Fantasy

Kiki’s Delivery Service

·      Matriarchal society

·      Initiation

·      Female mentor

·      Beta men

·      Maternal figures

·      Nurturing, the setting being a bakery

·      The city isn’t terribly welcoming or receptive

·      The roots of female power are rural

Position of Women in Fantasy

·      Archetypal story telling

Illustrated Horror- women in horror vs. women in fantasy

·      Frankenstein- damsel in distress

·      Posing language and the general composition- vulnerable, wearing white- innocent thing

·      Same posed used- paperback book of the 50s- lurid covers

·      Bride of Frankenstein- interesting concept- kind of occurs in the book

·      “ Always with the neck”

·      Idea of Dracula as a seducer

·      Seduction- all about the denial of female sexual experience

·      Against contraception – they will be out of control

·      Dracula’s Daughter- female desire out of control in the other way- fem fatale

·      Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- all men are two faced- the civilized and the real guy underneath (The Wolf Man)

·      The Mummy- all about male obsession for the female

·      Invisible Man- stalker

·      Edgar Allan Poe- Mystery an Imagination- abstract art

·      Cat People

·      Victim or fem fatale- not a lot of room for safe sex so to speak

·      Cultural clutter over the top of the genre

·      Women spend their lives rediscovering sex

·      Women being anxious

·      Women waiting to be victimized/ frequently tied up or just laying their (fainted)

·      Overt sexuality- “ bondage liberates you”

·      Weird tales

·      Woman who runs with wolves

·      Sex and violence

·      Misogyny – horror in general is a very misogynist genre

What does fantasy do?

·      Women up the pedestal that they aren’t real

·      Virgin Mary quality

·      How dare they have their own set of sexual desires and real lives

·      Attempt in contemporary fantasy to make it more real

·      Still dealing with misogyny- Twilight

·      Kiki- admirable in the ways that she is rooted in real female power

·      Positive model

·      Disney is all very “mans world”

·      Is a princess movie an anecdote?

·      Worshiping the object of desire which is the status

·      Warbreaker

·      What about gaming? – what is happening there and what are those girls like?

·      Pans Labyrinth brings politics to the front of fantasy- fantasy does this in general Pans Labyrinth just pushes it right to the front

·       Pagan  

Foucault Reading

·      The imperfect was the earth- everything else was increasingly perfect- heaven should be more perfect and so should the moon- but it wasn’t

·      If everything we know is wrong????

·      Layers of perfections was incorrect

·      It didn’t stop

·      Space

·      Time- relative- not anything you want to base your cosmology around

·      When you disturb hierarchies in this way

·      Sites- place- sacred-

·      Heterotopias- mirrors

·      Cemeteries

·      Virtual space