Actors and actresses, drag kings and queens have much in common. They all constantly try on new identities and project personas that onto the world. In the movie “Todo Sobre mi Madre,” the idea of authenticity is explored through the various character present in the movie. The movie touches on the idea of realness in gender projection and presentation, the notion of being out, and also transcends the standard tragic transgender character depiction. Through the usage of Judith Butler’s Imitation and Gender Insubordination I will explore the central ideas presented in the movie.
Gender representation in a movie is quite often consistent to it being phallic centric. This is where Pedro Almodovar differs from the standard. The director presents to us a variation of characters who sway away from the standard gender roles and characteristics often presented to the audience. The men that are present in the movie do have have a significant handle on the plot of story, and are (in context of this movie) often dependent on the womyn in the movie. For example Lola, the absent father, is not present both figuratively and literally in the movie to make a difference, and through his death becomes an object of pity to Manuela. Another example would be Rosa’s father, who is suffering from Alzeimeher’s disease and is completely dependent on Rosa’s mother, who in the movie seems to lacks empathy for him, seemingly making Rosa’s father another object of sympathy to the womyn in the movie.
Contrary to this, the womyn in the movie run the storyline and actively run the events in the plot. Manuela is the main character in the movie, who takes various actions in search of Lola, (Esteban’s father) and makes her the bearer-of-the-look in the movie and not...
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...s, by embracing and letting the people in the movie know that yes she is a trans-womyn, and yes she still has the ‘male attributed’ organ. She continues to do this by admitting that she has constructed her body to fit the aesthetic expectations of ‘real’ womyn, and by doing this she herself and befallen to these rules, but yet she does not hide the fact that she in the eyes of other might not be authentic, because as far as she is concerned her projection of her internal feelings is what makes her
Agrado is a projection of the transgender character that would be beneficial to the cinematic community and the transgender community. She is someone who transcends the tragic character that is usually found through the transgender gaze, and uses identity disassociation to become someone who is authentic through internal interpretation and self-identification of who she is.
“From Lieutenant Nun,” a memoir written by doña Catalina de Erauso, tells an intriguing story of a young Spanish female and her advantageous journey through Spain and the New World. Her family intends for her to become a nun but, that is not the life she seeks for herself. Therefore, she breaks away from the convent in hopes of finding somewhere to make her fortune by passing as a male. Catalina’s story is noteworthy because it gives readers another perspective of exploration focusing on self-discovery during the seventeenth century emphasizing how passing as a male is the only thing that secured her ability to explore. In the memoir, Catalina repeatedly reminisces about clothing and, whether she consciously or unconsciously does so, she allows the reader to see that this is an important aspect of her exploration. Throughout Catalina’s journey, clothing plays an increasingly important role not only in her travels but, also her personal life because it symbolized ones status, role, gender and privileges.
In conclusion, todays cinematic evolvement through being more accepting of sexual themes as well as representation of different sexual orientations, in both characters and audience alike, contributes to further objectifying people in an erotic sense to please different kind of spectators. Furthermore, it enables male characters to be subjected to erotic objectification and is therefore not a portrayal exclusive in portraying females. However, this remodels the way male and female characters are depicted as it in a sense equalizes them through the same kind of degrading portrayal as sexual objects.
Chilwane, Desire. "Recognizing Transsexuals: Personal, Political and Medicolegal Embodiment." Journal of International Women's Studies 12.4 (2011): 158+. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 13 Oct. 2011
Grande introduces to the audience various characters that cross Juana 's path to either alter or assist her on her journey to find her father. Through those individuals, Grande offers a strong comparison of female characters who follow the norms, versus those that challenge gender roles that
Gender, ethnicity, and sexuality are core components that create a solid identity. In the western world Jolene is known as a bisexual Latina female. She is bisexual because she is sexually attracted to men and women, she is a Latina because she is a mixed company of Puerto Rican and German American, and she is a female because she has the physical attributes of a woman. Although gender, ethnicity, and sexuality are all relating factors, they are also separate units of identity. Gender refers to physical attributes and traits that make one appear to be male or female. Sexuality refers to how one feels about their body, one’s sexual orientation, and one’s sexual attraction for others. Ethnicity refers to a group of people who share the same cultural background and heritage. Lopez uses these three different factors of identity and crafts them together simultaneously to suggest the damage of stereotypes. Throughout the novel, Lopez’s Flaming Iguanas highlights the conformity of sex and gender stereotypes, and addresses the socially constructed stereotypes to challenge the patriarchy and expose the damage it does to one’s search for selfhood. Jolene exemplifies how they damage one’s sense of self as she ventures
Furthermore, the article clarifies that many transgender people experience a stage of identity development that aids in helping them better understanding their own self-image reflection, and expression. More specifically, they reach out to professional...
The article “What Makes a Woman” focuses on how transgender should not define a woman because they have not lived their whole lives as a women, have not gone through the struggles, complications and life experiences that women go through. The author also brings in the idea of women and men having different brains to support her argument. The author, Elinor Burkett, effectively uses the three appeals of logos, ethos and pathos to get across her message. The first appeal is ethos that mentions other people’s opinions. The second is pathos by showing Burkett’s emotions. And finally, the third appeal is logos, which includes data statistics.
The most important events of this film all revolve around the female characters. While there are some male charac...
Sandra Cisneros’ novel, The House on Mango Street, examines various key issues within established social systems. As a bildungsroman story, not only is there much growth and development experienced by the character, but from the reader as well. This is because the novel challenges false preset notions that one may have of the main character’s culture. In tearing down custom barriers and voicing out painful truths, there is a deeper understanding of Latina culture in the United States of America. Sandra Cisneros empowers the women who are living in a patriarchal society and her main character, reinforced by her name, Esperanza, gives women just that, hope.
Elena Poniatowska escrita durante una epoca de cambio en Mexico. Antes de sus obras las mujeres mexicanas eran sometidos, docil, y pasivo. En la tiempo de sus obras las mujeres estaba tratando salir de los estereotipos de antes. Esta problema social tomo un afecto en Elena. Aunque ella no viene de un movimiento literatura directamente, ella escrita con el concepto de compremetido. En su narrative El Recado ella crea un mujer estereotipical que no puede controlar sus emociones. La titula es eso porque ella viene a ver su amante, pero el no esta, asi ella escribe las cosas que sentia. La perspectiva es de un personaje y ella nunca interacta con otros personajes. En facto la unica descripcion de un personaje otro de la protagonista es de su amante Martin. Habla de otros personajes, pero solamente de sus acciones. Porque ellas es la unica perspectiva que tenemos es sencillo a sentar compasion para una protagonista de quien nombre no aun sabemos. Ella da la descripcion de toda que vea, y mas importante todo que se sienta. Tambien tropos y figuras retoricas dan un tono significante al poema. Estos sentimientos de la portagonista y el tono emocional de la narrativa transporta una tema de una mujer estereotipical y debil quien quiere ser reconocido.
When informing the readers that her fans would often write not only about her work but also about “… [her] youthful indiscretions, the slings and arrows I suffered as a minority…” (Tan 1), this bothered Tan to an extent because she By educating herself she was able to form her own opinion and no longer be ignorant to the problem of how women are judge by their appearance in Western cultures. By posing the rhetorical question “what is more liberating” (Ridley 448), she is able to get her readers to see what she has discovered. Cisneros also learned that despite the fact that she did not take the path that her father desired, he was still proud of all of her accomplishments. After reading her work for the first time her father asked “where can I get more copies” (Cisneros 369), showing her that he wanted to show others and brag about his only daughters accomplishments.
Azuela shows these impacts by the progression of Camila, from a sweet innocent woman, to joining the rebel forces, and lastly to being killed. Symbolically, Azuela kills off Camila almost immediately upon her rise to power and drops her from the novel’s plot. This shows the how insignificant of an impact that women had on the battles, and how easily they were forgotten after death. Women still struggle today with gaining equal rights and treatment within the Mexican culture. It has taken nearly 70 years for women to gain equality with men in the workforce, gaining rights such as voting, and having a shared family responsibility with the male figure (Global). Unfortunately, many women within the working-class household still suffer from the traditional norms and values regarding the roles of men and women. In addition, these women were often subjected to control, domination, and violence by men” (Global). This validates Azuela’s stance on how women should stay within their traditional roles because fighting for equality has been ineffective even still
... middle of paper ... ... Sandra Cisneros took a risk and got remarkably far with her passion for mixing the cultures and the identities of women. Her voice is what emphasizes the article to show how the goal is to redistribute the language and culture, not criticizing the “New World”.
The story of Marcela is first encountered second hand through a male character who describes her in the most negative way. In his criticism “Competing Narrative Discourses: (fe)male Fabulation in the Episode of Grisóstomo and Marcela,” John P. Gabriele agrees that Marcela is misinterpreted by the male characters who describe her to Don Quixote (509). The men plea that she is very cruel and “does more harm in this land than the plague” (Cervantes 85). Even though Marcela has asserted her independence and rejected a countless number of men desiring to obtain her love, the men still objectify her by “waiting to see where her haughtiness will end and who will be the fortunate man to conquer so difficult a nature” (Cervantes 85). Referring to her as something to be “conquered” demonstrates how women were respected as nothing more than property and a source of pride. Yvonne Jehenson describes Marcela’s situation as “a male fantasy, a microcosmic image of man’s gender-inflected wish fulfillment” (Gabriele 510). This explains why the men have so much built up frustration towards Marcela for being the complete opposite of their
The categorization of gender creates a space of normalacy that needs replication for sustainment. The gender binary i a cultural tool that implements that reproductive power. The communication of gender is what creates the normalcy and applies the use of performance assigned and learned gender roles. The assignment of the gender binary is examined in Judith Butler's Bodies that Matter, where performativity is connected to Derrida's theory of citationality and authenticity/inauthenticity. These concepts and the regard to materiality is what made the obscene nature of the book so subjective to the individual reading: “The classical configuration of matter as a site of generation or orginination becomes especially significant when the account of what an object is and means requires recourse to its originating principle” (Butler 31). The nature of matter is Western thought is to presc...