Before we start…ask yourselves these questions!

1. What was the product being sold here?

2. What is wrong with the way the product is being sold?

3. Would you buy the product?

Annies reaction to the clip:

When first watching this video clip, one may laugh.  After the laughter, it becomes a bit more serious.  At first this women does not appear attractive.  As the man featured in this clip continuously drinks the beer, the women becomes sexier.  This Denmark commercial sells beer in a sexually explicit way.  The company wants people to drink beer because it “makes women pretty”.  They urge consumers to buy this beer because all women will be more beautiful.  So, what would Michel Foucault have to say about this?

Marinas Reaction to the video clip:

Taking the feminist approach to looking at a banned beer commercial, my first thought was “no wonder it’s banned!”  This video is extremely degrading to women.  How would Butler and Rubin view this clip?

Butler, Rubin, Foucault…how does it go together?

Butler does a great job when explaining the role society plays on gender through her idea of “gender performance”.  This relates to Foucault and how he views society.  Foucault recognizes that everyday people talk about sex, practice sex, or use sex in some way.  Even-though society addresses sex (in one way or another) everyday, society has still attempted to gain a mastery over it, but in order to do so the language of sex (the lets talk about sex part) hasto be controlled.  In other words, even though society gets exposed to sex everyday, society still wants to “own” sex and control it (in addition, control the language).  Instead of talking about sex regularly and trying to become accustom with it, the language of sex has been silenced. 

So Rubin, where does he tie in?

Rubin would ask, “Why is a woman’s appearance being used to sell a product?”  Whether or not she is dressed to impress should have nothing to do with selling the product.  This ties in well with Rubin’s idea of the “trafficking of women”.  Rubin states, “Women are given in marriage…exchanged for favors…traded, bought, and sold” (1673).  The focus gets drawn to the woman and how, after a few beers, she looks like she’s trying to give this guy a peep show.  It seems that rather than selling a product, a woman is being used to sell her sexual seductiveness towards this man. 

Again, Refresh my memory!

Foucault is against the idea of sexuality being consumed by society and displayed the wrong way.  Clearly, with this video clip, that is going on.  Butler would agree with Foucault and add that society also attempts to control genders.  Society, has set in stone, a stereotype of men and a stereotype of women that MUST be lived up to.  Rubin, would be nodding her head the corner, but adding “than why is the women the victim in this clip?”  Everyday we see women falsely stereotyped or victimized, what purpose did this video clip have to do that?

Sum it up!

Foucault, Butler, and Rubin have helped us see a different side to this clip.  When we first watched the clip we did the “normal thing” and laughed about it.  As we applied Foucault, Butler, and Rubin, we discovered how sick this clip really is.  Its horrible that a man must be drunk to think this women is attractive.  It shows poor judgment on the mans side.  Its a very chauvinistic clip.  It uses women, depicts society, and sells a product because of sex.  No wonder it was banned!

For additional information please vist these webblogs:

Annies: http://annieeinna.wordpress.com/2007/05/03/final-project-annie-marina-part-i/

Marinas: http://marina628.wordpress.com/2007/05/03/theory-presentation-commercial/

      When first watching this video clip, one may laugh.  After the laughter, the humor goes away.  This women does not appear attractive.  As the man featured in this clip continuously drinks the beer, the women becomes sexier.  This Denmark commercials sells beer in a sexually explicit way.  The company wants people to drink beer because it makes women pretty.  They urge consumers to buy this beer because all women will be more beautiful.  So, what would Michel Foucault have to say about this?

     Foucault has addressed an issue that (to this day) rarely gets the attention it deserves; sex.  Everyone over the age of 15 (or younger!) should know about sex and/or should know that it exists.  Foucualt recognizes that everyday people talk about sex, practice sex, or use sex in some way.  On page 1648, Foucualt states “As if in order to gain mastery over it in reality, it had first been necessary to subjugate it at the level of language, controls its free circulation in speech, expunge it from the things that were said, and extinguish the words that render it too visibly present.”  Translated in simple terms, society has tried to gain a mastery over it but in order to do so it the language of sex (the lets talk about sex part) had to be controlled.  Instead of talking about sex regularly and trying to become accustom with it the language of sex has been switched. 

     In current socitey, talking about sex should not happen.  It makes someone look dirty or live a pervert.  So, if that motion stands, than (Foucault would say) why can society use sex to sell products?  The women in this video clip becomes sexier as the video clip moves on.  Once the booze dissapeares, the womens sexiness dissapears.  Society makes it okay to use sex as a joke or to sell product, but soceity silences itself when it comes to talking about sex or ingaging in the act. 

     Society has inforced a barrier that no indiviudal can break down.  Foucualt believes that society has taken it upon itself to place morals about sex (education, whats right and wrong, selling sex) and individuals judge themselves by this standard.  Due to all the restictions that soceity has inforced, individuals have become scared to address their sexuality, do not take sex seriously, and use it to sell products.

     According to Foucualt, all aspects of sex cannot be clumped into one, its a constant battle revolving around this subject.  The comerical represents sex because it suggests sex, reads visiual see “sex”, but sex is not spoken about…its just implyed.   Our society has forced us to believe that its okay for a women to be sexy or its okay to have sex help us sell a prodcut, but its not okay to further our education in human sexuality and its not okay to talk about sex (actual serious adult conversation), something is wrong with that!

     So, wow, this was a pretty long theory entry to go out with.  Nothing like really going out with a BANG.  There is so much to cover in this FINAL POST, so lets just rock it.

     Before we start, funny story:  My cousin (17 lives in AZ) went to her junior prom this weekend and she din’t have a date…so she thought to herself : “if I could take anyone, who would I take?”  She chose the leader singer of one of her favorite bands and her & my uncle made a cut out & she took him…than took him bowling.  Yeah, we’re nutz.

     That story leads me into a good quote on page 2278 of the bible: “I do not know of any other time in history when htere was greater need for political unity to confront effectively the domination of “race,” “gender,” “sexuality,” and “class.”  This line really sums up a lot of what Haraway speaks about.  A lot of ground gets covered.  Here Donna foreshadows a lot.  Its amazing that race & class are in different quotations.  Aren’t they the same things, or are we so shallow that we’re still putting them into different categories?  I highly doubt that.  Race = blacks + whites.  Class includes whites and blacks….no exceptions.

     The informatics of Domination.  The list under this is insane.  The list does not even seems to comp-lie with each-other.  (Or does it?!)  I mean, to me it doesn’t work…they have heat above biology as clinical practice.  I mean, maybe you need heat when studying biology as clinical practice so you don’t freeze.  I mean she’s trying to paint a picture (hence the prior paragraph on page 2281) but yet the “paint” (via words) make no since and do not mesh together.  She must have hung out with Monet to long.

     I have read this text twice now, and I just do not understand how she jumps from biology to sexuality.  I mean, underlying, everything connects in one way or another…I understand that, but I just don’t think those all should be mushed together.

Holler?

     Some notes to jump start this massacre…Jean Baudrillard…very smart.  I thought this was pretty complicated.  Maybe this is one argument I just did not feel that strongly about.  I thought compared to ones we’ve read lately it was a little boring and did not hold my attention.

     Basically, I gathered the main idea: (1773) first sentence of last paragraph…BAM…real nor truth…things are repeating.  There is no real and there is no truth anymore.  (Few lines down) “Never again will the real have to be produced…” Why?  Is this because it has already been invited.  Its like what we were talking about in last class, everything replicates off something else.  Everyone in the world can say they are 100% “real” and 100% “individual” but hey, guess what pal, you’re not.  This present life cycles is not the first on the earth, when it comes to being original we’ve created little.

     I believe you could write an entire paper (or blog post) on this one individual comment.  Good ol’ Jean I believe relates this to majority of things besides science.  Science (especially in our life time) truth has become known and we’ve made some fantastic advancements. 

     As much as I did not so much like this reading, I do believe the argument here is clear.  I feel that this argument has been underlying what we’ve already been talking about in class and this just brought it to a fore-front. 

     Horkheimer and Adorno address some really good ideas in “Dialectic of Enlightenment.”  They compare some really controversial issues to present day society.  That previous sentence in itself is strange because this article was written in 1947 but it seems as if it was written in 2005.  That really shows how little our society can change.

     I thought it was interesting on page 1226 of our novel, how Horkhemier and Adorno talk about things going from old to new.  Obviously, as time goes on things get newer and more advance, but they address it in another way that really makes the readers think.  They talk about the change as going through a filter.  They start to compare it to a movie.  There is like this initial change that should take place, but to get the result (the final change) it must go through a filter…or similar to a movie with different senses.  “Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies.”  A lot of our movies are based off of real life events…and even if they are not they are based off of things that “could happen.”  Society really shapes through a filter…a movie was a good example.

     On page 1228 they talk about artists.  “The great artists were never those who embodied a wholly flawless and perfect style, but those who used style as a way of hardening themselves against the chaotic expression of suffering, as a negative truth.”  A lot of the most famous artists artwork actually looks completely flawed.  Dali, being my favorite artist, paints these amazing pictures, but there is always something bizzar in them.  For instance, one of my favorite Dali’s is a picture of a women, she’s  nun, sitting in her kitchen holding a plate.  Her eyes are pure white and make up is painted on her face looking like she is crying.  On the plate are two hard boiled eggs that look like her eyes.  The picture itself explains a lot, as does the quote by Horkheimer and Adorno.  Artists also reflect society, nothing being so perfect and consisting of many flaws.  Its like that filter that I spoke of in the previous paragraph, everything goes through a certain “process” before the result comes about.

     Just to note, I did not fully understand on page 1231 about Laughter.  I am going to address this in class.  When I was reading it, I thought they were saying that Laughter is a way of escaping from true feelings and issues…and I do not believe that at all.  I laugh…a lot…and I also have nothing to hide.  What is your take?

     So when I was in high school, that was the “joke” saying because it was the best comic act ever.  I had no idea who it was by, so I was stoked to reminisce on that aspect of my high school years.

    Margaret Cho’s stand up comic act really relates to many theorist we’ve read thus far in theory 330.  First, I would like to relate her to Smith, the poet that I saw at the English symposium.  Smith focused on stereotypes of the blacks.  As I stated in a previous blog, she focused on drive bys and shootings.  She said how its a stereotype that people relate violence in only black community’s; well Cho does a similar thing.  Cho focuses on the gay community, the KKK, relationships, and the Korean community’s.  In act 7, she went into depth speaking of the Asian consulting.  She went on to say how the Asian consultant said to her to use chopsticks, than add them to her hair, no shoes in the house, use this abacus, you have a “native” language, you can not marry a white man, your jobs tend to be lower class, and your eyes are smaller than white peoples.  So both Smith and Cho better explain stereotypes that our society will holds present.

     Cho also relates to Micheal Foucualt.  Foucualt writes about discourse, the way society makes meaning of actions.  Society does not want to talk about sex, we like to ignore it.  Not only do we like to ignore sex, but we also tend to drift away from homosexuality and anything aside from heterosexual.  Cho speaks of homosexuality many times.  Whether or not she actually did, she said that she had sex with a woman on a ship.  She also ties into account that her Mother leaves messages saying “only gays screen phone calls.”  So the connection here is how Cho is one out of thousands, even maybe millions, who take a stand and who actually speak out about sex…and especially homosexual issues.  What does this say for us?

     Last but not least, its very apparent that Cho relates to Butler.  Butler discusses gender roles and roles that are basically “assigned” to us.  Chos act 6-7 demonstrate how Korean women are suppose to look / act.  There two connections paint a picture of what society believe to be true.  Of course its funny to watch such a video clip, but we all must keep in mind that these are real problems that arise.  A stupid TV station is giving Cho a problem telling her that she needs to loose weight to play herself on a show…does that make any sense to anyone? 

     Society needs to take a step back at moments, and try to realize what it does to their people.  As society, we give such hard times to its members instead of focusing on what matters.  In act 9 she spoke of killing herself from all the pressures, is that seriously what we want?  Lets let individuals be individuals…and Cho speak for us all!

     On Thursday evening of the last, I attended the poetry reading of Pattrica Smith.  To give a little background information, she is a African American Poet.  Her poetry very much represents life and the battles people face.

     I think that relating Smith to Frantz Fanon is a very strong comparison.  Smiths poetry represents an African American side of poetry, similar to what Fanon addresses in his “The Fact of Blackness.”  In one poem that Smith read, she spoke of how stereotypical black barber shops can be.  She read aloud a poem that was extremely funny, but also held a deeper meaning.  It is a fact that black and white barber shops are still separated today.  As the general public we may not believe that segregation still occurs, but it does.  Fanon states that “In American, Negroes are segregated” (Fact of Blackness page 2) and this strongly relates to what Smith says.  When she spoke her poem about the barber shop, she did not once speak of a white person.  Between Fanon and Smith, we can make the connection of how segregation still is present in our society.

     All throughout Smiths readings, she portrayed the blacks as being fixed.  In one of her poems she spoke of a run down community and gang violence.  As sad as our society is, when we think of gang violence and a run down community we assume that they are filled with blacks.  In her poem she spoke of a mother finding out that her child had been shot in a drive by.  I immediately made the connection to Fanon when he speaks of blacks being “fixed” in a racial sense.   (page 5).  This relates back to blacks being stereotyped constantly.  It was very uneasy to hear Smith state these poems and know that this is true.   Her poem would have seemed so different if a young white boy would have been shot in a drive by.  Fanon says because the racial views are so “fixed”, we forget that this could happen to anyone. 

     Watching the symposium, and having prior theory knowledge, helped better understand not only Smith but better understand Fanon.  As a society, we really are fixed into stereotype.  Black people and white people each have their own barber shops.  Sadly, majority of people relate high violence and bad neighborhoods with black people before white people. 

     So if I did not have the prior knowledge of Fanon, I may not have made such an intimate connection with Smiths poetry.  Its important to have a back ground in Literature (aka ENG 330) to make these connections.  Smiths poetry was beautiful, but I made a strong connection because I studied Fanon and understood what he said.  I am now one less person who will automatically think that a violent crime happened with blacks…I will more wonder why we still have separate barber shops?

     Judith Butler picked a very interesting thing to focus on, focusing on Gender differences (trouble).  Its really odd that she uses the word “trouble” because a lot of things she discusses in here, I do not seem to view them as trouble.  I think that our society as a whole has become accustom to these gender differences so much that we just view them as ordinary, opposed to trouble. 

     On page 2491, Butler speaks of how women and men varry greatly because of their bodies.  The body appearnce really states a difference.  Men in appearance look bigger and stronger than women thus their sex would dominate.  I thought this point was pretty important, as a reminder.

     On the bottom of page 2497, Butler writes about the differences between physical sex and mental sex.  I think this point, out of everything, reflects a problem our society has with a good chunk of its population.  Many people do not feel comfortable with their assigned sex.  Its proven that gender disforia is a real problem and a lot of times they result in sex changes.  Butler again reminds society of some problems we face and we still just let them slide away.

     I am very sleepy.  I just got done reading a lot of literature, so if my sentences seem out of order or repetitive, I am sorry in advance…I am not as stupid as this may appear.

      Foucaults entry brought forward many interesting facts / ideas about the history of sex.  This is not so easy of a topic to talk about nor right about, so right off the bat I give him credit for even doing this.  This semester I am taking human sexuality, and between Foucaults ideas and my classes, I made some pretty cool connections between them.

     I would like to first start by talking about religion.  On page 1649 of our norten, it states (and I quote) “White the language may have refined, the scope of the confession-the confession on the flesh- continually increased.” This quote is really interesting to examine.  The language, in every culture has changed but when it comes to sex, it is a very slow change.  Religion still holds many “drawbacks” when it comes to sexuality.  This quote examines how drastically language has grown (we’ve developed new big words) and human sexuality has only slowly expanded.  When it comes to religious beliefs though, they usually do not change as drastically.  Now, I in no means am a religious person…but what I have learned from my human sexuality class it seems that when things are in “stone” in religion, they are very hard to change.  If you follow beliefs strong enough, you should not break them either.

     Religion has defenlty made sex become a public issue, and this idea is supported on page 1652, summarizing how Christianity has brought about public interest.  A good quote to support the ideas of what I am going to give is on page 1653 stating “Between the state and the individual, sex became an issue and a public issue no less; a whole web of disclosures, special knowledges, and analyses, and injunctions settled upon it.”  This whole idea with public interest & religion, develops a really big problem.  Adultery is a major idea in this.  Take the story, The Scarlet letter for example.  For an act of adultery, Hester had to wear the letter “A” on her at all times to resemble her adultery.  The town made her problem much greater than it already was.  When it comes to religion and public interest, it is fine (in my eyes) if people want to believe in someone…but do not attempt to make it a public interest, you will hurt people & restrict them for living their lives to the fullest.

     A very interesting thing I learned this semester, the Victorian influence developing a “semen theory.”  From the years of 1839-1910, men were suppose to “save” their semen as much as possible.  If a man ejaculated, he was consider “spent.”  Sperm was looked at as money and the more you had the wealthier you were.  Victorian women also had to sew pantaloons on their furniture because it was said to “arouse” the men.  Just thought you all should be aware of this.

     Another thing I would like to write about dealing with the 18th century (and this article) is the quote on page 1654 stating “Doctors consulted the directions and professors of educational establishments, but they also gave their opinions to families; educators, designed projections which they submitted to the authorizes;…”  Why are doctors always looked at as gods?  Do doctors seriously have the answers to authority, sexuality, and families problems?  I usually thought MD’s knew more about medicine than pshycology…hmpf.  Anywho, in this time when women (and young children) had a medical problem, they had to go to the doctor and point to a manacling to describe where their pain was.  It does not seem like much has developed from the eighteenth century because they were to stubborn to learn.  So many restrictions were placed and did not help them to further their education.  In this century, sex should have been talked about.  They could have learned more and maybe stopped more diseases and got a jump start on finding cures.  Doctors do not hold all the answers…that is just foolish.

     Okay, I am sleepy & going to bed.  Night.

     The readings to me are getting easier.  I am starting to understand more what the theorist “expect.”  I have taken many English classes sense I have been in college, so they have all really helped prepare me for this class.  I think we started out with some really hard theorist, but they helped really throw us into it and say “here is how it needs to be addressed.”  I have learned some really helpful tools that help me with the theory and taking everything apart.  I love disgrace.

     I feel my writing is getting stronger.  I did not get my paper back, but for my blogs, I feel I go much more into debth than before.  I have really understood Disgrace, Fanon, and other present theorist.  I think the topics are easier to understand and relate to, so they are easier to write about.  I do see an improvement in my writings, and I think that is a good thing.

     The conversations in classes sometimes I feel intimated to speak up.  Sometimes I tend to get lost, or if Professor Middleton explains it, and I get it, and another student asks another question, I loose it.  I try to take very good notes in class, but sometimes even the best notes can not explain the way Dr. Middleton explains it.  Sometimes I feel that questions are answered but than students re-ask the question…so it confuses me.  Leading from this, personally, I do not like the group work.  Just how I feel, but I get more out of class discussions than group work.  I feel like group work is to focused & we do not always have the proper amount of time to hear from every group.  So I am not a big fan of the group work. 

     I think its very important to try to look up outside sources on everything we read.  I think that helps me better understand the article and the theorist in general.  For instance with Disgrace, reading about South Africa gave a little knowladge.  Also, reading Fanon before really helped with this reading.  Its awesome to read a book and relate it to theorists.  Also, Derrida really relates to our current novel (see previous post). 

     What I have gained so far is how to connect theorist to other works.  I like reading an article and if I do not understand it, I try to go to JSTOR or look up a reliable Internet source and see what other theorists have seen.  Also talking in class and reading students blogs really help.  We all read these assignments in our own ways, so to hear what other say is very important.