HOA 411

The essay, “Death of the author,” by Roland Barnes is the outlook on the rules of the author and the reader by using the commonality of meaning from the text written. Roland argues that the author has no has no jurisdiction over their own words that the words belong to the reader to interpret them and evaluate in their own accord. Roland challenges the idea of originality that an author may have and how the readers view it. The problem with this is that Roland in my opinion Wrongly assumes that anyone can pull an exact meaning or intent from what an author has written. Also, in this I believe that Roland thinks there must be a set meaning within the writing that someone should try and find. I evaluated this essay is in two ways. That an author by the standards of this essay, is someone that loses all their meaning as the written piece is put out or becomes irrelevant to the viewer. The other is that this article challenge’s purpose and what it means to have purpose. In the ess...

The essay, “The oppositional Gaze: black Female Spectators.” By Bell Hooks is the discussion of black females and the relation to black and white representations in movies. Hooks argues in the essay that we have an oppositional gaze. This oppositional gaze according to Hooks is the idea that black women must have the desire to correct or challenge the stereotypes of black women in movies. She argues that despite a long history of oppression on screens and in real life, black people had the right to look, observe, gaze. She also explains in this article how the power of looking had set this sense of resistance for black people. How it is meant to be “confrontational, a gesture of resistance, a challenge of authority.” This essay focuses on the days of slavery when there was a hard sense of control from white males to blacks and how they would look at their masters. It is this this gaze that is used in parenting, to control how their kids act. In many ways I understand that look...

“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” by Laura Mulvey is an analysis on focused on many theories about the representation and importance of women in cinema. Laura explains how women are in a way used a visual pleasure only, while men are sure to be the dominant role. She also began with Freuds ideas on scopophilia, or the pleasure in looking. In this reading, Laura focuses her attention on the theories from Sigmund Freud. While reading this article I found it hard to keep reading. The representation on how women were viewed and that this was probably a reality in how women were viewed is both fascinating, and disgusting. According to Freud, scopophilia is the manifest in, “the voyeuristic activities of children’, who have a desire to see private areas on the human body. There are many moments within this article where Freud refers to castration, or how women are a castration threat. “her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure. Ultimately, the me...