The assignment that I have chosen to write about is a miniature version of the gender and media study assignment that we are currently working on outside of class. I chose to do a smaller mock version of this assignment to help practice and find ways to improve the bigger version. The first part of the assignment required me to perform a close reading of a previous assignment. For this I chose “The Harlot’s House” by Oscar Wilde. During close reading I analyzed some of the deeper meanings in the poem. This part I found to be simple because we tend to analyze all of our readings in class and this is one piece we had gone over in class. This entire poem related to gender and sexuality so the topic would be perfect for future reference. The second part of the assignment was to compare this reading to a contemporary, or current, media such as a movie or television show. I chose the move “Taken” which is about a man who goes to rescue his daughter from the sex slave trade in Europe. I compared and contrasted the prostitution method and the current day harlot houses to the old Victorian era ones. In this movie all the girls were forced physically into prostitution which can be compared to the social forcing of prostitution in the Victorian era. When a woman commits just one impure act of sex she is no longer accepted by society and many times becomes a harlot. The short term value of this assignment is that it is great practice for the coming weeks of designing and doing the project about gender and media. The long term value I believe I have gained from this is to recognize the problems with contemporary media involving gender and sexuality. With the recognition I believe we can help other recognize the problem and maybe make a change about it.
-Alex Holtman
