I've told a couple people in the class I would post an article about female directors (and why there only about three of them) so here it is:

http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/movies/feature/2002/08/27/women_directors/index.html?pn=1

In both mainstream and independent films, female directors are a rare and diminishing species. This article interviews various female directors, asking why this is going on. It seems to be a combination of Hollywood money (old dudes don't like financing young women) and film schools attempting to mimic Hollywood's standards:

"In the hallways of San Diego State, says Professor Lauzen, "I have heard male professors say to female students, 'Don't even think about directing or being a cinematographer. Get into producing.'"

So I've been kind of fascinated with the idea of post-postmodernism lately. I used to just blow it off, because the name was too meta for my taste. But it is actually a cool concept: a return to the unity fractured by postmodernism. The best, most succinct definition I found was "Age of Synthesis"[source 1].

This is different than flat-out modernism (which also claims to unify), because it is more aware of itself as a construction, "aware of its own failures, insubstantiality, and secondariness" [source 2]. Also different from the modern industrial notion of unity, the "Age of Synthesis" unity is more natural, traditional, and "lyrical"--a reaction to technological disillusionment.

“For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive.”
–Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”

I've been reading some feminists for my thesis, even though I've never really been into the whole feminism thing before. It's actually interesting stuff, when I can digest it at my own rate. It seems to me that feminists attribute the overly rational nature of the Western, capitalist world to the masculine forces that founded it.

In positing an alternative, less rigid social order, Lorde looks to poetry, which she associates with women: "At this point in time, I believe that women carry within ourselves the possibility for fusion of these two approaches so necessary to survival [ideas and feelings], and we come closest to this combination in our poetry" (37).

SO this weekend a student-directed theatre production, STOPKISS, went up. And yours truly was overzealous enough to agree to help stage manage rehearsals – and seeing the final product really got me thinking about authorship and theatre. I haven’t delved too deeply in this yet, but I wonder if a part of it’s unique appeal is how authorship is constantly shifting in the message/meaning of a play. A playwright does his or her thing, and writes the text and all that. Then a director reads, feels inspired, and pitches his or her vision to a producer to get the thing up. Then actors interpret and create, and finally an audience receives the combined efforts, and I wonder how that equation flow chart actually manages to not come off as completely schizophrenic and impossible to comprehend. It seems almost miraculous, but then again it would also lead to me new conclusions about why live theatre, hell live performances, are only attended by less than 2% of the American Population. 26% apparently still go see movies – at least 3 a year or month, I can’t remember exactly, whereas 98% watch television regularly…

Warning: This is another of those blogs you don't want to read. It's just me going on about possible thesis topics...

Man oh man. Senior year is tough, huh. I've been barely sleeping and still I'm running ridiculously behind on everything, most notably a decision on a thesis topic. The one professor who knocked my socks off in my two semesters at Pomona is on sabbatical, so the search for readers hasn't been so hot either. But hey, how bout I outline my various ideas for ya and maybe everything will come together. By the by, my major is Social Activism through Media & the Arts (MS/Politics/Theatre), so my thesis is gonna be leaning in that direction:

I picked up a magazine while I was getting a haircut the other day (Glamour or Allure or one of those), and I was surprised to see a whole section devoted to cosmetic surgery. I was even more surprised to see statistics like "60% of women now approve of cosmetic surgery, 18% more than last year" were seen in a positive light - isn't it great that women finally feel empowered enough to take a knife to their ugly noses? The magazine, along with Christina Hoff Sommers’ speech at CMC (The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men) got me thinking about the original authors of the term "feminism" - and how the term has leapt from them and taken on several contasting connotations of its own.

For progress to occur regarding the position that women have in society, there must be unification in order to have understanding and thus affect change. To categorize female authorship in any way( the female genre) is to limit the affect that it can have on change away from the historically prevalent denial of their validity and value.

Although I didn't absorb much out of the Marchessault readings, I DID at least wean a TINY tidbit that I found interesting. This was along the lines of women declaring feminism through their works, particuarly women directors. She mentions that women would rather not choose "sides" with feminism--in fact to be associated with it would in a sense destroy their authorship by grouping them into a category. I can understand this. Nicole Holeffcener is no longer a brilliant director, but a brilliant FEMENIST director who makes FEMINIST films. Who wants to be identified like that? I sure don't. You don't hear Bruckheimer critiqued as an "accomplished male director who really captures a sense of patriarchy" (oh and 'Pearl Harbor' sucked) so why do women have to suffer the genre and label?

I just wanted to express my thoughts on the link between this week’s two articles. I think it is apparent that they are both about exploring the significance of underrepresented voices, be they from women, racial minorities, etc. What stands out to me is how different their conclusions are about suggestions for the future of authorship, as compared to last week’s readings. Marchessault frankly states, “Unlike Barthes’ Great Authors (Mallarmé, Proust, Balzac), women have nothing to gain from the destruction of the author at this historical juncture” (89). Women have been working for literary recognition for so long, and just as they are approaching this prize, Barthes is calling for its obliteration.

Overkill, Literally

With Barthes, Foucault, Nesbit, and now Marchessault, we have extensively discussed authorship in terms of life and death. For me, this is slightly dramatic and very dichotomous. It’s overkill. I really appreciated that Marchessault pointed out the need to move beyond such black-and-white thinking. She writes that confronting the exclusionary role of the Author “might be done by exploring alternative notions of subjectivity not bound to a dialectic of masters and slaves or life and death” (89). She suggests a way to break this dichotomy that is actually in direct opposition to Barthes’ call for the death of the author. Based on the ideas of Felski, she explains the possibility of “a sphere that would bring together both the author and the reader…as a discursive political community” (87) through a shared identity, here gender. This is an issue of collective representation. She continues, “The affirmation of female authorial voices can be understood as widening the political scope to take account of differences between women (class, race, nationality and sexuality) with the view towards larger political coalitions” (89). The patterns of individual recognition lead to large-scale group power dynamics, and are therefore crucial to societal democracy. To bring “death” to the author in order to bring “life” to the reader makes no sense when you consider how the two are inextricably bound together, especially among minority groups.