#the obsessive attention given to everyone around him - to their benefit in followers and engagement. as with his sisters and Eleanor

[louehvolution]

.

#nothing changes #another year. rinse and repeat #and it doesn't matter what you believe about his personal life. this isn't normal or right. to have Louis reduced to a prop #seen as literal body parts or a disembodied voice. or his presence hinted at through items of clothing or shoes. or whatever #and/or only to prop up someone else's IG account #while his own remains inactive. weeks and months on end #HE is the famous ARTIST #and even outside of music. in relation to other interests. it's all third parties too #time and again not seeing him except in connection to his ''girlfriend'' - and on her account - puts the focus on his ''private'' life #as a fan it is impossible to avoid. and there is a dependence on peripherals for content - which promotes + validates stalker behaviour too #the obsessive attention given to everyone around him - to their benefit in followers and engagement. as with his sisters and Eleanor #or in others. to their vexation - which is not beneficial to Louis either #this for an artist whose press and image has been dominated by his personal life. who has said he wants to keep his private life private #and be known as a singer #and it's not balanced out with content of HIM. as an individual outside his relationship to other people. let alone as an artist #it's not right. and it's not fair to him #and if you believe this is what he wants for himself... I don't understand the reaction being contempt or resentment #rather than concern. to be honest #because he deserved better all these years. and still does #[Eleanor posted an IG story at the beach where you can see his leg 🤍 - and he took a video with some fans. so confirmed it's him]

[princess-of-the-void]

Visual Pleasure in Alex Garland's Ex Machina

tw: sexually violent language

The Sci-fi genre and horror intersect in many films, tv series and books. Ex Machina is one of those films. This film deals with many themes that appear in the Frankenstein narrative- human vs God, what determines humanity, and the like. I will go over the Frankenstein narrative in an upcoming series titled Frankenstein through the Ages. This article will look into the use of scopophilia in Ex Machina through the lens of Laura Mulvey's article "Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema."

The language is Cis normative and I apologize for that. I did not know how to get away from that with this source material.

Alex Garland’s directorial debut, the 2015 sci-fi thriller Ex Machina, deals with the ideas of humans as gods and the humanity of human creation. Yet, the most enthralling theme and the one which has led it to be considered the silent feminist film of the 2015, next to George Miller’s Mad Max, is the theme of the role of the female body in relation to the male psyche. The film is centered around four characters, only three of these characters ever speak. The three key characters are Nathan, a brilliant and reclusive programmer who is worth millions of dollars, played by Oscar Isaac; Caleb, a programmer at Nathan’s company Blue Book, played by Domhnall Gleeson; and Ava, the beautiful, humanoid robot that Nathan has built, played by Oscar winning actress Alicia Vikander. The fourth and silent character is Kiyoko, Nathan’s humanoid robotic assistant played by Sonoya Mizuno. The plot of the film is that Nathan has brought Caleb to his remote home as a winner of a contest where the prize is to be the human component in a Turing test to determine whether or not an AI has consciousness. Caleb is conflicted when he meets the robot, Ava, because she has the body of a human and an extremely beautiful  face. He is thrown into a whirlwind of debate with Nathan on Ava’s pre-programed sexuality and his uneasy attraction to her. The audience gets to see Ava interact with Caleb on a human level and is left wondering until the very end if she does indeed have consciousness or is she is simply simulating it. We see her manipulate the men around her in order to gain a fundamentally human desire: freedom.  The audience also sees Ava’s rebellion against her creator, Nathan. In the end she cuts her ties with both Nathan and Caleb by killing the former and leaving the latter for dead as she escapes the remote location. Throughout the film, Laura Mulvey’s ideas from her essay Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema are proved correct by Ava’s behavior. She seems to fit the mold for the female place in cinema. yet, in the final scene Ava’s violent act subverts these ideas while also proving the men’s castration anxiety to be true. Thus, completely rewriting the female place in modern cinema as defined by Mulvey.Laura Mulvey says that women are the object of male scopophilia and that the camera in turns treats women in a scopophilic way by dehumanizing their bodies. In Ex Machina Ava is the center of everyone’s attention: the male characters, the audience and the camera. The men see her as an object to be viewed and studied; Nathan questions her humanity and keeps her in a glass room while Caleb finds himself spying on her through the CCTV cameras following their sessions together. These two men have come together to prove her humanity yet neither one acts as if he believes her to be anything less than subhuman. The camera treats Ava like it would any other female character by fragmenting her body for the audience. She is seen as a body able to be fetishized and sexually sought after. In one scene,  she puts on a dress and a wig for Caleb, the camera lingers over her robotic torso and arms as she dresses. It pulls her apart as it would a typical human woman, bringing the eye to her sexualized body parts and making her into nothing more than an object. The camera leaves her mind out of how it captures her. Laura Mulvey describes how women are used by the camera:

The beauty of the woman as object and the screen space coalesce; she is no longer the bearer of guilt but a perfect product, whose body, stylised and fragmented by close- ups, is the content of the film and the direct recipient of the spectator’s look. (47)

Ava has been dismembered in this scene and fragmented for the sexual pleasure of the viewer. She has been created to fit the female ideal and is treated likewise by the camera as well as the men in her life. The audience believes she is simply an idyllic creation and assumes any humanity within her is simulated because she has been successfully dehumanized by the camera. The unnerving idea in this is that this is how the camera in modern cinema also treats human female characters. Garland has in turn made Ava into a human by turning this traditional fragmentation of women into a tool for the film. The audience is directed to think of Ava as only a body in another scene as Nathan tells Caleb of her mechanical sex organs. Nathan tells him that she has a space between her legs that if it were stimulated properly she would feel a pleasure response. Nathan says to Caleb “You bet she can fuck.” In this statement Nathan makes Caleb see Ava as nothing more than an object capable of sexual intercourse. He reduces the sexuality he has given her down to the mechanics of her body. He never discusses if she would want to have sex or if sex with her could be consensual. The audience dismisses her as nothing more than what we can see of her. She is a feminine shell to be looked at, as well as sexually engaged with but not a human with consciousness or capable of giving or revoking consent. We see her as a robot in a world of true humans. That is, until the end when she surprises us with her self-preservation motivated actions. She changes the way her femininity is seen by throwing out the idyllic behavior the audience is expecting.

 As a woman this line sent shock waves through my body. To hear a man depict a woman as nothing more than her ability to pleasure a man sexually is disgusting and disturbing. Yet, this scene worked well on me. As a viewer I questioned Ava’s humanity and this scene pushed me away from seeing her as anything other than subhuman. The first time I saw the film the ending shocked me because I had been shown Ava as a sexual object and nothing more. To see her assert dominance and independence was beyond satisfying. The characters of the two men also fall in line with Laura Mulvey’s ideas on cinema. Nathan is shown to the audience as in prime physical condition and as brilliant. He lives in a home which looks like it cost millions of dollars and his personal assistant is a beautiful young woman he has created to serve him and even has sex with him. He has created a woman whose sole purpose is to serve him. It is no wonder he believes Ava will also be submissive. Caleb on the other hand is thin and at times unremarkable looking. He has a good job with an apartment. He does not have a girlfriend and seems to have little personality past his curious and calm outer demeanor. He is easily seen as what the gaming community calls a “neutral mask character.” Caleb is easy for the audience to slip themselves into. Also since this film is marketed to science fiction fans, which are assumed to be male, Caleb is all the more easy to put oneself into. This “every guy” kind of character  gives the audience the chance to see themselves in the romance with the beautiful Ava. As Laura Mulvey says in regards to identification with male leads in film “By means of identification with him, through participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too” (49). Throughout the entire film Ava is regarded as a possession; first of Nathan’s then of Caleb’s, and through him as a possession of the audience.

Returning to Caleb’s possessiveness of Ava specifically; during his first night at Nathan’s home Caleb discovers that he has connection to the CCTV cameras in Ava’s room. He thus spends each of his nights in the residence watching her.  This behavior directly correlates to Mulvey’s idea of male scopophilia in modern cinema;“Fetishistic scopophilia, builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself” (46). His obsession with watching Ava on the television resembles the audience’s interaction with her. Both relationships are purely scopophilic and are directed by a camera’s view..  In their third to last meeting Ava has dressed yet again as a human woman, complete with demure dress and sweater and short brown wig. She tells Caleb that she fantasizes that he is watching her at night on the cameras. She is thus supporting John Berger’s idea that women are both surveyors as well as conscious of their role as the surveyed. Ava knows she is being watched which serves Berger’s idea fully:

Women watch themselves being looked at.This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight (Berger, 47).

Ava is more than aware of her sexual appeal to Caleb and thus uses his hope of possessing her to her own benefit. She even goes as far as undressing herself, as a human would, in front of the cameras she knows he is watching. She slides her tights off slowly and pulls her dress off over head, revealing the outline of an idyllic female body. She turns herself into a sexual sight for Caleb in this scene. This keeps his sexual interest and engages a savior complex which benefits her in the end. His desire for the sight of Ava makes him want to possess her outside the frame of her glass cage. Ava then uses his savior complex and desire to physically possess her to convince him to rescue her. She tells him that she wants them to go on a date outside of her glass cage. She also begs him to help her and inserts her fears of being switched off into their conversations. She makes him believe she relies solely on him for her life. The audience should not believe this trick as easily as Caleb does. Ava is intelligent and derives her intelligence from her robotic connection to the world’s web. The audience should see the poor treatment of Ava at the hands of her two male companions and understand her motives for tricking Caleb. After he has done what was necessary to free her she turns on him and leaves him to die. She realizes his motivations are not purely for her benefit but are instead for his. He believes his actions to save Ava will make her belong to him. Instead his actions lead to her independence from both male figures.The two men’s possessiveness of Ava is visually seen through her captivity. In one of her first meetings with Caleb she shows him a picture she has drawn of fractals, he tells her to draw something that is physical and she tells him she does not know what to draw because she has never been outside of the room she is then residing in. Nathan also alludes to Ava’s perceived ability to manipulate sexually, specifically her ability to manipulate Caleb, which is another reason for her imposed living situation. Her sexual danger leads Nathan to display tendencies of Castration anxiety and thus punishes Ava for this. In regards to punishment of the sexual object Mulvey says “The male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma, counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment or saving of the guilty object” (49) Nathan combats his anxiety with punishing Ava with captivity while Caleb fantasizes about saving her from her punishment. Both men find Ava to be the trigger for their anxiety and thus must combat her female will as they see fit.

Most of Ex Machina strongly supports Mulvey’s ideas. This remains true until the very end. After Caleb has helped Ava escape her glass room she turns the whole affair on its head. First, with the help of Nathan’s assistant Kiyoko, Ava kills Nathan. Following this death she dresses herself as a human one last time, while Caleb watches from the next room, and proceeds to lock him into the room and leave the residence. The audience knows Caleb will eventually die and this destroys the hope for consummation. Ava destroys Mulvey’s ideas by actually being threatening to the men in her life. Their anxiety is realized and her last violent act confirms this. Ava also kills both men in extremely symbolic ways. She kills Nathan with a symbolic penetration. He has reduced her to a sexual object and has even had sex with his robotic assistant Kiyoko. He has created these two women, among others, and subjected them to a sexist outlook on the female form. In his death these two women reduce him to simply a body to be penetrated as he did to them. When Ava leaves Caleb for dead in the locked room she is exacting revenge on the man who left her inside her glass prison for the sake of science and only lets her out of her prison for his own sexual fantasy. In this finale act  Garland’s female lead subverts the narrative norm and destroys the sexual bond between herself and Caleb, as well as the sexual bond between herself and the audience. She does this by using the men’s Freudian fears and exacting them upon these two men. She is almost saying “if you want threatening I will show you threatening.” Her use of their castration anxiety reduces these men to nothing more than their fears and lifts her up to the standard, if not a seemingly flattering version, of the independent Woman. Many may see her depiction of female independence as reassuring the need for female punishment and controlling male figures. In my opinion, this film shows the extreme lengths woman have to go to in order to attain independence. The audience should feel strongly for Ava because she has no choice but to behave violently. She is not the reason society fears women but instead she is the result of a dominating patriarchal system. Garland solidifies this believe for me in the final scene. Ava is seen covering her robotic body with a skin like material and clothes. While she is doing this the camera fragments her body like it has in earlier scenes. Once she has covered her robotic exterior with a human exterior the camera shows her as a whole body. She is finally human to the camera as well as the audience. Her subversion of traditional femininity is what inevitably gives her true humanity.

#horror #horror genre #ex machina #alex garland #Oscar isaac #domhnall gleeson #science fiction #scifi

[shantelemile]

The Untraditional Culture: Fandoms

A fan is the shortened term for fanatic. The word fanatic was associated with people who were, “insanely but divinely inspired” with temples and sacred places. The word’s meaning has shifted to, “marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion”and has entered our pop culture and everyday lives. “Fandom is a sociocultural phenomenon largely associated with capitalist societies, electronic media, mass culture and public performance.” (Duffett, Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture). A fandom is a group that expresses their love and dedication to something in a creative form of art (fan fiction, drawings, cosplay, etc.). Fans are allowed to creatively express their love without being judged.

A fandom can be considered a culture because it follows the definition of what a culture is, “Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them.” (Lederach, Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures.). A culture is something taught and passed down through generations. Fandoms are establishing knowledge pertaining to the object being liked and the code of conduct within a fandom. They are also growing in size which can classify it as an actual culture.

Being a part of fandom is like an echo chamber, it becomes a space where ideas and beliefs are reinforced because it is closed off to outside opinions. Mark Duffett uses the example of Rupert Till’s experience at the Free Nelson Mandela concert in London. He states, “Rupert Till’s pleasure seems to spring unbidden from his experience of a live performance and yet it likely represents the culmination of an extended engagement with Sting’s recorded and broadcast music. Till is in a leisure environment surrounded by like-minded people, at an event that could resonate with his value system.” Till was able to feel a strong connection to this concert and the people around him because they had a common interest and they were able to reflect these interests to the public.

Just liking something is not enough to consider yourself a part of a fandom or a fan, there are steps to the process. There are three key stages of the fandom initiation according to John Fiske discussed in the book Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates: 1. The Semiotic Productivity: Do you feel empowered when you see that thing on TV? 2. Enunciative Productivity: Do you talk about the thing outside and proudly own their merchandise (posters, shirts, CDs etc.)? 3. The Textual Productivity: Do you write about your thing of interest and share it? When you can answer yes to all of these things, you are considered to be a part of a fandom.

Fandoms are popular, one of a kind, and grow in size every day. The question is what makes fandoms so appealing to the public. Since being a part of a fandom means you are entering a culture, John Jenkins brakes down what fan culture really means. He stated that there are five characteristics of fan culture: 1. When watching whatever it is on TV, you feel as though you are right there in the crowd even though you are not. 2. When you become a fan you have to understand all the inside jokes, you read and do whatever everyone else in the fandom is doing. 3. You can and will call radio stations to request a song or TV shows to gain attention or express your displeasure to whatever it is you like. 4. A fandom culture develops their own style and traditions. 5. A fandom is like a getaway from reality. (Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates). In a fandom, fans refuse to succumb to the social norms of the regular world, so they are able to express themselves freely there.

Even though within a fandom you are given unlimited freedom, the freedom and behavior are seen as crazy to people outside of the fandom. Like the definition stated earlier, a fan is a crazed person who would go to great lengths for the thing they love. People in a fandom would see this as dedication and an undying love whereas others would see it as being a lunatic. This is especially true for fandoms surrounding musical artists, celebrities, and television shows. The downfalls of having a fandom is the consumption of time and the stalker like behavior that people engage in. Being in a fandom requires spending a lot of time online and in communities to create new content for the fandom. There has to be new fanfictions, art works, and having to constantly be up to date with whatever is going on with the artist/celebrity, so it becomes very time consuming.

Fans are [sometimes] borderline psychotic. The term “stan” means when you obsess over a celebrity in an extremely overzealous way. It is derived from the Eminem song Stan (2000) which tells the story of an obsessive fan who is being ignored by his idol and kills his family and himself after he continuously gets overlooked. The musical group, One Direction, their fans would pay people to get information about which airport or hotel to stalk or harass them for a picture or try to talk to them. They would sometimes leak this information online and hordes of people would gather in these places making it dangerous.

Aimee Wilson, a 20-year-old that left the One Direction fandom believes leaving the fandom was the best choice for her. “There were people who were actually mean on Twitter. Other fans would dismiss them just saying that they were just protecting the One Direction members, but no it was bullying. Some of the Directioners would act like they owned the members and would tweet them non-stop demanding that they follow them or to do something. I remember they even made up this thing where they wanted two of the members to date each other and they found ‘evidence’ of their relationship. Some people would cut themselves because they were so sad they weren’t being noticed. I couldn’t even. As I got older I realized it’s not that serious, you can enjoy an artist and their music without being crazy.”

The good thing about having fandoms is that it has proven to benefit companies because they are making money from these fans. Dedicated fans will buy merchandise with the musical group(s) faces on it or anything referencing/promoting them. At concerts, they have multiple booths that have t-shirts, mugs, CDs, posters, and light sticks. Buying the concert ticket is the first way the companies that manage singers make money, then selling merchandise on the side is another way. Having fandoms also helps add hype to the company and the musical group. Simon Cowell is known for discovering the One Direction members on The X Factor UK and managed them under his record label, Syco Music. One Direction became the world’s biggest boyband during their six-year reign. Their success has been nothing but great for the founder and the company. This would not be possible without the fandom that demanded and supported the music they released. The use of social media sites like Twitter allowed the people who are in charge of the group to directly see the public’s response to the group and what they should incorporate or change.

The internet is aiding in shaping the identities of those in a fandom. Fandoms have a hierarchy system which determines who has power and who is popular. The number of followers you have indicates who’s the “leader” of the fandom. The more followers you have the more influence you have within the fandom, people are more likely to turn to you for information about the artists and what you say will be taken more seriously than other people. The PBS documentary Generation Like, Ceili the super Hunger Games fan, dedicated a lot of her time to getting more spark points and earning a higher level. The higher the level she had the more people would see her posts, and she would be able to enter the list of the top Hunger Games fan. Fandoms have helped reinforce this system in our society, fans want the high levels and followers to show off to the public so that their love is known within the fandom and not questioned.

Melanie Sanchez, a 19-year-old fan has been a fan of One Direction since their debut on The X Factor. She is still supporting them even though they are on an indefinite hiatus. “I liked the music that the boys put out, that’s why I liked them. But then I followed them on Twitter just to see what they’d tweet about and I don’t know when, but I entered the fandom. I kept posting memes and talked about how much I loved the boys and I gained a lot of followers over time, like 10,000. I would post something and if it didn’t get enough likes I’d delete it- I didn’t want to be lame.” When asked about the people in the fandom she said, “The community was filled with girls my age (at the time I was like 13-14). We cried, screamed, and laughed over these boys who didn’t know us personally. We all understood each other. We were all Directioners. I made friends online and we planned and met up in person in the city. It was the best time of my life.”

Within the fandom’s hierarchy system there are the OGs (Original Gangsters: people who’ve been around for a long time). They are constantly nitpicking and weeding out the fake fans. Since a fandom is its own culture, to just one day say; “Oh, I’m going to stan this thing” will not sit well with other people, especially the OGs within that fandom. That’s almost like culture appropriation to them. You are just wearing the name of the fandom for show, you have no idea what it is truly about. To test the loyalty and authenticity of fans in the fandom they might ask questions to test your knowledge and ask you about certain milestones. Some OGs base how long you have been interested in that specific thing to determine your fan status. Because fans treasure the artist and the fandom so much they do not want it to be disrupted by anyone who does not share the same feelings as them.

Fandoms are also shaping our gender roles/stereotypes. Gender roles have been instilled in society since the beginning of time, so it is only natural that they travel into our communities. In the Bible, 1 Timothy 2: 12-13 it states, “And I do permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first then Eve.” According to the Bible, men were born to be natural leaders and with leadership comes strength and authority. When men stray from these characteristics it raises criticism and some concerns towards their sexuality. For example, in the movie Grease (1978), the character Danny Zuko was a badass with a leather jacket, had a gang, a sweet ride, and girls swooned over him. In the Summer Loving scene of the film, he exaggerates what happened over the summer making everything more sexual than what it was. He makes Sandy change because he is embarrassed to be seen in public with her. Scenes like this have been translated and repeated throughout Hollywood, we see a repeat of similar characters like Danny, so it became the norm for men to act like him.

However, the children’s television show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010) is changing this long running gender stereotype of men. The show has a fan club of grown men who call themselves bronies.The show’s intended audience is children and airs on a children’s tv show network. The show has gained an unintended audience of males and these men are seen as weirdos to the public because the shows target audience is little kids. Yet, it does not say anywhere that children and their parents or males cannot bond over the shows storyline or the lessons it teaches at the end. The grown men who watch this show are most likely enjoying the experience that the show has to offer them. These men are not living up to the gender roles set up by characters like Danny Zuko. The scenes that have constantly been on replay in Hollywood have been disrupted by a children’s show about ponies. Because this is out of the social norm the public is perceiving this as something bad, a taboo. The bronies are facing a problem similar to those of actors in the film Chocolate Babies. In this film the group of friends were HIV positive and they always received the shorter end of the stick. They were mistreated by the government and they had to form a group of their own to get the support and love they deserved. The bronies are being ostracized for liking a children’s show and they find comfort within one another because they understand the situation they are facing with the public.

Nashaun, a 22-year-old African American father who is not a part of a fandom stated, “People can like whatever they want. It’s just that it’s weird to want to be in something for little kids, it makes me wonder if they got other motives in mind. Why would I want grown men associating with my kid? Something doesn’t add up there.”

There are many cultures around the world that are not accepted or understood, and fandoms are falling into that category. Humans are conditioned to repel what they do not know. Our automatic responses to the unknown are fear and to destroy it. The behavior and the craze that comes along with fandoms cannot be processed by people outside of it. The One Direction fandom and the My Little Pony fandom are only some of the many fandoms out there and they carry many controversies. Even though they have these negative connotations surrounding them people still flock to these fandoms because of the community they provide. If you never had a place to fit in in the real world, you can most likely find your spot within a fandom. The judgement free zone is something we don’t see a lot in everyday life. I think this is the biggest factor as to why fandoms are appealing to more and more people.

Works Cited

Chocolate Babies (n.d). Retrieved April 21, 2018.

https://vimeo.com/62632619

Devereux, Eoin. (2007). Media studies: Key issues and debates. London, UK: Routledge.

Duffett, M. (2015). Understanding fandom: An introduction to the study of media fan culture. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Generation Like (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2018, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/generation-like/

Lederach, J. P. (2008). Preparing for peace: Conflict transformation across cultures. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University.

PBSoffbook. (2012, September 06). Can Fandom Change Society? Retrieved April 23, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9Zum7azNIQ

#fandoms #case study #one direction #1d #my little pony #bronies #culture #study #fandom