The problem with that documentary (think I downloaed the last updated version somewhere and I saw it once a couple of years ago) is that is a bit tricky. It does have great points and observations, but inside a discursive frame made to win discussions not to have them and to do that mixes a lot of things. To be a video that talks so much about what male gaze and fantasy do about women, their own proposals are a bit scary: women can’t have fantasies because they fall in male objectification (and is not that they are in an environment where they can’t have their own way of expressing their sexuality or their desire, they can’t have it, they can’t make images of themselves or include themselves on their own erotic narratives because that is objectification and objectification=male, that is a tautology) and the second part, that is amazing, women should be married with men that love for who they are (which again is great and it is the way it should be, but the Victorian overtones, women again can’t express their sexuality if is not inside the bedroom with their husbands, "don't act as a slut and you wouldn't be treated as one" as if what the definition of what a "slut" is isn't what we are talking about and how those things are something men can do and be proud of and women need to feel asahamed about, and another thing, homosexuality, woman + woman is not a possibility, etc.). Other thing that freaked me a bit is some sort of evolutionary psychology resonances (see chart below about the jokes running about that neoliberal theory), men like young women, men are programmed to have sex, men become rapist (except if he dismiss that and you know, love women for what they are, and most likely marry her). Another thing, I don’t remember the exact example, think it was in some Justin Timberlake video, but they only take the bits that reinforce their theory and dismiss other lectures, including the main ones proposed on the original music videos. Meaning, new stereotypes instead of the old ones.
So to answer your question: is important objectify women for male fantasies? Having in mind that most male fantasies turn around images (imaginary or not), yes probably to objectify women, make them images is what is the material base to most fantasies. That is one thing, if people want to call it hardware, or a natural male instinct, fine. You also need to eat and most people, with practice, avoid eating each time that they feel hungry and don't start to search for food on the spot. Or you need to breathe, but if you learn how to sing, you see how the way your body act for that response is not necessary, or the last word for breathing itself. People can dismiss this process. People react to certain things and they don’t to others (in a drama, some resolutions always make you cry, but for your friend they are rubbish and they are to be laughed about). People feel sexually excited about other people that excite them. And people don’t feel sexually excited about other people that don’t excite them (even if their bodies are amazing, they dance in luscious ways or they are naked). Related to this is that to objectify is a process: male gaze, the gaze of the subject, objectify what they look (they are not me, the subject) so to objectify women is to neglect that they are subjects. Ok, this happens, and a lot and it is frankly something execrable. But again, is the way the theory is shaped: I sometimes objectify you (the ass is to sit in and it becomes this or that, arms are for ... but they become ...) but most of the time I don’t see you in that way, I see who you are, I think about you as a subject and you can do exactly the same with me if you want to. But that is not a choice for this theory, that would be naïve, it doesn’t work that way, you don’t understand the complex implications this process brings with it. But you scratch a little or a lot and you never find why it can be in another way, except for the limits of that theory (I don’t know like Marxism until it fall into pieces). Maybe is the lesser evil, still better than what we have now.
Do males really act upon their desires and misconceptions of women? Yes. But in the same way they act upon their desires and misconceptions in almost everything they do. Sometimes they learn to act in other ways.
Do I think a woman who looks haughty in a bar is "a bitch who needs to be pounded"? No.
Do I think a woman who looks haughty in a bar as somebody whom I would like to have sex with?
Yes. But most times that thought lasts like four, five seconds. Daydreaming.
About the first question, what that documentary doesn’t acknowledge is that the use of those terms are a question of practice, mental habits and customs, things you learnt and keep doing. My mother was taught to not use mean words when she was a child. Last year she started to say “fuck” when something happened. And then she used it every time. And now she doesn’t use it almost ever. In porn forums you often find quite rude comments, but usually or sometimes (when you learn about each user) are colourful comments, ways to express desires and fantasies, and usually about somebody that those users respect much more than other people on their lives. If you dismiss it, you don’t use it and all that. Those ways of talking are also about other fears, not only about women having their own power and those comments are usually used in that way too, but also about their own identities, sexualities, and other daily things. Things are complicated but they would prefer to think that they are not. Like this documentary does. On a side note, buying that video costs between 400-1000 $.
Topic: Dreamworlds 3- music, sex, the media, and men's dreams v. REAL females. (Read 2861 times)