At male strip shows, it is still the women that we watch, the audience of women and their eager faces. They are more obscene than if they were dancing naked themselves.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the observation that the real focus at male strip shows is the women in the audience rather than the performers, emphasizing their reactions and desires.
Jean Baudrillard's quote reflects on the dynamics of desire and voyeurism in male strip shows, suggesting that it is not just the male performers who captivate attention, but rather the audience of women watching them. The women's eager faces and their engagement signify a deeper level of obscenity and fascination, pointing to the complex interplay between gender roles, objectification, and societal norms of sexuality. This perspective invites us to reconsider how desire is expressed and perceived, making the audience's reactions a central element of the spectacle.
In practice
In a discussion about gender roles in entertainment, this quote can underscore the audience's role in shaping the performance culture.
The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around the world.
Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion
There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.
the neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.
Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.
Forget startup companies. The next frontier is startup countries.
All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.
My days – the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood – have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land – in the land of my sires – I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast.
But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world -- a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.
Never say you know the last word about any human heart.
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
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