Gender and Popular Culture
Through various popular media students will explore contemporary understandings of, and the historical contexts undergirding, gender, racial, and sexual privilege. From Nicki Minaj to Hannah Montana and Riot Grrrls students will examine the ways in which dominant cultural meanings shape and objectify bodies of colour, strip away women’s sexual agency, and reify postcolonial and imperialist discourses. Students will learn how popular media can be read theoretically. Using contemporary media (music videos, media sites, and news blogs) this module asks students to think critically about how media sources employ gender as a way to naturalize sexual norms and modern racism. The module also offer students opportunities to think critically about their own positionalities in relation to gender, sexuality, race and popular culture, and to engage with each other in analyzing racial, gender and sexuality hierarchies in popular music and media. The module similarly engages queer diasporic identities through media and music. Diaspora is examined through its intersections with gender, sexuality, transnationalism and resistance to the postcolonial frameworks of identity. Employing feminist and queer theory through the works of several scholars, students are asked to pay particular attention to themes such as movement, visibility, and sexual subjectivity, all of which are central to this analysis.
· PLEASE KEEP THESE QUESTIONS IN MIND THROUGHOUT THIS MODULE
Lecture 5.1: Beliefs Norms and Stereotypes
· What is privilege?
· What is hypersexuality and hypersexualisation?
· The impact of culture on the way we see the world
· Where do our beliefs about gender, race and sexuality come from? What, if anything makes us question our beliefs?
· How does popular media affect our interpretations of gender roles and normative expectations?
· How do we see gender being represented in pop culture and how does that affect notions of privilege and power?
Before starting Lecture 5.1, please read
1) Butler, Judith. "Introduction." Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of "sex". New York: Routlege, 1993. 1-23.
2) Collins, Patricia Hill. "Distinguishing Features in Black Feminist Thought." Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. Second ed. New York: Routledge, 2000. 21-44.
3) Gill, Rosalind. "Sexism Reloaded, or, It's Time to Get Angry Again. " Feminist Media Studies 11 1 (2011): 61-71.
4) Hancock, Ange-Marie "Chapter 2: Political Culture and the Public Identity of the Welfare Queen." The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen. New York: New York University Press, 2004. 23-64
5) Jagose, Annamarie, and Don Kulick. "Thinking Sex/Thinking Gender: Introduction."GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies10 2 (2004): 211-212.
6) Lam, Amy. "Nicki Minaj’s Unapolagetic Sexuality Is Not a Crisis." Bitchmedia.com, 2014. https://bitchmedia.org/post/nicki-minajs-unapologetic-sexuality-anaconda-video-feminism
7) Nguyen , Mimi Thi "Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival." Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 22 2-3 (2012): 173-96
8) Smith, Michelle. "Miley Cyrus, Sinéad O’connor and the Future of Feminism." The Conversation, 2013. https://theconversation.com/miley-cyrus-sinead-oconnor-and-the-future-of-feminism-18938
9) Vares, Tiina Marie, and Sue Jackson. "Reading Celebrities/Narrating Selves: ‘Tween’ Girls, Miley Cyrus and the Good/Bad Girl Binary." Celebrity Studies 6 4 (2015): 553-67
Please Watch
Kim Kardashian http://thegrio.com/2014/11/12/kim-kardashian-butt/
L7: (Pretend We’re Dead)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKLETNBTGx8
Miley Cyrus: (Wrecking ball)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8
I’ll always remember you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngl-Hk1qOI4
VMA (twerking)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFLv9Ns1EuQ
Missy Elliot (Gossip Folks)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYKI8tAELXY&list=RDkYKI8tAELXY - t=5
Museum of Vancouver: Vancouver's Bhangra Story
http://www.museumofvancouver.ca/exhibitions/exhibit/bhangrame-vancouvers-bhangra-story
Nikki Minaj (Anaconda)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDZX4ooRsWs
Sir Mix-a-Lot (Baby Got Back)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlItMpGYQTo
Taylor Swift
Wildest Dreams
https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdneKLhsWOQ
Shake it off
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM
Blank Space
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ORhEE9VVg
Riot Grrrl (Movie)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9G45K6FgaI
Lecture 5.2: Gendered Resistance
· Transnational feminism
· Diasporas
· Globalisation
· Trans/national
· Gender and Ethnicity: Intersections
· In Chutney Popcorn, how does Reena, the films central protagonist, negotiate gender, heteronormative and other cultural norms?
· What are the differences in how Reena and her sister, Maina, are represented? Within these what is your analysis of gender and sexuality in a relation to Diapora?
Before starting Lecture 5.2, please read:
1) Arora, Anupama. “Rituals of Queer Diaspora in Nisha Ganatra’s Chutney Popcorn, South Asian Popular Culture 5 1: 31-43.
2) Gopinath, Gayatri. "Impossible Desires: An Introduction." Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. 1-28.
3) Hall, Stuart. "Cultural Identity and Diaspora." Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Rutherford., Jonathan. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990. 222-37.
4) Puar, Jasbir. "Queer Times, Queer Assemblages." Social Text 23 3-4 (2005): 121-39.
5) Sharma, Nitasha Tamar "Introduction: Claiming Space, Making Race." Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. 1-36.
6) Singh, Jaspal Kaur. "Queering Diaspora in Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night, Nisha Ganatra's Chutney Popcorn and Deepa Mehta's Fire." Representation and Resistance: Indian and African Women's Texts at Home and in the Diasporas. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2008. 163-76.
7) Weems, Lisa. "M.I.A. In the Global Youthscape: Rethinking Girls’ Resistance and Agency in Postcolonial Contexts." Girlhood Studies 2 2 (2009): 55-75
Please Watch
1) M.I.A. Born Free https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeMvUlxXyz8
2) Jimmy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBECisSkAu4
3) Hard Kaur: Peeney Do (The Alcohol Song) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZA6dvJtkQM
4) Desi Dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w09pjnJyjho
Pussy Riot
5) I Can't Breathe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXctA2BqF9A
6) Putin Lights Up The Fires https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrLI-5xYybo
7) Pussy Riot on prison, Putin, the Ukraine crisis & activism | Channel 4 News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruMclx5Gy7M
8) Chutney Popcorn (Movie)
Additional Reading
· Ahmed, Sara. "Introduction: Why Happiness, Why Now." The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. 1-20.
· Blue, Morgan Genevieve. "The Best of Both Worlds? Youth, Gender, and a Post-Feminist Sensibility in Disney’s Hannah Montana." Feminist Media Studies 13 4 (2013): 660-75.
· Collins, Patricia Hill. "Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images." Feminist Philosophies. Eds. Kournay, J., J. Sterba and R Tong. Second ed. Upper Saddle Rive: Prentice Hall, 1999. 142-52.
· Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani. "Native Hawaiian Decolonization and the Politics of Gender." American Quarterly 60 2 (2008): 281-87.
· Molina-Guzmán, Isabel. "Maid in Hollywood: Producing Latina Labor in an Anti-Immigration Imaginary." Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media New York: New York University Press, 2010. 119-50.
· Shange, Savannah. "A King Named Nicki: Strategic Queerness and the Black Femmecee." Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 24 1 (2014): 29-45.
· Slatton, Brittany C., and Kamesha Spates. "Introduction " Hyper Sexual, Hyper Masculine?: Gender, Race and Sexuality in the Identities of Contemporary Black Men. Ed. Slatton, Brittany C. and Spates, Kamesha, . Farnham, Surrey, GBR: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 20.
· Springer, Kimberly. "Divas, Evil Black Bitches, and Bitter Black Women: African American Women Postfeminist and Post-Civil-Rights Popular Culture " Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture. Eds. Tasker, Yvonne and Diane Negra. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. 249-46.
· White, Theresa Renee. "Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott and Nicki Minaj: Fashionistin' Black' Female Sexuality in Hip-Hop Culture—Girl Power or Overpowered?" Journal of Black Studies 44 6 (2013): 607-26.