Good evening lovelies! ๐ I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend! ๐ซ Like I promised, I'm trying to share my thoughts more on here no matter how unorganized or nonsensical I think they are ๐ It's Thanksgiving weekend and while I don't celebrate the holiday, I'm still thankful I was granted a federal excused break from work to recharge and spend time with my parents. We've gone on so many drives around town and watched a ton of movies. I even rocked the boat by watching the Spanish dub of LoveHard with them. It's an American rom-com, and while it doesn't have any sex scenes, sexual themes are generously sprinkled throughout the film. My parents are not very hip™ made their disapproval known whenever someone talked about penis along with the where a character pulls out a joint. But in the end, they laughed at the jokes and expressed that they enjoyed it nonetheless ✌
I just finished reading Molly Soda's newest blog post where she talks about her most recent LIVE on TikTok where she danced in front of the camera for thirty-eight minutes. I thought it was interesting how she initially described it as regressive as an aging millennial. If you didn't know - Molly Soda is an internet performance artist who garnered popularity mostly on Tumblr throughout the 2010s. Her work elaborates on themes of feminism, self-conception, the boundaries between reality and performance, etc which expands throughout digital platforms, GIFs, zines, and even a one-woman web series titled Tween Dreams. I was obsessed with her throughout high school and it hurt to read how insecure she felt about the LIVE, which was exacerbated by a mean comment one user left. Fortunately, the post ends on a high note with Molly stating that she accepts her role as "the professional fool" and the boldness that comes with creating contemporary art. Not only do I disagree with the snarky comment because I am biased (and have been following Molly Soda for literally over ten years and can guess her intentions behind a performance) but they also failed to consider how modes of communication on the internet have evolved along with how people present themselves and the objectives behind them. It's not just Molly "doing the same thing fifteen years later", it's Molly being a girl on the internet in 2023 when you don't need to take the SD card out of your digital camera into your PC/connect it to the USB slot with a cable, pray your Windows Server could handle the export before finally logging onto your favorite social media site to launch your pictures and videos online. While TikTok LIVES are commonplace now, curating an event to collect data through performance art will age into a wonderful time capsule that the new wave of kids will want to study and possibly replicate. And what's wrong with girls being silly on the internet anyways?
Molly also briefly touches upon John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" (1972) and Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1973) which reminded me of an excerpt I came across from Mulvey's other article "Fears, Fantasies and the Male Unconscious" (1973): Women are constantly confronted with their own image in one form or another . . . they are being turned all the time into objects of display, to be looked at . . ." and before the academics point out that Mulvey is specifically talking about The Male Gaze in media and film theory - I understand this but am also ignorant of not knowing of the word or phrase that describes those ideas and sentiments but applied in the modern day when the screen is no longer contained in a theater and spectators don't have to wait in line and find a seat to participate in the act of looking. We're at a point where we can expose ourselves to anyone from anywhere with a signal to watch us or read our thoughts. We now have more avenues to confront our reflection on how we are perceived and how we should be perceived, always being met with judgments even in the privacy of our rooms. Molly continues to share the joy, confusion, and discomfort that comes with maintaining an online presence, especially now when we can witness comments being made about our presentation in real-time that can be accompanied by emojis and "reactions" where people can pay to have a filter of tomatoes being thrown at your face play during a broadcast. Ice Cream So Good, Yes, Yes, Gang Gang.
