Off the Wall

Off the wall is what I think this class was for me. I was so busy with other stuff that I forgot to do the last post for this class, and though I'm not getting credit for this one I think it's still worth the typing.

Off the wall is also what qualifies the art of Doze Green, graffiti writer and artist, whose work I'm linking below - I mentioned his art in class, and how crazy he is. The music to this short video piece is amazing as well, and the intricacy of his work is amazing.

This class was amazing too! I was excited to take this course merely based on its title and description but fell in love with it immediately after the first week of classes - it had everything I liked, visual culture, critique, feminist and queer theory. I was afraid that the readings would be dry, but I thought all the readings were fantastic and on point, and the way Cathy connected the visual culture to these readings was perfect. I have only encountered few instructors who are as approachable and delightful as Cathy, but also as knowledgeable as she is - and not condescending at that! My brain was stimulated on a daily basis and I felt very at ease in the class - sorry if I talked too much.

I thought the topics covered were great and diverse, I liked that we included disability studies and current topics such as the Body Exhibit because it is really important to me to relate theory and critique with current aspects of society as we live it. I also really liked that Cathy brought extra material to class to complement the lectures, which incited me more to share anecdotes and thoughts to add on to the discussions. My favorite set of readings where those dealing with Abu Ghraib, particularly those written by Puar Jasbir, and the whole concept of biopower knocked me off my feet and made me even more of a fan of Foucault.

Over all this class has taught how to critically look at the visual culture that surrounds me even outside of my field of expertise, which is film and photography. If I was skeptical of TV, advertisement and art before...imagine now. I wished everybody had to take classes like this because visual culture is such a part of our lives that not critiquing it is just nonsensical. This class is a tool to critically position yourself in your environment to understand how it affects you not just theoretically, but concretely.

So, this video is just for fun and I'm sharing it because I think it's amazing, not because it ties in to the discussions we had per se. Enjoy and have a wonderful break!

Portrayal of Disability in Fashion

Just thought this video was fascinating.

http://tomandlorenzo2.blogspot.com/2010/12/marion-cotillard-for-lady-dior-bag.html

Anne Friedberg and the Virtual Window

Thank you all for a wonderful semester and an absolutely fantastic set of conversations about the politics of visuality, bodies, and culture! You all have raised brilliant questions and made fabulous connections across texts, and the course as a whole was a smashing success in my opinion, thanks to you all.

A few of you have asked about the website we looked at for the last class. We looked at Anne Friedberg's Virtual Window website, which accompanies her book The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (MIT Press, 2009). If you're interested in the emergence of modern forms of looking and spectacle, and about how the visual architecture of the shopping mall, movie theater, car, and home theater system inform one another, check out her work. It's great.

I hope you all continue the conversations we've started with regards to the pleasures and perils of visual culture--I know I will. Thank you all.

wrapping it up- no xmas pun intended :)

Firstly, this course has been a huge eye-opener for me when it comes to viewing all visual culture. I never once took the time to think about the limitations of a picture which is supposed to be worth a thousand words. I never consider the other million words that were unspoken based on the photographers framing and simply the limitations of technology. I recall a classroom discussion where one person raised the concern of not only the photographer having sole discretion when it came to what was included and excluded in a frame, but also how the camera itself limits the photo. One shot can only include so many details—the reality is something is being excluded despite how many times you zoom out. I especially love this when considering the Elahi Hasam and the “tracking transience” site that he created. This was amazing how he chose to document his every move through photography and gps applications on his phone. He chose to include only portions of his body that provided details of his location and what he was doing—as specific as what meal he was having. The interesting aspect of this was that he excluded his face in all of the photos. This eye and face being captured in a photo in my opinion seemed to be a key factor in aligning a body to humanity.
I honestly had mixed emotions when it came to our section on fetal visual culture and how these bodies are framed. I thought about my original thoughts to only find the humanistic aspect of a body when it comes to seeing the face and connecting with the eyes of a body in a photo. Well looking back at the popular autonomous fetus that is often associated with abortion or pregnancies I barely focus on the face at all. I look at a fetus and associate it to “the future” of humankind. So when I consider this aspect of why the human fetus is of high importance- it has nothing to do with the individual, it associates more with the “ideals” of a human. So although these fetus’s hold importance, their autonomous framing align them with being needy and disabled- calling adults to speak up for them because they cannot stand for themselves. This was framing that I never considered. The sentiment that I felt for these fetuses or babies in visual culture had absolutely nothing to do with the individual baby, but more because my society has conditioned me to feel remorseful for the future of humankind. This was something that I never considered and I found most provocative in this class. I never realized how a fetus was always so conveniently lit up and floating in a sac of liquid. I never realized how invaluable a pregnancy was if a baby wasn’t exposed and the focus was placed on the mother. This was extremely interesting to me because prior to this class I never considered how biased visual culture was.
Another visual that I absolutely loved was the photo project that Ken Gonazalez-Day produced. It was so interesting how when something is extracted from a photo you find other things to focus on- or the meaning of the photo is completely different. In this case it allows for the audience member to frame the photo without outside influences- unless there is a caption associated with it. The photo that stood out to me in this photo series was the erased lynching photo. How amazing a photo changes when the center of attention is deleted.
I learned tons in this class- forcing me to be more critical about what is put in front of me. This obviously makes me more skeptical and negative when it comes to everything so this newfound lens is both hindering and helpful.

Alas, it ends.

I joined the class late and was terrified that, since I had only recently begun (read: not completed) Introduction to Feminist Theory that I was going to be far behind the intellectual level of my classmates. I will admit that the class holds many minds which one may feel intimidated by, but the intimate nature of the class made me feel welcomed regardless. I also found that I was not alone in my duel enrollment.

The first affect that this class had on me was a profound awareness of how I present me body (or how my body is presented). If I wear stripes am I naming myself a deviant of sorts? Is it wrong to wear a “harem” pant? Most of all, the course gave me the tools to begin critiquing daily occurrences in my life on a deeper level. Am I being monitored? When am I being monitored? How is my body perceived by others? While the class certainly brought up more questions than answers, I believe that to be the sign of a worthwhile course. My favorite parts of the course were when we discussed disability, performing the body, organ transplantation, and freak discourse.

The section on disability made me take a look at how I interact with specific people with disabilities. A few years ago I had a small crush on a girl who had a deformed hand. I was too nervous to tell her how interesting her thoughts were…etc. because I was paranoid that she would be paranoid that I was staring at her hand…So instead of getting to know her like the perfectly wonderful human being she was, I ignored her so that I wouldn’t be perceived as being offensive…thereby being offensive. So frequently society imagines disabled people as not having a voice—simply being in need of protection or guidance to what is normal. We are afraid of personalities which can talk back to us—which can challenge our traditional views that we have become so comfortable living in.

Which bring us (out of order, but on topic nonetheless) to freak discourse. It was incredibly fascinating to see how abnormal bodies have been displayed as spectacle. What interested me most here was a return to the idea of looking for the “tell.” As I went through the book of historical medical photographs from the Mutter museum, I felt that instead of looking for the gender tell (where can I find proof that this body is male while appearing womanly or female while appearing manly…etc) I was asked to look (frequently not very hard) for the disease tell. What makes this body strange or queer? What is wrong with this body? What ails this body? Has a doctor fixed it? Is it fixable? Do we now have the technology it would take to cure this abnormal body and allow it to live normally?

This class has also made me acutely aware of how much power and trust society gives to the hospital and medical doctors in general. Critiquing the UPMC website was particularly interesting for me because my dad has worked there my entire life and I have always conflated the two. I perhaps gave the system even more power and trust as in some way it represented him. Through critiquing I was both pleasantly surprised and utterly horrified at how easy it was to pick apart the donor body-based rhetoric used on the website.

Finally, performing the body needs to be mentioned. It was not my favorite unit, but it contains my favorite cultural production. The piece, Untitled, choreographed and danced by Bill T. Jones was spectacular. I still get chills thinking about it.

It has been a wonderful course and has made me incredibly excited to further my studies.

What is a body?

On the first day of class, we were asked a seemingly simple question: what is a body? In my notebook I wrote, “A body is a vessel, made of physical matter (flesh, bone, blood) that carries you from place to place.” How scholarly? I thought. I fashioned myself a modern day Merleau-Ponty. I was a master of the body and it was only August. Then I read the first paragraph from our first assignment in, “Why the Body?” and “The Body in the Visual Field,” by Dani Cavallaro. It went as so: “In recent years, the body has been radically rethought by both science and philosophy. We can no longer view the body as a natural object. The body is actually a cultural representation constructed through various media, especially language. Societies produce ideals of the proper body in order to define their identities. Yet time and again, the body’s boundaries turn out to be uncertain.” (Cavallaro) Oh rats! I thought. What a fool I had been. Sure, my body was a vessel made of flesh, bone, and blood, but had it really only carried me to write that “surface-deep” response to a question I found so easy? I thought of bodies only as a physical thing, but I disregarded the way in which we construct different physical bodies based on race, gender, disabilities. I also failed to think about the way in which we view bodies: face to face, through photos, and film. After this realization, I had two options. 1) I could burn my notebook scribbled with un-thoughtful prose. 2) I could continue on down the rabbit hole of corporal uncertainty. Red pill, blue pill, red pill blue pill? My mom reminded me this course was a requirement for graduation, so I took the blue pill. And down I went.

If anything, this class has reminded me to take a closer look into things we view as “everyday, normal, mundane, etc.” Actually, I would argue that this critique was the most provocative thing about the course. Sure we viewed shocking pictures, discoveries, and theories, however the most shocking discussions surrounded things we take for granted, like gendered bathrooms, sidewalks, and bodies. I had to view bodies (my body) in a different way than before.

The texts I found most intriguing were the Threadbared blogs by Mimi Thi Nguyen and Minh-ha T. Pham. The blogs were theory driven, and yet culturally relatable. I found myself connecting to these texts in particular, because I was doing a similar exercise each week on this site. The visual cultural production I was drawn to the most was, “Children of Men.” Besides loving post-apocalyptic narratives, the class discussion surround the movie was awesome. I loved connecting it to the text with the child as “hope” and I loved hearing my classmates discuss the technical film aspects in relation to theory.

Each week I was surprisingly intrigued by the topics. I was surprised, because usually I get bored with at least one weekly topic. However, if I had to add a topic to a course on “bodies,” I would probably choose one on "zombie bodies." Call me biased (because I love the new AMC show, “The Walking Dead,” and again I have an affinity for post-apocalyptic narratives) however the discourse around the “zombie body” can bring up discussions surrounding cultural reactions to devalued bodies, bodies that are both living/dead, etc. But guess what? Since this course allowed us to draw on our own cultural productions, I ended up making my own “zombie body” discussion in a past blog. That’s what I think I liked most about this class, the way in which we were encouraged to bring in outside productions of our choosing. It made the (at times difficult to understand) theory come to life—pardon my zombie rhetoric.

I was not only pleased to read my classmate’s brilliant connections on this blog, but I feel honored I was able to listen to my classmate’s brilliant connections during class. Even though many of the topics were political, loaded, and controversial, the “small class” made discussions comfortable and informative. This was the smallest class I have ever been in and it honestly made me wonder why I chose a large public school rather than a small liberal arts institution. There’s something extraordinary to be said about a learning environment where a small number of students can communicate amongst each other and their professor, while being able to listen- and more importantly, feeling that they have been listened to. Quite frankly, this excites me about learning and makes me happy that I took the blue pill. And yet, at the end I again find the most troubling and pleasurable thing about this class (or any class that provokes critical thought) is that I leave feeling that I know less. Alas, I must fall further into the bottomless pit that is theory.

Hey everybody, thanks.

The End Has No End

When I first signed up for this course, I really had no idea as to what “Gendered Bodies in Visual Culture” meant. I just really needed an upper level course to fulfill the requirements for the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies certificate. I noticed the word “gender” (which I like talking about) and I noticed the phrase “visual culture” (which I also like talking about) and figured there was a good chance there would be at least one discussion surrounding one or both of those topics. So I signed up.

On the first day, the first thing I noticed was that this was going to be a very, very intimate class. I was intimidated at the start, but now I think that this is one of my favorite aspects. With such a small class size, it is easier for organic conversations and discussions to occur. And it is easier to become more comfortable discussing certain topics. Similarly, it is easier for everyone to contribute to those conversations… and luckily for me, everyone had intelligent things to say.

It is hard for me to pick a favorite part of the course. Legitimately every class was interesting and full of great discussions. The topics and essays we read were, in general, thought provoking. If I had to pick my top three, it would probably include the section on disability, the section on fashion, and the most recent section on the body as a spectacle (the Bodies and Bodyworlds exhibits).

I found those three parts the most interesting because they were topics that I probably wouldn’t have thought as critically about without this course (though I guess I could say that about all the topics we covered). I also think I found the cultural objects associated with these topics the most intriguing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed all of the cultural objects, but I especially liked the Axis Dance Company videos, the Mimi Nguyen blog, and the websites associated with the body-themed exhibits.

The thing I liked most about the Axis Dance Company was that instead of trying to hide the difference in bodies, they embraced it and celebrated it. Wheelchairs played heavily into the choreography of the pieces. I also enjoyed the conversations surrounding it. Instead of accepting what was shown, classmates brought good and interesting challenges to what they were seeing. Why were the only disabled bodies used in wheelchairs? If this performance happens in a theater, how can a lot of disabled people go to see it since theaters are typically made for the able bodies?

The thing I like about Nguyen’s blog was that it thought critically about fashion and called out ridiculous and offensive things it was doing. For instance, I had no idea that modern day models still get put into blackface. I also liked how each classmate brought in their favorite post to discuss. It highlighted entries that I didn’t really pay any attention to at first glance.

The body-themed exhibits really blew my mind. They have so many complicated and sometimes troublesome aspects. I’m conflicted when I look at them because, on the one hand, they do have the potential to serve a scientific and useful purpose. But on the other hand, they have such gendered, racist, classist, and sexist implications.

Overall, I’m glad that I took this course. It opened my eyes to a lot of things that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Classes sometimes shape the way I view the world. For instance when I took a drawing course, I started noticing the lines and shapes within and outside of objects. With this course, I started noticing social implications and messages that the visual culture we live in has or puts out. I can’t watch television, look at advertisements, or think about museums the same way ever again. The course may be ending, but the effects of it aren’t.

Course Wrap-up

As a senior, I feel like many of the courses I have taken thus far are similar. When I think back on classes, they all start to blend together. This is especially true in my Women's Studies classes, because so many share the same subject matter. However, I can honestly say that I will always remember many of the discussions we had in this class. Each topic we covered was engaging, and many of the other students had a ton of interesting stuff to say about it.

One thing our class discussions did was give me a name for many concepts that I use often without thinking about it. An example of this is the concept of looking for “the tell.” It is a common practice in our culture to try to identify everyone we see. When someone is different and doesn’t fit the mold, we search for something to explain them or give them an excuse for the way they look. I always hear people say things like “oh it must be a man, look at their hands” or “it has little teeth, it must be a girl.” I was always disturbed by these comments, and I assumed it was because of their reference to a person as an object. Now I know that that is problematic, but it is also because they feel the need to discover a determining characteristic to make the personal more “normal” to them.

The section I found most interesting was the readings on body traffic. As a communication student who has spent a lot of time talking about popular visual media, I have spent a lot of time discussing medical shows. Our discussion about how body traffic happens in real life as opposed to television life appealed to me. I am constantly critiquing things I see on television. I am also a big fan of medical dramas. When we discussed things from new angles, it gave me another perspective and reason to critique these shows, and I look forward to thinking about the bodies on medical dramas in a whole different way.

In the same way, I am generally interested in a lot of things about bodies in advertising. I have done many critiques of advertising techniques, and I have noticed some really interesting stuff about the way bodies are used to sell products. I am writing my research paper on this topic, and because it is so interesting to me, I do wish we could have talked about the subject a little more. However, I think we did cover a very wide range of topics. Reflecting back on our discussions, I noticed just how much we managed to discuss in only one semester. Everything from politics to paintings involves the body, and now I feel that I can think about the role that bodies in play in many aspects of study.

Despite all the great things that were said in our class discussions, I was pleasantly surprised to see how many more smart things people had to say on the course blog. One of my favorite prompts was number 9, about critiquing UPMC’s organ transplant site. I was amazed to see that everyone was able to find such interesting details about the website to critique using discourse about bodies and transplants. Everyone made a lot of interesting discoveries and connections beyond what I saw. I thought it was so great that we now have the ability to take something as simple as a website and critique it so thoroughly.

Tacos, Pitas and Egg Rolls (Or, The Wrap-Up)

I think that the most important thing I'm leaving this class with is a more critical eye. I've taken plenty of other gender-themed classes before, where the aim is to arm the student with such a weapon, but I feel that this class has done that for me better than any other I've taken. The way the class is designed allows for more in-depth study than other classes do.

For me, the biggest differences between this and other classes are in the class size and this blog. I've never had the opportunity to read and listen to my classmates' points of view or to have real conversations about the class material. I know that, in reality, the class was much smaller than it could've been, but I think that I prefer that because of the allowed discussions in such a small group. I can also honestly say that there wasn't a topic that was covered, that I didn't enjoy.

I'll start with saying that, at first thought, I was going to suggest that the only thing I'd remove from this class was the discussion of Abu Ghraib. After a lot of thought, though, I realized that it wasn't because the discussion was uninteresting or too difficult in material. It was because the discussions were really disturbing to me. I'm really glad that I realized the difference, though, because I think that those discussions were some of the best we had. Since then, I've had most of the people that I know watch Standard Operating Procedure, and even watched it again myself. Such discussions of racism, nationalism and what constitutes violence are very informative on my opinion of what it means to be an American, or white, or WASPy, etc. I'm very glad we had such discussions.

Many of our topics have, in some way, been related to my personal life. The greatest of those related topics was our discussion of AIDS media. I have been working with the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force this semester, and the pieces that we read and watched regarding the AIDS battle brought me to a more sentimental understanding with some of my clients. Sadly, something that they teach you about going into fields of social work is that you have to have high levels of detachment. David Gere's piece on AIDS choreography, along with Bill T. Jones's video have made that somehow impossible for me. I think though, that it's for the best. Most of my clients cannot even try to take the normalizing approach of ignoring their illness. For many of them, they are defined by their illness. I didn't even want to consider AIDS as a "definition" for a person, but I suppose that could be the normalizer in me.

Along with those pieces, I found all of the readings from transgender photography on especially enthralling. There are fabulous links between transitioning, organ trafficking, reproductive photography and exhibitions of anatomy. The politics of photographing and visualizing the various aspects of these anatomical normalities and anomalies are explained in ways that I'd never even considered before. It has caused me took look at my own medical history (which is full of medical photography) in a different light. It's also driven me to ask the mothers that I know how they felt while they were pregnant. I was given a number of different explanations, but they all had a similar theme.

I mentioned the video posted on our blog, Pregnant Women are Smug, to the women who I'd talked to, and they all agreed that it was a good portrayal of pregnant women. Their explanation of why, though, is really striking. It seems to me, after the discussions, that pregnant women are smug because being a pregnant women does not allow for them to be themselves. Everything ends up being about pregnancy and the upcoming baby because they are no longer the woman they were before conception, and they kind of give into the societal pressure of being "the pregnant woman" instead of just a woman. Pretty crazy, huh?

I found many of the connections made this semester very interesting. I've loved our classroom discussions of various media, from films and video games to the UPMC website. The links we've made in class have made me realize just how interrelated the production and reproduction of the corporeal is to biopower, social control, and even the ability to gain citizenship are. I am very happy to be leaving this class with a more skeptical eye. Even in just watching "mindless" shows like South Park or Family Guy, I have to take into consideration such things as the portrayals of disability, gender difference, and even reproduction and trans issues. I must say, my family hates family time now!

Thanks, to all of you, for making this class awesome. I'm really glad I took it.

Blog Prompt 12: Bodies, Difference, & the Politics of Visuality--Course Wrap Up

By 9 pm on Tuesday December 7, please post a 600-word (min.) response to the following prompt:

This course was designed as an interdisciplinary inquiry into the relations between power, visual culture, and embodied difference. We have engaged with a plethora of visual cultural productions stretching across various national and transnational locations that construct bodies through regimes of race, sexuality, gender, nation, and ability/disability. Further, we've critically analyzed the pleasures and perils of visuality and visibility. I want to know what you are taking away from this course--what you found most provocative about the course, what visual cultural productions and written texts you found intriguing and why, what topics or texts or cultural productions would you add to the course that we didn't get a chance to talk about, and what brilliant connections you were excited to see your classmates make in class and/or on this blog?