By Yuyun, Aleksey, and Yvonne
Transcript
Intro
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10 sec
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I am the Power. I am a male created in the image of all-mighty God who is a male and, therefore, I am inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed week, especially females, and ENDOWED with the right to dominate and rule over the weak. I am a white heterosexual male who colonized people of color globally by killing or enslaving them by hundreds of thousands and declared the WHITE to be superior and the default color.
To maintain the white male supremacy, I invented and mastered the system of power relations known as Patriarchy that teaches girls, to be weak and free from burden of thinking, to serve and caretaker for others; it teaches boys to be strong and violent, to suppress all feelings except for rage that would help them later on to protect home and nation, i.e. the Patriarchy itself. As a heterosexual white male politician I legitimize and indoctrinate patriarchal values and beliefs in schools, places of worship, workplaces and in the home. I use Patriarchy to dictate what everyone should be from the moment they are born by assigning TWO ONLY patriarchal gender roles with the predetermined gender scripts based on the sex of a newborn. If someone deviates from the traditional roles and the script they will be shamed by their peers and by society in general for the rest of their life for not being normal or natural.
In continuous process of the sexist myth making I use mass media propaganda machine, fully owned and controlled by me - a white heterosexual male , to enforce in boys the notion that for a male, the exertion of brutal and monstrous physical force is viable response to all situation of crisis; to control the hearts of men by socializing males to believe that without their role as patriarchs they will have no reason for being; to preach that at the core of male identity is the will to dominate and the only way to prove masculinity is through the acts of brutal violence.
At the same time, my media networks export insecurity to women via artificially created unachievable ideals of beauty and contradictory expectations that keep them in double bind: they are expected to be sexy but virginal, experienced but naïve, assertive but passive; these media bombardments reduce them to objects of sexual desire of the phallocentric gaze.
Things were so much easier when women new their place. Now that women have become more empowered by the feminist discourse, as they became stronger, independent and began to challenge the prevailing gender arrangements, they began to pose a threat the existing order of the patriarchal system of power.
To protect God-given Power, I dictate women what to do with women’s bodies: I reinforce and reproduce thinness by restricting their appetite them. I dictate them whether they are allowed to have babies or to be sterilized. Such restrictions on appetite and social control of female bodies operates as a practical discipline that trains female bodies in the knowledge of their limits and possibilities. Of course women are excluded from these conversations.
When you look at me you might say you are not white - you are green. That is because I am the product of my own creation – Patriarchy. When I experience anger, as right now when my authority is being questioned, I turn into a creature of color and will commit violent acts. After committing violence, I will change back to my normal white-male rational self. I have no memory of my actions and therefore cannot assume responsibility for them. I am the symbol of the ultimate patriarchal man. I am the Power.
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2 min
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2) Transition with Techno music Agency (Yvonne)
Do you have agency? Do you know what it means to have agency? Aleksey has just explained one example of power. What I'm going to do today is I'm going to show you how you can use power differently in order to create agency, and why you might want to use your agency to represent yourself.
So what is agency?
Agency is the capacity for a person to act for herself or himself in any given environment. In other words, if you are able to make decisions, choices, and act on these decisions and choices for yourself, you have agency. That is, agency is not only an inherent role, but more importantly, it is an active role as well. Marion Cabrera in an article on cyberspace and women’s agency defines agency as “women’s experiences of making the most of their situation, in the following four ways: her ability to rise above the situations she is pressed with; participation in her community; assertion of her identity; and how she continues to survive and make changes for herself and her community”.
A good example of female agency is me, GoGo, from the #1 Animated Movie Big Hero 6. I’m an industrial designer and mechanical engineer. I make things happen as opposed to waiting for a male to make things happen. I demonstrated this when I provided support to my team for counterattacks, and skillfully drove my team away from danger. To satisfy my intense need for speed, I even created a special bike that runs on restriction-free wheels. When women like me are in charge of making things happen, when they can affect the world around them, we say they have agency.
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2 min
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3)Transition with Chinese music Representation(Yuyun) I am representation( definition of representation related to agency or media). According to media studies, representation is “the way in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective”. We know and understand the world through language, through media, through representations. The language constructs and evaluates the world and reality by naming it. The media constitute a language system. The language and the media are both systems of representation. We can define representation from three aspects.
· To look like or to resemble
· To stand in for something or someone
· To present a second time – re-present (O’shaughnessy, Media and Society)
There is a complex relationship between representation and reality. When we feel that the language and representations don’t do justice to our sense of reality, we have to find new ways of representing them, and indeed, this has been the history of human culture, constantly developing new modes of representation and discovering new ways of seeing reality. Let me say that again. (Slowly) When we feel that the language and representations don’t do justice to our sense of reality, we have to find new ways of representing them.
This is because all representations are bias because they come from humans and a particular position.
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2 min
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Wrap up
Today you learned about the definitions and effects of power, agency, and representation. Power is ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events; as well as Physical strength and force exerted by something or someone. Agency is the ability to act for yourself and make things happen. Representation is the portrayal of ideas and experiences through the media. The Hulk changes from a default white male to an irrationally angry creature of color, Gogo makes things happen according to her own agenda while thinking about her team, and Asian representation in media that we see today is a narrow and biased language that doesnt do justice to an Asian’s sense of reality. This is not to say that our stories of power, agency, and representation are universal, but they are commonplace nevertheless, in that power leads to agency, agency leads to representation. And representation is powerful.
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1 min
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Yvonne cited works:
http://infochangeindia.org/women/third-wave/we-are-only-halfway-to-understanding-women-s-agency.html
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