- Title
- Re-inventing the Lolita complex
- Creator
- Renz, Linda
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- This thesis explores the tensions and nuances of portraits of young women, including the contemporary and ubiquitous selfie. It will analyse the discourse of the subversion of female identities in the formation, assertion and distinction of the female portrait of the 20th and early 21st century as exemplified by the trope of Lolita from the 1950s. Exploring the continuing role of images of female sexual seductiveness through their contemporary expression in the selfie, the thesis will also produce a body of work drawing on existing social media images. In critically analysing the selfie, this thesis will also investigate the role of desire in the aesthetic experience, or specifically, the way it focuses on how we project and respond affectively to a work of art as part of formative processes of subjectivity. An examination of contemporary images, particularly postmodern photography, in social media, together with textured analyses of philosophy and film theory, viral videos, digital art, websites, media paratexts, and media spaces, will focus on the eroticization of pre-and-post pubescent bodies. Sociocultural beliefs about gender, authority, and erotic narratives, as inscribed onto girls through visual images have broad social implications. The sexualized images of girls in the media perform a representation of girl-children as one-dimensional sexual objects. Both feminist and critical theorists, Julia Kristeva and Abigail Solomon Godeau are calling for a new form of resistance to these hegemonic media forms. In terms of contemporary photographic work and theory, the belief in photography as a record of human nature and truth overlays the aesthetic experience. The photographic image is offered to the contemporary spectator as the site of an ongoing contest between the critical force of negation and the lure of technology that is all pervasive in the solidifying tropes, like Lolita. This thesis argues that tropes like Lolita point to the continuance of oppressive representations in late capitalist society and at the same time may suggest the emergence of new forms of feminist resistance.
- Subject
- selfie; Lolita; feminism
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1342531
- Identifier
- uon:28975
- Rights
- Copyright 2017 Linda Renz
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 22 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 178 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |