Week 6- Gender & Identity

The Tiger Who Came to Tea 

What I found interesting when we were asked to analyse this story was all the different and 'deep' interpretations people had of the story. Some argued it had sexist undertones, the tiger was actually a 'bad' figure, a metaphor for something...the list could go on. However, when I read this story, I simply see a children's book that serves to elevate children's imagination with its fantasy element. I think that it is an innocent story with no hidden meanings, it is there to entertain children, it's a fun and imaginative story, nothing more. Even the author herself reveals that there are no deep hidden meanings in it: 

Magazine Cover Analysis

GQ Magazine

• Joe Biden- president = POWERFUL, AUTHORITATIVE
• pose is relaxed? Shows a friendly side possibly? 
• Masculine- sharply dressed in a suit
• USA - colours in fonts represent the American flag  
• Professional photoshoot- well thought out, background of the whitehouse = depicts the person in the picture. Edited, airbrushed 
• contents are based on the edition of the magazine, in this case PRESIDENTIAL. However includes other things like fashion and story insights etc. 

Cosmopolitan 

• Actress is the cover 'star'- magazine features a section on her
• posed, professional photoshoot again, however no complex background. Focus is on the actress
• make-up, air-brushed, edited
• taster of the content such as- Lifestyle, fashion, 'hacks' (not necessarily targeted to one gender) 
  
• Bright orange is eye-catching , colours create a bright cover = more likely to catch your eye on the shelf = stand out 

These magazines contents are viewed in society as appealing to one gender only, GQ for men and Cosmo for women. I don't see how this is a problem, I think that having a mens magazine and a womens magazine is great, and if I found something I wanted to read in a mens magazine, nothing is stopping me from picking it up and reading it, similarly there's nothing stopping a man from picking up a 'womens' magazine and reading it. We all like different things, women like different things to men and vice versa, sometimes we like the same things, sometimes what someone likes as a girl or what someone likes as a boy is considered strange in societies view. All of these things are down to personal preference. 

A magazine has a target audience it needs to appeal to in terms of content, it doesn't necessarily have to be in terms of gender. The only reason we view them as being targeted towards a specific gender is because generally women will want to look at hair, fashion and makeup tips more than men will want to look at something like that. If the magazine wasn't selling well, I'm sure it would change its content, however it has been like this for years which shows that its general audience is satisfied with it. 

Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

Mulvey’s essay seems to be heavily influenced by the theories of Freud (throwback to A-LEVEL) and Lacan. From what I can gather the essay explains how women are always placed as a position of ‘desire’ in classical Hollywood cinema; going further to say that the classic Hollywood cinema more-or-less always assumes that the viewer is male. This brings us the idea of the male gaze and how it is prevalent throughout cinematic history.
 
The essay explores how filming strategies in Hollywood cinema are a result of the male-centric Hollywood, eg. Women as objects of desire, close shots of the legs, women viewed in an erotic way, fetishism etc. She argues that this provides a ‘narrative pleasure’ for men and men alone.
I was rather confused by this essay to begin with, however towards the end I kinda got it all. It is true that women are usually hyper-sexualised in film, and if they do not reach the societal norms of what is considered sexual and attractive, they are often the ‘joke’ of the film. It is evident from this essay that many women are treated merely as objects for example within the essay the notion of female characters are first coded as castrated, or merely as those that do not possess the male sex organ is explored. Women are merely an object of eroticism for the male characters.