Research is important and different sources are good to write a good essay.The more research I have the more the essay will write itself
Slides during the Lecture:
Claude Levi Strauss
Turn of the 20th century – famous anthropologist (study of people)
Was also interested in culture and writing
Use to spend time with tribal peoples in places like South America
Tribal people live in indigenous lifestyles
Strauss found that in other cultures there were stories and myths (deep myths) that the people believed in
Akin to christianity or islam – people thought they were real
Also called deep structure – we tell ourselves stories of what things mean
Myths – ideological
All myths are bound up in pairs of binary opposites, pairs of good and bad
Youth against old age, beauty against ugliness, life and death, hunger and plenty, day and night
All societies are made up of these binary opposite myths
As society becomes ‘sophisticated’ so do their myths – not just about life and death
Indigenous lifestyle is better for the planet, our society is not
What is considered positive helps people stay in power
Not individual people it is the structure of society
People ruling the earth (100 companies) exploit the ones who try to change for the better
Binary opposites can change within our society
The way we look at race gender disability are binary opposites
People like familiarity because it is comfortable but it is also bad for creativity
Example of Snow White Binary opposites
A lot of binary opposites – society is built around these ideologies
‘Good violence and bad violence’ – binary opposites change depending on context
No such thing s normal – there is only the current state – what society agrees to say is normal
Ugly is positioned as something negative in society
Binary opposites of fairy stories we know
Rich poor
Ugliness and beauty
Protector perpetrator
Staying off the path represented danger – its about telling women to stay on the path of innocence
Nothing is true
Its just what we agree to tell ourselves
Terrorist and a freedom fighter is exactly the same thing
These stories are told by the media and politicians in order to us to be part of the story
Everyone agrees that this is normal
Modern Ideology is wilfully ignoring the binary opposites and agreeing not to look differently CRITICAL THINKING
Don’t just go along with everything
Binary Opposites Comparison Activity Snow White vs Wonderbra
What can you not see that is part of binary opposites:
Men
Children
An ugly woman
nude is not natural or decorate
Dressed and undressed
Girly
Men – have been seen as they should be as active people logical people who can make things who can solve a problem navigators and still seen that way in their pay
Women – instinctive, hysterical, sensitive, which is why they are considered to be temperamental
Logic vs intuitive – the world needs both not one or the other
These traits in men and women are emphasised to keep society how it is
Its problem that people think society is okay when it is not
The male gaze – the birth of Venus
Women in art galleries in the past would have to be chaperoned
Man takes the place of the artist
Active man is looking at the passive women in the painting
men painted what they saw
Men painted for men on how they saw women
The women looking at the art looks at the women passively – ‘am I that woman?’
Male gaze – taking power through looking
Entitled to your opinion but you cannot justify making up your own facts
