Women’s body power in Philippine Sex Melodramas

😀 Women’s body power in Philippine Sex Melodramas 😀

“Sex in Philippine cinema has to be seen as always enmeshed in power: the power to suffer pleasure, the power to address desire, the power of agents to resist both craving and conscription as sexual labor and capital.” – Patrick Flores (2000) 

In our country today, women remained as the main subject on sex melodramas films of this new cultural model. Female characters often appeared prostitutes on televisions and films depicted the feminine essence as inferior.  To further elaborate, women were marginalized, disempowered and humiliated through their representation. Simply male viewers and determining their fantasy about females in watching those kind of films, and that derives pleasure to male viewers and visual pleasure through what is seen on the screen and take a look on the reaction of the males.

And the woman in films fulfilled their  position as an oppressed and silenced individual and women adopted this societal role as the media had, and has the power. This in effect led to a self-fulfilling prophecy for the subjugated woman.  This public stigma essentially consisted of the creation of a stereotype for women, sexual revolution boosted the women’s liberation movement in our country, that women’s image in films was very much related to mass media representations and that change and to gain more viewers using their body.

“Woman as image, man as bearer of the look”, Laura Mulvey (1975)

STRUCTURALISM

Based on my own understating Structuralism is a method for analyzing logic and understanding large portion of investigation into the semiotics of cinema on how the viewers should be aware of semiotics in cinema or the language of cinema, and it is also a approach to human activity that sees networks of relationships and Structural analysis attempts to equalize all texts and forms of texts . This system was articulated through the vocabulary of classical structural linguistics.

 😀 Ferdinand De Saussure 😀

According to Ferdinand De Saussure who  created two terms to define a way to look at language. The first, “parole”, which is French for “speech”, refers to the sounds that a person makes when speaking, or a graphic representation of that sound. The same paroles might exist in multiple languages, but have very different meanings.(http://www.parleremo.org/magazine/index.php?i=1&a=3&p=all) 

Where does structuralism come from? 

Structuralism first comes to prominence as a specific discourse with the work of a Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, who developed a branch of linguistics called “Structural Linguistics.” Saussure died before he was able to publish his material but we have the meticulously recorded notes of several of his students made during the 2nd course of 1908-1909. The theory was still at a developmental stage then–and has remained in a developmental stage ever after. There is nothing authoritative about Saussure’s theory and even now it is open to debate and controversy. Yet there has been an extraordinarily diverse and fecund range of work, including a number of schools of thought in Eastern Europe, the United States, and thriving today in Japan, based upon readings of his initial insights as documented by his students. The reconstruction of his lecture courses can be found in The Course in General Linguistics. This is an essential read for anyone who seriously wants to understand the basis of structuralism and semiotics. For those who don’t have the time, my summary of basic points follows. Bear in mind that I am reading with hindsight and have probably added some insights that are in debt to Saussure’s critical heritage. (http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/structuralism.htm)

Examples: 🙂

THE BIRDS 

The Birds is a 1963 suspense/horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Apparatus Theory

😀 Apparatus Theory 😀

In my own understanding about Apparatus Theory, I think this is a relationship  of spectators and institutions in watching films and I think it argues about cinema is ideological  that based on ideas, because the films are created to represent reality, on how the audience can relate in watching a film or movie. And this means that because film is created to illustrate different ideas, that everything has a meaning from the camera, shoot to the editing process. It argues that ideology is not imposed on cinema, but is part of its nature through the viewer and it shapes how we think.

And Apparatus theory  is derived from a combination of  semiotics, psychoanalysis and the Marxist theory. In the film theory, the idea is that  the representation must include the mechanics of film, like for example the camera and editing. In the way a text relates a viewing subject and the mechanics of making a film all affect the representation of the subject of the film. This theory simply discusses between the spectator and the viewer within the perspective of the text is also ideological  it is a reproduced reality and the experience of cinema influences the viewer.

CINEMA DESIRE

After I watch this video on  YouTube, and I had no idea what it was and our professor discussed this and to understand what this topic is all about an  example of how film and psychology can meet. At First I assumed that Zizek was a comedian pretending to be a central european intellectual. Then it turns out that he is a “serious” philosopher. He discussed that certain autonomy is cinematic form. Form is not simply to express a content and it has a message of its own. Although there are some films shown that have infamously disturbed and unsettled for years, but Zizek  leaves us with a sense of appreciation rather than terror for the films.

“Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire – it tells you how to desire.” – Slavoj Zizek

examples:

😀 THE MATRIX 😀

In the movie THE MATRIX, psychoanalysis embodied in the relations between people, where Neo is asked to choose between a red pill and blue pill.  This scene is questioning the reality and questioning the reality in illusion of the reality. That there is something real in the illusion, more real than in the reality behind it. If something gets too traumatic or violent, it sets off the coordinates of our reality and we have to fictionalize it in order to remain stable.

😀 PSYCHO 😀

😀 THE EXORCIST 😀

 And I think cinema or film is nothing but symbolism, so the subjective experience and to apply to the experience of being a passive observer who has become a repository for a filmmaker’s ideas. Psychoanalysts were hugely popular and powerful during Hitchcock’s prime, so it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Zizek’s interpretation is spot on. Zizek is amazing! 🙂

“In order to understand today’s world, we need cinema, literally. It’s only in cinema that we get that crucial dimension which we are not ready to confront in our reality. If you are looking for what is in reality more real than reality itself, look into the cinematic fiction.” -Zizek

DIGITAL FUTURES

A national conference by the American Studies Association of the Philippines with the support of the Cultural Affairs Office of the Embassy of the United States of America and in partnership with the Department of International Studies and the Department of Communication of Far Eastern University – Manila

November 16, 2013 FEU UCC AB Ground Floor

We attended the seminar last November 16 at FEU UCC this is about a various things about multimedia, animation and digital arts and a lots of stuff! 🙂

Now, these are shorter texts that I have written during the seminar taking down some notes.I think this seminar helped me a lot because I want to lean toward making new arguments and testing some ideas out in relating to our course. The 2 hours of the seminar really made me feel so satisfied because the knowledge of the speakers shared to us is very fulfilling and full of new ideas and gaining information.

Mr. Joel Chua is the First Speaker, He is a Fine Arts graduate at UP Diliman and He is a painter and a Multimedia Artist

— MULTIMEDIA —

– sight + sound + interaction

– both words and pictures

– non verbal expressions

– contextualizes the text and the image

– matching related text and images

– too much. too much only because the brain can handle so much

– it narrates pictures

Ms. Ayeen Pineda is the Second Speaker, She is a Comm Org Gradute at DLSU, a animator, a voice actor and the founder of TULDOK PRODUCTIONS

— ANIMATION —

– Move and Alive

– Giving Life

– Making it Believable

Why Animation?

– people engaged in multimedia

– information that is necessary

– it can be fun

Maam Pineda shows this video from Dumbs ways to die video that this is a good example of a good and simple animation.

 

1. Displays simpler and less cluttered

2. images move vivid and engaging

3. can provide additional information that cannot be display in pictures

4. Helps build mental models of situation

BENEFITS

-storytelling, visual communication, emotional, observation and sensory aspects,

concentration, problem solving aspects

MOTION GRAPHICS – graphic design that can be put into motion

“TIME TO ABSORB WHAT ARE YOU SAYING AND BALANCE INFORMATION AND UNDERSTAND” – Maam Pineda 

Mrs. Grace Dimaranan is the last speaker that talks about the Local Animation Industry and Digital Features

Digital Literary

– access to information has changed

– people need to be transliterate in order to be involved to contribute to the society

– trends

– technology is evolving rapidly

TRANSLITERATE

– ability to read, write and interact through social networks and digitals

– able to negotiate across multiple media

TRANSLITERACY

– wider analysis of reading writing and interacting in different platforms

TRANSMEDIA

– being transformed into other platform

Have the instincts, if you feel and see that it’s related to your being as a student, your abilities and skills then grab it 🙂

Thank you! 🙂

Auteur Theory

 

 

This theory is usually did not literally write scripts but to managed to his or her personalityy on studio products. And this theory explains that a director can use the commercial apparatus of film making in the same way that a writer uses a pen and It is a medium for the personal artistic expression of the director.  And it is a way of  choosing the factor of an artistic creation as a standard of reference, and then assuming that it continues and even progresses from one film to other.

American Directors considered “Auteurs”

Howard Hawks

Otto Preminger

Samuel Fuller

Vincente Minnelli

NIcholas Ray

Alfred Hitchcock

Robert Aldritch

Fritz Lang

 

EUROPEANS

Jean Renoir

Roberto Rossellini

Kenji Mizoguchi

Max Ophuls

Jean Cocteau

Ethnic Theory

Race, Ethnicity and Culture

Ethnicity can be defined as, relating to or of a culture or racial group. It is not specific to any one color or nationality, and by itself cannot cause harm, but when you enter a region that is ethnically diverse tensions begin to rise. (Websters Dictionary)

 

This theory explains that individuals have several important similarities and influence behaviors in various ways so as to differentiate them as members of their group from members of other ethnic groups, and it is a given society that may differ for several reasons because all of us have different society.

Spectatorship Theory

This Theory tells us on what we want to do in discussing in the nature of a viewer is not at how viewers respond to a film statistically and scientifically, but instead at how the viewer is involved, and engaged in the viewing experience.

Dutoit Quoted that “Those who will watch the film have, in a sense, already been created by it. That’s how the camera looks at us: it imposes on our looking an identity already invented for us.”

Performance Theory

 

 Performance Theory is a interdisciplinary drawing from theories of the performing arts, this is just a effect between a performer and an audience that identify cause and effect principles that explain what occurs when any given system is used to accomplish a task through performance. 

Gender Studies

 

Gender studies talks about how to contribute greatly to our understanding of the social and cultural world in our society and studying the complex issues in our country like LGBT of this field that has many key insights to other people.  That positively affect our society and the awareness through learning and through this awareness to avoid discrimination.