Reflection Statement

Reflection Statement, Lingjun Wang

Address for the landing page of the site: https://mscwangfilmseries.movie.blog

Being a fan of superhero films impels me to make this blog and combine superhero films with what I have learned in MCS200. In my website, the introduction explains my creating idea about this blog and the mashup is put in it to help the blog users to meet female images in films before the start. The photographic images on this media project were taken from Google by searching for the specific characters names. It is my first time to design a website but I had searched some of marvel and DC characters posters before making the blog. The background adapts to use black, interlacing with image collages made by myself by using photoshop. The idea of my logo was inspired by a film blog https://ohthatfilmblog.com/ and the background inspiration comes from https://www.marvel.com/movies and https://www.wizardingworld.com/. The setting of twitter makes my blog more abundant. I also leave my twitter on the home page to interact with website users.

 My pictures demonstrate the female function to verify the magic of narrative and commercial films come from the proficient and satisfactory operation of visual pleasure. The site takes the form (on the second and third page) of the media gallery. The text captions for the videos and photos which is based on reflections about Mulvey’s (1989) Visual pleasure and narrative cinema, Snow (1989) Representations, Bourdieu (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice and Freud (1953) The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud.

The blog https://www.top10films.co.uk/52008-gender-imbalance-in-film-women-under-represented-in-superhero-movies/ and https://www.businessinsider.sg/gal-gadot-wonder-woman-costume-2016-3 on this site feature what other people think towards “gender scopic regime”(Sassatelli, 2011,p.124) in superhero films. The gender imbalance is not exclusively seen in the quantitative difference but also demonstrates in female dressing style. For Mulvey (1989) male gaze theory, female characters’ appearance brings viewing pleasure for characters and the audience, they are the object to be seen and displayed.

Besides, I also mentioned the setting of some normal female images to eliminate male character’s anxiety (Mulvey, 1989) and female characters’ unfortunate life experience. Based on the Freud (1953, p.221) psychological theory, disfigured face and disabled bodies have the typical symbolic meaning of castration. However, the destruction of female characters comes from contrived reasons. For this castration, female become disabled and passive, reflecting how “the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form” and demonstrating “films depend on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world” (Mulvey, 1989, p.14).

Female in superheroes films are more independent and braver. McRobbie (2004, p.260) claimed that the success of post-feminism is seen in which the feminist values are indeed taken on board within a range of social institutions, they can fulfil themselves in society. The use of https://eu.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2018/02/15/black-panther-dora-milaje/309218002/ aims to prove my opinion and emphasis on the change of female images.

My pictures and GIFS also feature the reversal of female images. Such change criticizes Mulvey’s theory about the subject and object of female images in visual pleasure (Mulvey, 1989). In the films, female images get the new stereotype of becoming violent and rebellious. Female superpower in the films verifies Bourdieu theory (1977) because some of the women rights are castrated to make them still in a weak position. 

This is a short conclusion of my website making process, hoping it can fit into the requirement.