One of the assignments of this course was to go to the Hawai'i International Film Festival. Unfortunately I was unable to complete this assignment so as an alternative assignment I attended a movie at the Movie Museum in Kaimuki.
Depending on which direction your coming from, the Movie Museum is located in a small shopping plaza off of Harding and 12th avenues right past the Cheveron station which would be on your right if you are heading up Harding east towards Kahala. Anyhow, tucked away in on the ground floor of the building which borders Harding Ave. is this hidden jewel on the mauka side -haha I'm so mocal.
Forgetting to check the schedule of what movie was showing when I headed to the Movie Museum to watch a flick on Sat. night solo. What a movie alone is a peculiar thing but if you're going to do it that way . . . this is the place. On saturday, "Somewhere" showed which features Stephen Dorf and Elle Fanning. The film is was directed by Sofia Coppola and is about a Hollywood actor who attempts to reconcile fatherhood with a life of promiscuity and partying.
For more information regarding the film consult
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somewhere_(film)
Otherwise, the movie is well put together although it is a slow as a sloth so if you're expecting to be engaged, don't. Honestly, there are a few hilarious scenes which deal with synchronized pole-dancers but otherwise the film addresses the actors daily life in a rather blah fashion. With that said, I suppose if you're looking to do a cynamtic critique of this film it might be interesting considering technique, production code, etc but as a whole the film offers little viewing pleasure unless you emphasize male gaze and the pleasure of viewing beautiful unclad women - the film shows a bit of skin. In this sense, the movie is very Hollywood as -thinking in terms of Mulvey- it captures male gaze -interesting because it is produced by a woman.
Lastly, the movie was a bore so instead of watching it -whoever may read this- I suggest you check out the movie museum as it is a spot that will keep you coming back . . . its BYOB and you can also eat in the small theater. There are four rows of maybe 6? seats so its very small and offers very comfortable reclining chairs. As well you can reserve tickets or the whole theater for parties and events . . . not much space but still a cool place to rent, drink, and watch a movie.
Here is a link with the Movie Museum schedule, address, etc:
http://www.kaimukihawaii.com/d/c/movie-museum.html
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Downtown Girls
I recently rewatched "Downtown Girls" which is a film that I had seen on HPU some odd years ago in addition to watching it in some of my anthro courses at HPU. After a few years of not seeing this film I had forgotten about it yet it inspired me to think about the film in terms of its role in academia.
Currently I am enrolled in teaching techniques with Dr. Whitfield and curriculm is only one of the many topics which we have addressed in this course. For that matter, I have considered "Downtown Girls" as an artifact and its applicability and appropriateness to the classroom.
As of now, I think the film -regressing to my undergrad days- was a useful and exciting artifact -don't get the wrong idea- as it was atypical because of it's divergent nature -oh the implications. Anyhow, while writing another paper I stumbled through my documents and found an assigment I had written on the movie in Anhro 3823 - Taboos.
Reading through this paper apparently I selected my own assignment and did not write according to the assignment which is evident in the following text. Otherwise, after going through Whitfields course and thinking about what to incorporate and what not to incorporate in the classroom I think I would use this material for it exposes very interesting aspects of our culture. Not importantly this is what I wrote for that class:
Gray Space: Between the ears and between the thighs
"Knowingly the assignment is to write about chapters 9-10 of Monsters yet that is not of my interest thus my critique to implication surrounding “Downtown Girls”. My interest is not so much the film itself rather the question which you asked us: “Is this film appropriate, inappropriate, and how does it relate to the concept of taboo?”
In response to your question my answer is yes, yes that “Downtown Girls” is appropriate and does illicit every possibly implication of taboo. More so, is that the content of this film is not outrageous contextually for that our supposed critique is that of academia. In principle, academia, in theory, should be the institution which perpetuates challenge to and expansion of the mind. On this note, in light of Christendom, this film may have been challenging to those of little experience beyond the picturesque nature of what it means to be a secularized conservative American. Likewise, because this film was “challenging” it commands display in light that it is an address more of the construction of “institutional thought products” –the student- rather than the material portrayed.
With this in mind, material such as “Downtown Girls” is priceless as it exercises the student psychologically and poses important sociological questions –how do institutional inequalities manifest? Etc. I’ve studied Cabrillo College and UCSC in California, at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, La Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica and HPU and it is in the context where a professor challenges the student where learning occurs, not through the de rigueur courses bound by the institutions’ conservative nature."
Currently I am enrolled in teaching techniques with Dr. Whitfield and curriculm is only one of the many topics which we have addressed in this course. For that matter, I have considered "Downtown Girls" as an artifact and its applicability and appropriateness to the classroom.
As of now, I think the film -regressing to my undergrad days- was a useful and exciting artifact -don't get the wrong idea- as it was atypical because of it's divergent nature -oh the implications. Anyhow, while writing another paper I stumbled through my documents and found an assigment I had written on the movie in Anhro 3823 - Taboos.
Reading through this paper apparently I selected my own assignment and did not write according to the assignment which is evident in the following text. Otherwise, after going through Whitfields course and thinking about what to incorporate and what not to incorporate in the classroom I think I would use this material for it exposes very interesting aspects of our culture. Not importantly this is what I wrote for that class:
Gray Space: Between the ears and between the thighs
"Knowingly the assignment is to write about chapters 9-10 of Monsters yet that is not of my interest thus my critique to implication surrounding “Downtown Girls”. My interest is not so much the film itself rather the question which you asked us: “Is this film appropriate, inappropriate, and how does it relate to the concept of taboo?”
In response to your question my answer is yes, yes that “Downtown Girls” is appropriate and does illicit every possibly implication of taboo. More so, is that the content of this film is not outrageous contextually for that our supposed critique is that of academia. In principle, academia, in theory, should be the institution which perpetuates challenge to and expansion of the mind. On this note, in light of Christendom, this film may have been challenging to those of little experience beyond the picturesque nature of what it means to be a secularized conservative American. Likewise, because this film was “challenging” it commands display in light that it is an address more of the construction of “institutional thought products” –the student- rather than the material portrayed.
With this in mind, material such as “Downtown Girls” is priceless as it exercises the student psychologically and poses important sociological questions –how do institutional inequalities manifest? Etc. I’ve studied Cabrillo College and UCSC in California, at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, La Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica and HPU and it is in the context where a professor challenges the student where learning occurs, not through the de rigueur courses bound by the institutions’ conservative nature."
Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America
From the Closet to the Loft and Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America share a common element: hybridity. Although From the Closest to the Loft does not explore Spanglish or Spanglish as does the other article, it establishes a platform for the discussion of cultural blending and offers an ideological critique of how marginalization occurs between a heteronormative domgroup and homosexual subgroup.
With this in mind, I’ve selected both articles because hybridity as a theoretical tool can be used to examine other phenomena in a similar way to how I have used hybridity theory to examine Spanglish and Spanglish as linguistic and cultural phenomenon. Take for example the following quotation “the Loft serves to contain queers, and especially queer sexuality, in order to protect the social mainstream from the supposed danger posed by queer “contamination”. In the case of the Queer Eye, this containment is accomplished through a ritual formula that inverts the traditional sequence characteristic of rites of passage. This inversion grants the show’s protagonists permission to enter temporarily the heterosexual mainstream only to be relegated to the Loft’s cultural, geographical, and sexual exile by each episodes end” (Foss, 2009, p. 247).
In Spanglish (2004) a similar code for production is followed but the framing is different. In Spanglish, Flor and Cristina Moreno are two undocumented Mexican immigrants who have moved to California to live the dream. Once Flor leaves the barrio and looks for work in White America and is hired by Deborah Clasky –the first instance of cultural blending evident in the film – the audience is witness to the same phenomena that is portrayed in Queer Eye, i.e. now that Flor is out of the barrio and in white territory as an “other” she is quickly picked from the street and put into a white home to be normalized and this is the same function which the loft serves. For the men who star in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy once they interact with straight America they are placed into a “loft” which serves as a categorical safe place which reinforces Heteronormativity; the Clasky’s home and the fact that Flor get hired normalizes her in terms of whiteness and makes her “safe” just as the loft does to these gay men, it makes them safe.
Further, Spanglish, Spanglish, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and hybridity have another point in common which is that after each subgroup –gay men and Latina immigrants- are marginalized and put into their proper “safe” box, each group is removed from center stage and exiled to their loft after temporarily interacted with heterosexual and white America. An interesting parallel to draw between the two artifacts to further demonstrate what is common between the two productions is that in the Queer Eye by the end of the show the men are removed and watch the success of their work on a screen removed from the hetero context as voyeurs. In Spanglish by the end of the film a similar phenomenon occurs: Flor quits her job and takes Cristina out of private school to move from Beverly Hills back to the Barrio while Cristina narrates the final scenes of the movie. What this brings attention to is that both subgroups are marginalized and reduced to voyeurs, only witness to what occurs on center stage while they watch from the fringes.
Likewise, because both subgroups are depicted in a limited and temporary sense attention should be given to such roles as critiques From the Closet to the Loft; although the normalization of these groups requires they enter the spotlight these roles do not integrate them rather quite the opposite bringing attention to my last point. That is, Hollywood and the producers of such shows follow a narrow code of production which is obviously heteronormative and white which leaves little room for anyone else yet that is a whole different discussion which I do not care to elaborate upon at this point.
Dean, C., & Leibsohn, D. (2003). Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America*. Colonial Latin American Review, 12(1), 5. Retrieved from EBSCOhost
With this in mind, I’ve selected both articles because hybridity as a theoretical tool can be used to examine other phenomena in a similar way to how I have used hybridity theory to examine Spanglish and Spanglish as linguistic and cultural phenomenon. Take for example the following quotation “the Loft serves to contain queers, and especially queer sexuality, in order to protect the social mainstream from the supposed danger posed by queer “contamination”. In the case of the Queer Eye, this containment is accomplished through a ritual formula that inverts the traditional sequence characteristic of rites of passage. This inversion grants the show’s protagonists permission to enter temporarily the heterosexual mainstream only to be relegated to the Loft’s cultural, geographical, and sexual exile by each episodes end” (Foss, 2009, p. 247).
In Spanglish (2004) a similar code for production is followed but the framing is different. In Spanglish, Flor and Cristina Moreno are two undocumented Mexican immigrants who have moved to California to live the dream. Once Flor leaves the barrio and looks for work in White America and is hired by Deborah Clasky –the first instance of cultural blending evident in the film – the audience is witness to the same phenomena that is portrayed in Queer Eye, i.e. now that Flor is out of the barrio and in white territory as an “other” she is quickly picked from the street and put into a white home to be normalized and this is the same function which the loft serves. For the men who star in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy once they interact with straight America they are placed into a “loft” which serves as a categorical safe place which reinforces Heteronormativity; the Clasky’s home and the fact that Flor get hired normalizes her in terms of whiteness and makes her “safe” just as the loft does to these gay men, it makes them safe.
Further, Spanglish, Spanglish, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and hybridity have another point in common which is that after each subgroup –gay men and Latina immigrants- are marginalized and put into their proper “safe” box, each group is removed from center stage and exiled to their loft after temporarily interacted with heterosexual and white America. An interesting parallel to draw between the two artifacts to further demonstrate what is common between the two productions is that in the Queer Eye by the end of the show the men are removed and watch the success of their work on a screen removed from the hetero context as voyeurs. In Spanglish by the end of the film a similar phenomenon occurs: Flor quits her job and takes Cristina out of private school to move from Beverly Hills back to the Barrio while Cristina narrates the final scenes of the movie. What this brings attention to is that both subgroups are marginalized and reduced to voyeurs, only witness to what occurs on center stage while they watch from the fringes.
Likewise, because both subgroups are depicted in a limited and temporary sense attention should be given to such roles as critiques From the Closet to the Loft; although the normalization of these groups requires they enter the spotlight these roles do not integrate them rather quite the opposite bringing attention to my last point. That is, Hollywood and the producers of such shows follow a narrow code of production which is obviously heteronormative and white which leaves little room for anyone else yet that is a whole different discussion which I do not care to elaborate upon at this point.
Dean, C., & Leibsohn, D. (2003). Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America*. Colonial Latin American Review, 12(1), 5. Retrieved from EBSCOhost
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