From the start to the ending of the course, my interest towards it has been increasingly great, as going over a very big variety of social issues seen through the scope of media, is a very interesting subject to me, as it is the mix of two things that are really present in my life, which are the interest I have in sociology, and the diversity of media.
All of the topics called my attention in one way or the other, I really enjoyed talking and understanding more about feminism and queer representation in media; the topic of greenwashing and ecocinemas was also something really interesting to me, as I have learnt to see and explain how big companies and enterprises take advantage of social movements (same with feminisms and queer movements) in order to sell a product through a softened portrayal that takes away it subversive power. To top this up, the issue regarding the dichotomy between utopias and dystopias gave me a new perspective about how empowering and creative they can result to create social change and innovative media products.
Although I already had knowledge of many of the authors, I really liked to dig deeper an actually apply the ideas of Adorno, Žižek and Butler for my essays, as they are two authors which I find really innovative towards changing the conception we have of a certain set of issues, developing a critique to them and presenting a path towards a solution. For example Adorno, (thanks to his influence by Walter Benjamin) creating a meticulously constructed critique of capitalist mediatic products that can be applied to our days; Žižek analysis of ideology and its material manifestations; and Butler’s idea of gender as a performance, which is fascinating to explain many gendered conducts through the socialization of the subject.
A thing that shocked my way of thinking during an ecocritical analysis of ‘’Into the Wild’’, was the way in which nature was portrayed as a sublime and merciless force which can make anyone drop to their knees due to its mesmerizing agency. When in reality, although this pantheistic view may be a good starting point to begin respecting nature by placing a human attribute into it so that we can empathize with it, it also creates an issue in terms of seeing a dichotomy with a portrayal of humans fighting against nature, when, apart from being like fighting with ourselves, we would be doing it with a force that has no will. This view, due to my distance to rural lifestyles, has made me see nature as a tourist attraction for members of cosmopolitan society and, even though I have always believed in respecting nature from an almost religious point of view, I’ve come to realize that this portrayal, although it doesn't necessarily need to be disattached from the enchantment of myths created by different societies, it must be always be centered apart from anthropocentric benefit, as we are just another component of nature, and it’s main purpose is not focused on serving as an attraction for us.
I’m sure there is a lot of issues I have missed during the course, as i is a very short time to deeply study all of the theories we and methodologies we have seen, but now that I have a structured scheme of all the main issues, I would like to go back by myself to some of them in order to develop a deeper understanding and see how they can correlate and contribute to one another. I especially want to do this with Mulvey, Žižek, Butler and some more.
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