond
hair, and her coy expression that acknowledges that she is being looked at.
The point of view we see her from calls attention to her physical assets.
While the male gets pleasure from looking, the woman is shown to get
pleasure from being looked at.
The woman does have power, but it is power gained from her ability to
attract male attention. Thus her power is not independent but contained
within the patriachal system. While our culture authorizes the privilege of
the male to look, for most women the daily experience of such aggressive
attention by the male gaze is seen to be threatening and intrusive. Girls are
trained to not look directly but avert their eyes. This is made explicit in
French nineteenth century etiquette books: "Women must avoid looking
people in the eye especially men who pass near them. This would be a mark

of incivility and impudence." While proper women were trained to avert their
eyes, the courtesan looked directly. Emile Zola in his novel Nana, published
in 1880 and whose main character was a courtesan, writes: "Nana looked all
the ladies in the face, and made a point of staring hard at the Comtesse
Sabine." In this context we should see the coy expression of Manet's Nana
(1877) who looks out directly at us while one of her gentleman friends,
clearly admiring Nana's physical assets, waits for her to prepare herself:

The inclusion of this other man serves to accentuate Nana's promiscuity, and
is undoubtedly the reason the painting was rejected for the Salon of 1877.
Manet's painting makes an interesting comparison to the eighteenth century
painting by Franois Boucher of Madame de Pompadour at her toilette. As
the courtesan to King Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour was one of the most
influential women of the period. Like Nana, Madame de Pompadour looks out
at us, but in the case of the Boucher painting we are the King of France as
suggested by the cameo of the king on her bracelet, and not as in the case
of Manet's paintings one of Nana's customers.
[for more on the gaze see the excerpts from Sturken
and Cartwright's discussion.]

Into the Looking Glass

The mirror is a frequent symbol in western painting. In
some contexts the mirror signifies the mimetic quality of painting. This is
apparently the significance of the mirror on the back wall of Velazquez's Las

Meninas. The mirror in other contexts takes on the significance of vanitas, or

the idea of the fleeting nature of human life and beauty. This is the
significance of the mirror held by the woman in Hans Baldung Grien's Three
Ages of Woman and Death (or Allegory of Earthly Vanity, 1509-11). But in
many other cases the mirror becomes a symbol of female beauty. Consider
the following selection of paintings where the mirror plays
a prominent role:

Notice how in the cases of the Titian, Rubens, and

Velazquez, the angle of the mirror and its reflections indicates that Venus is
looking at herself being looked at. We as the viewer of the painting take on
the role of the lover of Venus, and that Venus is taking pleasure at being
looked at by us. Like Mulvey's account of the gaze in modern film, it is
assumed that the constructed observer of these paintings is a heterosexual
male. Imagine that the constructed viewer of the paintings is female. Do the
paintings make sense? This illustrates well John Berger's famous formulation
in his Ways of Seeing:
One might simplify this by saying: men act and women
appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being
looked at. This determines not only most relations between
men and women but also the relation of women to
themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the
surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and
most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
Similarly, Linda Nead writes in her Female Nude (p. 11):
Woman looks are herself in the mirror, her identity is framed
by the abundance of images that define femininity. She is
framed --experiences herself as image or representation-- by
the edges of the mirror and then judges the boundaries of
her own form and carries out any necessary selfregulation....The formless matter of the female body has to
be contained within boundaries, conventions and poses.

Meaning of Munni: Munni is a word used for innocent cute young girl and it can also
be a name.
Zandu Balm line -you rub balm over you to relieve pain, so she is saying "im zandu
balm for you."
Lyrics of Munni Badnam Hui with English Translation
Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye
Munni ke gaal gulabi, nain sharabi, chaal nawabi re
Le zandu balm hui, darling tere liye
Munni got disgraced, for you darling,
Munni has pink cheeks, mesmerizing eyes, a royal walk,
(and I) became Zandu Balm, for you darling

Shilpa sa figure Bebo si adaa, Bebo si adaa

Hai mere jhatke mein filmi mazaa re filmi mazaa
Haye tu na jaane mere nakhre ve
Haye tu na jaane mere nakhre ve laakhon rupaiya udaa
Ve main taksaal hui, darling tere liye
Cinema hall hui, darling tere liye
Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye
I have Shilpa's figure and Bebo's(Kareena Kapoor) style
In my jerk there is pleasure of a movie,
You don't know my attitude,
Yeah, you don't know lacs of Rupees are spent on my attitude

that I became a mint(place where coins are made), for you darling
Became a Cinema hall, for you darling
Munni got disgraced, for you darling

O munni re, o munni re

Tera gali gali mein charcha re
Hai jama ishq da ishq da parcha re
Jama ishq da ishq da parcha re
O munni re
O munni, O munni,
You are the talk of the town
there are letters of love everywhere
letters of love everywhere
O munni
Kaise anaari se paala pada ji paala pada
Bina rupaiye ke aake khada mere peechay pada
Popat na jaane mere peechay woh Saifu
(haye haye maar hi daalogi kya)
Popat na jaane mere peechay Saifu se leke Lambu khada
Item yeh aam hui, darling tere liye
Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye
What a naive guy I have got to deal with
Without money he's here, following me,
The idiot doesn't know that Saif is behind me,
(hey, will you just kill us)
The idiot doesn't know that from Saif to the tall guy (Amitabh Bachchan)
all are behind me,
I've become a commoner from (a special) item, for you darling,
Munni got disgraced, for you darling
Hai tujh mein poori botal ka nasha, botal ka nasha
Kar de budhaape ko kar de jawan, re kar de jawan
Honthon pe gaali teri aankhein gulaali, haye
Tu item bomb hui, darling mere liye
Munni badnaam hui, darling mere liye
There is intoxication of a whole Bottle in you,
You make even old-age young, you make it young,
there's a swearword on your tongue and your eyes are (red) like gulaal
You became smokin hot, for me darling

Munni got infamous, for you darling.

Munni ke gaal gulabi, nain sharabi, chaal nawabi re

Le zandu balm hui, darling tere liye
Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye
Baat yeh aam hui, darling tere liye
Be-Hindustan hui, darling tere liye
Amiya se aam hui, darling mere liye
Le zandu balm hui, darling mere liye
Seenay mein hole hui, tere tere tere liye
Aale badnaam hui haanji haan tere liye
Le sareaam hui, darling tere liye
Darling tere liye
This thing became common, for you darling
Became out of India, for you darling
Became raw to ripe mango, for me darling
Became Zandu Balm, for me darling
Became a hole in the chest, for you
Come, I became infamous, yes, for you,
Became public, for you darling
for you darling

Search Results
1. [PDF]Women in popular music and the construction of Authenticity
www.newcastle.edu.au/Resources/Schools/.../JIGS/JIGSV4N1_63.pdf
by E Mayhew - 1999 - Cited by 3 - Related articles
of the musical author/composer; the female singer's role in popular music
and the ... concerning women's participation in popular music are negotiated
by fans ...
2. Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and ...
muse.jhu.edu Browse Music

by S Hawkins - 2002 - Cited by 1 - Related articles

Download PDF. Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and
Subjectivity (review). Stan Hawkins. From: Notes Volume 58, Number 4, June
2002 pp.
3. [PDF]Women, Ageing and Popular music - Ashgate
www.ashgate.com/pdf/.../Rock_On_Women_Ageing_and_Popular_Musi...
relationships between age, women and popular music: tempered with this, ...
(http://www.agingstudies.eu/file/lk8978449c-478f-1cd1.pdf). This new
collection.
4. [PDF]Discourses on Gender, Popular Music, and Social ... - GUPEA
https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/24290/.../gupea_2077_24290_1.p...
by C Bjrck - 2011 - Cited by 23 - Related articles
Keywords: space, spatiality, popular music, girls, women, gender, social
change ... explicit aim to increase the number of girls and women involved in
popular.

The Interesting Case of Yo Yo Honey Singh: Mainstream

Versus Sub-cultures

(Yo Yo Honey Singh)

Last year, in December, after the infamous Nirbhaya Rape case in Delhi, rapper-singer Yo Yo Honey
Singhs concert in a Gurgaon hotel was called off due to public protests. He was expected to peform there
on the New Year eve. The vulgar lyrics (that amounts to the claim of the singer/lyricist being a rapist and
so proud of it) in one of his songs had apparently spurred the public anger especially in a volatile

atmosphere charged with the middle class anxieties and fear regarding the safety of women in private
and public domains. Later the Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed the case against Yo Yo Honey
Singh citing that there was no objectionable content in his song and the version that had been available in
YouTube was a doctored version by some trouble shooters. I am no legal expert to challenge the court
verdict nor am a hyper moralist who would censure Honey Singh at least from my cultural sphere. In the
age of mechanical ways to concoct reality, which Baudrillard qualifies as simulacrum, anybody could
prove or disprove a reality simply by concocting for and against evidences based on the direction of the
case. What I want to argue in this write up is this one liner that came to my mind today while listening to
one of the Yo Yo Honey Singh songs in television. I said to myself: Yo Yo Honey Singh is not a disease.
He is a symptom.

I would like to argue my case, or rather the explanation of that one liner in a few different ways: First of all
I want to analyse the context in which Yo Yo Honey Singh and his songs become relevant or appealing to
the mass or in other words, how this rappers songs imply the general tendencies of our present mass
culture. Secondly, I would see how Yo Yo Honey Singh, the musician-singer-actor operates from within a
particular cultural context still transcends the boundaries and becomes an international star through the
very playing up of his own ambiguities. Thirdly, I would also like to go a bit in detail about why Yo Yo
Honey Singh does not represent a sub-culture or a regional culture but uses the traits of sub-culture to be
right in the middle of the popular culture. Before I launch myself into the thought process, I would like to
tell you that I am not a researcher in the music culture of the masses hence my observations are based
on my experience as a passive consumer of this mass culture. Besides, I am not a Yo Yo Honey Singh
fan or scholar. However, my analytical mind has been seeking him out for a long time, perhaps from the
first time I heard him a couple of years before in a local gym. The song was Lak 28 Kudi da. What
attracted me in this song was not the shrill voice of a generic Punjabi popular singer (exceptions being
Gurdeep Mann and Rabbi Shergil) but the ecstatic outburst of a female voice, nghaa.. it went like that.

(Shah Rukh Khan and Yo Yo Honey Singh in Lungi Dance still)

Wikipedia tells me Yo Yo Honey Singh is born in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, in 1983. He studied in Delhi and
later studied music in Trinity College, London. He lived in Delhi for some years till he found a posh
accommodation after success in a plush Gurgaon neighbourhood. He was a music arranger, then a DJ
and finally he realized his real strength was in rapping. Hirdesh Singh aka Yo Yo Honey Singh has been
around in the scene for the last ten years but he shot into fame, from the Punjabi DJs driven musical and
dance nights and the local gyms to the Bollywood mainstream during the last three years. Getting his
name associated with the mainstream Bollywood stars and music directors was the first step towards it. In
a carefully played strategy, Yo Yo Honey Singh, worked through the cut throat music industry in India and
reached the top of the charts and in the meanwhile had already bagged a few awards from Britain where
the Punjabi diaspora makes anything Punjabi more than a hit. The latest story of Yo Yo baiting was Vishal
Dadlanis (of Vishal-Shekhar music director duo) disowning of his Lungi Dance song in Chennai
Express, the Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone starrer directed by Rohit Shetty. Vishal who had
given music to the film and also sang the foot tapping number 1 2 3 4 Get on the Dance floor accused,
like many others did at that time, Yo Yo Honey Singh of misogyny (after his controversial Balaatkaar song)
and also said that Lungi Dance by the rapper was a later addition to the film without the knowledge or
consent of the music directors. It shows that the producers do not care much about the sentiments of the
crew members, when it comes to big bucks. 1 2 3 4 Get on the Dance floor which had been the
promotional song for Chennai Express in the initial days, was taken out from the promos and in its place
the Lungi Dance song was used. It was one clear victory for Yo Yo Honey Singh, because he knew for the
success of a movie, that too of the top star and top director of the Bollywood needed his voice. To
underline his success, the Lungi Dance, penned and crooned by Yo Yo Honey Singh himself was re-shot
and combination scenes between King Khan and the rapper were canned once again to add to the
original print. Today, this version (in an old jargon, this re-mixed version) is used when Lungi Dance is
given the airtime by the television channels and FM Radio channels.

(1 2 3 4 Get on the Dance floor still from Chennai Express)

I am not a sociologist however, at times as a writer it is imperative to use empirical data to argue a case
which is popular in nature. Today, when I was watching the Lungi Dance song in television I found that the
one and only King Khan was almost sidelined by the presence of Yo Yo Honey Singh. In the combination
shots, one has to really train the eyes to see King Khan on the left of the frame. I double checked it with
the frames where King Khan and Deepika Padukone come together. I experienced/felt/saw that in those
frames ones attention remained on the jumping and thumping King Khan rather than on the tall, beautiful
and rustically elegant presence of Deepika. Height of the heroine just did not affect the screen presence
of a comparatively short King Khan (interestingly, in Chennai Express, his diminutive physical stature is a

thing of self-ridicule against his contender for Deepikas hand, Thangabali, played by a six and half feet
tall actor, and again it is an irony played up against the belief that the Pathans are generally tall and
hefty). But in the scenes where he is seen with Yo Yo Honey Singh, King Khan just disappears. That
means Yo Yo Honey Singh has more screen presence than King Khan, which I would argue as a
temporary screen presence but a real one.

The particular screen presence of Yo Yo Honey Singh, which I qualify as temporal but real, comes from
our idea of seeing someone of the rappers reputation and talent within the given socio-cultural context,
which interestingly is out of the politico-legal surveillance (except when it is called for by public demand). I
would like to use another empirical data to see this presence in the right perspective. Todays Hindustan
Times newspaper has published so many reports about rape cases including the now hot Tarun Tejpal
scandal. From the first page to the last, a cursory counting revealed that the word sex is used around fifty
times. When a word, which has been considered as a taboo till now finds ample amount of print space, it
achieves a sort of neutrality where its connotations remain the same while the denotative meanings get
submerged in overuse. This is good and bad at the same time. When the word sex is used as we use the
words chair, table, car, cinema and so on, it gains a sort of normalcy and also a sort of acceptance in
the decent crowd. It is good as the issues related to gender could be talked freely without attaching any
kind of taboo to it. At the same time it is bad because, the overuse could kill its denotative meanings
therefore its possible nuances and reducing it to a normal thing therefore an offence related to it could
turn into a no-offence. Emma L.E Reeves, the scholar who has written the latest book, The Vagina also
speaks the same idea when she analyses the origin and use of the word cunt in different mediums and in
different periods. While she says that the use of the word cunt by woman with confidence it could be an
act of reclamation of the power and abuse of power related to the word for and by its rightful owners.

(King Khan and Rapper, Akon on a stage)

Yo Yo Honey Singh naturalizes the taboos. The social context in which he operates does not take too
much of an offence when he uses the taboo words liberally or expresses misogynistic ideas in his lyrics.
He finds the social context automatically becomes a cultural context (with occasional outrages) and vice
versa. Hence, he does not find it a problem to call a girl a bomb or puns that cut across age and

respectability of women. This social turning into cultural and vice versa must have become a necessary
evil for the mass cultures to monetize its product. Had it been the singles that got Yo Yo Honey Singh his
due attention and later the albums, despite the offensive lyrics he got his recognition from the cream of
the popular cultural industry in India, the Bollywood. It is interesting to notice that there has been rappers
adding to the regular crooning as a part of the changing complexion of the popular music for the last few
years. First time it appeared via Appache Indian and Hard Caur in Indian popular music in the new
millennium. The changing pace of the film narratives, mostly aiming at the impatient multiplex cine goers,
facilitated by the new age film makers who revel in taboo stories, fast cutting and unconventional songs,
made the mainstream film makers to follow the suit and the first major hit was from Ra-One of King Khan
where rapper the American Rapper Akon sang Tu meri chammak jhallo for the robotic Khan in the sci-fi
movie. It would be interesting to see that Akon (an alien singer with no Indian origin, unlike Appache
Indian and Hard Caur) singing for the robot not for the human Khan. Even before that the famous black
American Rapper, Snoop Dogg had crooned for Akshay Kumar in Singh is King. The alienation effect was
re-iterated there by the intercutting of the singers image with the actor himself or bringing both of them
together in the same frame but remember as a promotional strategy.

(Akshay Kumar and rapper Snoop Dogg in Singh is Kingg)

It is Akshay Kumar once again does the trick (interestingly not King Khan) in his Khiladi 786 with the
Himesh Reshamiya as the music director, in which we see in the Lonely lonely tere bin song, Akshay
Kumar, Himesh Reshamiya and Yo Yo Honey Singh coming in the same song to promote this comically
nasal song. Himesh Reshamiya here accepts the criticism against his voice as nasal and makes it a
virtue. This song becomes a vehicle of recognition for not only the music director but also for the rapper
and as we all know Akshykumar is not a singer but a lipper. But from the release of the movie in 2012
December, incidentally the same month the Nirbhaya issue came up, we see a gradual change in the
aggressive posture of Yo Yo Honey Singh. In Khiladi 786, he goes along with the loneliness of the hero
and the music director. But when it comes to Chennai Express, he plays up his aggression through the
character of King Khan. He says, Mere mood mein dance karega, kisi ke daddy ko na darage (I will sing
my own tune and I will not be afraid of anybodys father). He goes on to say that mere bare mein
Wikipedia mein pad lo or google kar lo. Here he asserts his own position than that of King Khan. One
need to google Khan to know more about him but it is always necessary to do a Wikipedia search on Yo
Yo Honey Sing. But what interests me is Yo Yo Honey Singhs own self-doubt when he plays with two
Titans in the field; King Khan and Thalaiva (Leader/God) Rajni Kant. The lyrics go like this This is the

tribute to Thalaiva. From King Khan and the one and only yo yo honey singh. I deliberately use the small
cases to write his name here. If you listen the song carefully you could hear the intentional emphasis.
While Thalaiva is pronounced as if it were a German word, the name King Khan is stated with the dignity
it demands but when he says, yo yo honey singh in a Punjabi accent, it sounds like an apology. But in
my view, this is a deliberate strategy taken by the singer as he knows that it is his autobiography than a
Tribute to Thalaiva. But through this down playing of his own name, he gets the endorsement of both
Thalaiva and King Khan.

(Himesh Reshamiya, Akshaykumar and Yo Yo Honey Singh)

Yo Yo Honey Singh continues with the same strategy in his next film Boss of Akshaykumar. When he
reaches Boss, the rapper knows for sure that he is in demand but he does not want to burn out within that
demand itself. So in the introduction song, he raps for Akshaykumar; Mein apni tariff karoon (I will say
some good words about myself), Upar wale se na darun (I dont even care God), Hum Haryana kelauta
king (I am the much liked king of Haryana), Bahut hai apni fan following (Yet I have a lot of fan
following), ... Akshaykumar ho bhai hai apna/bol to sahi, photo kara dun (Akshaykumar is our brother, tell
me shall I give an autograph). Here, Yo Yo Honey Singh (though he is not the lyricist here) gives an
answer to King Khan blow by blow but puts the words neatly into the mouth of the hero himself. It is also
autobiographical for him because while Akshay is a Punjabi from Old Delhi, Yo Yo Honey is Sing is a
Punjabi-Haryana boy who had been even exempted from a possible crime by the High Court there. This
clever play between autobiography and popular demand helps Yo Yo Honey Singh to establish his
temporal position where the male chauvinist could dare anything and anybody (including God) provided
money, muscle and law are on his side. Yo Yo Honey is accepted in such a cultural milieu. But in the
same movie, Yo Yo Honey Sing, in the song, Party All Night comes out as himself in the lyrics at least and
even boasts that the girls from Delhi and Haryana come for the party, they all carry Yo Yo Honey Singh
CD with them to scorch the dance floor. The party will continue for long and the catch line is aunty police
bula legi. Aunty will call police. That means he knows well that his words are offensive and his song and
DJying is going to disturb the neighbour and the Aunty is going to call the police. But still the party will
continue all night. Here one could see the disregard for an aunty who suddenly becomes a sexually

available woman but restrained by her age and her threat to call police is only a result of her jealous for
the young crowd who are out there to enjoy it. Also, he says that even if the Police come the party is
going to continue; means even Law cannot stop Yo Yo Honey Singh. In one of his recent private albums
he asks a young girl to leave the class room, tell lies to parents as she is staying out and even her
principal is a fan of Yo Yo Honey Singh.

(Yo Yo and his girls, from one of his private albums)

My second argument is that Yo Yo Honey Singh does not really represent a mass culture. His primary
audience is the Punjabi mundas and kudis who understand his language. To give a wider space to him, I
would say that it is the new North India dominated by the Hindi-Punjabi speaking, politically and
economically affluent classes that identify with Yo Yo Honey Singh. Even after studying in Trinity College,
London, his Wikipedia page says that he prefers to sing in Punjabi. That is a good stance that he has
taken but at the same time this identification with a particular language and a particular region makes this
singers presence a bit problematic. But he transcends this problem by aligning himself with the mass
culture dominated by the Punjabi-Pathan oriented aesthetics of Bollywood. He transcends his Punjabi
language and region by singing for the masses (multiplex going and bar hitting masses who think about
weekends, shopping brands and life style issues). So the Yo Yo Honey Singh phenomenon is a limited
phenomenon though his presence has given birth to so many local Yo Yos in various regions and in their
respective cultural industries. What makes his success in the industry ambiguous therefore interesting is
that he at once identifies with his Punjabi-ness (through language), the affluent middle class youths
aspirations (through his style, body language and lyrics) and an international community (through all kinds
of identifiable symbols of urbane cool, luxury life and a sort of borderless liminal spaces of bar interiors,
wide roads which could be in Arizona or in Amritsar, airport lounges, hotel rooms, dining halls and all sorts
of nowhere-s). This is what exactly the mainstream Bollywood flicks produce as the urban culture that
does not give any damn to God or Dad. Like Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) exclaims, Eh Gad, bad Dad.

(Legendary rappers, Biggie and Tupac Shakur)

I would like to end this article by turning my attention to the third and final argument which says that Yo Yo
Honey Singh does not belong to any sub culture but the mainstream culture. There are certain writers or
journalists who tend to position this singer as a representative of sub culture. Interestingly, they have
mistaken the use of expletives and crude expressions as the emblems of a sub-culture. This misreading
happens when we look at the history of rapping in the West, especially in the US. The Black music or the
black American music which has taken various forms and has gone through various evolutions, basically
had begun as chanting to pagan gods and later on wailing of the slaves. Their wailing and complaints
took the form of music and slowly it became the expression of a covert protest. Rapping stood against the
sweet, velvety music of the white, and during 1970s and 80s it got its evolution in black ghettos in Harlem
and elsewhere in the US. This music of protest, rebellion and even defiance did not mind using expletives
and cuss words when it spoke out the angst of the society. It did not speak the mainstream sentiments. It
in fact attacked the mainstream sentiments as expressed by the Hollywood movies. This music evolved in
ghettos, streets, barbar shops, chicken shops, drug dealing dens and brothels. This was the music of
rebellion. The music industry found the potential of this different form of expression and pitted the first two
exponents, Tupac Shakur and Biggie against each other and got them killed. While a parallel music
industry developed funded by big thugs and warlords, the white world brought out a white rapper in
Eminem and he brought rapping closer to the mainstream world in his movies like Seven Miles. He
mentored another black rapper 50 Cent and a generation of rappers like Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Ice T
and so on became mainstreamers in 1990s and 2000s. Rapping was a sub culture eventually co-opted by
the mainstream.

(Rapper, 50 Cent)

Yo Yo Honey Singh, except for his affinity for Punjabi language did not and does not stand for any subculture. The kind of sub culture that he portrays in his language and style are co-opted sub-cultures. For
example the hair style and the heavy chains worn around the neck, the finger rings and so on are the
stereotyping of the American Black culture. The black American wanted to show a sort of affluence even
using illegal means to gain them in order to counter dream the Big American Dream of getting richer and
richer. Even when they knew that they could not match up with the white chauvinistic world, they dreamt
affluence differently. And they used abusive language to drive in a few facts not only to their own
communities who primarily enjoyed rapping but to the white world. Yo Yo Honey sing just clones these
attitudes in the mainstream urban rich culture of Delhi, Haryana, Chandigarh and the satellite cities like
Gurgaon and Noida. His influences could go to Hoshiarpur, Amritsar and Ludhiana. Yo Yo Honey Singh
does not address any sub cultures in India as seen in the Dalit Movements or Queer Movements or
Environmental Movements or anything of that sort. He is a singer who has identified with the mainstream
using the effective tools of the sub cultures. This is how the cultural industries do away with sub cultures.
But such phenomena will keep coming up in regular intervals forcing even a lucky singer like Mika (who is
a staple ingredient in current Bollywood music even though he is a limited singer with a different voice) to
embrace Yo Yo Singh and getting a song recorded along with him. Thats why I say, Yo Yo Honey Sing is
a temporal phenomenon but a real one.

Feminist theory
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Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical or philosophical discourse. It aims to
understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's social roles, experience, interests,
and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such
as anthropology and sociology, communication, psychoanalysis,[1] economics, literature,education,
and philosophy.[2]
Feminist theory focuses on analyzing gender inequality. Themes explored in feminism
include discrimination, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression,patriarchy,[3]
[4]
stereotyping, art history[5] and contemporary art,[6][7] and aesthetics.[8][9]

Contents

1 History of feminist theory

2 Disciplines
o

2.1 Bodies

2.2 The Standard and Contemporary Sex and Gender System

2.3 Epistemologies
2.3.1 Love

2.4 Intersectionality

2.5 Language

2.6 Psychology
2.6.1 Psychoanalysis

2.7 Literary theory

2.8 Film theory

2.9 Art history

2.10 History

2.11 Geography

2.12 Philosophy

2.13 Sexology

2.14 Monosexual Paradigm

2.15 Politics

2.16 Economics

2.17 Legal theory

2.18 Communication theory

2.19 Feminist Theory of Design

3 See also

4 References

5 Books

6 External links

History of feminist theory[edit]

Feminist theories first emerged as early as 1792 in publications such as A Vindication of the Rights
of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, The Changing Woman,[10] Aint I a Woman,[11] Speech after
Arrest for Illegal Voting,[12] and so on. The Changing Woman is a Navajo Myth that gave credit to a
woman who, in the end, populated the world.[13] In 1851, Sojourner Truth addressed womens rights
issues through her publication, Aint I a Woman. Sojourner Truth addressed the issue of women
having limited rights due to men's flawed perception of women. Truth argued that if a woman of color
can perform tasks that were supposedly limited to men, then any woman of any color could perform
those same tasks. After her arrest for illegally voting, Susan B. Anthony gave a speech within court
in which she addressed the issues of language within the constitution documented in her publication,
Speech after Arrest for Illegal voting in 1872. Anthony questioned the authoritative principles of the
constitution and its male gendered language. She raised the question of why women are
accountable to be punished under law but they cannot use the law for their own protection (women
could not vote, own property, nor themselves in marriage). She also critiqued the constitution for its
male gendered language and questioned why women should have to abide by laws that do not
specify women.
Nancy Cott makes a distinction between modern feminism and its antecedents, particularly
the struggle for suffrage. In the United States she places the turning point in the decades before and
after women obtained the vote in 1920 (19101930). She argues that the prior woman
movement was primarily about woman as a universal entity, whereas over this 20-year period it
transformed itself into one primarily concerned with social differentiation, attentive to individuality and
diversity. New issues dealt more with woman's condition as a social construct, gender identity, and
relationships within and between genders. Politically this represented a shift from an ideological
alignment comfortable with the right, to one more radically associated with the left. [14]
Susan Kingsley Kent says that Freudian patriarchy was responsible for the diminished profile of
feminism in the inter-war years,[15] others such as Juliet Mitchell consider this to be overly simplistic
since Freudian theory is not wholly incompatible with feminism.[16] Some feminist scholarship shifted
away from the need to establish the origins offamily, and towards analyzing the process
of patriarchy.[17] In the immediate postwar period, Simone de Beauvoir stood in opposition to an
image of "the woman in the home". De Beauvoir provided an existentialist dimension to feminism
with the publication of Le Deuxime Sexe (The Second Sex) in 1949.[18] As the title implies, the
starting point is the implicit inferiority of women, and the first question de Beauvoir asks is "what is a
woman"?.[19] Woman she realizes is always perceived of as the "other", "she is defined and
differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her". In this book and her essay,
"Woman: Myth & Reality", de Beauvoir anticipates Betty Friedan in seeking to demythologise the
male concept of woman. "A myth invented by men to confine women to their oppressed state. For
women it is not a question of asserting themselves as women, but of becoming full-scale human

beings." "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman", or as Toril Moi puts it "a woman defines
herself through the way she lives her embodied situation in the world, or in other words, through the
way in which she makes something of what the world makes of her". Therefore, woman must regain
subject, to escape her defined role as "other", as a Cartesian point of departure.[20] In her examination
of myth, she appears as one who does not accept any special privileges for women. Ironically,
feminist philosophers have had to extract de Beauvoir herself from out of the shadow of Jean-Paul
Sartre to fully appreciate her.[21] While more philosopher and novelist than activist, she did sign one of
the Mouvement de Libration des Femmes manifestos.
The resurgence of feminist activism in the late 1960s was accompanied by an emerging literature of
what might be considered female associated issues, such as concerns for the earth and spirituality,
and environmentalism. This in turn created an atmosphere conducive to reigniting the study of and
debate on matricentricity, as a rejection ofdeterminism, such as Adrienne Rich[22] and Marilyn
French[23] while for socialist feminists like Evelyn Reed,[24] patriarchy held the properties of capitalism.
Feminist psychologists, such as Jean Baker Miller, sought to bring a feminist analysis to previous
psychological theories, proving that "there was nothing wrong with women, but rather with the way
modern culture viewed them."[25]
Elaine Showalter describes the development of Feminist theory as having a number of phases. The
first she calls "feminist critique" - where the feminist reader examines the ideologies behind literary
phenomena. The second Showalter calls "Gynocritics" - where the "woman is producer of textual
meaning" including "the psychodynamics of female creativity; linguistics and the problem of a female
language; the trajectory of the individual or collective female literary career and literary history". The
last phase she calls "gender theory" - where the "ideological inscription and the literary effects of
the sex/gender system" are explored."[26] This model has been criticized by Toril Moi who sees it as
an essentialist and deterministicmodel for female subjectivity. She also criticized it for not taking
account of the situation for women outside the west.[27] From the 1970s onwards, psychoanalytical
ideas that have been arising in the field of French feminism have gained a decisive influence on
feminist theory. Feminist psychoanalysis deconstructed the phallic hypotheses regarding the
Unconscious. Julia Kristeva, Bracha Ettinger and Luce Irigaray developed specific notions
concerning unconscious sexual difference, the feminine and motherhood, with wide implications for
film and literature analysis.[28]

Disciplines[edit]
There are a number of distinct feminist disciplines, in which experts in other areas apply feminist
techniques and principles to their own fields. Additionally, these are also debates which shape
feminist theory and they can be applied interchangeably in the arguments of feminist theorists.

Bodies[edit]
In western thought, the body has been historically associated solely with women, whereas men have
been associated with the mind. Susan Bordo, a modern feminist philosopher, in her writings
elaborates the dualisticnature of the mind/body connection by examining the early philosophies
of Aristotle, Hegel and Descartes, revealing how such distinguishing binaries such as spirit/matter

and male activity/female passivity have worked to solidify gender characteristics and categorization.
Bordo goes on to point out that while men have historically been associated with the intellect and the
mind or spirit, women have long been associated with the body, the subordinated, negatively imbued
term in the mind/body dichotomy.[29] The notion of the body (but not the mind) being associated with
women has served as a justification to deem women as property, objects, and exchangeable
commodities (among men). For example, womens bodies have been objectified throughout history
through the changing ideologies of fashion, diet, exercise programs, cosmetic surgery, childbearing,
etc. This contrasts to men's role as a moral agent, responsible for working or being allowed to fight in
bloody wars. The race and class of a woman can determine whether her body will be treated as
decoration and protected, which is associated with middle or upper-class womens bodies. On the
other hand, the other body is recognized for its use in labor and exploitation which is generally
associated with womens bodies in the working-class or with women of color. Second-wave feminist
activism has argued for reproductive rights and choice, womens health (movement), and lesbian
rights (movement) which are also associated with this Bodies debate.

The Standard and Contemporary Sex and Gender System[edit]

The standard sex and gender model consists of ideologies based on the sex and gender of every
individual and serve as "norms" for societal life. The model claims that the sex of a person is the
physical body that the individual is born with, strictly existing within a male/female dichotomy giving
importance to the genitals and the chromosomes which make the organism male or female. The
standard model defines gender as a social understanding/ideology that defines what behaviors,
actions, and appearances are proper for males and females living in society.
The contemporary sex and gender model corrects and broadens the horizons of the sex and gender
ideologies. It revises the ideology of sex in that an individual's sex is actually a social construct which
is not limited to either male or female. This can be seen by the Intersex Society of North
America which explains that, nature doesn't decide where the category of male ends and the
category of intersex begins, or where the category of intersex ends and the category of female
begins. Humans decide. Humans (today, typically doctors) decide how small a penis has to be, or
how unusual a combination of parts has to be, before it counts as intersex. [30] Therefore, sex is not a
biological/natural construct but a social one instead since, society and doctors decide on what it
means to be male, female, or intersex in terms of sex chromosomes and genitals, in addition to their
personal judgment on who or how one passes as a specific sex. The ideology of gender remains a
social construct but is not as strict and fixed. Instead, gender is easily malleable, and is forever
changing. One example of where the standard definition of gender alters with time happens to be
depicted in Sally Shuttleworths Female Circulation in which the, abasement of the woman, reducing
her from an active participant in the labor market to the passive bodily existence to be controlled by
male expertise is indicative of the ways in which the ideological deployment of gender roles operated
to facilitate and sustain the changing structure of familial and market relations in Victorian England.
[31]
In other words this quote shows what it meant growing up into the roles of a female (gender/roles)
changed from being a homemaker to being a working woman and then back to being passive and
inferior to males. In conclusion, the contemporary sex gender model is accurate because both sex
and gender are rightly seen as social constructs inclusive of the wide spectrum of sexes and
genders and in which nature and nurture are interconnected.

Epistemologies[edit]
The generation and production of knowledge has been an important part of feminist theory. This
debate proposes such questions as Are there womens ways of knowing and womens
knowledge?" And How does the knowledge women produce about themselves differ from that
produced by patriarchy? (Bartowski and Kolmar 2005, 45) Feminist theorists have also proposed
the feminist standpoint knowledge which attempts to replace the view from nowhere with the
model of knowing that expels the view from womens lives. (Bartowski and Kolmar 2005, 45). A
feminist approach to epistemology seeks to establish knowledge production from a woman's
perspective. It theorizes that from personal experience comes knowledge which helps each
individual look at things from a different insight.
Central to feminism is that women are systematically subordinated, and bad faith exists when
women surrender their agency to this subordination, e.g., acceptance of religious beliefs that a man
is the dominant party in a marriage by the will of God; Simone de Beauvoir labels such women
"mutilated" and "immanent".[32][33][34][35]
Love[edit]
A lifes project to be in love may result in bad faith; love is an example of bad faith given by both
Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (who were in love with each other). [36][37][38] A woman in love
may in bad faith allow herself to be subjugated by her lover, who has created a dependency of the
woman on him, allowed by the woman in bad faith.[39]

Intersectionality[edit]
Main article: Intersectionality
Intersectionality is the examination of various ways in which people are oppressed, based on the
relational web of dominating factors of race, sex, class, nation and sexual orientation.
Intersectionality describes the simultaneous, multiple, overlapping, and contradictory systems of
power that shape our lives and political options. While this theory can be applied to all people, and
more particularly all women, it is specifically mentioned and studied within the realms of black
feminism. Patricia Hill Collins, a leader in sociology and black feminism, argues that black women in
particular, have a unique perspective on the oppression of the world as unlike white women, they
face both racial and gender oppression simultaneously, among other factors. This debate raises the
issue of understanding the oppressive lives of women that are not only shaped by gender alone but
by other elements such as racism, classism, ageism, heterosexism, disableism etc.

Language[edit]
In this debate, women writers have addressed the issues of masculinized writing through male
gendered language that may not serve to accommodate the literary understanding of womens lives.
Such masculinized language that feminist theorists address is the use of, for example, God the
Father which is looked upon as a way of designating the sacred as solely men (or, in other words,
biblical language glorifies men through all of the masculine pronouns like he and him and
addressing God as a He). Feminist theorists attempt to reclaim and redefine women through re-

structuring language. For example, feminist theorists have used the term womyn instead of
women." Some feminist theorists find solace in changing titles of unisex jobs (for example, police
officer versus policeman or mail carrier versus mailman). Some feminist theorists have reclaimed
and redefined such words as dyke and bitch and others have invested redefining knowledge into
feminist dictionaries.

Psychology[edit]
Feminist psychology, is a form of psychology centered on societal structures and gender. Feminist
psychology critiques the fact that historically psychological research has been done from a male
perspective with the view that males are the norm. [40] Feminist psychology is oriented on the values
and principles of feminism. It incorporates gender and the ways women are affected by issues
resulting from it. Ethel Dench Puffer Howeswas one of the first women to enter the field of
psychology. She was the Executive Secretary of the National College Equal Suffrage League in
1914.
One major psychological theory, Relational-Cultural Theory, is based on the work of Jean Baker
Miller, who's book Toward a New Psychology of Women proposes that "growth-fostering
relationships are a central human necessity and that disconnections are the source of psychological
problems."[41] Inspired by Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique, and other feminist classics from the
1960s, Relational-Cultural Theory proposes that "isolation is one of the most damaging human
experiences and is best treated by reconnecting with other people," and that a therapist should
"foster an atmosphere of empathy and acceptance for the patient, even at the cost of the therapists
neutrality."[42] The theory is based on clinical observations and sought to prove that "there was
nothing wrong with women, but rather with the way modern culture viewed them." [25]
Psychoanalysis[edit]
See also: Psychoanalysis
See also: Feminism and the Oedipus complex
Psychoanalytic feminism and Feminist psychoanalysis are based on Freud and his psychoanalytic
theories, but they also supply an important critique of it. It maintains that gender is not biological but
is based on the psycho-sexual development of the individual, but also that sexual difference and
gender are different notions. Psychoanalytical feminists believe that gender inequality comes from
early childhood experiences, which lead men to believe themselves to be masculine, and women to
believe themselves feminine. It is further maintained that gender leads to a social system that is
dominated by males, which in turn influences the individual psycho-sexual development. As a
solution it was suggested by some to avoid the gender-specific structuring of the
society coeducation.[1][4] From the last 30 years of the 20th Century, the contemporary French
psychoanalytical theories concerning the feminine, that refer to sexual difference rather than to
gender, with psychoanalysts like Julia Kristeva,[43][43]Maud Mannoni, Luce Irigaray,[44][44] and Bracha
Ettinger,[45] have largely influenced not only feminist theory but also the understanding of the subject
in philosophy and the general field of psychoanalysis itself. [46][47] These French psychoanalysts are
mainly post-Lacanian. Other feminist psychoanalysts and feminist theorists whose contributions

have enriched the field through an engagement with psychoanalysis are Jessica Benjamin,
[48]
Jacqueline Rose,[49]

Girl with doll

Ranjana Khanna,[50] and Shoshana Felman.[51]

Literary theory[edit]
Main article: Feminist literary criticism
See also: Gynocriticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theories or politics. Its history has
been varied, from classic works of female authors such as George Eliot, Virginia Woolf,
[52]
and Margaret Fuller to recent theoretical work in women's studies and gender studies by "thirdwave" authors.[53]
In the most general, feminist literary criticism before the 1970s was concerned with the politics of
women's authorship and the representation of women's condition within literature. [53] Since the arrival
of more complex conceptions of gender and subjectivity, feminist literary criticism has taken a variety
of new routes. It has considered gender in the terms of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, as
part of the deconstruction of existing power relations.[53]

Film theory[edit]
Main article: Feminist film theory
Film theory is often dominated by feminism being played a major antagonist side of the film or made
fun of. Feminists have taken many different approaches to the analysis of cinema. These include
discussions of the function of women characters in particular film narratives or in particular genres,
such as film noir, where a female character can often be seen to embody a subversive sexuality that
is dangerous to males and is ultimately punished with death. [citation needed] In considering the way that
films are put together, many feminist film critics, such as Laura Mulvey, have pointed to the "male
gaze" that predominates in classical Hollywood film making. Through the use of various film

techniques, such as shot reverse shot, the viewers are led to align themselves with the point of view
of a male protagonist. Notably, women function as objects of this gaze far more often than as proxies
for the spectator.[54][55] Feminist film theory of the last twenty years is heavily influenced by the general
transformation in the field of aesthetics, including the new options of articulating thegaze, offered by
psychoanalytical French feminism, like the matrixial gaze.[56]

Art history[edit]
Linda Nochlin[57] and Griselda Pollock [58][59][60] are prominent art historians writing on contemporary and
modern artists and articulating Art history from a feminist perspective since the 1970s. Pollock works
with French psychoanalysis, and in particular with Kristeva's and Ettinger's theories, to offer new
insights into art history and contemporary art with special regard to questions of trauma and transgeneration memory in the works of women artists. Other prominent feminist art historians include:
Norma Broude and Mary Garrard; Amelia Jones; Mieke Bal; Carol Duncan; Lynda Nead; Lisa
Tickner; Tamar Garb; Hilary Robinson; Katy Deepwell.

History[edit]
Main article: Feminist history
Feminist history refers to the re-reading and re-interpretation of history from a feminist perspective. It
is not the same as the history of feminism, which outlines the origins and evolution of the feminist
movement. It also differs from women's history, which focuses on the role of women in historical
events. The goal of feminist history is to explore and illuminate the female viewpoint of history
through rediscovery of female writers, artists, philosophers, etc., in order to recover and demonstrate
the significance of women's voices and choices in the past.[61][62][63][64][65]

Geography[edit]
Main article: Feminist geography
Feminist geography is often considered part of a broader postmodern approach to the subject which
is not primarily concerned with the development of conceptual theory in itself but rather focuses on
the real experiences of individuals and groups in their own localities, upon the geographies that they
live in within their own communities. In addition to its analysis of the real world, it also critiques
existing geographical and social studies, arguing that academic traditions are delineated
by patriarchy, and that contemporary studies which do not confront the nature of previous work
reinforce the male bias of academic study.[66][67][68]

Philosophy[edit]
Main article: Feminist philosophy
The Feminist philosophy refers to a philosophy approached from a feminist perspective. Feminist
philosophy involves attempts to use methods of philosophy to further the cause of the feminist
movements, it also tries to criticize and/or reevaluate the ideas of traditional philosophy from within a
feminist view. This critique stems from the dichotomy Western philosophy has conjectured with
the mind and body phenomena.[69] There is no specific school for feminist philosophy like there has

been in regard to other theories. This means that Feminist philosophers can be found in the analytic
and continental traditions, and the different viewpoints taken on philosophical issues with those
traditions. Feminist philosophers also have many different viewpoints taken on philosophical issues
within those traditions. Feminist philosophers who are feminists can belong to many different
varieties of feminism. The writings of Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway and Avital
Ronell are the most significant psychoanalytically informed influences on contemporary feminist
philosophy.

Sexology[edit]
Main article: Feminist sexology
Feminist sexology is an offshoot of traditional studies of sexology that focuses on
the intersectionality of sex and gender in relation to the sexual lives of women. Feminist sexology
shares many principles with the wider field of sexology; in particular, it does not try to prescribe a
certain path or normality for women's sexuality, but only observe and note the different and varied
ways in which women express their sexuality. Looking at sexuality from a feminist point of view
creates connections between the different aspects of a person's sexual life.

Monosexual Paradigm[edit]
Main article: Monosexuality
Monosexual Paradigm is a term coined by Blasingame, a self-identified African American, bisexual
female. Blasingame used this term to address the lesbian and gay communities who turned a blind
eye to the dichotomy that oppressed bisexuals from both heterosexual and homosexual
communities. This oppression negatively affects the gay and lesbian communities more so than the
heterosexual community due to its contradictory exclusiveness of bisexuals. Blasingame argued that
in reality dichotomies are inaccurate to the representation of individuals because nothing is truly
black or white, straight or gay. Her main argument is that biphobia is the central message of two
roots; internalized heterosexism and racism. Internalized heterosexism is described in the
monosexual paradigm in which the binary states that you are either straight or gay and nothing in
between. Gays and lesbians accept this internalized heterosexism by morphing into the monosexial
paradigm and favoring single attraction and opposing attraction for both sexes. Blasingame
described this favoritism as an act of horizontal hostility, where oppressed groups fight amongst
themselves. Racism is described in the monosexual paradigm as a dichotomy where individuals are
either black or white, again nothing in between. The issue of racism comes into fruition in regards to
the bisexuals coming out process, where risks of coming out vary on a basis of anticipated
community reaction and also in regards to the norms among bisexual leadership, where class status
and race factor predominately over sexual orientation. [70]

Politics[edit]
Main article: Feminist political theory
Feminist political theory is a recently emerging field in political science focusing on gender and
feminist themes within the state, institutions and policies. It questions the "modern political theory,
dominated by universalistic liberalist thought, which claims indifference to gender or other identity
differences and has therefore taken its time to open up to such concerns". [71]

Economics[edit]
Main article: Feminist economics
Feminist economics broadly refers to a developing branch of economics that applies feminist
insights and critiques to economics. Research under this heading is often interdisciplinary, critical,
or heterodox. It encompasses debates about the relationship between feminism and economics on
many levels: from applying mainstream economic methods to under-researched "women's" areas, to
questioning how mainstream economics values the reproductive sector, to deeply philosophical
critiques of economic epistemology and methodology.[72]
One prominent issue that feminist economists investigate is how the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
does not adequately measure unpaid labor predominantly performed by women, such as
housework, childcare, and eldercare.[73] Feminist economists have also challenged and exposed the
rhetorical approach of mainstream economics.[74] They have made critiques of many basic
assumptions of mainstream economics, including theHomo economicus model.[75] In the
Houseworker's Handbook Betsy Warrior presents a cogent argument that the reproduction and
domestic labor of women form the foundation of economic survival; although, unremunerated and
not included in the GDP. Warrior also notes that the unacknowledged income of men from illegal
activities like arms, drugs and human trafficking, political graft, religious emollients and various other
undisclosed activities provide a rich revenue stream to men, which further invalidates GDP figures.
Somehow proponents of this theory operate under the assumption that women don't generate
revenue from illegal sources and men provide no domestic production. They have been instrumental
in creating alternative models, such as the Capability Approach and incorporating gender into the
analysis of economic data to affect policy. Marilyn Power suggests that feminist economic
methodology can be broken down into five categories.[76]

Legal theory[edit]
Main article: Feminist legal theory
Feminist legal theory is based on the feminist view that law's treatment of women in relation to men
has not been equal or fair. The goals of feminist legal theory, as defined by leading theorist Claire
Dalton, consist of understanding and exploring the female experience, figuring out if law and
institutions oppose females, and figuring out what changes can be committed to. This is to be
accomplished through studying the connections between the law and gender as well as applying
feminist analysis to concrete areas of law.[77][78][79]

Communication theory[edit]
Feminist communication theory has evolved over time and branches out in many directions. Early
theories focused on the way that gender influenced communication and many argued that language
was MAN made. This view of communication promoted a deficiency model asserting that
characteristics of speech associated with women were negative and that men set the standard for
competent interpersonal communication." These early theories also suggested that ethnicity, cultural
and economic backgrounds also needed to be addressed. They looked at how gender intersects
with other identity constructs, such as class, race, and sexuality. Feminist theorists, especially those
considered to be liberal feminists, began looking at issues of equality in education and employment.

Other theorists addressed political oratory and public discourse. The recovery project brought to light
many women orators who had been erased or ignored as significant contributors." Feminist
communication theorists also addressed how women were represented in the media and how the
media communicated ideology about women, gender, and feminism."[80][81]
Feminist communication theory also encompasses access to the public sphere, whose voices are
heard in that sphere, and the ways in which the field of communication studies has limited what is
regarded as essential to public discourse. The recognition of a full history of women orators
overlooked and disregarded by the field has effectively become an undertaking of recovery, as it
establishes and honors the existence of women in history and lauds the communication by these
historically significant contributors. This recovery effort, begun by Andrea Lundsford, Professor
of English and Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University and followed by
other feminist communication theorists also names women such as Aspasia, Diotima, and Christine
de Pisan, who were likely influential in rhetorical and communication traditions in classical and
medieval times, but who have been negated as serious contributors to the traditions. [82]
Feminist communication theorists are also concerned with attempting to explain the methods used
by those with power to prohibit women like Maria W. Stewart, Sarah Grimke, and Angelina Grimke,
and more recently,Ella Baker and Anita Hill, from achieving a voice in political discourse and
consequently being driven from the public sphere. Theorists in this vein are also interested in the
unique and significant techniques of communication employed by these women and others like them
to surmount some of the oppression they experienced.[83]

Feminist Theory of Design[edit]

Technical writers have concluded that visual language can convey facts and ideas clearer than
almost any other means of communication.[84] According to the feminist theory, "gender may be a
factor in how human beings represent reality."[84]
Men and women will construct different types of structures about the self, and, consequently, their
thought processes may diverge in content and form. This division depends on the self-concept,
which is an "important regulator of thoughts, feelings and actions" that "governs ones perception of
reality."[85]
With that being said, the self-concept has a significant effect on how men and women represent
reality in different ways.
Recently, "technical communicators terms such as visual rhetoric, visual language, and document
design indicate a new awareness of the importance of visual design. [84]
Deborah S. Bosley explores this new concept of the feminist theory of design [84] by conducting a
study on a collection of undergraduate males and females who were asked to illustrate a visual, on
paper, given to them in a text. Based on this study, she creates a feminist theory of design and
connects it to technical communicators.

In the results of the study, males used more angular illustrations, such as squares, rectangles and
arrows, which are interpreted as a direction moving away from or a moving toward, thus suggesting
more aggressive positions than rounded shapes, showing masculinity.
Females, on the other hand, used more curved visuals, such as circles, rounded containers and
bending pipes. Bosley takes into account that feminist theory offers insight into the relationship
between females and circles or rounded objects. According to Bosley, studies of women and
leadership indicate a preference for nonhierarchical work patterns (preferring a communication web
rather than a communication ladder). Bosley explains that circles and other rounded shapes, which
women chose to draw, are nonhierarchical and often used to represent inclusive, communal
relationships, confirming her results that womens visual designs do have an effect on their means of
communications.
Based on these conclusions, this feminist theory of design can go on to say that gender does play
a role in how humans represent reality.

Black Feminist Criminology

Black Feminist Criminology theory is a concept created by Hillary Potter in the 1990s and a bridge
that integrates Feminist theory with criminology. It is based on the integration of Black Feminist
theory and Critical Race theory.
For years, Black women were historically overlooked and disregarded in the study of crime and
criminology; however, with a new focus on Black feminism that sparked in the 1980s, Black feminists
began to contextualize their unique experiences and examine why the general status of Black
women in the criminal justice system was lacking in female specific approaches. [86] Potter explains
that because Black women usually have "limited access to adequate education and employment as
consequences of racism, sexism, and classism, they are often disadvantaged. This disadvantage
materializes into "poor responses by social service professionals and crime-processing agents to
Black women's interpersonal victimization.[87]" Most crime studies focused on White males/females
and Black males. Any results or conclusions targeted to Black males were usually assumed to be the
same situation for Black females. This was very problematic since Black males and Black females
differ in what they experience. For instance, economic deprivation, status equality between the
sexes, distinctive socialization patterns, racism, and sexism should all be taken into account
between Black males and Black females. The two will experience all of these factors differently;
therefore, it was crucial to resolve this dilemma.
Black Feminist Criminology is the solution to this problem. It takes four factors into account: One, it
observes the social structural oppression of Black women. Two, it recognizes the Black community
and its culture. Three, it looks at Black intimate and familial relations. And four, it looks at the Black
woman as an individual. These four factors will help distinguish Black women from Black males into
an accurate branch of learning in the criminal justice system.

Criticisms of Black Feminist Criminology

It has been said that Black Feminist Criminology is still in its "infancy stage;" therefore, there is little
discussion or studies that disprove it as an affective feminist perspective. In addition to its age, Black
Feminist Criminology has not actively accounted for role of religion and spirituality in Black women's
"experience with abuse.[88]"

See also[edit]

Amazon feminism

Anarcha-feminism

Antifeminism

Atheist feminism

Black Feminism

Chicana feminism

Christian feminism

Conflict theories

Conservative feminism

Cultural feminism

Difference feminism

Feminism and modern architecture

Fat feminism

Feminist anthropology

Feminist sociology

First-wave feminism

Fourth-wave feminism

French feminism

Gender equality

Gender studies

Global feminism

Hip-hop feminism

Individualist feminism

Islamic feminism

Jewish feminism

Lesbian feminism

Lipstick feminism

Liberal feminism

Material feminism

Marxist feminism

Networked feminism

Neofeminism

New feminism

Postcolonial feminism

Postmodern feminism

Post-structural feminism

Pro-feminism

Pro-life feminism

Radical feminism

Separatist feminism

Second-wave feminism

Sex-positive feminism

Sikh feminism

Socialist feminism

Standpoint feminism

State feminism

Structuralist feminism

Third-wave feminism

Transfeminism

Transnational feminism

Women's studies

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Books[edit]
Lexicon of Debates. Feminist Theory: A Reader. 2nd Ed. Edited by Kolmar, Wendy and Bartowski,
Frances. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. 42-60.

External links[edit]

Evolutionary Feminism

Feminist theory website (Center for Digital Discourse and Culture, Virginia Tech)

Feminist Theories and Anthropology by Heidi Armbruster

[3] The Radical Women Manifesto: Socialist Feminist Theory, Program and Organizational
Structure (Seattle: Red Letter Press, 2001)

Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University

Feminist Theory Papers, Brown University

The Feminist eZine - An Archive of Historical Feminist Articles

[4] Women, Poverty, and Economics- Facts and Figures

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