In the essay “Beyond Bullying” by Krissy Darch and Fazeela Jiwa the readers got a chance to further their understanding of the injustice many victims bullying receive in Canada. The essay starts off with focusing mainly on two victims of bullying; Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons. These two victims cases were posted on social media under the title of cyberbullying but little did everyone knows that both girls were faced with sexual harassment by younger men. The felonies that Rehtaeh and Amanda both went through was the outcome of a sexist system that states a women body does not belong to her solely. The term bullying is understood differently, across the globe.
Children in the age range thirteen to fifteen are often transitioning through a critical time of their lives. They frequently look to others as a cicerone on how they themselves should act. In the novel, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda Sordino calls the cops on an end-of-summer party at which she was raped. The novel depicts Melinda’s excursion as to how she copes with the heart-wrenching events that have affected her momentously as well as creating “[a] frightening and sobering look at the cruelty and viciousness that pervade much of contemporary high school life.” (Kirkus Reviews, Pointer Review).
The main theme of the book, Speak, centers around feelings of isolation. Before beginning her freshman year, the main character, Melinda, attends an end of the summer high school party. For reasons that are not made known until later in the story, Melinda ends up calling the police, which causes the party to get busted and makes everyone hate Melinda. In addition to being an outcast among her friends and peers, Melinda also struggles in her relationships with the adults in her life. Throughout the course, we have discussed how many topics of adolescence can be critiqued through books and movies.
In Michael Lehmann’s facetious Heathers, various characters display their perspectives on the complications and difficulties of navigating the dynamics of adolescence. The teenage years are known throughout American culture to be some of the most trying times in one’s life. The pressures of fitting in, being popular, and feeling loved can become so important to teens, often close to obsessions. JD is someone who sees the falsehood behind these needs and looks down on those who epitomize them. While shown in an exaggerated form, JD’s animosity towards those in the popular clique reveals itself to the extreme.
Melinda Sordino started ninth grade just as afraid and alone as I did. At an End-of-the-Summer party, Melinda was raped by a football player from Merryweather, her new high school. She immediately called the cops to report the crime, however the kneejerk reaction of the underage drinkers occupying the houseparty silenced her and chased her away. Consequently, Melinda’s best friends from middle school abandoned her; no one wanted to be associated with the squealer. Her parents were distant and never took the time to understand the sudden change in Melinda’s demeanor.
The American obsession with spectatorship is a phenomenon created by the inaccessibility of timely and relevant knowledge. This oddly leads to an increase in the demand and likeability of terror. In her piece “Great to Watch”, Maggie Nelson explores the origins of this fascination with horror and gives an
The women of the neighborhood analyzed the couple’s every move. Theresa remained unaffected and unaware of the gossip around here. On the other hand, Lorraine was self-conscious as she was previously fired from a job because of her relationship with Theresa. Lorraine relied on Theresa’s tenacity and self-confidence. Theresa had many friends of her own, while Lorraine depended on the support of the women in the community.
This is suggested by Helen Simpson who stated that Carter centralises ‘latent content of fairy-tale’ is that women are objects of male desire hence patriarchal discourse establishes male supremacy to which Carter does this to challenge contemporary perspectives on the place of women by revealing the oppression that society inflicted. The Marquis is an overt example of male ownership of female bodies. Similarly, where Atwood exposes the harsh realities of oppressive patriarchy through the female body, Carter utilises the construct of the Marquis in the eponymous story ‘The Bloody Chamber’ as a grotesque embodiment of patriarchal control. In her essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Laura Mulvey coined the feminist term ‘male gaze.’ She argues that men are the audience and women are to embody the male perspective of women as objects of satisfaction.
Richard Chase was given the name “The Vampire of Sacramento” during his killing spree in California. Chase put fear into the United States with his gruesome killings and unusual behavior. Some of this behavior included drinking his victim’s blood, killing animals, and injecting rabbit blood into his body. Schizophrenia played a large part in his motive for the killing. It created hallucinations and delusions making him believe he need to ingest human blood to stop his own from turning to dust.
Feminist Reading: Dracula between Beauvoir’s and Roth’s Ideas In her article, “Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” Phyllis Roth argues that Dracula is a misogynistic novel which is obvious in the system of power in which men are dominant and active figures whereas women are just followers and obedient to their system. She draws on Simon de Beauvoir’s idea that “ambivalence as an intrinsic quality of Eternal Feminine”, in order to show that women are victims to men powers. In her chapter, “Myth and Reality”, Beauvoir discusses the way that anybody in the society, specially men, doesn’t do their job in taking a step towards the oppressed women, but to act just like what the system of myth impose them to act.
Introduction The film, Mean Girls, a 2004 American teen comedy, focuses on female high school social “cliques” and their effects. In doing so, the movie brings up various topics of sociological relevance, with connections to two of the main topics discussed in the first semester of this course. This film’s characters and world tie into modern socialization and gender issues, giving sociologists a satirical in-depth view of the social hierarchy present in today’s youth—particularly concentrated in young female teenagers. The movie addresses gender stereotypes, socialization and assimilation into a complex high school environment, self-fulfilling prophecy, and various other concepts important to the development of a social self for teens in the
The notion of separate spheres seen throughout the Victorian period was set up to distinguish the roles of men and women in society. Women fulfilled the domestic sphere and were generally seen as emotionally sensitive and submissive individuals. Conversely, men were held to be intelligent, stable, and fulfill all of the work outside of the home. In Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, the Count seems to actually embody the fear of the breakdown of such separate spheres. However, Bram Stoker breaks down these separate spheres and the fear associated with their breakdown through the theme of the “New Woman” intertwined with the actions and behaviors of the characters in the novel.
In Laura Mulvey’s article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” she writes about the relationship between voyeurism, cinema, and gender. She begins by describing the concept of scopophilia, which means to gain pleasure from looking. She writes that scopophilia is inherently active/masculine, and that pleasure is derived from looking at other people as mere objects. On the other hand, the passive/feminine is derived from the experience of being looked at (pg.188). Mulvey sees this binary relationship between viewer and object being viewed as a part of our culture, and the greatest example of this is found in cinema.
The literature pieces help explore the subject of female sexuality, as time progress the amount of female sexuality increases. Women can desire, they can have aspirations, even though shown as vampires the text still suggests that they are women. The gothic writing of Victorian era such as Dracula, Carmilla, and Christabel help
Stalking often has a giant impact on the life of the victim, resulting in drastic lifestyle changes such as focusing way more on one´s security and becoming more isolated. Many victims of stalking even change jobs and their homes to escape the stalker, which often does not help against an overly motivated stalker. Especially the victims´ fears and their increasing isolation lead to a loss of social capital (such as family and friends) in a situation where the victims would need their support most, leaving the victim even more vulnerable than before. Being stalked often results in anxiety, insomnia, and other results of post-traumatic stress
