champ-the-mudkip

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male gaze is not 'when person look sexy' or 'when misogynist make film'

death of the author is not 'miku wrote this'

I don't think you have to read either essay to grasp the basic concepts

death of the author means that once a work is complete, what the author believes it to mean is irrelevant to critical analysis of what's in the text. it means when analysing the meaning of a text you prioritise reader interpretation above author intention, and that an interpretation can hold valid meaning even if it's utterly unintentional on the part of the person who created the thing. it doesn't mean 'i can ignore that the person who made this is a bigot' - it may in fact often mean 'this piece of art holds a lot of bigoted meanings that the author probably wasn't intentionally trying to convey but did anyway, and it's worth addressing that on its own terms regardless of whether the author recognises it's there.' it's important to understand because most artists are not consciously and vocally aware of all the possible meanings of their art, and because art is communal and interpretive. and because what somebody thinks they mean, what you think somebody means, and what a text is saying to you are three entirely different things and it's important to be able to tell the difference.

male gaze is a cinematographic theory on how films construct subjectivity (ie who you identify with and who you look at). it argues that film language assumes that the watcher is a (cis straight white hegemonically normative) man, and treats men as relatable subjects and women as unknowable objects - men as people with interior lives and women as things to be looked at or interacted with but not related to. this includes sexual objectification and voyeurism, but it doesn't mean 'finding a lady sexy' or 'looking with a sexual lens', it means the ways in which visual languages strip women of interiority and encourage us to understand only men as relatable people. it's important to understand this because not all related gaze theories are sexual in nature and if you can't get a grip on male gaze beyond 'sexual imagery', you're really going to struggle with concepts of white or abled or cis subjectivities.

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okay so I finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs, and here are my takeaways, because it was AMAZING and I can't believe all US students aren't required to read it in school:

shows how slavery actually worked in nuanced ways i'd never thought much about

example: Jacobs's grandmother would work making goods like crackers and preserves after she was done with her work day (so imagine boiling jars at like 3 a.m.) so that she could sell them in the local market

through this her grandmother actually earned enough money, over many years, to buy herself and earn her freedom

BUT her "mistress" needed to borrow money from her. :)))) Yeah. Seriously. And never paid her back, and there was obviously no legal recourse for your "owner" stealing your life's savings, so all those years of laboring to buy her freedom were just ****ing wasted. like.

But also! Her grandmother met a lot of white women by selling them her homemade goods, and she cultivated so much good will in the community that she was able to essentially peer pressure the family that "owned" her into freeing her when she was elderly (because otherwise her so-called owners' white neighbors would have judged them for being total assholes, which they were)

She was free and lived in her own home, but she had to watch her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all continue to be enslaved. She tried to buy her family but their "owners" wouldn't allow it.

Enslaved people celebrated Christmas. they feasted, and men went around caroling as a way to ask white people in the community for money.

But Christmas made enslaved people incredibly anxious because New Years was a common time for them to be sold, so mothers giving their children homemade dolls on Christmas might, in just a few days' time, be separated from their children forever

over and over again, families were deliberately ripped apart in just the one community that Harriet Jacobs lived in. so many parents kept from their children. just insane to think of that happening everywhere across the slave states for almost 200 years

Harriet Jacobs was kept from marrying a free Black man she loved because her "owner" wouldn't let her

Jacobs also shows numerous ways slavery made white people powerless

for example: a white politician had some kind of relationship with her outside of marriage, obviously very questionably consensual (she didn't hate him but couldn't have safely said no), and she had 2 children by him--but he wasn't her "master," so her "master" was allowed to legally "own" his children, even though he was an influential and wealthy man and tried for years to buy his children's freedom

she also gives examples of white men raping Black women and, when the Black women gave birth to children who resembled their "masters," the wives of those "masters" would be devastated--like, their husbands were (from their POV) cheating on them, committing violent sexual acts in their own house, and the wives couldn't do anything about it (except take out their anger on the enslaved women who were already rape victims)

just to emphasize: rape was LEGALLY INCENTIVIZED BY US LAW LESS THAN 200 YEARS AGO. It was a legal decision that made children slaves like their mothers were, meaning that a slaveowner who was a serial rapist would "own" more "property" and be better off financially than a man who would not commit rape.

also so many examples of white people promising to free the enslaved but then dying too soon, or marrying a spouse who wouldn't allow it, or going bankrupt and deciding to sell the enslaved person as a last resort instead

A lot of white people who seemed to feel that they would make morally better decisions if not for the fact that they were suffering financially and needed the enslaved to give them some kind of net worth; reminds me of people who buy Shein and other slave-made products because they just "can"t" afford fairly traded stuff

but also there were white people who helped Harriet Jacobs, including a ship captain whose brother was a slavetrader, but he himself felt slavery was wrong, so he agreed to sail Harriet to a free state; later, her white employer did everything she could to help Harriet when Harriet was being hunted by her "owner"

^so clearly the excuse that "people were just racist back then" doesn't hold any water; there were plenty of folks who found it just as insane and wrongminded as we do now

Harriet Jacobs making it to the "free" north and being surprised that she wasn't legally entitled to sit first-class on the train. Again: segregation wasn't this natural thing that seemed normal to people in the 1800s. it was weird and fucked up and it felt weird and fucked up!

Also how valued literacy skills were for the enslaved! Just one example: Harriet Jacobs at one point needed to trick the "slaveowner" who was hunting her into thinking she was in New York, and she used an NYC newspaper to research the names of streets and avenues so that she could send him a letter from a fake New York address

I don't wanna give away the book, because even though it's an autobiography, it has a strangely thrilling plot. But these were some of the points that made a big impression on me.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also inspired the first novel written by a Black American woman, Frances Harper, who penned Iola Leroy. And Iola Leroy, in turn, helped inspire books by writers like Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Harriet Jacob is also credited in Colson Whitehead's acknowledgments page for informing the plot of The Underground Railroad. so this book is a pivotal work in the US literary canon and, again, it's weird that we don't all read it as a matter of course.

(also P.S. it's free on project gutenberg and i personally read it [also free] on the app Serial Reader)

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i saw a license plate this morning that said ‘drgn slr’ which probably means ‘dragon slayer’ but ‘dragon slur’ is funnier. dragon faggot. draggot if you will.

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My advice to every artist (and honestly, everyone, but it’s especially relevant if you want to make art yourself) is to learn to appreciate everything other people make. Especially things you don’t like! Look at weird, ugly, bad art, with clashing colors and weird proportions and botched perspective and tropey subjects. Look at things made by amateurs an hobbyists and children, with shaky lines and incomprehensible detail. Look at everything you might find cringe or unpleasant - look at furries and gore and fetish porn and all the niche fandom crossovers. Look at art from cultures you don’t know well, look at things made hundreds of years ago, look at paintings from art movements you don’t know or don’t like at the museum. Look at photography and sculptures and fashion shows and murals on buildings and the design of everyday objects like chairs or lampposts or cars. Look at animation and comics and advertising, even the design on your cereal box.

And each time you look, try to find one thing you can appreciate about it. It’s fine if you don’t enjoy the art, but try to find something in it that has value, something you can respect about it, something that moves the world. It can be mastery of a technique, it can be the emotion conveyed, the thought it provoked, it can be color choice, composition, originality, or it can simply be the act of creation itself. Even in art that makes you uncomfortable, art that you find disgusting or bland or vile or ugly or just lame. You need to learn to see it. It’s ALWAYS there. Really look for it. Because you can learn from every single one of these things. Ask yourself why the artist made this, why they made it in this way. Wonder what someone other than you might see that you don’t see, if it has a meaning you just can’t grasp.

You will learn about the value of art, what it means to create, what it means to be human. If you can appreciate those things, it’ll reflect in how you make your own art. Not only will it deepen your relationship to art as a whole, but it’ll allow you to jump past the initial instinct to look away and give you the opportunity to notice techniques and patterns that you maybe wouldn’t have thought to use otherwise! You can learn from the masters, but you can also learn from everyone else. Learn to see the soul in art! I promise it’s worth it.

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I have had a really full and busy day today, but the highlight was:

So I'm sitting in the staff work area and one of my colleagues comes up to me. There's an open day this weekend, and so we need to plan an activity for the would-be students.

"Simple!" I say. "Let's get them to dissect some owl pellets. Hands on, fun, they get to play with skulls."

"Good idea!" she says. "But we'll need something even fancier for the open day in February. What can we do? Perhaps we can take some soil samples."

And as we're debating the photogenic merits of soil Vs dead mice...

Suddenly, a Dashing and Handsome Stranger (read: an autistic engineering lecturer) appears with a flourish (read: launches himself into a seat beside us while visibly and physically vibrating with excitement about his special interest being Useful) and asks "HELLO I'M SORRY DID YOU SAY SOIL BECAUSE I HAVE A RAMAN MICROSCOPE"

"Amazing!" declares my colleague. "...Who are you?"

"COME AND SEE IT!!!" he says, currently the human embodiment of the :D emoticon.

We went and saw it. It's an excellent microscope and his ten minute infodump about it was both spectacular and also extremely useful. We're going to use it to assess microplastics.

I have a new friend.

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Save A Crazy Person Buy Some Art Sale!

This Summer's Most Popular Paintings For SALE!

70% OFF From Etsy and Website Prices. Commissioned Plant Portraits Also Available.

Glimmer In the Dark 22"x 30" Decending Serenity 22"x 30"

Jolly Holiday 11"x 14" Just Give Me the Flax 11"x 14"

High Fever 30"x 22"

Hybridizing Giants 22"x 30" Flax Are Wild 22"x 30"

Life In the Dead Of Night 30"x 22"

Some Little Peace Of Beauty 18"x 24" Dreamland 11"x 14" Lover's Journeys Begin In Twilight Meetings 11"x 14"

Twisted 22"x 30" Discovering New Flax 22"x 30"

Heated Outburst 22"x 30" Fancy Free 22"x 30"

Fragrance Of Lost Souls 22"x 30"

I was served with eviction papers this morning and have 6 days to make enough sales to pay my landlord.

Sales Payable via

Venmo-Kate-Havekost (Preferred)

Paypal-havekatart@gmail.com

Prices include US shipping and are exclusive to tumblr.

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I think it's possible to pay my landlord in the 6 remaining days.

I will be okay if I can sell 4 22"x 30" ($900) every day.

If you can be one of the four today, please be one of the four.

Sales can be paid

Venmo-Kate-Havekost (perfered)

Paypal-havekatart@gmail.com

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Buy Art For A Good Cause!!!

Watercolor Lovers 48"x 24" ($2600)

I was served eviction papers on Thursday. I have 7 Days to make enough Art sales and original commissions to save both my housing and gallery/ art studio.

Living For Summer 40"x 30" ($1800)

Twisted 22"x 30" ($900,) Lavender Love 22"x 30" ($900)

A Rare Glimpse Into My Secret Pink Place 44"x 30" ($1800)

Meet Me In the Moonlight 22"x 30" ($900,) When We're Out Together, Dancing Cheek To Cheek 22"x 30" ($900)

Great Balls Of Fire 22"x 30" ($900)

Better Angels 22"x 30" ($900,) Lovechild Of A Moonbeam 24"x 36" ($1950,) Halcyone's Aquatic Incarnation 22"x 30" ($900)

Golden Hour 44"x 30" ($1800)

To save both my housing and autistic, woman owned gallery, I have to catch up several months of rent that adds up to $13275.

Sales Payable via

Venmo-Kate-Havekost (perfered)

Paypal-havekatart@gmail.com

Prices include US shipping and are tumblr only!

To view other available artworks check out my etsy or website

KateHavekostFineArt

Out Of Still Waters 48"x 24" ($2600)

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Could yall stop shooting each other outside my window im trying to masturbate

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so it turns out that climbing onto a rooftop in the middle of the night does solve all your problems, but i failed to consider that it would create a brand new one

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If you support gay marriage reblog this. If you're on the homophobic side, keep scrolling.

As a bisexual, it sickens me that some people WILL keep scrolling.

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My favorite grocery store cashier died a few months ago. I know this probably sounds like a bizarre thing to be sad about. Her name was Judith and I only saw her once or twice a week, and only while I was paying for groceries. But even now, months later, I think of her when I'm at the grocery store. She used to save the ends of receipt paper rolls when they only had a foot or two left on them and give them to me, which I never asked her to do, but the first time she did it she held one out to me and said "you look like someone who would make a craft out of this," and I laughed because she was right. I do save them to put in geocaches and letterboxes. Our small talk was about the weather and the weekend and aren't those cookies good? They're so expensive though. But it's worth it.

I'm just saying. If you ever sit around wondering whether you'd be missed if you disappeared off the face of the earth, the answer is probably yes, very much, and probably by more people than you think.

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My Pokemon head canon is that if you were holding an Aron and she wanted to go down she would do the little cat thing where they wiggle until they leap out of your arms gracefully except Aron is made mostly out of solid steel and would land with the impact tungsten cube, dent the floor, cause permanent structural damage to the foundation, and then stand up and happily trot along like she didn't do anything

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as a person who lost a loved one to addiction, i would rather have them be able to use safely in a sterile environment with safe equipment, where they can 100% know the drug is not laced with something deadly, and live- than them dying because they didn’t know what the drug contained, or because no one was there to make sure they weren’t ODing, or because they used dirty equipment in a dirty environment.

again more simply put, i would rather have my dead loved one continue using drugs in a safe manner and stay alive, than die the way they did because the stigma around substance use is not only dangerous, but lethal.

harm reduction saves lives.

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