I had a difficult time choosing a single idea to address from this week's reading because there was so many interesting ideas and areas where the two schools of thought intersected. Ultimately I decided to go with a couple of Barry's points about what feminist critics do.

Barry stated that feminist critics "raise the question of whether men and women are 'essentially' different because of biology or are socially constructed as different". One of the feminist theories that I find most interesting is the idea that sex is a biological fact but that gender is performative and shaped by cultural norms, so that what we in America consider appropriate male or female behavior is shaped by our cultural expectations. Chosen is an action movie and action movies are designed to appeal to a male audience. Clive Owen is the stereotype of a male action star. He is tough, cool, and independent--clearly not swayed by any female influences. This is a genre made by men for men. Even in the few action films with a female lead the heroine is portrayed as being an exception to her gender. She is heroic because she acts like a man. Action films reaffirm the societal construct of male and female behaviors.

Of course Chosen is also a commercial and it's clearly trying to sell a product to a male audience by proclaiming this is what it means to be a man in a man's world. BMW is unconcerned about whether or not any women appear in the ad because in a patriarchal society media that highlights men and caters to men is the norm rather than the exception. The Bechdel Test is a simple rule used for judging female representation in media, the very existence of such a test makes a case for the limited presence that women have in media. Additionally, I would argue that societal misogyny makes it acceptable for women to like action movies-- see Timbre's example of female fans of the James Bond franchise-- while belittling any men who like media that is produced for a female demographic.

I was also interested in the idea that feminism criticism debates the idea of the death of the author and instead argues that "experience is central". I think that this has interesting applications for Chosen. Ang Lee is an Asian American male and in Chosen he's made a film that features Asians and men. This would seem to support the idea that experience is central in the creation of a text. Of course a look at his entire ouvre of work show's that he is capable of telling authentic stories about characters who are very much outside his personal experience but I do think it's interesting to question this idea of the role of experience in creating art. Is it possible for a white male to create a feminist film that accurately depicts female characters? Is it possible for a white film maker to create a story about African American characters? I'm not entirely sure that this was the point Barry was trying to make but I found the idea very interesting.