Monday, 17 October 2011

The link below it to a television advert for 'Derren Brown's: The Experiments'. Derren Brown is a magician and the advert stood out to me because all the people speaking have mouths like Ventriloquist puppets. At the end of the clip they all say in unison ‘Are we really in control of ourselves?’ which made me think of my project. This is because it made me think, are we in control of our identities? Or are they constructed for us by the media?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnV5PL228ug


It also links with a photographic shoot I am planning for next term. I am planning to have a girl on strings like a puppet being pulled in different directions to portray how women can feel. For example one may feel the need to change to fit into society to be seen as ‘beautiful’. Thefore changing their appearance by adapting their clothes to fashion trends, applying more make up or even plastic surgery.

I was also watching an American dating programme the other day called 'Tough Love' where women go to a matchmaker to set them up with men to try and find love. It was interesting because one of the women on the programme said how she felt the need to change herself to fit in, for example her appearance. She felt that if she changed herself and her appearance men would like her more.

An interesting journal I looked at was Marry Russon’s, ‘The female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity.’ A quote that stood out to me was, ‘the grotesque returns as the repressed of the political unconscious, as those hidden cultural contents which by their abjection had consolidated the cultural identity of the bourgeoisie’ (Russon, 1995, p.8-9). It can be said that to an audience we may not notice this dominant presences that the media has on an individual, but it is evident in everyday life shown through magazines, television and film. One can argue that political background and what is seen as acceptable in society at the time can define what is seen as ‘beautiful.’

Russon, Mary. (1995) Modernism/modernity. The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity, Vol. 2 no 3

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