From pictorial vandalism in public spaces to Feminist Asian cinema – the range of topics discussed in the blogs students created for ANTH 378 is extensive. Assessing one's fellow students work, however, is often difficult. Not only does it at times seem pretentious to rate and thus somehow mark other students' work, but it also confronts you with your own work. Involuntarily, then, we are put in a situation of comparing ourselves and our achievements with our classmates' contributions. Despite the fact that this task might trigger professional or peer envy it is a useful and in the end rather rewarding thing to do, for it sheds light on how capable in fact students are when it comes to participating in the academic discourse.
In her blog on bathroom graffiti Larissa Dziubenko thinks about ideas of anonymity and identity in an environment as particular as the public washroom and how the nature of this relationship influences people when choosing which type of graffiti to mark this very special territory with – a transitory place, an Augean non-place that is usually not really paid attention to (Augé 2008). First of all identifying the bathroom 'masterpieces', those "convoluted conversations, social commentaries and insults we often find scribbled on the walls of bathroom stalls or study cubicles" (Dziubenko 2011) as a special kind of graffiti, she then goes on to investigating the special nature of the washroom ambience: There is no doubt that this is a public space. At the same time, however, it is a highly private, at times even vulnerable, moment in which people get to see and read these scribbles and thus be impacted upon by other people's thoughts. This intervention in one's private sphere, this reaching into another person by virtue of words, is what Larissa Dziubenko is concerned with. From her own elaborations she infers that "graffiti writings are anonymous statements of an individual’s identity and presence in the world” (2011). But more importantly, I think, these graffiti works hint at the anonymity of our contemporary world, the fact that 'real' presence does not exist anymore. It has become nothing but an illusion, one might argue. This would also tie into another idea put forward by Larissa, namely that the more anonymous a setting is, the braver people get: If people view the public washroom as a last resort to express themselves, then they are in fact erasing their own identities, for it is place that denies identity and eventually hides presence.
Discussing graffiti as signs that provide an insight into the nature of society, Larissa raises a lot of interesting questions as for instance whether the feeling of one's identity is more at risk if one is the first person to write tag the interior of the bathroom stall. Also, it might be interesting to take a closer look at why people still respond to those 'washroom feeds' when they could just post something similar on Facebook.
Jeff Hart equally contributes to the discussion that has evolved around new media. His blog on Hayao Miyazaki’s anime film Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986) analyzes the movie's main characters and their relationships towards one another from a feminist point of view. Arguing that “as a self-proclaimed feminist, Miyazaki often centers the plot on many female characters, projected as independent and competent individuals that attempt to repress patriarchal systems” (Hart 2011) Jeff does indeed, and rightly so, highlight the number of females as well as the variety of portrayals of women in the movie. In addition to the protagonist, Sheet, a young female, “Miyazaki also challenges traditional representation in creating the character of Dola, a matriarch heading a pirate family of sons” (Hart 2011). But apart from looking at who is being portrayed and as well as from calling for more appropriate and less clichéd media depictions of women, feminists are also concerned with who does these representations and who is benefiting from them (Gray 2010: 59). 'Benefiting' in this context might refer to how accurate the depictions are and thus regard whether women benefit from certain images that are being evoked; something that Jeff tries to argue for and that he sees realized in Miyazaki's movie. It might, however, also allude to what Laura Mulvey calls scopophilia, the pleasure of looking and her concept of the gaze conceptualized as follows: “Male pleasure is created in mainstream cinema is created in three ways: identification, voyeurism and fetishism” (Gray 2010: 59). One might argue that being a man Miyazaki cannot help but employ a certain male-centric point of view and that even in portraying mainly female characters and supposedly reversing traditional gender roles – “Miyazaki gives Sheeta the characteristics that traditionally fall to the male, in both Hollywood and Japanese films” (Hart 2011) – he is still catering to a dominantly male audience.
No matter whether it is questions of identity negotiated in graffiti or gender stereotypes called into question by Asian anime movies, the blogs created by ANTH 378 students provide insightful analyses of contemporary media phenomena that invite the readers to think more about issues discussed among anthropology of media theorists and how these might relate to their own lives.
References Cited
Augé, Marc
2008 Non-Places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London; New York: Verso.
Dziubenko, Larissa
2011 The Writing on the Stall: Identity and Anonymity in Bathroom Graffiti (Blog #4). Culture and Media: http://cultureandmedia378.blogspot.com/2011/02/writing-on-stall- identity-and-anonymity.html .
Gray, Gordon
2010 Cinema: A Visual Anthropology. Oxford, UK; New York: Berg Publishers.
Hart, Jeff
2011 Miyazaki's Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Feminist Theory (Blog #7). Jeff Hart's Blog: http://jeffalexanderhart.blogspot.com/2011/04/miyazakis-laputa-castle-in-sky-and.html.
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