pulse of the class

This class definitely helped me understand sexuality and gender in another different perspective. Gender and sexuality are really something that we will see and experience in our life everyday, but people don’t really pay attention to the subjects. People often-think gender only includes female and male, and there are certain rule to be a man and woman. The readings from this class really led me to pay attention to gender and sexuality in real life. For example, when I watch TV now, I am always looing for evidence that support what I learned in class, such as stereotyping women’s body in advertisements and how usually media portrays masculinity and femininity in movie and TV shows. The readings along with the screening in class also give me so much information that is new to me. I think because our social norms we can be blinded when it comes to the topic gender. Ma Vie En is a great example and it is extremely heart breaking, to see someone like Ludovic fighting against the world just to be himself. This is when I realized just like me (before I learned anything from the class) many people don’t have knowledge about gender identity and they judge people from what they think is right or wrong. That is why I think the words should be spread in our society so less people will suffer from the harms of our social norms and stereotypes.

     The most engaging reading for me is “visual pleasure and Narrative cinema” by Laura Mulvey, Laura explained some terms that I think are very true about cinema or perhaps just media in general. The concept is films depend on visual pleasure such as scopophilia and narcissism.  When we think about it, we really enjoy watching other people’s story and sometimes imagine ourselves to be them. I think her concepts are very important when it comes to the relationship between audience and the film. She also mentioned about how women are usually passive objects while men are active subject. Although I think this concept is not as obvious in today’s media, but it definitely applies to the old films.

    The most difficult reading will be “ Imitation and gender insubordination” by Judith butler.although David Gauntlett  already summarized Butler’s main concepts, it still seems confusing. Such as identity and performance, I have to go back and forth from the two reading to understand