1) In film studies Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) is often regarded as movie about cinema, and as a movie about the situation of spectatorship in particular. Explain how both the power and the powerlessness of spectatorship are represented in this movie. Your answer should refer to scenes from the movie and should analyze these scenes by using theories of the gaze and concepts from these theories. [500 words max, 10 points]
-Marita Sturken & Lisa Cartwright, ‘Viewers Make Meaning’ & ‘Modernity; Spectatorship, the Gaze and Power’ Practices of Looking. An Introduction to Visual Culture. Third Edition. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 51-88 & 100-138
2) Explain the meaning and historical origin of the ‘logic of the secret museum.’ Does this logic shape current concerns over the sexualization and pornification of mainstream media culture? Substantiate your answer with 3 examples from three different texts you have read for lecture classes 4 (May 13) and 5 (May 20)—use texts from both classes. [500 words max, 10 points]
Walter Kendrick, ‘Origins’ The Secret Museum. Pornography in Modern Culture. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. 1-32, 267-270
May 13th
-Ariel Levy, ‘Introduction’ & ‘Raunch Culture’ Female Chauvinist Pigs. Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. New York: Free press, 2006. 1-5 & 45.
-Rosalind Gill, ‘Empowerment/Sexism: Figuring Female Sexual Agency in Contemporary Advertising’ Feminism & Psychology 18 (2008) 1, 35-60.
-Rosalind Gill, ‘Beyond the “Sexualization of Culture” Thesis: An Intersectional Analysis of “Sixpacks”, “Midriffs” and “Hot Lesbians” in Advertising’ Sexualities 12 (2009) 2, 137-16
May 20th
-Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. Executive Summary. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 2007 [9 pp].
-Pamela Paul, ‘Born into Porn: Kids in a Pornified Culture’ Pornified. How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005. 172-210.
-Sara Bragg and David Buckingham, ‘Too Much Too Young?: Young People, Sexual Media and Learning’ Mainstreaming Sex. The Sexualization of Western Culture. Ed. Feona Atwood. London/New York: I.B. Taris, 2009. 129-146.
3) Carefully study the following 1994 Diet Coke Break commercial and 2013 Coca Cola Light commercial:
Write an analysis of these commercials in which you compare them as representing two moments in the contemporary history of the sexualization of mainstream media culture.
Sample Solution
