gender: intro


Subject: gender: intro
From: Peter Debruge (peterd@mail.utexas.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 15 1999 - 01:53:03 CDT


I can't tell if I'm extremely out of touch with the department or if
others found themselves in my shoes on the first day of class. I was
expecting (or perhaps "dreading" might be more appropriate) "Gender and
Sexuality in the Media" to be some sort of heavily theoretical and
stagnantly academic lecture-type couse with a back-breaking reading list
made up of the likes of Camille Paglia. Turns out that's not what the
class is about at all, and though I think a course like the one I
imagined might have served me well, I'm pleased to be in over my head
with "Gender and Sexuality in NEW MEDIA."

My name is Peter Debruge. I transferred here after a misguided year
studying Computer Science at Rice, and am technically a Senior with
miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep. I have three
majors, the relevant two being RTF and Advertising. I plan to drop
Advertising as soon as I've taken all those interesting upper-division
classes you can't take without listing it as a major, but I'm really
focusing on the film criticism side of RTF. In a perfect world, some
dream employer would pay me to go see movies and write about them. In
the meantime, I am Entertainment editor of The Daily Texan this
semester, which I mention only to explain away the dark circles under my
eyes and throbbing vein in my forehead.

I have experience with Web design (feel free to visit my site at
http://go.to/themovies) and I've created multimedia presentations in the
past on primitive software. I guess I could do something along those
lines for my project, but I'd like to at least brainstorm away from the
direction of things I'm accustomed to doing. My refined goal given what
this class turned out to be is to create a project I wouldn't dare show
my mother.

What really interests me is gender and sexuality in OLD MEDIA, and I
think I may incorporate those representations into my final project. I
hope that with this class I might try to find those patterns on my own,
rather than have them forced at me under the guise of a lot of high
theory as they might be in the type of class I thought this would be. I
couldn't be more pleased by what this class turned out to be.
Actually, I could be a teensy bit more pleased if there was some way
that the classroom could be arranged so I could hear what everyone was
saying, rather than trying to crane over a glaring row of monitors to
follow conversations anchored in another corner of the room. Stuck near
the door, I keep noticing that some of the people with the biggest ideas
have the littlest voices.



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