Blogging class notes on film openings

The final girl/scream queen binary: Laurie has the school books, the scream queen has makeup!

You can find a detailed guide on what/how to blog here.
We're going to look today at the final girl archetype, Laurie Strode: read more about the theory behind this idea here.

Again, the scream queen smokes signifying her 'deviancy'

Screenshots are always key to back up points made; I've provided a couple for you in this post you can save and upload into your own posts.


Here's how I'd set out a post looking at a film opening.

POST TITLE: Needs to be kept brief, and a numbering system helps, either OpeningEG1: This is England or SlasherEG1: Halloween (orig).

Screenshots and screen recording

We can't quite afford the most popular choice for this - Camtasia - but there is software built into the Macs to capture screenshots (there are also keyboard shortcuts for this, blogged on earlier) and record the screen: "Grab"
You need to go into FINDER; APPLICATIONS; UTLILITIES; GRAB   (or, in Finder just type Grab into the search box!)
This is the most effective means of showing how you've utilised software

You can also try QuickTime has has recording tools most people are unaware of (it also enables you to do basic edits).

FEmale gaze? Adapting Laura Mulvey

UPDATE, 2015: Rather than add another post, I'll add to this one which looked at the example of Magic Mike as an exemplar of an emerging female gaze. That was rather limited to the notion of objectifying; I've added more below on an article for Media Magazine by Sean Richardson in which he challenges us to think more carefully about how a female viewer (de)constructs and receives media images. Yes, media and not least cinema remains somewhat patriarchal overall, but it is just too simplistic to view media entirely through the prism of sexist objectification.


The Female Gaze: Rethinking Representation
Following quotes are from an article in the always excellent Media Magazine (subscription needed - ask the Librarian or me for login details). Sean Richardson wrote in April 2015 on this topic, starting with a simple statement on the impact of male gaze:

Research suggests that advertising campaigns for a female audience are dominated by heterosexual Caucasian size 0 to 2 models. This is a fact, despite what we might think or want, in a multicultural, complex world. Increasingly, accusations have been made by the likes of Naomi Campbell and Dame Vivienne Westwood that representations of women in advertising are too white and nearly exclusively under size 6.