Class Notes

10.02.02

by: Susanna Cameron

In Class Today:
- Roll
- Dreamworlds II, continued
- Resource Reports
- Friday
*For the people using websites, do not use a scholarly article even though they are available online.

DreamWorldsII Movie Notes Continued:
- Music videos and the fantasy world show that women become inhuman while on "display"
- Women are denied subjectivity
- It is natural to be in cages until men are ready
- Women can?t leave until men want the to:
when the do leave they are roped and dragged back because they really don't want to leave, in fact they want to be caught.

Saying no really means yes.
- What happens when men use the dream world as basis for relationships in the real world.

Sex
- The way that women are touched in music videos is made natural.
- The dream world makes it seem like women desire that type of manipulation by men
- Women want to be carried away At this point is the gang rape scene from which we were forewarned. It shows the woman having a hand put over her mouth to silence her screaming no. The guys in the background are cheering the others on yelling, "She's lovin it, she's lovin it!" During this scene they continued to play the sound from the movie, but also spliced scenes from music videos in, changing the context that the videos are seen in. These videos show women dancing for men.

Consequences in the Real World
- Explicit violence doesn?t really affect us any more; we have been desensitized to it
- Women become incapable of saying no to men?s advances
- What effect do these stories have on the real world if we accept the effect of music videos?
- They influence our views:

In a survey of College students:
60% of the men said that women provoke rape by their clothing
40% of the women agreed with the above statement
1/3 of the men said that it would do some women some good to get raped
at some point in their life

In a survey of 7th -12th grade boys said it was okay to force a girl to have sex with him if:
24% - he had spent a lot of money on her
31% - if she had done it with other guys
- As a society we tend to blame the victim saying, "She was asking for it" or "She probably liked it."
- Should we censor the media more then? No, there is too little true sex in the media. More diversity and openness
in talking about sex would shift the perspective from the fantasy world to the real world.
- Fantasies effect how we view the world and base our relationships.

Statistics:
1 in 8 college women are rape
1 in 4 college women are victims of attempted rape
84% of these women knew their attacker
57% of these occasions were while on dates
1 in 4 women get raped in a lifetimeClass Discussion:

Class Discussion
-Video have become like wall paper - they're just going on in the background.
- One of the students watched MTV to see if she could recognize these patterns in more modern videos and found that she did.
- Style and Behavior is normalized so that we don?t see it for what it's truly worth. This happens in music videos, advertisements, and even movies.
- Disney heroines tend to be sexualized. The stories always seem to be, boy meets girl and girl falls in love. When telling stories about boys they are about them coming of age.
-Girls have romantic of sexual adventures. Most young girls in stories have no mother (implying that they?re not safe and that they're subject to the dangers of life). When boys loose their parents they are never replaced by wicked step-parents.
- In the 1800's the ankle was sexualized. Things become sexualized because they are unattainable: "Can't see the forest for the trees."
- Women are told to show desire to be overwhelmed or raped as opposed to showing their true desires.
-As Madona got more powerful she could do more with her videos, but when she started to explore her sexuality within them the censorship levels went up.
- Female full frontal nudity is normal, but male full frontal nudity is viewed as bad and pornographic. Rape is connected.
- Videos portray male adolescent fantasy
- Can?t think of girls as teenage adolescents
- Difference between date movies and chick flicks: date movies aren?t too mushy with some action, and chick flicks are love stories.
- We can?t come up with alternative videos

Revisions of Resource Reports-
Professor McBride said, "I haven't learned anything in life with out making mistakes."
Revising helps you learn. It's how writing gets good. Don?t feel bad if you have to revise. The comments are to help you do better
and move forward? to instill confidence in your writing

Term Paper-
It's the biggest assignment in the class. It?s a research paper on your group topic. It may be helpful to share you bibliography with your group.

***Forget Scheffield Reading for Today***
Friday there is a quiz on the video.