Author: lausou17

Feminist Criticism and the STEM push

On By lausou17In LaurenLeave a comment

One of the biggest places where I’ve seen a big feminist perspective is in science and math in schools.  In the Feminist criticism chapter of Critical Theory Today, Tyson focuses heavily on what girls are told they can and cannot do as children. (Tyson 82-83)  Her biggest example is the subject of mathematics and how most girls are told that they will never be good at math and don’t need to study the subject. (Tyson 83)  While this may have been true for Tyson’s childhood, it was certainly not true for mine. 

As I was going through school, I was experiencing the culture shift from pushing girls away from math and sciences to pushing them into it.  Throughout middle and high school, teachers and administrators would push the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program onto as many students as they could.  My little sister’s class had a huge focus on computer programing.  Our culture seems to have gone through a huge shift in the past few decades, from telling women that their place is in the home and doing domestic work to actively encouraging young girls to seek employment in fields where they would not have been welcome a generation ago.  Many people have criticized the science, engineering, and computer programing fields as being too male dominated and as it being a place that women need to break into.  My school advertise these subjects by telling the female population of the school that they would have more opportunity in those fields because of how male-dominated they were.  My high school specialized in their STEM program and had a focus on ‘getting girls into STEM.’  They would tell girls that they could do STEM related careers just as well as their male counterparts. 

This shift falls under feminist criticism because of the focus on making sure that women in this field are becoming seen, heard, and celebrated.  Women who go into these fields are seen as rebelling against the patriarchy because they are making a space for women in a previously all male space.  This new enthusiasm for women in STEM is also trying to dismantle the sexism that was previously present in these fields, such as Tyson experiencing young girls being told they couldn’t do math.  It is promoting women’s equality by showing that women can excel across a variety of different fields and by creating workspaces that have a more equal division of genders in STEM related fields.  I find this criticism so interesting because of how quickly it took effect.  Just with in the past two generations, it was odd for a woman to have a job that wasn’t nursing or teaching, but now we are heavily encouraging our young girls to pursue as many career paths as are available to them.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.

Annotation

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My topic is currently how specific reinterpretations of the Cinderella tale are affected by the changing gender roles of the surrounding time period.

Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Folklore Casebook. Garland Pub., 1982.

The source I will be looking at is Cinderella, A Folklore Casebook by Alan Dundes.  This book contains both a small collection of early Cinderella tales, such as Perrault’s and the Grimm Brothers’, as well as small essays analyzing different aspects of the tale and its interpretations.  I find this source useful for its translation of both Perrault’s and the Grimm Brothers’ versions, as they were written in French and German, respectively, and the first section of this book gives me easy access to the translated versions and annotates where they came from.  This will give me original texts to work with and compare to other versions.  I had been planning on using some of the essays in the next section of the book, but the one I was looking at specifically turned out to use psychoanalysis theory rather than cultural, feminist, or gender theory as I had hoped.  I plan on looking at a few more of the essays included, but I don’t hold much hope of finding something useful, not least of all because this book was published in the 1980’s and uses essays from a few decades before.  What I find more useful is the bibliography of this book.  It will hopefully lead me to more helpful sources.  I plan on using both the bibliographies of the essays that are included as well as the selected bibliography at the back that is intended for further research.

Elevator Speech 2 – Cinderella and Gender Roles

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My project has changed since the last post, so here is a new elevator speech. For my project, I want to use New Historical and Cultural theory to look at how multiple renditions of the Cinderella fairy tale reflect the gender roles of that time and how they have changed.  The Cinderella tale is very popular, appearing in many different cultures and having many popular retellings, to the point where it has become a standard story type.  Because this story is so popular, and because it is something that is told to our children literally from birth so many times that they have it memorized for the rest of their lives, I think there is an interesting connection between how Cinderella is portrayed and what we want her portrayal to teach the children who are absorbing this story.  My topic is the cultural impact of the Cinderella tale, my question is how does the portrayal of Cinderella reflect the gender roles of the culture that produced that particular tale, and my hypothesis is that they show the ideal girl to fit those roles and that they show the qualities that are valued in women at that particular time.  One of the sources I plan on using is Cinderella: A Folklore Casebook by Alan Dundes which is a collection of both different versions of the Cinderella tale from different cultures and essays analyzing them and how they relate to one another.  This will be a useful source for me because it will give me both tales to look at and comparisons between them, which will show me how the retelling have changed.  The specific versions I want to look at are the Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, the Disney 1950’s animated film, and the Ella Enchanted film.

Dundes, Alan. Cinderella: a Folklore Casebook. Garland, 1982.

Further Reading – Cinderella and Culture

On By lausou17In LaurenLeave a comment

When I read about Cultural Criticism, what came to mind was the Cinderella fairy tale.  This famous tale has been retold and reshaped so many times throughout history and across so many cultures.  Tyson says, “while we are constrained within the limits set for us by our culture, we may struggle against those limits or transform them.” (280)  I think the Cinderella tale reflects that.  Fairy tales are stories that we tell to children literally from birth so many times, kids can recite them off the top of their head years to decades later.  They become cultural references and familiar touchstones for other stories.  Fairy tales have been told so many times, they have been ground into our culture and affect it in many ways.  Looking at how could reveal some interesting truths about both the story and the culture around it.

I think a close look at the multiple versions of this fairy tale could show the cultural impact on gender roles that they had.  Cinderella is usually portrayed as a girl who does all of the house work and as someone who is submissive to a point.  More recent versions have changed Cinderella’s submissive personality or sometimes even her role in the story itself.  Many people are familiar with the 1950’s cartoon that was made by Disney, which shows Cinderella as the ideal 50’s house wife.  She cooks, cleans, sews, and does housework for most of the movie, singing the whole time.  She doesn’t even go to the ball until the Fairy Godmother intervenes.  This Cinderella really only does as she’s told and relies on her Prince Charming to get her out of her awful home situation.  On the other hand, if you look at an adaptation like the movie Ella Enchanted, it shows a girl who is much more in control of her situation.  In this particular movie, Ella, who is the Cinderella figure, is put under a curse to follow any and every command she is given.  This movie shows a much different girl, one who constantly rebels against what she is told and eventually finds a way to be her own person.  The movie ends with Ella breaking her curse herself, not having to rely on anyone else to help her.  This protagonist fits an entirely different mold than her predecessor and shows a completely different person to a new generation of children.  These movies are only 50 years apart, but show vast differences in how Cinderella is interpreted in these time periods.  Our culture is reflected in the stories we tell, as well as the ones we continuously re-adapt.  Cinderella is a prime example.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.

Elevator Speech – Gender roles and power in Shakespeare

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For my potential project, I want to look at Shakespeare’s plays and how men and women use power differently.  I know we haven’t looked at feminist theory yet, but its still something I want to use.  I have noticed in many of Shakespeare’s plays, men tend to show their power through their actions while women tend to show their power through words.  Like how in the Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio shows his power over Katherine by forcing her into marriage, but Katherine shows her power over Petruchio by mocking him.  Or how in Richard III, Queen Margaret, who is supposed to be a very powerful figure, has to show her power over Richard by verbally cursing him multiple times, while Richard just murders people.  My topic is the how gender in Shakespeare’s plays.  My question is how gender affects the way the characters show that power.  My response is that gender causes male and female characters to show power differently because of their gender.  A critical article that I could potentially look at is “Silence, Speech and Gender in Shakespeare’s Othello: A Presentist, Palestinian Perspective” by Bilal M.T. Hamamra.  It looks at the different ways that male and female characters speak in Shakespeare’s Othello and could really help me draw a distinction between the speech and actions of the characters in that specific play.

Bilal M.T. Hamamra. “Silence, Speech and Gender in Shakespeare’s Othello: A Presentist, Palestinian Perspective.” International Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, no. 4, 2015, p. 1. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsdoj&AN=edsdoj.107b55b5158489cbcfbde6fd2f00246&site=eds-live.

Found with OneSearch from the Washington College Library and Academic Technology page.

Further Reading – Reader Response

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Just a warning, domestic abuse is mentioned throughout this post.

While we were reading and discussing reader response theory, there was one poem that I continually thought about, which was My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke.  The reason I kept coming back to this particular poem was because of the drastically different responses I have seen people have after reading it for the first time.  The majority of people, after reading this, seem to think it is a cute poem about a father teaching his child how to dance.  Others interpret it as a child being physically abused by the father.  Since these are two very different interpretations, I think this poem could benefit from some reader response criticism.  Reader response criticism has many different subsections, all of which are useful, but the most useful here are transactional reader response theory and psychological reader response theory. 

Transactional response theory looks at both the text and how the reader reacts to it, which could explain how there are two different interpretations.  My Papa’s Waltz has a lot of “indeterminate meaning, or… ‘gaps’ in the text… which allow or even invite readers to create their own interpretation.”[1]  The images of the drunk father moving around while the child clings to them, the pots and pans falling in the kitchen, the frowning mother, and the father’s battered hand can either lend themselves to a picture of an abusive family or a father that is having fun with his child despite hard times.  This piece also has a lot of syntax that can be interpreted multiple ways.  The father “beats time on [the child’s] head / with a palm caked hard by dirt”.[2]  Beat, here, can be used to describe some sort of tapping or similar motion to keep time with the music they are dancing to, or to describe the father hitting the child.  “At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle” can similarly be interpreted two ways.[3]  Either the child is being hit with a belt, or the child is so small that their ear only comes up to the father’s belt.  This poem leaves a lot of what is being shown up to the reader to interpret, which is what makes it a good candidate for reader response criticism.

Psychological response theory looks at how the reader’s motives and experiences influence how the reader interacts with the text, which could explain how the readers are coming to different responses.  Everyone brings their own experiences and biases with them when they go to read something.  In my experience, someone who has a less than good home life is more likely to read this poem through the domestic abuse lens than someone who has a great home life.  It could be that the reader is projecting their own experiences onto the poem or that their experiences just set them up to see it a certain way.  Either way, something psychological seems to be at play in reader interpretation of this poem.

[1] “Reader-Response Criticsim.” Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide, by Lois Tyson, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015, pp. 161–197.

[2] [3] Roethke, Theodore. “My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43330/my-papas-waltz.

Further Reading – Structuralism and the 4 chords

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            In today’s discussion on structuralist theory, I began thinking about how it could be applied to music.  Many people know that the top 40 pop songs tend to sound very similar, but most don’t know just how similar.  The majority of popular songs in the past few decades have only used the same four chords played in various arrangements and time signatures.  Those chords are C, G, A minor, and F, which are all actually just variations on the C scale.  So many songs use these chords that these are typically the first ones any musician learns when learning to play a new instrument.  These four chords allow a musician to play so many songs and so many simplified versions that many people don’t go far past learning these four if they are only interested in casual mastery of their instrument.

            The fact that so many songs use the same four chords has led to many people creating their own songs, tutorials, and videos based around this phenomenon.  You can find many different mash ups on YouTube that provide an example for how many songs use the four-chord formula, but the best one I’ve found is from the spoof band The Axis of Awesome.  Their song, literally called “4 Chords”, is approximately 6 minutes long and includes 47 snippets of different songs.  The video starts off with one of the three members playing the opening melody to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” while the other two walk up.  The man at the piano asks the other two if they recognize the song, they answer yes, and the man at the piano says, “Well, there’s a few more songs with the same chords, check it out.” (The Axis of Awesome)  The man at the piano then slips into a simple melody that is used for the rest of the song.  The three men then proceed to sing the snippets of other songs over this melody line, showing how all those other songs follow the same formula with the same four chords.  The never changing melody line, but ever-changing lyrics and beat at which the men sing forms their structuralist criticism.  It shows how many popular artists use the same framework to construct their songs.  The song ends with the lyrics,

Doesn’t that sound familiar?

Doesn’t that hit too close to home?

Doesn’t that make you shiver?

The way that things have gone? …

It’s something I do remember

To never go this far

That’s all it takes to be a star.  (The Axis of Awesome)

The criticism here is how simplistic most songs are and how simple it is to construct a top hit song.  The Axis of Awesome is using structuralism to form their argument by showing just how many songs they can throw together into one piece with the same melody line, which shows how all the songs are using the same frame work.

If you’re interested in the video, you can watch it here.

The Axis of Awesome, director. 4 Chords | Music Videos | The Axis Of Awesome. YouTube, YouTube, 20 July 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ.

Further Reading – T. S. Eliot

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In his essay, T. S. Eliot takes a very New Critical stance by insisting that one must focus on the technical prowess of the text alone to find value in a work of literature.  He made the case that the value of poetry can only be found in the text and not anything around it.  This excludes a lot of context, history, and biographical information that could help lead a reader to a better understanding of the text and to gain a better appreciation for the work.  New Criticism limits the ways one can look at a text and excludes many different lenses that can help contribute to an analysis of why a text is written the way it is.  I don’t agree with Eliot’s insistence that background and history don’t matter.  I think that they provide valuable insight or context to an author’s decisions in their writing.  Authors are a product of their time, just like anyone else.  Many things that they include in their writing are influenced by the time period they live in, the societal expectations, and the events happening around them.  It is impossible to separate a work from its time because you loose so much valuable context.

The Odyssey is one such text that does benefit from having contextual information.  Throughout the epic poem, many lines, phrases, or images are repeated.  From a purely textual basis, this would make these repetitions seem unnecessary, drawing attention to things that don’t have much of an impact on the story at large.  Most of these repetitions refer to the changing of time or already established details about the characters.  Homer’s famous epithets do the famous faux pas of telling instead of showing.  Yet the Odyssey is still treated as a prevailing classic across centuries despite these textual flaws.  The important context here is that the Odyssey used to be memorized and performed aloud more than the actual text was sat down with and read or studied.  The repeating lines, phrases, and images made the poem easier to memorize and to be listened to.  The Odyssey was not even conceived by Homer himself.  The Odyssey began as an oral tradition that Homer recorded, and that record was used as the basis for the oral retellings from there on out.  The Odyssey also takes place just after the Trojan War, which holds valuable context for why Odysseus is in the predicament he is in.  Without studying the background of the Trojan War or the events of the Iliad, which is almost like a prequel for the Odyssey, a lot of the background for the text would be lost and the events of the narrative, both past and present, would be confusing.  In the case of the Odyssey, it is beneficial to study the history and background of the text as well as analyzing it.  Many of the important details of this text would be lost without studying them.
-Lauren Souder