I have been straying away from the blog prompts lately, instead concentrating on aspects of my research that have been a little more interesting to me. Today I am going to pick back up with the syllabus prompts. I want to pick apart the theoretical framework of Cultural Studies in today’s blog and attempt to apply it to my ongoing research.
On the handout from Katie and Sean the main idea section had a point that stated, “A cultural studies scholar would first study an object and then connect that information to a larger progressive political project.” I think this will be something that is very helpful in my cultural artifact project for a couple of reason:
1. My research has absolutely taken a turn towards women’s studies issues, just as I anticipated at the beginning of the semester. This becomes very relevant to the women’s liberation movement. Right there I have an artifact and a correlating political issue.
2. 2. The timeline of Film Noir is the 1940s and 1950s. On the global stage the world was dealing with WWII and the aftermath.
3. 3. I am looking at the feelings the femme fatale has towards the home. The conflict of female roles in the public and private spheres is expressed when we The Cult of Domesticity.
There is such a strong conversation going on between the femme fatale and the audience in regards to “norms” and society. Every Film Noir I watch seems to bring up dark and dicey questions for the time period through the use of this “evil” character and their actions. I have been viewing these movies more and more on the use of language by the femme fatales, their dress, the lighting, and so forth. I see the cinema as a stage to voice problems of society and American culture. These women sacrifice themselves in order to vocalize the disconnect between public and private spheres in regards to women. (Yikes, did I just say the femme fatale was actually a righteous character?)
Cultural Studies seems like the right place to help ground my cultural artifact criticism. Along with this, Feminist Criticism will definitely come into play. Now I feel confident and ready to make some big bad claims and back it up using these sweet frameworks.
And to answer your question Becca, being a research rocks! I don't think I want this project to end.
MMMMhmmm. I see I see. You are tying it all back together. Cultural Studies seems like a very appropriate framework for you to use, and i think it will help you to really make that connection to a larger political project or whatever big, global issue you tackle. The cool thing about cultural studies is that it combines so many elements of other frameworks––media, literature, philosophy, communication, museum studies...the possibilities really are endless. It’s much like postmodernism in that several areas are contributing to it, and the conventional lines that divide up fields of study are broken down or at least blurred.
ReplyDeleteMy advice would be to keep paring down your research (as you have been doing with great aplomb) and to not get overwhelmed with all the things that you could do that would qualify as “cultural studies.”
Also, I was curious, how is film noir and the femme fatale relevant today? I mean obviously women have come a long way since WWII as far as achieving the same rights and opportunities as men, and as you said––film noir acted as a voice for women in that time period. But what about now? Are there still femme-fatale-like archetypes in movies? Does film noir still exist in contemporary cinema or just contemporary pop culture in some form or another?