A Short Collection On Catering To Men. Gone Girl By Gillian Flynn (2012) A Doll’s House By Henrik Ibsen

male gaze is not 'when person look sexy' or 'when misogynist make film'

death of the author is not 'miku wrote this'

I don't think you have to read either essay to grasp the basic concepts

death of the author means that once a work is complete, what the author believes it to mean is irrelevant to critical analysis of what's in the text. it means when analysing the meaning of a text you prioritise reader interpretation above author intention, and that an interpretation can hold valid meaning even if it's utterly unintentional on the part of the person who created the thing. it doesn't mean 'i can ignore that the person who made this is a bigot' - it may in fact often mean 'this piece of art holds a lot of bigoted meanings that the author probably wasn't intentionally trying to convey but did anyway, and it's worth addressing that on its own terms regardless of whether the author recognises it's there.' it's important to understand because most artists are not consciously and vocally aware of all the possible meanings of their art, and because art is communal and interpretive. and because what somebody thinks they mean, what you think somebody means, and what a text is saying to you are three entirely different things and it's important to be able to tell the difference.

male gaze is a cinematographic theory on how films construct subjectivity (ie who you identify with and who you look at). it argues that film language assumes that the watcher is a (cis straight white hegemonically normative) man, and treats men as relatable subjects and women as unknowable objects - men as people with interior lives and women as things to be looked at or interacted with but not related to. this includes sexual objectification and voyeurism, but it doesn't mean 'finding a lady sexy' or 'looking with a sexual lens', it means the ways in which visual languages strip women of interiority and encourage us to understand only men as relatable people. it's important to understand this because not all related gaze theories are sexual in nature and if you can't get a grip on male gaze beyond 'sexual imagery', you're really going to struggle with concepts of white or abled or cis subjectivities.

Aloha from Hell - Richard Kadrey / x / I Can Fly - Lana Del Rey / Alejandro Jodorowsky / Cut - Catherine Lacey / How’d Your Parents Die Again? - Fatimah Asghar / Margaret Atwood / Courtney Love Prays To Oregon - Clementine von Radics / The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore - Tennessee Williams / Vesuvius - Amber Sparks

“i knew everything when i was young”

“the admirable crichton” - jm barrie (1918) // the man with the axe - lorde (2021) // picture of alana zimmer // massa - tyler, the creator (2021) // first love/late spring - mitski (2014) // painting by peter brown // this is me trying - taylor swift (2020) // “nothing new” journal entry - taylor swift (2012) // cardigan - taylor swift (2020)

when florence welch said “and everything i ever did was just another way to scream your name” and when mitski said “if you would let me give you pinky promise kisses then i wouldn’t have to scream your name atop of every roof in the city of my heart” and when taylor swift said “and i still talk to you when i’m screaming at the sky” and when phoebe bridgers said “there are no words in the english language i could scream to drown you out” and when oh pep said “heard you were yelling before you could talk” and when

paperswallow:

When I say girlhood I mean to bleach and bind and braid. I mean that soft gape-mouthed mirror face. I mean the slight, tight discomfort of hair scraped into a ponytail lifting the skin of the forehead. I mean pleasure-pain. I mean knowing how to hurt. I mean the fixed quality of attention bestowed by your best friend as she grips your chin to apply your lipstick, half-sensual half-ritual all hush, like communion. Sad as Sunday night television. I mean following those flow-charts in teen magazines that tell you which movie star you’re going to marry, looking for clues about the unknown quantity of yourself. I mean the sense of waiting for upheaval. I mean having an itchy soul. I mean girls are cruellest to themselves. I mean a fire in a dollhouse. 

Halsey, “I would leave me if I could” / Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” / Kiran Desai, “The Inheritance of Loss” / Mary Ruefle, “Woodtangle” / Opie, “The Angry Father” / Josephin August, “Half a Woman” / Catherine Lacey, “Cut” / Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” / Rupi Kaur, “Milk and Honey” / Henry Chapin, “Cat’s in the Cradle” / Dick Lourie, “How do we forgive our fathers?”

stealing this from twitter

Ok girlies time for our prescription 1-2 hour walk, imagine we r all in line like Madeline

“The most haunting time at which to see them is at the turn of the moon, when they utter strange wailing cries; but the lagoon is dangerous for mortals then…”

“the mermaids” - marianne boruch // “hylas and the nymphs” - john william waterhouse // “the love song of j. alfred prufrock” - t.s. eliot // “a mermaid” - john william waterhouse // “the siren” john william waterhouse // moby-dick - herman melville // “the knight and the mermaid” - isobel lilian gloag // “the land baby” - john collier // “lamia” - john keats // of “hylas and the water nymphs” - henrietta rae // peter pan // j.m. barrie