First Blog

Hi All,

So I finally found the New Post button, horrar!

Not to sure what we're meant to post, but going from what I'v read I'll say that a blog/site I use regularly are the 'virtual classrooms' at the school I work at, because its my job I guess. I am in my final semester of Arts Communications majoring in English, and I have very much enjoyed all the women studies units I have done.

Emily P handed out some stills in her presentation last week, one of which was from a Björk film clip All Is Full of Love (click here to watch). The clip was one of the features at a short film evening I went to in Melbourne recently that showcased a number of incredible music videos. It shows two quite attractive, asian looking fembots making out, so of course it is incredibly relevant to our studies thus far.

The clip in a sense is a visual celebration of technology and "ladybots". Speaking of which I thought I would share a paragraph from a women's studies essay I wrote last year on the celebration of techno science via visual techniques in reality make over programs.

Similar to the post-feminist celebratory logic of the feminine body, a celebration of cosmetic technology also works towards cultural standardization of cosmetic surgery. Within a highly visual based contemporary society, reality television makeover shows are undoubtedly successful in constructing a visual representation of cosmetic surgery procedures, which within the commercial (often cable) televisual domain, appears aesthetically appealing, crediting logic of social acceptability. With reference to the popular American reality makeover program The Swan, Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer (2006) determine that the structured process of turning a "patient" into a "swan", is eminently 'technologised using simple and culturally recognizable pseudo-scientific visual techniques'(p. 267). The visual composition used on The Swan to display the patients "before body", prior to their makeover, resembles the screen of a highly advanced computer program, or a superhuman technological database from a sci-fi movie. The patient's plasticised bodies appear visually entrapped within a systemic grid of rotating and scrolling measurements, expected cosmetic procedures are listed like missions down the side of the screen while sets of digits and symbols run endlessly, the entire visual design is complete with digital sound effects and running commentary from the "team of world experts".

A few other similar film clips that came to mind were that you might like to check out were, Silver Chair- Year 2000, and Regurgitator's Polyester girl which I couldn't find the video to unfortunately, but take a look at the lyrics, quite hilarious.

See ya'll tomorrow!