Films from class

Today I am going to take a look at two of the films that have been mentioned in class this semester and give a short summary of them as well as discuss how they relate to gender and sexuality and the topics we discussed in class.

                The first film I will discuss today is Pariah. It is an independent American film that deals with a young girl named Alike and how she is growing up and struggling to come to terms with her sexuality. She is quietly a lesbian and tries to deal with this. Alike talks to her openly lesbian best friend Laura to help her cope with her newly discovered sexuality. During the course of the film her parents find out about her sexuality and introduce her to a girl named Bina and she and Alike become friends. This film deals greatly with sexuality and coming to terms with ones sexual preferences.

                The next film I will discuss is the film Cabaret. This film focuses on an American  singer Sally Bowles who performs at a night club in Berlin and Brian Roberts an Englishman who is visiting the town.  In the beginning of the film Sally hits on Brian and assumes he is gay when he resists. Sally and Brian become friends and eventually make love and Brian says that maybe he was unable to make love before because the other women he had been with were not the right women. Later Sally and Brian meet and  befriend Max von Heune and he invites the two to his estate for the weekend and makes love to each of them separately. Sally and Brian get in a fight over this but Max ends up leaving them money. Sally later finds out she is pregnant and is unsure if it is Brian’s or Max’s child and even though Brian promises to take care of Sally and the baby Sally ends up aborting the baby and Brian returns home while Sally stays in Berlin.

-Jason

“Migrant Mother"

Photography Post #5

Alysha Reed

Women In Photography

Photography Post # 4
Alysha Reed

Dorothea Lange is the most prominent, well-known woman in the history of photography. Lange received an education for photography at Colombia University and took her career to San Francisco where she ran a successful studio. The start of The Great Depression opened a door for Lange’s career to take a huge turn. She began to turn her focus to the streets as opposed to her studio. One of her most powerful pieces, “Migrant Mother", was captured during the Great Depression. Her photo, “Migrant Mother”, is evidence that photos can get powerful messages across to the audience. By simply looking at the photo, the viewer can feel the disparity and pain of the woman and children depicted. There is no need for a caption explaining what the middle-aged woman and her children had been experiencing at the time. Without the details explained, Lange’s photograph taps into the audience’s ethos and sends a powerful message.


Despite being a woman, Dorothea Lange was able to take her talents and make a name for herself not only within her era, but enough to become a historical figure.

Works Cited

Vaughn, Stephen L. Encyclopedia of American Journalism. 254. 2008. 17 Feb. 2012.

Jersey, Bill, Nancy Hale, Elizabeth Partridge, and Meg Partridge. “Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life.” The Journal of American History. 82 (1995). http://www.jstor.org/stable/2945291. 17 Feb. 2012.

Graphic Design Post #2

Graphic Design 

Post #2

          This is a very interesting article about retouching images and pop culture. It shows how retouching has become such an overused tool lately in our society. It makes images of "famous" people appear to be perfect and it makes their audiences want to be as "sexually attractive" as they are, which is an impossible feat. Retouching displays "fake" images of people and unrealistic desires for people who do not look like them.

http://www.davidairey.com/sex-lies-and-photoshop/

-- Sammy McCracken

Intorduction and Graphic Design/Sexual Identity

Graphic Design 

Post #1

My name is Samantha McCracken and I will be covering the topic of graphic design in relation to gender and sexuality. First off, graphic design is a digital art form that has become increasingly popular over the past decade. As technology becomes more and more advanced, so does graphic design. A common definition for graphic design is images and pictures that are created and put with words or a text of some kind. Examples of graphic design can be seen in advertisements and posters.

Graphic design and sex is an interesting topic. The way males and females create graphics in the work place differs quite a bit. Which, honestly, isn’t too surprising as male and female minds are quite different. A fellow blogger posted a blog on the most common differences between male and female graphic designers.

One commonality among female designers is their organization and punctuality. Females tend to be more organized than males; their desks are less cluttered, the files on their computers are all in organized folders, their calendars are well marked and presented easily, etc. They also tend to be more punctual, meaning they will wrap up a project as far in advance as possible and get it in on time even if it kills them. A common downside to female graphic designers is that they “tend to panic” (“Graphic Design Blog”).

A commonality among men seems to be that they are more “cool-headed” than women tend to be. The author of this blog stated this opinion because women also tend to take criticism much harder than men do. Men can push through a stressful project with clients yelling in their ears much easier than women do. Men also seem to be more easily distracted on the job. The author states that he usually has many other browser windows open on his computer when he is working on a project.

Overall, there are pros and cons to having men and women graphic designers and each seems to have their own unique working style – unique to their sex.

Works Cited

"Gender affects a Graphic Design Project – Is HE right or is SHE wrong?." Graphic Design Blog. 29 MAR 2011. Web. 6 Feb. 2012. <http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/gender-affects-graphic-design-project/>.

Film Introduction

Film is a very prominent and important form of visual art in today’s modern world. My contributions to this blog will focus on films as an art form and how it portrays gender and sexuality within our society. I will focus mainly on independent films because they tend to address these issues more frequently but I will also be addressing commercial films and how mainstream Hollywood dictates and provides commentary on what gender and sexuality norms are and what they are not. I will be doing my own research to find examples of this as well as analyze those which are mentioned in class. I hope I am able to bring these issues to light through my analysis. Enjoy the blog and keep an eye out for more posts soon.

-Jason

Emma Watson’s sexuality captured

Photography Post #3

Alysha Reed

Photographs can capture the essence of an individual person.  In this photo of Emma Watson, along with the quote by her, sums up the essence of who Watson is as a person.  Clearly from the photograph anyone can look and see a girl with short hair.  However, it is much more than that and makes you stop and think.   The silence of the photograph with the voice of Watson, evokes deep thought.

  Typically women are thought to have long flowing hair and men are seen as having very short trimmed locks.  By defying that tiny aspect that society evokes in the minds of nearly every human being, Watson is standing up for who she is rather than conforming to the way in which society feels she should appear based upon her gender.  

Iggy Pop

Photography Post #2

Alysha Reed

Iggy Pop is easily considered the inventor of punk rock.  Although this is the visual arts blog, I wanted to give some background on Iggy Pop since his picture lends a hand to our blog.  Iggy Pop is a man that presents himself in the way that the typical burly muscular man is “suppose to”.  In a sense Iggy Pop fits the stereotypical man category.  The photographer of the below photo, Mikael Jansson, captures the essence of Iggy Pop, the stereotypical man, stepping into the realm of the stereotypical woman.  Mikael Jansson enjoys telling stories in his photographs and in this particular photo of Iggy Pop the viewer can easily see the story behind it.  This man is defying the boundaries society has placed upon gender.  Men are not supposed to wear dresses and carry Lady Dior tote bags.  Men are intended to wear pants and appear tough rather than dainty. 

This particular photo has an interesting take on the boundaries of society.   By placing a very clear, no questions about it, man in a dress it causes the viewers of the photo to stop and take a moment to think about the story being told by the photo, or rather the message it is conveying. 

"The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But, you have to SEE."
-Ernst Haas

Check out this photographer’s other work: http://mikael.carbonmade.com/

Photography Introduction

Photography Post #1

Alysha Reed

With the art of photography I do not plan to be extremely rigid with the definition of what is and is not considered photography.  Art is a very free flowing world; therefore I do not see a need to constrain it.  I consider photography to be any moment in time captured by a device (camera) and reproduced in the two-dimensional form of being printed onto paper.   The subject matter is not relevant in the definition of photography as visual art, but for our purposes my goal is to use academic articles, websites, and newspapers, along with photographs, to explore how gender and sexuality play a role in photography. 

Starting off with male/female graphics!

For my first post I felt it would be helpful to post some examples of what graphic design. I also wanted to showcase how gender and sex really affects how graphics are made.

Here is a link to a graphic design blog which features graphics made by male and female artists.

It's very interesting to note the differences between the male and female side. The female artwork has more color and more curvature to the pictures and text. The male artwork features mostly blacks, whites and shades of red and also has a more blocky and stiff style.

Sculpture - Post #1

What Constitutes as Sculpture?

Why Sculpture?

Through the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Sculpture is more than painting. It is greater to raise the dead to life than to create phantoms that seem to live.”

Sculpture is, according to Marriam-Webster’s online dictionary, “a three-dimensional work of art.”

So what is sculpture? Well, to start, sculpture is a little bit of everything. It’s a three-dimensional piece of visual art that allows the work to come to life. Take “The Thinker” by Auguste Rodin, for example. Rodin sculpted this work of art in 1902, during a time when he begin to focus more on themes of masculinity and femininity. So not only is this a three-dimensional work of art, but it holds special meaning and in Longfellow’s words: “raise[s] the dead to life.” Sculpture allows artists, and the average citizen alike, to lift their beliefs to a higher level and explore societal norms.

When it comes to sculpture, I will be investigating various mediums used for sculpture around the world. These include, but are not limited to: clay, wood, stone, glass, and metal. Through the exploration of these various mediums of sculpture, it will be easy to compare various cultures' views on gender and sexuality and how these cultures portray their beliefs through sculpture.

The main reason I chose to delve into the world of sculpture is because of my mother and her adventures in Kenya, Africa during her pre-teen years. She lived there for about two years with her immediate family (her mother, father, and four brothers) and then moved back home for high school. Therefore, I have grown up around sculptures and visual art that my mother, and grandmother, brought back from their time in Kenya. The sculptures themselves, mainly wooden ones, always fascinated me because even as a child I knew there was some deeper meaning behind them. Today, through this blog and personal research, I will be able to dive into the world I always knew existed but never truly knew much about—the world of sculpture as it pertains to gender and sexuality!

Kristen

Works Cited

"Rodin, Auguste." Info:Main Page - New World Encyclopedia. 4 Oct. 2008. Web. 01 Feb. 2012. <http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Auguste_Rodin>.

"Sculpture - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary." Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. Web. 01 Feb. 2012. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sculpture>.

"Sculpture." ModernSculpture.com - Contemporary & Modern Art. Web. 31 Jan. 2012. <http://www.modernsculpture.com/sculpture.htm>.

"The Thinker." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 26 Jan. 2012. Web. 01 Feb. 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker.