30th September 2023

It’s my first week on the MRes Arts!! Yippee!!

Very excited to get started on my research project. While I haven’t yet narrowed down a question, or even entirely decided on a specific area, my aim is to research the depiction of asexuality and aromanticism in media. Now, what this will specifically entail is something I’m still working on. I’ve had a lot of productive discussions with the course team, my coursemates, and the staff and students on MA Digital Fashion Innovation and Design and Innovation courses. There are a few different angles I’m considering:

• The issue of stereotypes – both for aspec identities and also in terms of how it intersects with other identities e.g. gender, race, age, disability – we love intersectionality!!
• What is the actual impact of this representation? What kind of roles can it play? Education about these identities for people who might not know about them vs artistic expression for people who actually HAVE these identities
• What does portrayal in the media tell us about how society views aspec individuals? Or about how society views sex and relationships generally

I think this last point might be the most interesting direction to go in, at least for me. Lately I’ve been really fascinated by the topic of how art reflects attitudes of its time period, and what we can learn about society from the art people create e.g. how horror movies reflect current anxieties, or how older comedy movies are often based on stereotypes that would be seen as horrible today but would be more normalised at the time. As much as I love discussing art, I want to keep this discussion grounded in that art’s place in the real world and society.

Also, while I’m aware of the risks of going too broad with this project, I think it would be really interesting to bring up the wider implications of aspec identities for people who aren’t aspec. The subtitle of Angela Chen’s Ace is “What asexuality reveals about desire, society, and the meaning of sex” (emphasis mine) and I think it is absolutely pertinent to discuss what attitudes to aspec people reveal (perhaps inadvertently) about attitudes to things like consent and relationships.

We’ve been asked to read/watch a few things to prepare for our seminars next week:

• In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki – Honestly really interesting and fun to read and genuinely pretty funny in places! I like how much care Tanizaki puts into describing seemingly mundane things like a toilet or a bowl of soup and treating them as just as important as something grand like a temple. Even though it’s almost a hundred years old the book still feels very relevant – issues like other countries having to assimilate to western culture and the increasingly speed at which technology is developing are still much-discussed today. I wish he’d talked more about the possible reasons for the cultural differences between Japan and Western countries that he discusses, but I accept that may be beyond the realm of this book
• Unpacking my Library by Walter Benjamin – I find Benjamin a bit hard to read but this was pretty short and interesting. I like how he talks about books as more than just the books themselves – collecting books is also about the memories associated with them!
• Black Girl dir. Ousmane Sembéne – Really good film!! Again much like the Tanizaki essay a lot of what it deals with is still very relevant today, and also like Tanizaki I appreciated how much attention the film gives to everyday tasks and objects. Also just generally a really well-made film that uses a shocking tragic ending to hammer home its message effectively
• Funnily enough this is something I discussed in an essay on tragedy I wrote in second year, as a possible reason why tragic films have such an appeal

• Another thing it reminded me of was the recent revival of the musical Oklahoma! – specifically the scene where the wife chooses a woman to work as their maid reminded me of the auction scene in Oklahoma! where the men of the town bid on who gets to go on a date with certain women. They’re both very uncomfortable scenes where we see our main character being objectified by someone with more power than her. Also similar in terms of its tone – both works that want to implicate the audience in their tragedy

Other stuff I've seen this week:

• The Tale of Princess Kaguya – Purely by coincidence I watched this film that was very relevant to what Tanizaki talked about. It’s based on a classic Japanese legend, so it’s set in a time when the kind of traditional Japanese practices Tanizaki discusses such as teeth blackening and making utensils out of lacquer would have been common. These traditions are actually depicted in this film, for example it’s a plot point in the film that Kaguya is forced to blacken her teeth to look more beautiful and she doesn’t want to. Interestingly a lot of Ghibli films also deal with similar themes to Tanizaki’s essay i.e. traditional Japanese way of life vs technological advancement/westernisation.
• The Silt Verses – Most relevantly to my research topic I listened to the latest episode of my beloved favourite audio drama The Silt Verses. While I’m planning to focus more on visual media like film, this series is interesting because it’s one of the few pieces of media I’ve seen/listened to that features an aromantic character – in fact, one of the two main protagonists! More than that, the story as a whole has a lot of clear interest in societal views on romantic relationships and the narratives we tell about them, and it often comments on the topic. In the current season there’s a running theme of characters adding romance to true stories that lacked it, with the idea that it will basically make them more palatable. Some notable moments from the season:

• Arts by the Sea festival – I spent the weekend visiting the Arts by the Sea festival. My favourite of the shows/exhibits I saw was definitely The Black Victorians – a dance show about the history of Black people living in Britain in the Victorian times that used different dance styles and costumes in a very interesting way. Reminded me of what Emma talked about when we watched Black Girl in terms of how it used textiles to tell the story. I also really liked the Gay Disco Bike show and the Portal exhibit

Stuff I want to look at next:

• The Heartstopper comic – During our session unpacking our research proposals I ended up talking with Amelia and Miles about the TV adaptation of Heartstopper and how it portrays an aroace character, as well as problems we have more generally with how the show portrays different social issues. My perception, which Amelia agreed with, is that the show never really portrays these issues in much depth, whether that’s the portrayal of asexuality or, as Amelia brought up, the portrayal of mental illness. Anyway I thought it might be interesting to read the comic and see if there’s any differences there, since Miles mentioned that it was more effective at portraying issues to do with mental health. No idea if this would actually be relevant to my topic but here we go.
• I also really want to reread Ace by Angela Chen – It’s a book that’s really inspired my own project here, but it’s been about a year since I last read it so it would be nice to refresh my memory
• Also maybe Candyman (2021)? This is perhaps a tenuous association but the part in Black Girl about the white couple collecting artefacts from African countries sort of made me think of it – it’s a film that’s at least partly about Black artists and how their work gets consumed by white audiences. Also it’s almost October so I’m in the mood for a horror movie

All in all I’ve enjoyed this first week! It was a bit daunting at first especially seeing all the past students’ work, but it’s been great getting to discuss art and culture with my fellow grad students, meeting new people, and reading and watching some interesting texts!

Next week

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