[http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~prism/events.htm]
[http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=175260031]
[http://focusboy.net/2008/04/kerry-degman-for-tetu/][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DAEiAfSBAg] - Katie Perry "I Kissed a Girl"
[http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/object/3803288-two-girls-and-a-guy.php?id=3803288]
The artifacts that I chose to focus on are gays and lesbians. The music video by Katie Perry "I kissed a Girl," is about a woman who fantasizes about kissing another female. Female homosexuality is what every guy dreams about, with two attractive females making out with each other. Ever since Katie Perry's "I Kissed a Girl," female on female has been little more appreciated in the media. It became the "new" trend to experiment with other females and explore female homosexuality. Even though it is usually persuaded by males for the females to act sexually with each other, other times females act sexually with each other to teach heterosexual males a lesson. In the reading, "Potential Lesbian at Two O'Clock" talks about how the mainstream media use lesbian portrayals by heterosexualizing the scenes "in order to promote the conventional straight male's lesbian fantasy" and the actresses that are playing these roles are usually heterosexual females. Lesbianism might be "acceptable" in the mainstream media, there are still limitations on how far they can go. In the films, lesbian portrayals are used for viewing pleasure of the male audiences but usually their actions does not go beyond kissing or touching each other and the rest is up to the audience to fantasize. Another thing there are certain image that are put on lesbians, which is they are "hot." For example, Jenkins talks about the film American pie 2 where boys are on their walkie talkie while they are watching two lesbians in actions. One of the males says "lesbians?" and another male clarifies it by saying, "hot lesbians" which is acceptable. There is this stereotype that lesbians have to hot, attractive and sexy while there are lesbians that are little more masculine.
Male homosexuality is usually not looked upon fondly in the media. For example when the film Brokeback Mountain came out it was a huge deal because it show male homosexuality between the two male characters. The film played on the heterosexual script for little bit since Heath Ledger was shown as heterosexual at the beginning of the movie but later in the movie it expended on his homosexuality. In media, male homosexuals are shown as something negative and they need to be fixed. They are usually shown lot more feminized and ridiculed. When people think about homosexual males before, they were usually seen as acting feminine and looking more feminine than masculine. Because of these stereotypes, homosexual males are lot more masculinized. One thing I noticed was that similar to how females are portrayed in ads, homosexual males seen to be portrayed in a same way. The ad for Dolce and Gabbana, there is a male that is laying down fully naked in front of two males. The male that is naked is sort of objectified as a sexual being. He is clearly in a vulnerable position of the two males and they are looking at his body. Another thing is that, when homosexual males are shown, they tend to focus on one certain area which is the males privates. They do not fully show it but it is similar to how female bodies are shown where the audiences need to fantasize about what is behind it.
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