explores the array of resistance pleasures that audiences derive from media by examining the various sensuous, creative, and transgressive ways in which persons use and interpret media.
- Disruptive of the status quo or established order
- Productive of something new; Eros – the “liberator”
Media erotics
Examples: • Gravity o Heightened emotional sense o So serious, in time it will seen humourous • Jamie Foxx’s Parody of Gravity o Memes • Parody in IKEA store o Reappropriates the idea o A store designed to keep customers in their and deliberately encourage impulse buying o The IKEA mentality • Feminity o Resistive pleasure • Promoting a stereotypical view of femininity: hysterical when trouble comes their way, helpless, etc.
Examples
as those symbolic and material practices that challenge, subvert, or suspend the cultural codes, rules or norms which through their everyday operation create, sustain and naturalize the prevailing social structure in a particular space and time
resistance
Resistive Pleasures
• Contextual (how, what, when, where and why; depends on prevailing norms or codes to resist)
• Tactical (must cease the opportunity, fleeting)
• Creative (takes advantage of available resources)
- Cumulative and Incremental (over time, slowly and in tiny bits)
“Resistive”
Interpretative Play - an active mode of reading media artefacts that ignores dominant interpretive codes in favour of pursuing one’s own desires
Open vs Closed Text
Open – writerly; a text structured to call the active participation from audiences in the production of meaning
Closed Text – readerly; a text structured to elicit a particular usually singular, response from audiences
• i.e. a situation comedy; tv game show such as The Price is Right
“Pleasures”
Plaisir – hegemonic pleasure; comfortable and comforting pleasure that reproduces dominant culture/subjectivity
Dominant (hegemonic): the gaze; form, genre and narrative
A radically disruptive pleasure; an elusive and ecstatic pleasure that destabilizes culture/subjectivity. Creates crack in dominant ideology.
Resistive (counter-hegemonic): interpretive play; fandom & cultural production; participatory media.
Jouissance
interpretive play; fandom and cultural production; participatory media
Resistive
- Abjection (crossing cultural boundaries and the defilement of social categories, including the human body)
- Carnivalesque (inversion of social hierarchy; degredation, bebasement, uncrowning)
- Intertextuality (intentionally/unintentionally refers to other texts; shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy are examples)
- Irony (watch from a variety of viewpoints without choosing one and seeing everything as an ironic opposite of what’s said)
- Liminality (space between ideologies; borders and boundaries
Five Modes of “Cruising” or taking pleasure in Jouissance
Enjoying the culture of surface and spectacle, aesthetics, and living in Plato’s cave
One Mode of “Cruising” or taking pleasure in Plaisir
- Depthlessness
• Becomes easier with new media:
- Horizontal or peer-to-peer communication, not top down communication
- Users have access to info from a wide variety of sources
- Lack of government control
- Ability to form virtual communities not based on geography
Capacity to disseminate, debate, and deliberate on issues and to challenge professional and official position
- Communication that is not filtered
Meme – a cultural element or behavioral trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population. Although occurring by non-genetic means is considered as analogous to inheritance of a gene; a mechanism of social evolution
Fan Fiction – produced for personal pleasure
“Writing stories about characters of a favourite television program..” in textbook
Slash Fan fiction – appropriates media characters for personal ends
o Kirk/Sock slash produced by young, heterosexual women
o Harry Potter meets Twilight
Participartory Media/Cultural Production
- Tendency after studying the topic of resistance to see it in everything
; this has the effect of weakening the force of the concept along with the transformative potential it holds - Tendency to romanticize the role of resistance in society and thus under estimate hegemony and its capacity to co-opt and commodify resistance
i. e. Occupy Best Buy
i. e. USA Pepper Spray Cop
Resistance is Futile.
You will be assimilated.
Two Caveats Regarding Media Erotics
