the normalization of being able to take photos of random people without their consent and just post it online without care for their feelings or privacy being violated for who knows to see makes me literally murderous
I want to find a way to explain what I remember learning language was like, but the hard part is that before words the way I remember thinking didn’t *use* words, but what is the name of a thing which clearly and concisely communicates a specific concept from one mind to another through visual media? Fucking words. So fuck me I guess
Anyhow “Tomorrow” as a word was a fucking mind bender with very memorable confusion so I’m starting there
male gaze is not ‘when person look sexy’ or 'when misogynist make film’
death of the author is not 'miku wrote this’
I don’t think you have to read either essay to grasp the basic concepts
death of the author means that once a work is complete, what the author believes it to mean is irrelevant to critical analysis of what’s in the text. it means when analysing the meaning of a text you prioritise reader interpretation above author intention, and that an interpretation can hold valid meaning even if it’s utterly unintentional on the part of the person who created the thing. it doesn’t mean 'i can ignore that the person who made this is a bigot’ - it may in fact often mean 'this piece of art holds a lot of bigoted meanings that the author probably wasn’t intentionally trying to convey but did anyway, and it’s worth addressing that on its own terms regardless of whether the author recognises it’s there.’ it’s important to understand because most artists are not consciously and vocally aware of all the possible meanings of their art, and because art is communal and interpretive. and because what somebody thinks they mean, what you think somebody means, and what a text is saying to you are three entirely different things and it’s important to be able to tell the difference.
male gaze is a cinematographic theory on how films construct subjectivity (ie who you identify with and who you look at). it argues that film language assumes that the watcher is a (cis straight white hegemonically normative) man, and treats men as relatable subjects and women as unknowable objects - men as people with interior lives and women as things to be looked at or interacted with but not related to. this includes sexual objectification and voyeurism, but it doesn’t mean 'finding a lady sexy’ or 'looking with a sexual lens’, it means the ways in which visual languages strip women of interiority and encourage us to understand only men as relatable people. it’s important to understand this because not all related gaze theories are sexual in nature and if you can’t get a grip on male gaze beyond 'sexual imagery’, you’re really going to struggle with concepts of white or abled or cis subjectivities.
:whispers: also Death of the Author means you have to exercise self-criticism and recognise the bias YOU as the audience bring to interpreting a piece of work. Yes, your reading is valid. But to what extent are you extrapolating from your own experiences, privileges & lacks of privilege, past traumas, etc.? How might this affect your interpretation of the text?
More people need to understand that part, too.
Also also, death of the author is just one of the many ways you can look at the text. You can also very heavily analyze it with consideration for the cultural context, the author’s personal life, queer lens, and a number of other ways. Death of the author is just one of them.
there’s so little taste in advertising that it was bound to happen sooner or later, but would you like to take one guess as to why the JP barbie account had to make a post disavowing the actions of the US barbie account
ALT
