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For Your Viewing (Dis)Pleasure: Investigating Power, Bodies, And Objectification Through Performance-Based Video Art, Alice E. Johnson

Honors Program Theses

Using my relationship with my own body as a queer, gender non-conforming woman as a lens, the work discussed in this thesis investigates the role of objectification in the sociopolitical and cultural structures that forcibly position womenʼs bodies as sites of control under “white supremacist, capitalist [hetero]patriarchy.” Central to my work are the concepts of the male gaze, the sexual objectification of women, agency, and the pleasure of looking as discussed in feminist film theorist Laura Mulveyʼs classic essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” By discussing my process of thinking/making—a circular process in which thinking generates making which generates thinking, …