Princesses in the Suburbs: Reading The Virgin Suicides as a Fairytale

<p>The concept of male gaze has been present for a very long time. It is present in literature, albeit literature being an entirely different media. In <em>The Virgin Suicides </em>by Jeffrey Eugenides, this theme seems to be very apparent along with themes such as voyeurism and objectifications. Drawing on the structuralist and gender studies, this article emphasizes about the effect of the male gaze and how this specific way of viewing affects the girls in a way that it shifts their function as a character, by reading the novel as a fairytale—a form of literary work of which the elements are easy to understand—helped by Vladimir Propp’s theory of <em>dramatis personae</em>. The findings attained from literature reading and library research concludes that the way the neighborhood boys' view of the Lisbon girls does affect their roles in the story. I argue that the Lisbon girls were put on a very high pedestal since the very beginning; therefore positions them as the fairytale princess. However, due to the nature of the gaze applied in the work, there are possibilities that it may shift to other characters.</p><p> </p>

Gothic Noir Filmic Male Gaze: Gender Stereotyping in Margaret Atwood’s “The Freeze-Dried Groom”

Stereotyping has been crucial in artistic representations, especially cinema, in the construction of gender paradigms. Males and females have been portrayed by means of simplified unrealistic clichés with the purpose of controlling and constraining them into patriarchal roles and conventions, promoting societal normative ideologies. Noir women are projections of male anxieties about female sexuality and female independence. In “The Freeze-Dried Groom,” Atwood unveils gender stereotyping through a typically film noir male gaze in three of its stock characters: the femme attrapée, the “detective” and the femme fatale. Hence, Atwood depicts a femme fatale to reflect not just on this character in film noir, but also on female identity, gender dynamics and feminism. She exposes and questions the marriage-family institution, and the patriarchal society as a whole.

A cure for woundless pain

As a cultural construct, the idol is a consumer product created to “heal” in the age of exhaustion. Layering a “guardian” aspect onto Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze,” this paper contextualizes the commodification and consumption of innocence. This paper brings the documentary, Tokyo Idols (2017), and the animated film, Perfect Blue (1997), into a conversation to theorize how femininity is constructed and commodified in Japan’s pop idol industry. The idol culture consumes innocence only to create more trauma for women by stressing the arbitrary importance of innocence and sacrificing female agency in the process.

What is Behind the Bodice (Choli Ki Pichhe)? Narratives of Simulacra, Rape, Forced Whoredom: A Critical Analysis of Mahasweta Devi’s Behind the Bodice

Media is not a charitable organization rather a profitable institution. Media often fails to publish important national issues and success to publish the non-issues for escalating the mercantile gains. Interestingly, media often adopts simulation, simulacra, hyper-reality to printed or digitalized news applying their unethical de-realization or yellow journalism. I, therefore, theoretically and thematically will show in my paper how this paid journalism and unethical media using a false representation of Gangor’s breast doomed her life. This ‘Simulacrum’ gives birth of narratives of violence, gang rape, and forced prostitution in Mahasweta Devi’s story Behind the Bodice. Jean Baudrillard defines ‘Simulacra’ as something that replaces reality with its false representation. According to him, it refers the false reality of the image and misrepresentation of true reality actually. In the story Behind the Bodice, Gangor’s breast feeding of her child is a natural phenomenon. But this true reality, ‘save the breast’ (simulacra) is represented with erotic code which sells abroad by Upin Puri at huge prices. This ace-photographer exhibited the nakedness of India to the West for his journalistic prosperity. His false representations of Gangor’s breasts germinate the tales of violence, eviction, male gaze, narratives of forced prostitution and finally, a tragic doom. I will highlight in my paper how this subject is appreciated by then. On the other hand, ‘Behind the Bodice’ introduces the narrative of simulacra, rape and forced whoredom by the power, politics and apparatus of the repressive state.

Narrative der Essstörung im Zeitgenössischen Film und Roman: Simón Bross' Malos hábitos (2007) und Nina Bouraouis La voyeuse interdite (1991)

En el cine contemporáneo y en la literatura narrativa de los países de lengua románica se encuentra una multitud de obras en las cuales los trastornos alimenticios no sólo representan una adecuación exagerada a los dictados contemporáneos de belleza, sino también una metáfora sociocultural que visualiza las disfunciones de la sociedad actual a través del cuerpo femenino. El análisis de la película Malos hábitos (2007) del director mejicano Simón Bross y de la novela La voyeuse interdite (1991) de la autora franco-argelina Nina Bou- raoui demuestra que la sumisión del cuerpo femenino a los ideales desinhibidos de belleza occidental (Bross) y a las normas púdicas de un Islam fundamentalista (Bouraoui) representan la dependencia de la mujer con respecto al poder de la mirada masculina (male gaze), transformando el cuerpo femenino en un espacio de proyección de las jerarquías sociales . Ante la idea ampliamente difundida del Islam como ’lo otro‘, criticado particularmente por su ’concepción atrasada‘ en cuanto al papel de la mujer, la comparación demuestra que la hipersexualización occidental y la tabuización integrista del cuerpo femenino son dos caras de la misma moneda, que reduce a la mujer – de manera desconcertantemente similar – al estado de objeto sexual.