Media and Commentary

Feel free to post relevant media here

Below, check out Marilyn Monroe’s Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes:

Then compare it to Madonna’s Material Girl. Interesting to watch the two and think about Kaplan’s theory of “parody vs. pastiche:”

Material Girl

Finally, here is the Beyoncé cover which she did for an Armani fragrance commercial:

~David

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Lucy from “L.A. at Last!” — as a Barbie Doll…

Here is the text I found with this image of Lucy as a Barbie on the web:   (Posted by Prof. Hinton)

Hooray for Hollywood! At least that’s what Lucy thinks in the episode L.A. at Last™. But after a disastrous encounter with William Holden at the famed Brown Derby Restaurant, she’s not so sure. Especially when Ricky invites Holden up to their hotel room to meet his biggest fan, Lucy. Mortified by her previous encounter, Lucy runs to the bedroom and disguises herself with glasses, scarf, and an oversized putty nose, which she manages to catch on fire, and then comically extinguishes in a cup of coffee! Lucy wears an authentic re-creation of the episode’s costume, which includes a black chiffon coatdress with black dots over a tan jumpsuit. Silvery dots adorn her waistband and a large bow at the collar to coordinate with her dangling earrings. She has rooted eyelashes underneath tortoiseshell glasses that rest on an over-sized, protruding nose. Curls of her signature-red hair peek out from the tan kerchief that completes her disguise.

I Love Lucy and L.A. at Last are trademarks of CBS

“Here is a link to a photo campaign put together by a School Of Visual Arts student Grace Brown to re-empower victims of sexual assault. Each victim holds up something that their attacker said to them. This works on many levels to give the victims a voice, in some ways a means of “letting go”, and bring awareness to instances of sexual assault by creating an artistic text around the issue. I think this is really important and relevant not only to Push, but also to the theory pieces that we have read.”
Here’s the link to the blog:
http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/
and a news story to give the blog some context:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/unbreakable-blog-lets-sex-abuse-victims-speak/story?id=15481021#.T3Kt3cz9WjQ
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While channel surfing tonight, I happened upon this documentary that WLIW-21 (Long Island) was airing. “Who Does She Think She Is?” looks at woman’s rather limited place within the art world. Towards the end, there was a very interesting comment along the lines of “Women’s status is a better predictor of overall quality of life in a country than even a country’s GDP, and beyond quality of life, has a greater overall output of self-expression.” It may well re-air at some point this week, so if you get Channel Thirteen or WLIW, try and tune it; it’s definitely worth a watch!

~David

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“Here, as promised, is a link to the exhibit The Great Wall by artist Jamie McCartney. The objective of the piece is to change perspectives about women’s bodies, obviously here, specifically vaginas. I believe this links closely to the Luce Irigaray piece, both as a visual aide to the two lips analogy, and in thinking about women’s ownership and participation in sex and desire.”
Students, One of my son’s college friends, Liz New, just sent me this info and link. Thought you would be interested in an example of how our American politics continues to me (literally) male-driven:

At a House Oversight Committee hearing, House Republicans convened a panel on denying access to birth control coverage with five men and no women.
Help gather 50,000 signatures before Congress heads home tomorrow.

http://www.dccc.org/pages/wherearethewomen

— Prof. Hinton

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Here is this week’s movie, I the Worst of All. It is available on YouTube in its entirety:

http://youtu.be/PTI7H1ohD2M

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“Today in class we discussed how Jennifer Lopez new ad can possibly represent a female’s use of her own body for advertisement. I feel that Jennifer’s ad in comparison with Beckham’s commercial is different since Jennifer, as mentioned in class, is covering herself. Beckham stands secure and proudly displays his body while Jennifer is huddled and insecure. I believe there is a lot to say about the cultural standing on the exposure of the female body versus the male body.”
~Jasmine Cruz

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