Judith Butler argues that gender is performative rather than innate. Gender is constituted through expressions rather than expressing a pre-existing identity. Butler seeks to disrupt the notion that sex determines gender or gender determines sexuality. Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory describes how women are objectified for the visual pleasure of men in film. Angela McRobbie discusses how the media influences gender roles and sexuality. Queer theory aims to disrupt social categories around sexuality. Stuart Hall argues that race is a social construct and racism is expressed through language and discourse. Dick Hebdige examines how youth subcultures express resistance but are often commercialized and co-opted by the mainstream.

1. Representation
Lauren & Lucy
(L-Train)

2. Gender

3. Judith Butler (1990)
• Butler argues that feminism has made a mistake by asserting that
women were a group with common characteristics and interests,
which reinforces a binary view of gender relations in which human
beings are divided into two clear cut groups of men and women,
rather than opening up possibilities for a person to form and
choose their own identity.
• Butler argues that sex is seen to cause gender which is seen to
cause desire to the other gender.
• Butler’s approach is to destroy the links between these to that
gender and desire are flexible and free floating, not caused by other
stable factors.
‘There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender:…
identity is performativity constituted by the very expressions that are
said to be its results’ – gender is a performance; it’s what you do at
particuar times, rather than a universal who you are.

4. Laura Mulvey (1975)
• Male Gaze: women are objects for sexual
pleasure only to be looked at. Male gaze
theory denies women human identity.
• ‘The pleasure in looking has been split
between active male and passive female’

5. Scopophilia
• Scopophilia is taking other people as objects,
subjecting them to controlling and curious
gaze.
• (Love of watching) – We sit in a darkened
movie theatre and observe the activities of
people on the screen who are unaware that
are being watched. (VOYEURISM)

6. Angela McRobbie
• McRobbie feels that the media (through magazines)
influences us into what we should and shouldn’t do,
telling us how to behave; example men are strong and
women are weak.
• ‘Sexual pleasure is learnt, not automatically
discovered with the right partner, the importance of
being able to identify and articulate what you want
sexually, the importance of learning about the body
and being able to make the right decisions about
abortion and contraception, the different ways of
getting pleasure and so on, each one of these figured
high in he early feminist agenda’.

7. David Gauntlett
• Girl Power – Women can do what they want,
be themselves, sassy and sexy.
• ‘To young women, feminism is something
that belongs to their mother’s generation.
They have to develop their own language for
dealing with sexual inequality and if they do
this is through raunchy language of
‘shagging, snogging and having a good time’

8. Sexuality

9. Queer Theory
• Is a perspective that seeks to disrupt socially
constructed systems of meaning surrounding
human sexuality.
• Sexuality is fluid and difficult to categorize. Queer
theorists aim to expose the short comings of
these labels and show how the function support
systems of social power and privilege.
Heteronormativity maintains the distinction
between homosexuality and heterosexuality.

10. Feminist Theory
• The theory focuses on the function of female
characters in particular film narratives or
genres and the stereotypes of society’s view
of women.
• ‘Female characters can possess the look and
even make the male character the object of
her gaze, but being a women, her desire has
no power’ – Anna Kaplan

11. Race

12. Stuart Hall
• Hall argued that race is nothing but a floating
signifier, therefore illuminated our understanding
of race being nothing but a social construct.
• Discursive racism – racism expressed linguistically
• Hall explains that discursive racism is more
powerful than the random acts of racial attacks
experienced by people of colour in the western
world, and therefore explains why people of
colour hardly gain recognition for their work.

13. Edward Said
• Orientalism is a way of seeing that distorts
differences of Arab culture as compared to that
of Europe and US. It often involves seeing Arab
culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and
dangerous.
• ‘The basic distinction between East and West as
the starting point for elaborate theories, novels,
social descriptions, and political accounts
concerning the Orient, its people, customs,
‘mind’, destiny and so on’.

14. Subcultures and Youth

15. Dick Hebdige
• Members of the working class encounter daily hardships
and alienation from the ruling hegemony
• Younger generations don’t want to suffer this like their
parents without protest, therefore develop distinct styles
and practices with manifest their separate identity,
condition and subversion
• Media discovers the subculture, with a typical reaction of
moral panic
• Subculture expands, losing its rebellious edge by turning
into a commerical consumer product or by the media
rendering the members as harmless ‘clowns’
• Mainstream hegemony returns it it peaceful unthreatened
state