My Journey through the Media

My Identity Parade

In a retrospective look at this semester, the thing that continues to stand out is the theme of voyeurism. When I look to the Media, I am expected to take some pleasure from the images. According to Laura Mulvey, that is scopophilia. According to John Berger, that appraisal is simply an internalisation of the male gaze. According to bell hooks, it should be a critical spectatorship. The point is that you have to look. You are forced to interpret, engage and absorb the media constantly. I am my voice, and my medium is the internet. That's what I have learnt. I am a bit of an enigma, even to myself, so the current social media landscape takes away the only thing that truly defines me - my diction. Words are a jumbled mess online. They don't translate well from my heart to my brain, and like a familiar game of whispers, the message is completely distorted by the time it reaches its intended target. Language becomes incomprehensible here when each page has a minute or less to grab and hold the attention of my fair flicker generation. It's like I'm speaking but the words are escaping in the wrong language with the wrong accent, and the meanings are suddenly lost. I do have a voice in the Media though. I just had to go out there, gather the scattered little pieces, and reassemble them in one place where I could shout everything I have ever thought about my role in consuming media. I focus on four key areas that I think contribute most to my persona. My origins, my style, my gender, and my sexuality, in fact, I used Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity as a guide throughout the piece.

I am who I say I am

but am I who I say I am,

because you say I am that which I am?

Am I who I am

because you said I couldn't be 

who I am going to become?

I don't know who I am

but I am not

what you know me to be;
what you think I should be
is exactly what I shan't become.

The Framework (That is, works not cited):

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism : Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44.

hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End, 1992. Print.