Gender Roles-Who Decides What is Right?

In Ma Vie En Rose, Ludo knows in his heart that he is a girl, so for the rest of this blog I would feel more comfortable referring to Ludo as a girl. Ludo tries to tell her family that she is a girl and she knows that is who she truly is. Irigaray's reading suggests that all women strive to be men to some extent, so what does that say about Ludo? Would Irigaray say that Ludo is just confused in general, because what person born in a boy's body would actually want to be a woman?
Even when speaking about a person's genitals, Irigaray refers to the woman's clitoris as a "baby penis." I believe that Irigaray would say that Ludo is just a confused child, because every person strives to be male, not female.
In the Schiavi reading, he seems to be more sympathetic to the problems Ludo faces in her life every day. He seems to understand that there really is something that can be fixed or changed to help children like Ludo live up to their full potential as who they really are, mentally as well as physically. He seems to have more of an open mind to situations such as this one, and that is what I believe every person needs to have. This is obviously a problem affecting quite a few people around the world. Every person should be able to live their life how they choose, whether it is a heterosexual lifestyle that is chosen, a homosexual lifestyle, or if they were born one sex and believe they are truly another. There is no reason why anyone should judge anyone else, based on their sexual preference, gender, race, religion or anything else. Everyone should be free to be who they want to be.

Far From Heaven

Throughout the movie, the children are never the main focus of the family, rather, they seem to be there just to make the "family" look better. As if they are there solely as objects, because the perfect family needs children, it's even better that their children happen to be a boy and a girl. Many times the film shows Mrs. Whitaker pushing the children on Sybil, rather than taking care of them herself, as a real mother should.
Even though Mrs. Whitaker rarely pays full attention to her children there are many small instances in the film in which you see Jancie striving to be exactly like her mother. She is exemplifying the Oedipal complex in women, or little girls. The ideal that her first love-object is her mother, who feeds and tends to her. Which leads me to ask, "What is the significance of this portrayal of Mrs. Whitaker, as the 'perfect woman?"
The portrayal of Cathy is stereotypical 1950s. Every woman, especially the wife of such a successful man, should have this perfect life that Cathy seems to have, the perfect husband, beautiful house, wonderful children, many friends, beautiful wardrobe she has everything. However, she is still not happy. This exterior or front she feels she has to put on is everything her daughter, as well as every other woman wants to be. Even though they may not understand the real Cathy, or the real life of Cathy, they all still want to be just like her, because, after all, she is perfect.

Blindness=Alienation

After reading Marx's article on alienation, and watching the film Dancer in the Dark, one thing stood out to me over everything else in the film. What is the significance of the blindness? Once I thought more deeply into it, I realized that the blindness facilitates alienation. It helps to further prove the alienation of Selma not only from her country or people around her, but to us as viewers as well.
Selma is immediately alienated from her country and the people around her the second she steps foot on the soil. She is not from the same country as them, so she does not share the same lifestyle or customs, not to mention she is a little strange. And everyone knows how people from a particular country treat outsiders or foreigners... The majority of the time the natives are not nice or courteous to the foreigners, further alienating them instead of inviting them in. Her blindness is nothing but a giant hindrance for her, obviously, throughout the entire movie. It makes her oblivious to quite a few things, and many of these things are extremely important, such as when she hides the money and other characters, as well as the viewers see right where she places the money, and she has no clue anyone saw her.
Her alienation from the audience is not only because of her blindness, but also because of the way the movie is directed. It seems to me that there are many other factors that help to alienate her from everything, and the blindness seems to be that final factor that pushes it over the edge. The alienation of Selma from the audience is mainly due to the camera angles, and the way we view her and the events surrounding her, her blindness just serves as one more thing she has to deal with that the majority of us do not, and makes her even less relate-able.
Overall, even though there are many things that lead the audience and most of the characters in the film away from relating to Selma, blindness seems to be the most apparent one. It is something that is so obvious in daily life, and the majority of the audience does not experience life the way a blind person does, so there is very little we can relate to with Selma, although we may feel for her, and sympathize with her, we do not relate with her.