Analyzing Form and Content in Representations

One aspect of culture that I research and analyze is representations of gender and sexuality. I analyze both the form and the content of unique and lesser known representations that offer viewers powerful aesthetic and emotional experiences.

What do I mean by form and content?
Form refers to the type of media, composition, techniques, and elements of design in a work of art. The content is the subject matter that is explored in a work of art.  When I’m analyzing any work of art, I’m in the process of deciding how well these two parts of the structure come together.  In the first photo, above, the horses are the content (part of the story) of the subway mural and the arrangement of the tiles is one aspect of the form of the mural. The second photo features the calla lily and its growth, making it the content of the photo and the lighting, camera angles, and colour alterations are aspects of the form. So why it is important to study gender and sexuality in representations and in general? Here are some answers to that question from academics and writers who have focused on this topic and that have guided my interpretations of gender and sexuality in representations . Professor Raewyn Connell writes:

“To put it informally, gender concerns the way human societies deal with human bodies and their continuity, and the many consequences of that ‘dealing’ in our personal lives and our collective fate. This definition has important consequences. Among them: gender, like other social structures, is multidimensional. It is not just about identity, or just about work, or just about power, or just about sexuality, but about all of these things at once. Gender patterns may differ strikingly from one cultural context to another, and there are certainly very different ways of thinking about them, but it is still possible to think (and act) between cultures about gender. The power of structures to shape individual action often makes gender appear unchanging. Yet gender arrangements are in fact always changing, as human practice creates new situations and as structures develop crisis tendencies. Finally, gender had a beginning and may have an end”

(Connell, 2015, Defining Gender, para. 15-16).

In  Masculindians: Conversations about Indigenous Manhood, Sam McKegney interviewed writer, Tomson Highway about different Indigenous conceptions of gender. Highway makes the following comments:

"The fact is that the origin of masculinity—the whole issue of gender—comes from linguistic structure. I think one has to understand that… oh, it’s a long story. How do I put it? Human behaviour is ruled, the subconscious life of an individual is governed by the subconscious life of his community, his society. And the dream world, so to speak, is defined by the mythology of a people. To simplify the explanation—or raccourcir, to shorten it languages are given birth to by mythologies, by the collective dream world of a society. And they’re given birth to and they’re given form by that dream world. So the structure of a language depends on the nature of the mythology...To put it in blunt terms, the role of men in the circle of our society was to hunt and the role of women was to give birth—my mother had twelve children and my father was a fabulous hunter—but there was also a group who biologically were assigned neither role. Neither the hunt nor giving birth. So our responsibility became the spirit, to take care of the spirit of the community, which is where all the artists are from. This is why so many artists are gay. And that’s our job, to create this magic; we’re the magicians...There is no room for a third gender here in this phallic superstructure. Nobody crosses the path. Anybody who crosses that dividing line is to be destroyed, and we were destroyed by the thousands"
(Mckegney, 2014, para. 5,15, & 18).

References

Connell, R.W., & Pearse, R. (2015). The question of gender. In Gender: In World Perspective (Short Introductions) (pp.1-9). Wiley. Malden, MA, U.S.A.

McKegney, S. (2014). Repairing the Circle: A Conversation with Tomson Highway. In  Masculindians: Conversations about Indigenous Manhood. University of Manitoba Press, Winnipeg, MB. Kindle Edition.