Film studies Discussion Assignment | Online Homework Help

Answer three of the following questions after reading Kate Horsfield’s article. Feel free to respond to your classmates in this discussion.

1. What do we know about this source? Author?

2. State the purpose of this article and provide a brief summary.

3. What contemporary issues parallel the topics discussed in this article?

4. What is the relationship between video as an art form and other mediums or genres (photography, drawing/painting, sculpture, performance, theater, television, film, etc.)?

5. What are some benefits and limitations of video as an artistic medium?

6. How have technological advances in video and communications changed the way we live?

7. How do you see yourself represented in popular media

way that could lead to meaningful social change.1 Marcuse’s Marxist call for the end of social oppression and his support for all efforts of radical liberation inspired young activists to envision a new society based on alternative institutions and modes of thought that did not replicate social or economic oppression of minority or other disenfranchised groups. To drive this social change, Marcuse’s concept called for a more engaged individual personally committed to political ideas that would lead to change. This individual could become a new subject by stepping out of the blandness of the 1950s to change his or her personal consciousness. A change in one’s personal consciousness was seen as the starting point on the path to creating a new and better society. The concept took several other forms besides political awareness and activism during this period, including using drugs, free love, music, and mastering Eastern philosophical and disciplinary practices, such as yoga and meditation. All were efforts to create mind-altering states of consciousness to create a new, more enlightened self.
Feminist theory also focused on issues of personal consciousness. This can be seen in the famous slogan “the personal is the political,” a perspective that required that one look inside through consciousness-raising to begin the feminist political process. Consciousness-raising was a process of gathering radical feminists together in small groups to study, and analyze the personal situation of each woman, discuss the new feminist literature and strategize on what actions could be done to change the oppression of women in society. The goal was to create a mass movement for social change by helping women understand how they could alter their positions as objects (of male desire) to subjects that could determine their own future. The new subjectivity of the feminist movement demanded that its followers analyze power relations between the genders and how institutional structures enforce gender inequality or support economic or other forms of gender-biased exploitation. This critique merged with other anti-establishment ethos of the counterculture and other liberation movements that were focused on social change and working towards an expanded democracy that allowed greater equality and participation for all subjects, no matter what their color, gender, or class.
Armed with this new sense of subjectivity and political commitment, protests focused on institutions that supported unequal systems of power. Almost all centralized institutions were suspect, particularly the family, the church, the educational system, and corporations. Cultural institutions were also at the center of critique because they preserve dominant cultura