My graduation project Gaze, is a satirical 2D animation video that criticizes objectification of women within the realm of entertainment and popular culture industry.

In terms of CATTt:

Contrast

My stand is against objectification of women with male gaze that has roots in heteronormative social structures.

Analogy

Both the daily experience of the subject and the effect of the video is like changing a disposable diaper.

Everyday, every woman wakes up to a world that had been contaminated but tries to start all over, a new blank page, a brand new diaper. High hopes. What happens is at the end of the day diaper needs to be changed, again. The ideal is the day when baby learns to say his needs but it is a long and tiring road.

With the video on the other hand, viewer perceives  an animation image, like a cute baby. Then the video starts, and you open the diaper, a funny smell fills the room. The baby is looking at you, he is already stressed out, unhappy, so you have to laugh to make him comfortable, also you love the baby! Video continues and you feel uneasy. It is not fun anymore, it is the reality, the poop in the diaper. But you can’t stop and you also laugh because baby is so cute.

At the end, the diaper is changed and everybody is happy with the hope of tomorrow might be different. You close the video.

Theory

In Gaze, the theory that the video based on is Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze”. Her theory is based on film, mine is on entertainment industry and indirectly on life. Although my inspiration was the novel based film Gone Girl, I took the script from book itself. Script in the film was an analogy in itself because it was criticizing the Hollywood industry which Gone Girl movie was also very much depending on. But I tried link it with daily life rather than turning the video to a film analysis. So for the video the gaze was everywhere in our daily life. It was satiric of course but at the same time very real. We were as young women expected to be the cool girl.

Target

My target was an audience instead of an institution. Video talks to young women aged 15-30 because of its content that is from the popular culture.

tale

Tale would be the video medium itself since the Mulvey’s theory was based on feature-length film that would be watched in a movie theatre. Whereas video is for digital platform be it mobile phone, tablet or laptop.