Who wears the pants?

Another Uni blog for Sex and the Screen:

The thing that made me think the most – apart from Butler’s mindblowing suggestion that there is no such thing as an ungendered sex – was that everything is brought back to heterosexuality, or a version thereof.

I have a few friends in a lesbian relationship, and in the three cases that I immediately think of, at least one of them is considered “butch” while the other “girly”. I know this is counter-productive, but they sort of prove the theory that in a relationship, one of them have to be the “masculine” one (or, the one who takes on the role of masculinity), and the other the “feminine” one.

One of the couples got asked at a party “so, who’s the guy in your relationship?” which ALSO solidifies that idea of a relationship as between a “masculine” and a “feminine”.

There’s also that saying “wearing the pants in the relationship”. Again, that implies that in a relationship, there is someone who takes the masucline role, and if those pants happen to be on the non-male (or the “non-masucline”) of a relationship, then it’s considered amusing because it’s an inversion of the “normal”.

However, there seems to be a different way of looking at this for homosexual guys. For some reason, when someone says lesbian couple, the first thought to come to mind is a butch girl with a girly girl, or two butch girls (I am giving up on the “” marks, but you understand where they might go), yet when someone mentions a gay couple (gay guys), the first thing to come to mind (at least for me) are two “feminine” guys – two guys who enact more of a feminine role than a masculine one.

(Argh, drowning in the prescriptive non “” words here.)

I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I just find it weird that the heterosexual relationship pairing only exists for lesbian couples, and not gay couples…

Oh oh and this video confused a lot of my (straight) guy friends a lot. I like this (watch before you keep reading):

Thailand’s Got Talent video

My guy friends found themselves at a loss as to whether to think she’s adorable, or what. I think, when you live in a country with more transexuals (like Thailand), you kind of become more desensitized to the ambiguity of transexuals.

Alex.

That video, seriously, love it.

Alex

Final Uni Blog Post

I don’t know if I’ve done enough but here it is, the final uni blog post for Sem 2 2010.

I did my re-enrollment today, and if all things go well, I will be doing a LOT more uni blog assignments next year. If the tutors seem lenient, I will continue posting them here. If they don’t, I can go to them and be very sweet and all like “but this is a chance for me to better myself”.

Anyway:

So, in a final desperate attempt to blog on the last day (after writing this I’m going around commenting), I will write about fan culture.

There seems to be a group for everything. There is an entire society based around the worship of machines with turbine blades that, when activated, create a movement in the air that comes as a relieving cool breeze on a hot summer’s day.

Oh there’s a pun for ya.

No, actually I’m talking about the bunch of people who go nuts at the mention of something they collectively like. YES, electronic fans may be an example, but in this context, I am talking about media related things.

I asked my friend – you may remember her as Brenda from the previous post – why she used to ‘fangirl’ over what she fangirled over so much. (Fangirl, FYI, is apparently the term used to describe the group of females who worship electronic fans.)

She replied, “Because they’re perfect. They’re the whole package.”

What was the extent she’d gone to, to fangirl?

“Sent a postcard, bought shit off the internet.”

In my experiences, that is definitely not as manic as they come. Unless, of course, the postcard she sent included a lock of her hair, and the shit she bought off the internet was literally, shit off the internet. Then yeah.

I’m not saying I’m exempt from the slightly demeaning things a person does to get closer to a public figure/TV show/etc etc they adore. I follow blogs dedicated to actors and actresses I like on Tumblr, I was tempted to buy a jacket simply because it was the “official NCIS special agent windbreaker”. But these acts of trying to live out what we love are getting more and more recognized – though sending locks of hair is still creepy, in my books. Sidenote, Brenda didn’t actually do that.

Perhaps ‘recognized’ wasn’t the word. I was going for ‘more and more exploited-by-the-media-and-made-to-become-a-determiner-of-what-kind-of-person-you-are’.

Just because a guy likes Glee doesn’t make him gay.

Just because a girl likes watching gory horror movies doesn’t make her a sadist.

(If you like Justin Bieber though, oh, I have nothing to say.)

The media markets Glee and horror movies towards girls and guys respectively, and with good reason – stereotypes exist because they are obviously valid to some extent – but it annoys me when I personally change what I publicly declare as something I like, (or not just me, but people in general) because the stigma of liking something is so strong.

A lot of people say I should like Scrubs. I say “it’s okay.” To be honest, I don’t like it that much, but because Scrubs is almost the epitome of what people expect me to like, it seems I should like it.

No one expects me to like teenage melodramatic shows like The Vampire Diaries. Plus, liking vampires gets you automatically grouped into the sphere of Twihards. I liked vampires way before I even knew what Twilight was. I like Vampire Diaries because I like the way it looks – I can be shallow too. I decided to openly like the show just to prove to myself that I can be a fan of something that people don’t expect me to be.

Why do we have to be branded a certain way for things we like? Why, when someone says “I like Korean dramas” do we automatically brand them as pretty-boy loving teenage girls? Does the Korean media not produce more grungey shows where the actors don’t look androgynous?

Why can’t people just like things, and have other people go, “oh okay cool, as you were”?

There is too much crap given to people who identify themselves as a part of a fan culture, and there are too many people allowing the crap to be crapped.

Last post ends here. Over and out. Guns blazing. Etc.

The prev gif didn’t work. I changed it.

Alex.

Time to do my final CMEL essay, then study the crap out of Self, Asia and Linguistics.

Alex.

I Wish It Were Us

[Haunting – Anberlin]

I think I used this song already, too.

Anyway, it was brought to my attention that the link on the side for my Uni assignment won’t work unless you’re a logged in member of the subject, so I’ve taken it off (or will, after I finish writing this) and from now on I will just copy/paste what I wrote in this blog, and any comments I will copy/paste to that blog and answer them (as well as answering them here).

I know, it’s so confusing! But I think there will be people who want to see what I wrote.

So yesterday, my post was titled “C’mon lawn chair, look pretty for the camera”

So they reckon (well, Sontag reckons) that whoever is doing/making photographic recording of anything, is the person in power. Those doing the surveillance, those taking the photo, those behind the camera etc, they’re the ones in power because they get to decide and influence how an instance is depicted in photography.

Well, I see your Sontag, and I raise you ungrounded and unresearched rebuttal.

Now, I realize that the majority of those that read this are fellow Arts students, so I might be preaching to the already holy here, but how many times have you tried to take a photo of a lawn chair, wanting it to look freaking awesome and deep, only to have it look like a lawn chair?

I want to be good at photography! Admit it, people who can snap a mean picture are sexier – their skinny jeans, messy hair and don’t-give-a-grapefruit about anything demeanor – and I wanted to be one of them! But each picture that I tried to snap of someone turns out a bit drunk and blurry.

I put to you that it is not the PHOTOGRAPHERS who have the upper-hand, but it is the PHOTOGRAPHEES who hold the power to stand still while still looking good and baring their soul to the lens. You can set up the best shot, and then they decide their hair isn’t sitting right, reach up to fix it, and bam their beautiful face is obstructed by a blurry fleshy appendage. Um. The arm.

Take, for another really boring example, Australia’s Funniest Home Video. You can keep that camera rolling for as long as you want, but if your kid doesn’t throw up in your spouse’s face, or your dog doesn’t get her head stuck in the vase, then you don’t get those two cars! I wonder how many of those prize-winning side splitters have been set up and re-done until they’re exactly the right amount of funny?

Alex.

And, once again…

Alex.