nolanwuzhere

[nolanwuzhere]

My last portfolio entry is about a video titled "Conan Gives Staff Performance Reviews." I am a massive Conan O'Brien fan and have been for a long time. He's a perfect balance of hyper-intelligent comedy and stupidity. I actually did my Rhetorical Criticism final paper on his Dartmouth commencement speech which led to me watching clips of his show for hours. In this video in particular, he takes on the role of a more demanding and rude CEO. He walks down the halls knocking things off of people's desks and just generally being unlikeable. When interviewing one of the show's photographers, he mentions that he walks up behind the women in the office, grabs their shoulders, and says "Daddy's home." Later in the video, he starts talking to a male employee about celebrity crushes and when his female assistant tries to chime in he shoos her away. Obviously Conan doesn't do this stuff in the workplace and almost everything that comes out about his show is positive. But the fact that the typical male boss in America is seen as a guy who harasses the women in the office and talks about attractive women with his male counterparts is indicative of the U.S.A.'s hegemonic masculinity. Both Power = Physical Force & Control and Achievement through one’s job are major elements of the male leadership expectation.

[nolanwuzhere]

I'm back with yet another horror movie. This film is called Black Christmas and it released in 2019 to some pretty underwhelming reviews. This is a remake of the 1974 film, but with a more feminist message. It actively tackles rape culture, fraternities, and the quieting of female victims. I personally have not seen it, but I recently watched "The Kill Count" of it. "The Kill Count" is a series on YouTube that unsurprisingly counts the amount of deaths in horror movies while giving a deeper insight to the film's production and reception. In this video, he talked about how the movie was directed by a woman named Sophia Takal. It was clear that her primary intention of the film was to actively combat the male gaze that is so prevalent in Hollywood. In an interview she said, "I wanted to make a movie where instead of feeling objectified or watched from a distance, the audience felt seen." She didn't have the women seem helpless or dumb for the sake of the plot. Takal didn't have the characters wander aimlessly until they were inevitably killed. She instead gave them agency and emphasized their intelligence. What's also interesting is that she goes against the grain by making a movie for women in an industry that regularly assumes that the audience is male. The camera work never sexualizes the characters, none of the violence is eroticized, and essentially makes the big bad of the film the patriarchy. While I still need to watch the full movie for myself, it's interesting to see such a woman-centric project in a genre that is only now getting more accustomed to that perspective.

[nolanwuzhere]

When I was researching Nightmare on Elm Street 2 for my documentary review, this movie kept popping into my mind. Sleepaway Camp is an old horror movie where the big twist ending is that the main character, Angela Baker, was actually Peter Baker. She's been the one killing everybody, and the last shot zooms out revealing that she has a penis. In the year 2025, this comes off as pretty awful trans representation. The reveal is specifically made to shock and dismay the audience, which in itself is pretty gross. On top of that, Peter's transition to Angela isn't shown as a personal decision and is instead the result of a mental break. But for me, the crazy part is that a lot of people see this portrayal as really positive. I should preface that I don't have the experience of a trans individual and that is purely my opinion of the twist. People back in the day were just thankful to have any kind of transgender representation on their screen, even if it was done in the form of a shock horror movie twist. This to me speaks volumes to the lack of representation we see in TV and film, and it also reminds me of having an oppositional gaze. When watching this movie, it's easy to get lost in it and be shocked by the end reveal. It's done in a really creepy way and is effective as a horror moment. But watching that plot twist again, not just looking at the message itself but whether or not that message is a positive one, give you a different perspective.

[nolanwuzhere]

While the picture attached is a press photo from the amazing movie "The Mask", this post is actually about Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz at the 1995 MTV awards. I recently saw a clip on Twitter from the old award show and it perfectly showcases hegemony. Chris Isaak, a musician, was walking up to Cameron Diaz who was on stage announcing the next award. Isaak grabbed a hold of Diaz and attempted to kiss her in the middle of her speech. She is visibly trying to get away from him, and he keeps repeating "come here baby." It's extremely uncomfortable to watch, and if it was planned ahead of time it sure looked convincing. This is hegemonic in the sense that in the social understanding, an attractive guy should have no problem kissing an attractive lady. In fact, any woman that could kiss Chris Isaak is lucky. But obviously her reaction didn't reflect this. And funnily enough, Jim Carrey got revenge for his co-star. When walking up to accept his award, he grabbed Chris Isaak and seemingly kissed him. You can see after that Isaak is wiping his mouth off and walking away. If this guy thinks it's ok to force a kiss on someone who is unwilling, he shouldn't have a problem with another person doing the same to him.

[nolanwuzhere]

On the weekend it released, I went and watched the new Marvel Movie "The Thunderbolts*" in theaters and I absolutely loved it. It's about a rag-tag group of messed up vigilantes trying to team up. The acting is good, the action is good, and it handles a lot of mental health themes really well. But the thing that I was sort of surprised to see was a lack of fan outrage at the leader of the group being a woman. In every marvel project with a female lead (Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, Black Widow) there has been a lot of criticism from fans about Marvel pushing their woke agenda. But in the lead-up and release of the movie there was radio silence from these same critics. Part of me believes that this is because the movie actually turned out to be really great, but I also think that Marvel fans are potentially getting used to having kick-ass superheroes being women. Then I watched a review of the movie by a 2.3 million subscriber YouTuber named "The Critical Drinker" and I was immediately proved wrong. He rips apart the characters and the ideas of the movie, going as far to say that Yelena, the leader, was a "shorter, dumpier, less appealing version of Black Widow." But his problem with male characters like John Walker, the Captain America stand-in, is that he just exists to be proven wrong by the women in the group. These are the criticisms that I come to expect from these based reviewers. They complain about the looks and personalities of the women, and their main complaints about the male characters is that they aren't treated with enough respect. This made me think of gender performativity and how we are expected to act in certain ways, look in certain ways, and behave in certain ways. Women are expected to be thin, beautiful, subordinate characters, especially in action movies. Men are expected to be strong, dominant, self-reliant power-houses in these same films. When a movie breaks the mold and does something new, people like "The Critical Drinker" have to spout off on their opinions.

[nolanwuzhere]

Me and my brother really enjoy watching comedies, but we hit a bit of drought. I looked up some potential options and the 2018 film Blockers kept popping. We thought it looked interesting and we gave it a watch. The whole premise of the movie is that the three adult characters are trying to "c*ck-block" their daughters from losing their virginity on prom night. It takes some wild turns, but the whole plot revolves around this group of parents attempting to stop their children from making a mistake. This itself sort of made me think about terminisict screens. Part of why these parents are so worried about their kids having sex is because women in particular are viewed and spoken about very differently after they have sex. People use words like pure and innocent when referring to a woman who is still a virgin, and the parents are watching their kids grow up and want them to stay those pure, innocent daughters. But another part of the movie that I thought was fascinating was Hunter and Sam's father-daughter relationship. Hunter is one of the dads and he's mainly trying to stop his daughter because he secretly knows that she's gay and sees that she's being pressured to sleep with a man. Sam hadn't told her friends about her sexuality yet and was scared to do so in fear of ruining the dynamic. This is a classic example of heteronormativity. She's expected to have the perfect night, losing her virginity to a man on the prom night of her senior year. That's a well known stereotype that exists in media and in stories, but if you don't fit the sexual majority, then you feel left out from being a normal teenager.

[nolanwuzhere]

Last week when leaving one of my classes, I overheard one of my female peers ask classmate if they wanted to go to the bathroom together. This instantly made me think about our conversation about bathrooms being totally connected to gender. As a male, I have never once asked or been asked to join another guy to the restrooms. For a long time, I didn't really know why this distinction existed. And perhaps because of ignorance or naivety, I never considered why some women do this. There's a whole episode of Community about what being asked to the women's room represents and how personal it is. While the comedy show played this up for laughs, I still wasn't exactly sure why this was a woman-exclusive experience until we talked about the bathroom as a safe space. Several people in our class talked about how the restroom is a space where women don't have to worry about the presence of men, and they can drop their guard. It makes sense to me now in hindsight why this shared experience exists.

[nolanwuzhere]

My favorite show of all time is Community, hands down. It's funny and all of the characters are amazing. I can't count how many times I've watched it at this point. Yet every rewatch, the most apparent hiccup that the show had was with Britta Perry, played by Gillian Jacobs. She was introduced as a political activist wannabe whose sole purpose was to play hard to get with the lead character Jeff Winger. For the entire first season, there's a complicated dynamic between the two, with Jeff constantly hitting on her and Britta constantly deflecting it. Towards the end of the first season, there are subtle hints that she does have some feelings for him. This leads to the season finale in which she runs up on stage and shouts that she loves him. This makes for an unexpected moment that leads to Jeff walking out. It's after this moment that you start to see where the writers struggled though. Jeff and Britta don't end up together and they go on to do different shenanigans in season two. While Jeff's character didn't really take a hit, Britta was a mess. Her personality and existence was so heavily influenced by being the hard-to-get love interest that once the romance arch was over, she was pretty shallow. She instantly became a caricature of her former self, with most of her writing relying on her political opinions and overall self-righteousness. To me, this reminds me of how the culture industry builds characters and how that plays into hegemonic ideals. Jeff is built to be a suave, down-on-his-luck player that gets the ladies and acts cool in the process. It's built into his character to pick women up and drop them off a few episodes later. Britta, however, was built to be a love interest. So when that moment passed she barely had any characterization at all.

[nolanwuzhere]

Pictured above is one of my favorite sports analysts named Mina Kimes. Especially around the NFL Draft a couple of weeks ago, I would watch every single video that she posted about it. But the particular moment that I want to talk about is from back in March. In the baseball world, the U.S. Department of Defense had removed reference to baseball legend Jackie Robinson's military past and instead made a statement about DEI. Kimes when on air soon after used her "Face Time" to talk about the situation, shaming the erasure of an American icon's past. It should be noted that a ton of reporters around the sports world ripped into this whole situation, but I noticed that Kimes was getting far more backlash. While going back and looking through articles talking about this message, I found comments that were overly harsh and disrespectful. One in particular stated, "LOL. Why I am not surprised the race baiter herself would whine about this total setup of malicious compliance so whiners like her could whine, and this site would post her thoughts about it as if she matters." Other comments called her a DEI hire, and the replies in her tweet about the matter were also pretty insane, with one saying "I miss when it was about sports and not about liberal women needing to inject soft social science BS." To me, this is representative of how women in general are viewed in the eyes of sports fans. They follow a masculine thing and they want masculine reporters to talk about it. This took me back to our sports conversation, and the panel in particular. Something that the panelists mentioned was the need for more women to get involved in the sports world, but also for the media to highlight more female personalities. We can see here that while Kimes has a platform and is doing a good job, she is still looked at differently than every other network personality.

[nolanwuzhere]

One of my recent watches has been the show House. I started the series towards the end of last semester and I've slowly been churning through the episodes since. It was about two weeks ago that I hit the 15th episode of season 7. Despite the old black and white appearance of the photo attached, it aired on March 7, 2011. For context, throughout the entire show there is a constant teasing of something between Dr. House and the hospital's dean of medicine Lisa Cuddy. It isn't until season 7 that the two officially get together. In this particular episode, Cuddy has a health scare and is hospitalized. She starts dreaming and hallucinating about her relationship with House, and one of these clips was an old-timey vision of herself, House, and their daughter Rachel in a sitcom. Cuddy points out fairly quickly that something isn't right, and the show runners also needed a way to show the audience that something is going on. So, they depicted house in a baking apron and Cuddy in a business attire. This signals to the viewers that this isn't real and that there is something wrong about what we're seeing. But this also is meant to play with the fact that Cuddy is a serious business woman who is not afraid of taking charge, while House can be a man child that doesn't necessarily fit the classic masculine archetype. This dynamic that the two have, with Cuddy being the put together professional and House being the brilliant man-child that constantly bugs her is itself a twist on the classic formula. So many old sitcoms use the stay-at-home-mom and busy-body-dad trope that seeing it reversed is somewhat off-putting. This speaks to media hegemony and the idea that programs on the screen give messages to viewers about what a man and a woman should be in a perfect world. Cuddy herself is confused by the situation, and it's failure to reflect what the media typically displays is what tips her off that it's not real.

[nolanwuzhere]

This portfolio entry game out of nowhere to be honest. At nights I like to doom-scroll on YouTube Shorts, and there was one night in which a compilation of crazy NFL edits started playing. I have tried finding it again but it was a pretty small post with just a couple hundred views, so I'm sure it's buried in the YouTube algorithm now. Essentially, a reporter was asking former New England Patriot tight end Rob Gronkowski whether or not the team expressed frustration with him over a photo that he took with a female porn star. Gronk simply corrected the reporter with one word, saying "Actress" in response. This of course then transitioned into sick sports highlights of the athlete scoring touchdowns.

This lead me to researching the situation a bit further, and it's actually fairly interesting. Gronk asked the porn actress BiBi Jones to take a picture with him to boost his follower count on Twitter. This was back when the football player was just 22 and needed more of a personality going into the NFL. Both parties insisted that it was just a picture and that nothing happened between them. Despite this, Gronkowski was forced to put out an apology stating that he didn't mean to harm the organization or the owner in any way. This all made me think about our sex work conversation and how anything related to it is so polarizing. Even just posting a picture with a woman entirely covered up is disrespectful and distasteful because of the job that she has. There was no nudity besides Gronk having no shirt on, but that's just par for the course with athletes. To me, especially after the talk that we had recently about sex work and its perceptions, I see this as a pretty heavy overreaction to a slightly risky photo.

[nolanwuzhere]

I'm someone who really doesn't look too deep into the lyrics of songs. If I enjoy the way a track sounds then I listen to it. A few months ago when I was going through Spotify's Discover Weekly selections, the song "Average Joe" by Oscar Scheller popped up. I really enjoyed it so I added it to my playlist. At this point in time I've listened to it a lot, but it wasn't until recently that I actually started listening to the words on a drive home. The song is absolutely littered with references to course concepts. In summary, the song is about how he's not the stereotypical masculine man and that he's doesn't conform to what society deems as cool. The line "Cause you play with your action man, but Barbie doll's your inner peace" reminded me of the conversation that we had about the toy aisles being very distinctly separated and there being gendered expectations for what kids play with. Another line that stood out to me was "No, no, don't cry. Boy, you're paper-thin, don't show me that you're weak." This is reminiscent of toxic masculinity, and the lyrics "I read a poem once that parents fuck you up" tie into that socialization cycle that people grow up in.

[nolanwuzhere]

Scooby Doo Body Swap Scene

A lot of my examples come from movies, but this specific scene immediately came to mind when this assignment was given. I watch Scooby Doo (2002) on average once every month. It's a gem from my childhood and it somehow gets funnier every time I rewatch it. The scene I refer to from this masterpiece is the body swapping scene. For context in case you've never seen this brilliant work of art, the souls of the Mystery Inc. members are released and jump from person to person. The moments from this part of the movie that jumped out to me the last time I watched it was when Fred and Shaggy possess the bodies of Daphne and Velma. Fred's first thoughts when he's in Daphne's body is that he can look at himself naked, and he proceeds to look down his shirt. Shaggy also checks under his skirt the moment he possesses Velma. While the scene is admittedly pretty funny and the actors do a good job, it definitely raises an eyebrow 20+ years later. This also isn't the only time something like this happens, because in the sequel Shaggy drinks a potion that gives him "the body of a woman", and in that sequence an old jazzy swooning sound effect plays. Both examples are a decent representation of objectification and ideals about the body. The first thought that the male characters have when in the bodies of the female characters is to think sexually. Meanwhile, when Daphne and Velma are in Fred and Shaggy's bodies, they aren't making the same references. This is a double standard, and I imagine if this scene was done the other way around, with the women objectifying men the reception would be a little different.

[nolanwuzhere]

Nightmare On Elm Street 2

I'm a big horror movie fan. I especially love the more classic slasher films, like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Child's Play, and Halloween franchises. But some of my favorite horror films are the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. While watching through the series, one of the movies that always sticks out to me is Nightmare on Elm Street 2. The tone is different and the mechanics of how Freddy Kreuger functions is out of place, yes. But the most noticeable aspect of this particular film that highlights its uniqueness is it's main character. Now horror movies have always encountered gendered concepts and are rooted in some outdated ideologies, such as the oversexualization of women, and the concept of the final girl is one that is especially relevant in this case.

The final girl is typically the female protagonist that acts as the main character and the lone survivor. This was originally conceptualized to make the villains more intimidating, but it's also because audiences may have trouble connecting to a male character in a weak position. This is entirely flipped on its head in NoES2. The protagonist, Jesse, is referred to in the horror community as the first male final girl. Another title that a lot of actresses that play final girls are referred to as scream queens. Mark Patton, Jesse's actor, has a documentary literally titled Scream, Queen! The character of Jesse is alluded to be a closeted gay man. There are scenes that definitely indicate this fact, from the language used and certain imagery. But the thing that a lot of audience members in 1985 noticed most was his voice. When being attacked by Freddy Kreuger, he displays his emotion very visibly. People that gave the movie negative reviews pointed to how feminine his mannerisms and voice was, and that it made them feel uncomfortable.

This directly correlates to gendered voice. People expect a male character in a horror movie to be a strong hero that fights against the monster, and to speak in a masculine manner. But what Patton portrays instead is a more emotionally vulnerable and expressive performance. Emotions so strong aren't typically related to ultimate masculinity. Because his mannerisms and vocalics falls in line with the victimized portrayal of women in old horror, people instead lumped Jesse with the final girls instead of final boys like Ash from Evil Dead and Tommy Jarvis from Friday the 13th.

[nolanwuzhere]

Gender Envy

When I was a kid I played a video game called Skylanders. While the gameplay itself was great, the thing that made Skylanders special was the gimmick. There were physical toys that you would place on a small portal toy, and that character would then be playable in the game. I don't use Reddit very often, but I do follow a couple of topics, including r/skylanders. A post was recommended to me a couple of weeks ago that jumped out at me. It was a picture of a character named Roller Brawl with the caption "TFW a plastic figure gives me more gender envy than any other character from media ever". I have never heard of the term gender envy before, so I started to look a little deeper into it. From what I've gathered its when you feel envious of someone else's gender presentation. This isn't something that I myself have thought deeply about, and I can't quite recall an example of a time that I've felt this. Then again, I've always been pretty concrete in my gender identity, so it's possible that I don't necessarily look for those kinds of things. I've also seen this term used online specifically by transgender people to describe what gender presentation they aspire for. As far as course terms go, this reminded me right away of penis envy. While penis envy is more based in the social power related to being a male, it still involves a want to have a characteristic of another gender.

[nolanwuzhere]

Rick Astley - Pink Pony CLub

Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan is basically about a space where you can feel free to be who you are, and more specifically speaks to the yearn for a sense of queer belonging. So naturally, when the uber-talented "Never Gonna Give You Up" singer Rick Astley covers the song, it's a little surprising. Astley didn't change any lyrics and even dons a cowboy hat a few minutes in. He just covered the song without making a joke of it or playing it for laughs. It is a genuine, heartfelt cover of a great song. If anything, this fights against the idea of expected gender performativity. As a male, you are expected to cover songs that are manly and masculine, and you certainly aren't expected to sing about wanting to be a queen in heels. This is especially true for a heterosexual male. But Astley, being the coolest person ever, doesn't care about this and does what he wants. If you have a chance to give it a listen, you absolutely should. It is stripped down to just an acoustic guitar and his voice, and it really something.

[nolanwuzhere]

Women's Wrestling

I am a massive fan of the WWE. I haven't missed a pay-per-view in years and I try to tune in to every episode of their weekly show. One of my favorite wrestlers is Chelsea Green. She is a very comedic character and she is incredibly charismatic. After she won the Women's United States Championship, I texted one of my friends the clip of her winning the title. He responded by pointing out the outfits of the women in the match and how there was a fair amount of skin showing. This to me was interesting because I don't really think about it that much. I watch so much WWE that the ring gear sort of blends in with the rest of the match. Honestly, most of female wrestlers wear far more clothing than the male wrestlers do. But we as a society have stronger opinions and views about what women wear than we do men. On top of ring gear and outfits, WWE has a few other interesting gender connections. Some of the championships are called the WWE Championship, the Intercontinental Championship, and the United States Championship. The corresponding championships for the female wrestlers are the Women's WWE Championship, the Women's Intercontinental Championship, and the Women's United States Championship. This is an example of a marked term. Another odd aspect of women's wrestling is that it used to be called "The Divas Division" and they would have an event called "The Diva Search". It is clear that WWE has made some significant progress in terms of showing women's wrestling more respect, including having women main event WrestleMania, though they still have a way to go.