WOMAN IN CULTURE AND ART (WOMEN'S RESEARCH)
Year:2018 | Volume:10 | Issue:3 |Papers Count:7

Sexual identity, as a culture based issue, can be regarded as a founding stone for many social inequalities. People (no matter men or women) have to borrow some features of the opposite sex in order to get along with some imposed situations of its surroundings, and wear the mask of another sex in order to solve some of its problems. This, however, may establish those features in the mind of the person, and change its sex typing in the long run. Androgyny takes place when such masks represent the male and female essence at the same time. This article aims to find out when the (female) characters of films tend to make use of Androgyny as a mask, and how they turn to androgenic characters. This article has made use of the theoretical framework of Sandra Bem named Psychological Androgyny, together with Goffman's Dramaturgical Analysis. We have also attempted to study two films named "The Blue Scarf" (1994) and "Transit Cafe" (2004), to show the impacts of the society in forming a psychological androgyny in the sexuality of female characters in these films. The results show that these women have resorted making use of the androgenic mask in order to get their basic social rights, and have gradually turned to androgenic characters.

Feminist campaigns have been a main force behind major historical and societal changes for women rights. Black Feminism is a school of thought stating that sexism, gender identity, racism and class oppressions are inextricably bound together. The way these concepts relate to each other is called intersectionality, a term coined by Crenshaw. Double minority refers to a person with two devalued identities. Feminist art tends to change the women’ s image in art world positively, in hope to lead to equality. This research has attempted to analyze the symbols and semiotic concepts in artworks and style of Lorna Simpson, a female artist who was born in 1960. The main purpose of this survey is to characterize her personal parole, as a narrator of double minority, in the langue of Feminist art and context of Black Feminism. The selected works of art belong to a four years period of her professional life (1988-1991), which coincides with the third wave Feminism. Re-examining photography as a conceptual medium, Simpson’ s works remind us of historical ooppressions in the field of gender and race. Textual and visual codes are linked together in her works. Using young African American women as her instant photos’ models, Simpson creates tableaux that utilize repetition and pictorial framing to challenge prejudices and assumptions of gender and race, culturally and historically. Her figures are shown mostly from behind or in fragments, which draws attention to the historical depersonalization and sexualization of coloured women. By combining irritating words with faceless portraits, Simpson calls our attention to the unconscious ways in which people are classified based on physical and cultural attributes. She conveys political messages to destroy the fabricated stereotype of black women and rrestore their identity and position in contemporary society.

The purpose of this research is sociological analysis of humiliation among women and their relationship with different parenting styles. This research is descriptive and analytical-quantitative and conducted by survey method. The statistical population of this study consists of all women over 15 years old living in Tabriz. Sampling method was a multi-stage cluster type with a sample size of 400 people. The research tool was a questionnaire. A standard questionnaire was used in the parenting style and the researcher-made questionnaire was made in the sense of humiliation. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software. Based on the descriptive results of the research, the mean of depression among women is relatively low and the average of the dimensions of parenting is relatively low in the light dimensions, relatively modest in the dimension and in the authoritarian dimension is relatively high. There is a significant relationship between deviance and authoritarian parenting and reproductive parenting. According to the views expressed in the field of childbearing, negative education has a high degree of degradation. But this humiliation may be as commonplace with normal behaviors and everyday relationships as to be commonplace. In fact, as more equal interaction of family life is emphasized, the same amount of people will experience less humiliation.

The research analyzes Naghme Samini's dramas based on Durant Gilbert's mythocriticque. The theory and method of myth-analysis were initially introduced by Gilbert Durand. In this theory and method, the texts and hypertexts, such as author’ s life, are simultaneously important. Myth-analysis is an interdisciplinary criticism, and its process and method can be divided into three stages: symbol-analysis, psychometric and myth-analysis. According to Durand, there is a relationship among all works of an author; personal myth of the author’ s mind can be understood through examining them. Based on the original and primary myths, he deeply analyses a work of an author and focuses on the primitive original myths in the last stage of analysis. He states that although a text and work of art plays a main role, this text is not apart from the author and his living environment. Naghme Samini is a contemporary Iranian playwright; due to her interest in myths, archetypes and history, her playwrights deserve analysis from the viewpoint of Gilbert Durand’ s mythology. In this research, five plays and two research books written by Naghme Samini have been selected and examined. In the first stage, namely symbol-analysis stage which relies on the text, the selected works were firstly studied. They were then criticized and analyzed through examining symbols, characters and archetypal acts using valid books; this was the first stage of Durand’ s mythology. As the second stage, psychometric, which relies on hypertext, was completed through examining the author’ s autobiography as well as asking questions from the author himself. Finally, with a general analysis of the previous stages and combination of the results, the final stage, the mythology of the works was fulfilled in order to achieve the personal myth of author’ s mind and then the collective myth of her thought. The data were collected using library studies and valid sources and books, and the research method was analytical-descriptive. The research results show that mental concerns of Naghme Samini mostly include the issues related to war and women. Her most important personal myth is Shahrzad, and her narration is to rescue a part that expands on other women through a collective perspective on myth-building.

Feeling of safety is one of the main factors of social comfort and women as part of society have significant role in developing societies and improving of human. Increasing safety using environmental design in ladies urban park in which only women are allowed can be considered an effective method. The current study was conducted to understand women safety feeling in Ladies Park and also to discover the main reasons of feeling unsafe in Sahand city in Tabriz. In addition, Islamic cultural beliefs and values were considered during this study. In this aspect, all together 125 people of park users were selected and interviewed asking questions regarding preferred physical activities, accessibility to park, perceived safety, reasons of feeling unsafe, and their recommendation to improve safety in ladies urban parks. The results of the study revealed that high-rise building around park and arid area around the park were the main issue of not feeling safe in park, meanwhile, darkness and attending men for maintenance of the park were placed in the second level of importance for unsafe perception. Also, majority of the participants declared that they like to exercise in mornings every day. It seems that development of park surrounding and providing sport facilities may enhance safety perception in ladies urban park.

One of the most important issues that women considered in their poetry, in Iran, was the problem of social inequality. An outstanding example of the kind of issues can be found in the published press of late Qajar periods. This study as a descriptive-analytic research emphasizes on all the remaining numbers of women’ s letters of Banavan Newspaper as the first newspaper publishing various women’ s poems, from a sociological perspective to analyze the main issue of women poets dangled in their thoughts and poems. The studies show that the main issue in these women's poems is to criticize gender inequalities in the Iranian society and the main focus of these poems is mostly on Iranian women. A special emphasis has been placed on the “ female gender” pattern. Due to the issue of social equality, the comparing pattern is men’ s social right and position. In conclusion, change of social view towards women and their education are the main solutions which have been proposed to eliminate gender inequality in the society.

Harold Pinter is among the most famous playwrights of the world and won Nobel Prize in 2005. How he used female characters in his plays is one of the most challenging issues in his dramatic texts. Many of these texts don't have any female personage while the others with female characters show complicated gendered and sexual functions. Many believe that these characters fit in common stereotypes of females in the world of theater. Among these challenging texts is The Homecoming which shows a unique character, Ruth, who has been controversial among critics. This essay tries to examine the representation of female character in Pinter's plays while focusing solely on The Homecoming. Given the representation of Ruth in this text, some of the critics read this text as a feminist one despite the others who believe Pinter is misogynist. In this essay, after studying the previous views on the play, I try to show how both perspectives can be seen in this text. In fact, just by this article, we cannot accuse Pinter of being misogynist neither acclaim him to be feminist. Pinter indeed wants to decentralize the patriarchal structure of family and the society, using his Pinteresque dialogues and devices.