COMM 2P20 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Laura Mulvey, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan

• School: Brock University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMM 2P20
• Professor: Baxter Moore

Document Summary

Gender and sexuality - feminist theory and popular culture. Feminism describes both a set of theoretical understandings and an ideology. Theoretical - a linkage between a set of concepts that attempt to explain how the world works. Ideology - an action related system of ideas - contains theoretical understandings about how the world works but also diagnoses of the present ills of society and prescriptions for improving society. Feminist as a theory attempts to explain how the world works - particularly the position of women within the world. Feminism as an ideology attempts to find ways to improve the positions of women within society. Feminist approaches to popular culture may draw on both sides - theory and action. Mulvey both theorizes cinema and provides solutions for women in cinema. Sex: female, male (or some variation thereof) - determined by biology, by genetics, by the presence or absence of physical organs, hormones, genes, and other biological traits;