Books on the topic 'Male-gaze'

This chapter discusses the transition between the classical war films of the early 1940s and the anticlassical film noirs of the later half of the decade. This period can be roughly described in terms of a dual crisis, seen at the level of representation and at the level of the subject's capacity to act and to know. The chapter then examines noir's visual and narrative regime, especially its ability to express in purely visual terms certain modern tenets such as the psyche's split nature, the notion of embodied subjectivity, and the failure of vision and seeing. Similarly, noir alters the function of verbal language: the protagonist's subjective narration is often the only key to knowledge and truth, and words seem to take up the role previously assigned to vision and action. Meanwhile deep focus photography alters the terms of visuality.

This chapter explores how male homosexuality is suggested via the presentation of the sexualized male body as object of the gaze—an objectifying gaze placing the male in the position of the “feminine.” It looks at the efflorescence of images of male physical beauty in the musical discourses of numerous singers and bands in the first two decades of the twenty-first century in Russia and how these images were conflated with homosexuality or homoeroticism. To this end, the chapter examines instances of the male body's foregrounding in the work of Andrei Danilko, the groups Hi-Fi and Smash!!, and singer Dima Bilan (focusing on his appearances at the Eurovision Song Contest). It highlights not only the variable of the body's visibility (and, concomitantly, questions of power), but also the interrelated and phenomenologically inflected dynamics of intentionality, proximity, and orientation. It shows that visible male bodies, invoking the possibility of the homosexual, provide a sight/site for Russian gay men and also serve the goluboi.

This chapter draws upon the personal narratives of noncommissioned rankers serving with the British Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I to explore how these men responded to encounters with bodily strength and weakness in their roles as male caregivers. In particular, it examines how they constructed the disablement of combatant troops by warfare in light of their own role as noncombatant service men. It locates this analysis in the context of a cultural historiography that has examined the gendering of the disabled male body in war primarily in relation to female caregivers. By examining the impact of disability on relationships between men in wartime, this chapter explores the role of the male gaze in constructing war disability and the gendering of caregiving.

This chapter examines gendered violence against men, which, unlike other violations such as rape, abduction, and looting, has been largely forgotten in popular memorializations of Partition. It focuses mainly on writer Saadat Hasan Manto's fictional response to the violence of Partition, Black Marginalia (1948), exploring the techniques by which he narrowly focuses the reader's gaze on the forms of male-on-male violence and evidentiary procedures used by warring religious mobs in the Partition riot. However, despite Manto's brilliant deconstruction of the logic of the communal riot, the chapter questions some aspects of his secular critique of such violence, particularly in the melodramatic tale “Mozail,” where the Sikh male figure's investments in the markers of his faith are presented merely as dogmatic and superficial.

This chapter examines the hybrid origins of Hong Kong's Huangmei opera film. It shows how the Chinese Communist Party's demand for a cinema showcasing the national cultural past paradoxically facilitated the cross-border circulation of an indigenous, vernacular operatic tradition—featuring feisty rural women, female voice-over chanting, and frequent cross-dressing—into the modernizing idioms of Hong Kong's film industry. Under colonial suppression of local nationalist objectives, the resulting hybridized genre carried a vital female imaginary in nostalgic Chinese wrappings. In contrast to Indian cinema's culture of emotion, female performativity contests Chinese conventions of restraint, opening up imaginary female power. This is supported by the impact of the female voice on point-of-view shooting, spatial organization, and narrative structure, foregrounding, against Western feminism's focus on the male gaze, a female counter-gaze within a patriarchal drama of conflicting desires.

Over 430 entriesThis new dictionary provides clear and accessible definitions of a range of terms from within the fast-developing field of Gender Studies. It covers terms which have emerged out of Gender Studies, such as cyber feminism, the double burden, and the male gaze, and gender-focused definitions of more general terms, such as housework, intersectionality, and trolling. It also covers major feminist figures, including Hélène Cixous, bell hooks, and Mary Wollstonecraft, as well as groups and movements from Votes for Women to Reclaim the Night. It is an invaluable reference resource for students taking Gender Studies courses at undergraduate or postgraduate level, and for those applying a gender perspective within other subject areas.

Pornography has long been an omnipresent phenomenon in both everyday and popular culture: representations of sexualities and the sexual body (the suffix ‘-graphy’ refers to this depictive and staging character) through language, signs and images can be found at any time and in any culture, but since the 20th century, of course, especially in photography and film. Over the centuries, specific writing strategies have emerged in order to escape censorship, and representations characterised by a ‘male gaze’ have been established—aesthetics of pornography that tread a narrow line between being ‘artfully’ erotic and ‘wickedly’ obscene. With contributions by Tatiana Ageeva, Hans Richard Brittnacher, Philip Jacobi, Katharina Kohm, Norbert Lennartz, Christian Lenz, Swantje van Mark, Jonas Nesselhauf, Wieland Schwanebeck and Sabine Sielke.

Dorothy Arzner’s 1940 filmDance, Girl, Dancehas been embraced within feminist film criticism as a stunning demonstration and critique of the “male gaze” so typical in classical Hollywood cinema. Tracing the lives and careers of two dancers, scholars argue, the film privileges strong female characters and women’s relationships with one another over heterosexual romance. Yet this essay argues thatDance, Girl, Danceis as much a film about the evolution of American dance in the twentieth century as it is about looking at women’s friendships. Juxtaposing Bubbles’s risqué burlesque routines and Judy’s sentimental divertissements with extended sequences of “modern” ballet,Dance, Girl, Dancegrafts contemporary debates about the future of American dance and the meaning of American modernism onto the bodies of Bubbles, Judy, and their fellow dancers.

This chapter interprets the serialized narration and characterization of John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer (1925) in line with the figuring of female bodies through the photographic apparatus of advertisement and celebrity that was ancillary to popular Broadway entertainments in the early twentieth century. Unpacking the image of Ellen Thatcher, Dos Passos’s central character, as a photograph at the end of the multilinear novel, it accounts for Dos Passos’s critique of the patriarchal, white-centric specular economy of the modern city. The photographic freezing of the wealthy, white Ellen registers her imprisonment to the male gaze and her resistance to those who are ethnically and socially other to her. Yet by the additive construction of its female characters, Manhattan Transfer undercuts Ellen’s sense of her essentialized difference from the novel’s other women.

Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction focuses on moving beyond stereotypes to examine how Asian American children and adolescents define their unique identities. For these kids, being or considered to be American becomes a challenge in itself as they assert their Asian and American identities; claim their own ethnic identity, be they an immigrant or American-born; and negotiate their ethnic communities. Chapters focus on primary texts from many ethnicities, such as Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese, South Asian, and Hawaiian. Individual chapters crossing cultural, linguistic, and racial boundaries revise the traditional white male bildungsroman to negotiate the complex terrain of Asian American children’s and teenagers’ identities. Chapters cover such topics as internalized racism and self-loathing; hyper-sexualization of Asian American females in graphic novels; the fluidity and ambiguity of the biracial or mestizo Filipino male and female’s ethnic and racial identities; interracial friendships between Japanese Americans and Americans of other ethnicities during the Japanese internment; transnational adoptions and birth searches by Korean Americans; food as a means of assimilation and resistance for first generation immigrant Vietnamese American girls; the hostile and alienating environment generated by the War on Terror for South Asian American teenagers; and commodity racism and the tourist gaze as well as self-authorship, interstitial identity, and the ambiguity of motherland in Hawaiian American literature.

In the context of decolonisation movements across Higher Education in the UK and around the world, this book shows that decolonial, queer, feminist readings are possible in even the deepest corners of the colonial literary canon. Decolonising the Conrad Canon turns to Joseph Conrad’s lesser-known works in search of textual breathing spaces, in which female characters of colour speak, think, gaze, and yearn, and follows them off the page into their transmedia afterlives. Through this intervention, the book challenges the ubiquitous recirculation of white male voices as uniquely endowed to speak the history of Empire and turns instead to the many powerful indigenous women that live forgotten in the Conrad archive and the myriad adaptations housed within it. Presenting Immada and Edith’s queer desires in The Rescue and its periodical illustrations, Aïssa’s anti-colonial resistance in An Outcast of the Islands and her characterisation on its pulp book covers, the feminist relationships of Almayer’s Folly and Nina Almayer’s embodiment in Chantal Akerman’s adaptation La Folie Almayer, this book argues that Conrad’s female characters of colour deserve to be read as viable, meaning-making protagonists who matter. Decolonising the Conrad Canon interrogates race, gender, and character status in literary scholarship to propose alternative methods for teaching, reading, and studying not just Joseph Conrad but all those seemingly immovable author-Gods like him.

The snake is one of humankind's most powerful and ambiguous symbols: it has at various times represented immortality and death, male and female, deity and demon, circle and line, killer and healer, the highest wisdom and the deepest subconscious. By virtue of its mysterious movement, potent poison, fearful grip, unblinking gaze and lightning quick strike, the power and image of the snake has wound its way into every culture. Whether snakes are worshipped as gods, feared as devils, or handled in religious ceremonies to test faith, snakes have played a critical role in the human heritage. This book explores the cult of the snake in world history, religion, and folklore. Fascination with snakes has been around since the dawn of time. Even today, images of snakes attract attention, fear, disgust, or admiration. Morgan examines that obsession with this mysterious creature, covering in vivid details such topics as mythical snakes like the Plumed Serpent, serpent iconography, tall tales, as well as the psychological symbolism that has attached itself to snakes. Cultures as diverse as pre-Columbian America, India, Egypt, China, sub-Saharan Africa, Celtic Europe, and the United States have all accorded the serpent a special place in their culture—apparently regardless of whether or not real snakes play an important part in the life of the people. Here, the mysterious nature of the snake unfolds, enchanting readers with a colorful and lively discussion of its place in our history, stories, religions, and cultures.

The International Conference on Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Equality and Diversity in Sports (ICMPEDS) is organized by GESPORT with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union from the 14th to the 16th of July 2021. The conference is an excellent forum for academics, researchers, practitioners, athletes, man- agers and professionals of federations, associations and sport organizations, and those other- wise involved in sport to share and exchange ideas in different areas of sport related equality worldwide. We will keep you informed by email and post the latest information on this matter on the GESPORT website and social media. Sport and its management continues to be a field where men and masculinity strongly prevail. This conference aims to investigate the complexities attached to the following questions: What does gender openness mean in the context of sport in the 21st century? What persists as gen- der closure in the same context? What are the gender cultures that signify sport continuing to be defined by regimes that resort to a dominant masculinity embodied in a strong and athletic male body? Moreover, and albeit some exceptions, athletes, practitioners, decision and policy makers, and sports spectators are predominantly men. In this sense, gender discrimination and segregation are present in multiple aspects of sport. Some illustrations include: a) male athletes have high salaries, more career opportunities, and get more recognition by society than female athletes; b) management and leadership positions in sports organizations are mainly occupied by men, including in sports traditionally considered as feminine and which have become feminised (e.g. gymnastics and dance); c) masculinised sports and its male athletes have much more attention and recognition from the media than female athletes; d) sports journalism continues to be predominantly produced and managed by men; e) some sports spectatorships cultures are marked by rituals and interactions that resort to masculine tribalism, often leading to aggressive and violent behaviours. Gender discrimination in sport is somehow socially normalised and accepted through a dis- course that essentialises the embodied sexual differences between genders. This gender dis- course legitimises the exclusion of women in some sports modalities and traps female bodies in sociocultural constructions as less able to exercise and engage in sport, or as the second and weaker version of the ideal masculine body. However, there are signs that the context of sport may be changing. The European Union and some national governments have made an effort to promote gender equality and diversity by fostering the adoption of gender equality codes/policies in different modalities and in in- ternational and local sports organizations. These new policies aim to increase female partic- ipation and recognition in sport, their access to leadership positions and involvement in the decision-making in sport structures. Additionally, the number of women practising non-com- petitive sport and as sports spectators have started growing, leading to new representations of sport and challenging the role of women in such a context. Finally, different body constructions and the emergence of alternative embodied femininities and masculinities are also challeng- ing how athletes of both genders experience their bodies and sports practice. Yet, research is scarce about the impact of these changes/challenges in the sports context. This conference will focus on mapping gender relations in sport and its management by taking into account the different modalities, contexts, institutional policies, organizational structures and actors (e.g. athletes, spectators, media professionals, sport decision makers and man- agers). It will treat sport and its management as one avenue where gender segregation and inequality occurs, but also adopt such as a space that presents an opportunity for change and does so as a widely applicable topic whose traits and culture are reflected in organizations and work more broadly. In this sense, the conference is interested in theoretical and empirical research work that may explore, but are not limited to the following issues: • Women representativeness in sports modalities and in sport organizational structures in different countries; • Women and management accounting in sport organizations; • The gender regimes that (re)produce different sports policies, modalities, and institu- tions in sport; • The stories of resistance/conformity of women that already occupy different roles in sport contexts; • The challenges and impact of conventional and new body representations in sports institutions and including athletes of both genders; • The discourses of masculinities in sport and its effect on women and men athletes; • The emergence of nationalism and populist discourses in political and governments states and their impact on the (re)shaping of masculinity and femininity constructions in sport; • The gendered transformations of the spectators’ gaze in what concerns different sports modalities; • The effects of new groups of sports spectators on gender relations in sport; • The discourses in media and its participation in the sports gender (in)equality; • The impact of new technologies, and new practices of training/coaching in the body- work and identities of athletes of both genders.