Movie 1.3 Dreamworlds 3 PDF

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FILM: Dreamworlds 3 1. What has happened to music videos in terms of their place in the culture? a. Music videos have come to the center of the culture and become a subject of controversy over the sexual imagery that defined music videos as a genre. 2. What story about women is told across the whole range of our media culture? a. The link between a woman’s identity, her body and sexuality is told in many ways. This story is most focused in music videos. CONSTRUCTING FEMININITY 3. How are women presented in music video with regard to sexuality? a. Music videos make it clear that the most important aspect of a woman is her sexuality. Women are portrayed as creatures who desire sex at all times, with any man who happens to be there. They are presented as aggressors who won’t take no for an answer.. 4. What understanding does the cliché of multiple women draped over a man help construct? a. It helps construct an understanding of femininity always being defined in terms of a powerful man (or boy). 5. What happens to women in music videos when men are absent? a. Even when men are absent in music videos, acceptable substitutes have to be found, as these women are desperate and need men very badly. It could be pieces of fruit, ice cream, their own fingers… etc. This is used to further sexualize women’s behavior, even when men are absent. Women are often unable to cope until men return. 6. What is the major activity that the women of music video are engaged in? a. Women engage in undressing to capture male attention. Women party, dance, and frolic. When not partying, women are diligent and helpful to men. They wrestle, relax, and shower. 7. What female character has evolved into one of the major aspects of music videos? a. The stripper has become one of the major characters of the music video. This stripper is the ultimate heterosexual male fantasy. THE PORNOGRAPHIC IMAGINATION 8. What is a staple of heterosexual male fantasy? a. Girl on girl action is a staple of male heterosexual fantasy. 9. What is the essence of the commercial, male, heterosexual pornographic imagination?

a. Thinking about women as being defined only through their sexuality, and that sexuality to be at the service of men’s desires. 10. Which convention in hip-hop videos shows that women are regarded with contempt? a. Showering women with money signifies they are regarded with the same contempt given to strippers and prostitutes. 11. What film do black male images of hip-hop most resemble? a. D.W. Griffiths 1915 white-supremacist film “Birth of a Nation” where black people are portrayed as irresponsible drunken buffoons, and out of control rapists of women. 12. In the Snoop Dogg DVD Diary of a Pimp what is the mission that he accomplishes? a. To ‘break these hoes’. The journalist in the film eventually is overcome with lust and joins Snoops hoes, essentially being “broke”. 13. How are the worlds of music video and pornography most directly intertwined? a. Rock and porn have been intertwined by porn stars appearing in music videos and by directors switching from making porn films to shooting music videos. 14. According to the film, what is the real question that we should ask about sexuality in media images? a. The question is whose story is being told? Whose eyes do we see the world through? Whose visions guide us through the process of what it means to be a man or women? Whose fantasies are these? WAYS OF LOOKING 15. What filming techniques reflect the view of the person being watched as a passive thing? a. A common filming technique that reflects this involves the camera panning the willing an exposed bodies of these women. 16. How can we label the filmic techniques that accompany the pornographic imagination? a. These filmic techniques are reflections of the pornographic gaze. The way women are filmed communicates messages and ideas about them. 17. When could we say that objectification is not negative? a. Objectification is not negative when women are presented as more than just sexual objects… if they were presented as more than just sex objects, there would be no problem with a little bit of objectification. 18. What does the video series Girls Gone Wild demonstrate?

a. Girls Gone Wild demonstrates the internalization of the story that women are only sexual objects. FEMALE ARTISTS 19. What is the challenge that female artists face in the male dreamworld? a. The challenge is for female artists to try and stay true to their own vision of themselves, and not conform presenting themselves as predominantly sexual beings. 20. What does the video career of Jewel tell us? a. Jewel had made a career as a serious and authentic artist, but in one of her music videos, she knowingly reenacting many conventions of the dreamworld, perhaps to boost her image. Jewle’s subsequent video also included more pornographic imagination than she had previously. 21. What is similar about the careers of Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson? a. All these artists originally had an ‘innocent’ image, before changing dramatically to have an image with sexual terms. MASCULINITY & CONTROL 22. Before the “wardrobe malfunction” that exposed Janet Jackson, how are she and Justin Timberlake acting toward each other? a. Janet played the role of a tease, and Justin played the role of a man who wanted to take control of her and her body. 23. Why is the conclusion to the Superbowl incident a microcosm of the dreamworld? a. She had become nothing more than a body part and he had demonstrated sexual control over her. 24. What is glamorized in the Justin Timberlake’s video ‘Buy me a River”? a. The behavior of Justin as he breaks into his ex’s house and watches her undress and shower. This is behavior of stalking and domestic abuse. 25. In the video “Eat You Alive” what does Fred Durst do to demonstrate male control? a. Fred kidnaps a woman and forces her to watch as he expresses anger for rejecting his advances and demonstrates his ability to control her. 26. What happened during the 2000 Puerto Rican day parade? a. Many women were doused with water, sexually assaulted, and stripped of their clothes by men who felt they had entitlement to enact their desires on any female body.

27. What was most striking about the images from Central Park? a. How familiar they were. 28. What is the major difference between music videos and the images from Central Park? a. The women in real life were not enjoying it, they were not smiling. 29. What is one of the most interesting questions to ask about the photograph of the sexual assault that took place during the 2001 Mardi Gras festival in Seattle? a. What is going on in the minds of these normal looking men that they think that they have an entitlement to enact their desires on any female body that happens to be around, even if it is clearly against her will? 30. What are the two sides of the sexual objectification of the female body? a. Adoration and desire/ loathing and contempt. 31. What is revealed by the attitudes expressed by the men in the segment from “Keeping Score”? a. Men think that women need to be fucked to be straightened out or taught a lesson. 32. Why are the images of the dreamworld not innocent? a. They are not just images because the stories they tell are firmly implicated in the gender and sexual power relations of our society....