scholarly journals Fashion/Photo/Film: The Intertextual Discourse of Funny Face (1956)

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Paul Jobling
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Costume Design ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
Cultural Leadership ◽  
Art And Design ◽  
Fashion Photography ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Relationship Of

In this paper I mobilize Funny Face (dir. Stanley Donen, 1956) to examine the intertextual nexus between fashion, fashion photography, and film. Set in New York City and Paris, with costume design by Hubert de Givenchy and Edith Head, the film is a latter day telling of the Pygmalion myth, such that photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) and Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson), the dictatorial Fashion Editor of Quality, take up the challenge of converting Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn), whom they regard as an unprepossessing bookstore intellectual, into a top model. Thus I analyze how a film that is more generally regarded as a benchmark in the Hollywood musical for its exuberant use of colour and songs is, more particularly, a cinematic locus for both the mediation and mediatization of fashionable identities. To this end, I assess how the film elaborates the power of the fashion industry as a matter of social practice in regards to Foucauldian discourse and the related concept of the énoncé, or event/statement. Thus I evince I two events/statements — “Think Pink!” and “Bonjour Paris” — to discuss in particular the relationship of style to national identities and the need or desire for America to assert cultural leadership in fashion photography, art, and design over France in the context of 1950s Cold War politics. By comparison, I enlist the statements, “Take the Picture!” and “A Bird of Paradise,” to examine respectively the dynamic of looking/gazing between the fashion photographer and designer and their (in this case) female models, the nexus between star designing, clothing, and gender identity, and what Foucault calls assujetissement — subjection — which connotes the dual process of Jo’s subordination as well as the act of her becoming or “being made” a subject according to a system of power.

Collaboration, competition and conflict: The collective labour of fashion photography at US Vogue (1940–42)

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlène Van de Casteele
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
New York ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Fashion Photography ◽  
Artistic Directors ◽  
Conde Nast

While the figure of the fashion photographer has been widely discussed, little has been written on image-making as a collective endeavour. Fashion photography indeed results from technical innovations, publishing strategies, editorial policies, behind-the-scenes negotiations and, ultimately, decision-making. This article analyses ‘The Condé Nast Papers’ – a series of internal documents held at the Condé Nast archives in New York – together with US Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar’s editorials and covers to explore how fashion photographs resulted from the collective labour of photographers, editors, artistic directors and many others in the early 1940s. Through these unique historical sources, this article gives a voice to the workers involved in the making of fashion images and shows how decision-making and creativity were distributed across occupations. It also unpacks the negotiations, arbitrations and power relations that underpinned work relations at US Vogue, showing the collaboration, competition and conflict between the different actors. Drawing on art sociologist Howard Becker’s concept of ‘art worlds’ while combining methods from fashion history and visual and material culture, I question the respective status of the multiple authors involved in this activity and the conventions of fashion image-making. In doing so, I argue that fashion photographs are the product of the interactions of a multitude of workers who are embedded in the power structures of the fashion media industry, and whose collective labour is made invisible. My goal is to rethink the ways in which collective labour has been evidenced and produced in the fashion industry.

Queer insurgency: Slava Mogutin and the politics of camp

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 141-161
Author(s):  
Graham H. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
Analysis Methodology ◽  
American Artist ◽  
Fashion Photography ◽  
Political Challenge ◽  
Political Form

The subject of this article is Russo-American artist Slava Mogutin. A close associate of Gosha Rubchinskiy and Lotta Volkova, Mogutin has been based in New York since 1995. While he originally shot to fame as a poet and novelist, Mogutin is today better known as a performance artist, filmmaker and photographer. The aim of my article is to locate Mogutin, and in particular his fashion photography, within current debates around the representation of masculinity and the construction of masculine subjectivity/-ies. More specifically, using a visual analysis methodology, I analyse the camp aesthetics of Mogutin’s fashion imagery. In a number of ways, Mogutin’s camp aesthetic raises questions about displacement and identity, the clash between individual desires and social norms and – as he puts it – ‘what it means to be a young man in the modern world’. It also constitutes an avowedly political challenge, not just to the state-sponsored homophobia and heteronormativity of Mogutin’s native Russia but also to the identity politics underpinning today’s fashion industry. I conclude by suggesting that Mogutin’s openly political form of camp might pose a challenge to the traditional Sontagian view of camp as apolitical.

Self-Compassion and Quality of Life in Adults Who Stutter

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 2097-2108
Author(s):  
Robyn L. Croft ◽  
Courtney T. Byrd
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
The Self ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Self Compassion ◽  
Adults Who Stutter ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Impact

Purpose The purpose of this study was to identify levels of self-compassion in adults who do and do not stutter and to determine whether self-compassion predicts the impact of stuttering on quality of life in adults who stutter. Method Participants included 140 adults who do and do not stutter matched for age and gender. All participants completed the Self-Compassion Scale. Adults who stutter also completed the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering. Data were analyzed for self-compassion differences between and within adults who do and do not stutter and to predict self-compassion on quality of life in adults who stutter. Results Adults who do and do not stutter exhibited no significant differences in total self-compassion, regardless of participant gender. A simple linear regression of the total self-compassion score and total Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering score showed a significant, negative linear relationship of self-compassion predicting the impact of stuttering on quality of life. Conclusions Data suggest that higher levels of self-kindness, mindfulness, and social connectedness (i.e., self-compassion) are related to reduced negative reactions to stuttering, an increased participation in daily communication situations, and an improved overall quality of life. Future research should replicate current findings and identify moderators of the self-compassion–quality of life relationship.

The Relationship of Digit Ratio (2D:4D) and Gender-Role Orientation in Four National Samples

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan J. Troche ◽  
Nina Weber ◽  
Karina Hennigs ◽  
Carl-René Andresen ◽  
Thomas H. Rammsayer
Keyword(s):  
Gender Role ◽  
Sex Role ◽  
Role Orientation ◽  
Sexually Dimorphic ◽  
Gender Role Orientation ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Fourth Finger ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract. The ratio of second to fourth finger length (2D:4D ratio) is sexually dimorphic with women having higher 2D:4D ratio than men. Recent studies on the relationship between 2D:4D ratio and gender-role orientation yielded rather inconsistent results. The present study examines the moderating influence of nationality on the relationship between 2D:4D ratio and gender-role orientation, as assessed with the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, as a possible explanation for these inconsistencies. Participants were 176 female and 171 male university students from Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden ranging in age from 19 to 32 years. Left-hand 2D:4D ratio was significantly lower in men than in women across all nationalities. Right-hand 2D:4D ratio differed only between Swedish males and females indicating that nationality might effectively moderate the sexual dimorphism of 2D:4D ratio. In none of the examined nationalities was a reliable relationship between 2D:4D ratio and gender-role orientation obtained. Thus, the assumption of nationality-related between-population differences does not seem to account for the inconsistent results on the relationship between 2D:4D ratio and gender-role orientation.

Jazz Bubble

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Chapman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Social Trends ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
A Site

Hailed by corporate, philanthropic, and governmental organizations as a metaphor for democratic interaction and business dynamics, contemporary jazz culture has a story to tell about the relationship between political economy and social practice in the era of neoliberal capitalism. The Jazz Bubble approaches the emergence of the neoclassical jazz aesthetic since the 1980s as a powerful, if unexpected, point of departure for a wide-ranging investigation of important social trends during this period. The emergence of financialization as a key dimension of the global economy shapes a variety of aspects of contemporary jazz culture, and jazz culture comments upon this dimension in turn. During the stateside return of Dexter Gordon in the mid-1970s, the cultural turmoil of the New York fiscal crisis served as a crucial backdrop to understanding the resonance of Gordon’s appearances in the city. The financial markets directly inform the structural upheaval that major label jazz subsidiaries must navigate in the music industry of the early twenty-first century, and they inform the disruptive impact of urban redevelopment in communities that have relied upon jazz as a site of economic vibrancy. In examining these issues, The Jazz Bubble seeks to intensify conversations surrounding music, culture, and political economy.

PAR Method

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Billies
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Design Method ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Context Analysis ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender

The work of the Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative (WWRC), a participatory action research (PAR) project that looks at how low income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming (LG-BTGNC) people survive and resist violence and discrimination in New York City, raises the question of what it means to make conscientization, or critical consciousness, a core feature of PAR. Guishard's (2009) reconceptualization of conscientization as “moments of consciousness” provides a new way of looking at what seemed to be missing from WWRC's process and analysis. According to Guishard, rather than a singular awakening, critical consciousness emerges continually through interactions with others and the social context. Analysis of the WWRC's process demonstrates that PAR researchers doing “PAR deep” (Fine, 2008)—research in which community members share in all aspects of design, method, analysis and product development—should have an agenda for developing critical consciousness, just as they would have agendas for participation, for action, and for research.

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