14 thoughts on “Reading Questions: Williams

  1. Rajsavi Anand

    William’s article points out key commonalities between these three genres. However is it possible for a male to play a role as the spectacle or the one who is sexually invoked in these films? If so does would the women get the similar pleasure that a man gains from seeing the orgasmic, fearful, and in some case tear-jerking in the woman? Is the reason these genres are seen as the bottom of society because they cause this pleasure solely for a male view? If the answer is more of the same or more sex, isn’t this just a cycle just the same putting the male in the same position to be the perverted watcher?

  2. Oliver Sutro

    “films that have had especially low cultural status…[capture the spectator] in an almost involuntary mimicry of the emotion or sensation of the body on the screen”
    Why do films that provoke such emotion and stimulation receive such a low cultural status from society? How have sex and horror become such taboo genres?

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  3. Anna Gallagher

    Linda Williams argues that all of these “low brow” genres—porn, slasher horror, and melodrama—elicit *physical* reactions in the audience (all forms of “jerking”). Why are we so quick to associate these physical reactions with “gratuitousness?” Are men and women spectators’ physical reactions the same? Because women are starting to (admit to) watch(ing) porn, and as men drift towards certain forms of melodrama, then how does these affect us as an audience? Does it change our sense of the “male gaze?”

  4. Eleanor Krause

    According to Williams, horror is for adolescent boys, pornography for men, and melodrama for girls and women. Doesn’t this imbalance of “body genres” signify the still male-oriented leanings of film?

  5. Amelia Furlong

    Williams says in her essay that “the deployment of sex, violence, and emotions…address persistent problems in our culture, in our sexualities, in our very identities. The deployment of sex, violence, and emotion is thus in no way gratuitous and in no way strictly limited to each of these genres; it is instead a cultural form of problem solving.” But is it enough to claim that these “body genres” problem solve for our culture just because they present a “problem” and then fix it with more of the same problem? How does this really solve anything? Isn’t gratuitousness in these films more of a statement on how desperate for some sort of feeling, how devoid of all passion and emotion our culture has become, not a solution to that problem?

  6. Avery Rain

    Williams comments that subject positions in these types of films maybe are “not as gender-linked and as gender-fixed as has often been supposed,” mentioning “men who hug and women who leer.” How does this change reflect culture? Are films moving towards looser representations of gender roles in a way that mirrors current societal norms? What might this look like in the near future? Will gender become less important?

  7. Alexander Griffiths

    “If the sexually active bad girls” usually killed off, and the “non sexual good girls survive” what does that say about the sexual liberation of women? If these good girls become “remarkably active at the point of appropriating the phallic power to themselves” surely this insights the notion that bad girls are for men safe, and that good girls are a risk to ones phallus. Why does the author assert that the sexually assertive bad girls, are “punished for an ill-timed exhibition of sexual desire”, when why would a horror film want to reassert societal constructs such as no underage sex, when to be frank this would alienate its respective audience, adolescent boys?

  8. Amethyst Tate

    Williams argues that in “body genres,” spectators respond to these genres by mimicking the actions of the characters onscreen. But do we as the viewer identify with the character onscreen as a result of these bodily sensations we may have towards them, or is the viewer’s reaction the effect of identification?

  9. Rosalind Downer

    Why does Linda Williams suggest that even when the pleasure of viewing has traditionally been constructed for masculine spectators, that it is the female body which offers the most sensational sight? Why is it so that she believes it is only women’s bodies that are the ”moved and the moving”? Is she justified in thinking this? Or is it fair to say that men can also feel emotionally perturbed by on-screen violence?

  10. Laura Hendricksen

    In her article, Linda Williams mentions at one point that in any kind of the three genres of pornography, melodrama and horror films, « even in the most extreme displays of feminine masochistic suffering, there is always a component of either power or pleasure for the woman victim ». What is the actual pleasure that women may take in a masochist torture on bodies of women? Is there a female overt sexual pleasure in the scenario of domination displayed in pornographic films and that of victimization in horror movies?

  11. Bryanna Kleber

    Linda William’s son is seven years old. It struck me as very odd that Williams would use a seven year old’s views to begin to address her argument (and let him watch movies like Nightmare on Elm Street). What was William’s strategic reason for bringing a child’s perspective to this piece. She says, “one that I like and my son doesn’t,” but, I don’t think she is using her son’s opinions as a general male opinion juxtaposing her own. Does the child’s view serve as a innocent perspective that shows the reader a pure, outside perspective? Or is she simply using her son’s simplified explanations to make her argument more understandable?

  12. Maria Macaya

    Williams argues that these 3 excess films, pornography, horror and melodrama can solve social problems and eliminate gender differences. She states that films can break down taboos against male to male sex and male to male hugs and embraces. The 3 types of film also pose problems which are solved with more of the problem itself. The solution for sex is more or better sex. When the problem is violence against sexual difference, the solution is more violence. Where pathos of loss is the problem the repetition of this loss is the solution. Similarly fantasies can function as solutions to major enigmas. Enigmas such as the enigma of the origin of sexual desire, the enigma of sexual difference and the enigma of the origin of self. How much can society be beneffited from these films? To what extent do these films “with solutions” affect our reality? Could these films help individuals with their problems and enigmas and/or can they improve society in general? Can they help us become more accepting and understanding with ourselves and others?

  13. Joyce Ma

    Linda Williams highlights the significance of bisexual video, male weepie, and paternal weepie.

    “The point is certainly not to admire the ‘sexual freedom’ of this new fluidity and oscillation- the new femininity of men who hug and the new masculinity of women who leer- as if it represented and ultimate defeat of phallic power. Rather, the more useful lesson might be to see what this new fluidity and oscillation permits in the construction of feminine viewing pleasures once thought not to exist at all.”

    Williams uses examples of people performing sex(sexual intercourse) which initially allows the construction of feminine viewing pleasures; therefore is it only through sex that woman inherit this power of viewing pleasure? For example in “Damages,” it is in Peggy’s want to have sex that catalyzes her change from a quiet Brooklyn girl to professional advertiser. Can women gain viewing pleasures through a different method? Or is viewing pleasure indefinitely linked to sex?

  14. Luke Martinez

    Is it possible for a woman to be “sexually saturated” as Williams puts it, without the viewer objectifying her? Can men be sexually saturated, evoking a similar sensation in women?

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