It seems it is unusual for a woman to enjoy this type of movie as the violence is extreme; however, when that violence is based on true events and is essential to the growth of the character it becomes easier to accept. The fighting portrayed in this movie falls into that category; it is something that young people often become involved in to demonstrate their power and it can only be hoped that they learn early enough that there is a better way to stand your ground and prove your worth.
Director Lexi Alexander’s Green Street Hooligans begins with a brawl in the London underground but quickly cuts to Matt Buckner (Elijah Wood), a journalism student at Harvard, clearing out his dorm room; he has been expelled for drug possession and feels he can’t stand up for himself against the power of his roommates’ family; furthermore, to avoid telling his father, he flies to London to stay with his sister (Claire Forlani) and her husband (Marc Warren). Here Buckner meets the brawler we were introduced to in the first scene, Pete Dunham (Charlie Hunnam), the leader of the local football firm, the Green Street Elite. The GSE is a band of professional men that violently support the West Ham United Football Club, regularly mixing it up with rival firms in support of their own teams. As this story unfolds, Buckner realizes: “I’ve never lived closer to danger, but I've never felt safer. I've never felt more confident, and people could spot it from a mile away. And as for this, the violence? I gotta be honest - it grew on me. Once you've taken a few punches and realize you're not made of glass, you don't feel alive unless you're pushing yourself as far as you can go.’ (Wood) The events of this story lift Buckner to the point where he can face...
... middle of paper ...
... placed his wife and child over football, but, in his own way, the child of his rival and it is confirmed when Buckner’s sister takes her son and leaves her husband for stepping back into that world, even momentarily. As Matt Buckner states “Pete Dunham's life taught me there's a time to stand your ground, and his death taught me there's a time to walk away.” (Wood) This is a lesson everyone should learn – do not live in fear, do not be pushed around by those that have more money or power, but at the same time, do not be someone who takes advantage where it is you who are in the position of strength. Always stand in integrity and live as someone that can be counted on.
Works Cited
Green Street Hooligans. Dir. Lexi Alexander. Perf. Elijah Wood. 2005.
Jay, Terence. "One Blood." Green Street Hooligans Soundtrack. By Charlie and Ivan Koutikov Midnight. 2005.
The Odessa football players couldn't be objective about criticisms of football. Their total self-esteem depended on how they did on Friday night. This was the glorified culmination of their football career: wearing the black MoJo uniform in the stadium under the big lights. Football was more than just a game to them; it was a religion. It "made them seem like boys going off to fight a war for the benefit of someone else, unwitting sacrifices to a strange and powerful god" (Bissinger, p.11). Because football was so meaningful in their lives, to criticize it was to criticize everything they'd worked so hard for and lived for.
It is no secret that there is an obvious difference of how women are portrayed in the media versus men. This movie discussed female characters never having lead roles and stated that when they did it ended in the women depending on, loving, or having to have a man. One young high school girl said, “Women never play the protagonist. The girls are
...te when it comes to emotions and each of the female characters are the product of male influences and much of their rage is intermixed with occasional feelings of love due to their lack of self-recognition.
Street Gangs are becoming popular in many cities across the country. According to the Department of Justice's 2005 National Gang Threat Assessment, there are at least 21,500 gangs and more than 731,000 active gang members (Grabianowski). Gangs bring fear and violence to neighborhoods, drugs, destroy property, involve youth in crimes and drive out businesses. When you have gangs in a community, it affects everyone in the community. An alarming amount of young adults are joining gangs and becoming involved in illegal activity. Most gangs have a rule that when you join the gang you are a member of the gang for life. Gangs can be removed from our communities with more community involvement and education.
Young, K. (2007). From Violence in Sport to Sports-Related Violence: Widening the Focus. Sport in Society: A Student Introduction, Second Edition. London. Sage Publications.
Marla is the only woman in the movie and she is used to show that the idea of women fighting is a ridicule where as the idea of men fighting is celebrated.
Movies are a new edition in today’s culture. They are a new form of art medium that has arrived in the late 1900s and were a new way to express ideas and viewpoints of the time. A good example of this is the movie The Manchurian Candidate. The movie had a simple plot a man is kidnapped after the Korean war and is hypnotized to work for the communists and take down the U.S. This movie showed the American public’s fear of communism at the time. If a movie like this can easily portray the fears of the American people at the time then it can easily portray stereotypes of gender. There have been thousands of movies where the male protagonist is a rough tough dude but there is one movie that has that stereotype is broken. That movie is none other than Napoleon Dynamite.
Led by Laura Mulvey, feminist film critics have discussed the difficulty presented to female spectators by the controlling male gaze and narrative generally found in mainstream film, creating for female spectators a position that forces them into limited choices: "bisexual" identification with active male characters; identification with the passive, often victimized, female characters; or on occasion, identification with a "masculinized" active female character, who is generally punished for her unhealthy behavior. Before discussing recent improvements, it is important to note that a group of Classic Hollywood films regularly offered female spectators positive, female characters who were active in controlling narrative, gazing and desiring: the screwball comedy.
Susan Jeffords’ journal entry “The Battle of the Big Mamas” does agree that the film contains feminist themes throughout; however she feels as if it doesn’t give off the message the producers were originally going for. Jeffords criticizes the film for presenting a “feminism that can succeed only by making women ‘alien’ to themselves” (Jeffords 75). Jeffords argues that women “accept the point of view of a corporate masculinity at the expense of relations between women” (76). This point can see be seen throughout the decades as women purposely drop their feminine touch in order to gain the respect as an equal that women feel they deserve. Jeffords emphasizes that the film encourages women to leave behind all feminist qualities and to act like a man in order to be equal with man. This gives a very different point of view from the other sources, which highly support that the film praises feminism and its true qualities
In the book entitled Out of Their League, David Meggyesy describes his life as a football player from high school through his days with the St. Louis Cardinals of the National Football League (NFL). Born in 1941, Meggyesy was raised in a low-income household in Solon, Ohio. Like many athletes from impoverished backgrounds, he was able to use the game of football to better himself though both a full scholarship to Syracuse University and financial stability with the Cardinals. During his career, however, Meggyesy became increasingly disillusioned with the game of football and how its athletes were subject to tremendous physical and psychological turmoil from those in power—namely the coaches and the NFL team owners. He began to see the game of football from a conflict theorist point of view. This is the belief that sport is an opiate used to benefit those in power through the exploitation of athletes which enables those such as coaches and team owners to maintain their power and privilege in society. (Coakley, 1998) Meggyesy's growing disenchantment with football and adoption of a conflict theorist point of view led him to retire from the Cardinals in 1969.
Also, the film revealed women empowerment and how superior they can be compared to men. While demonstrating sexual objectification, empowerment, there was also sexual exploitation of the women, shown through the film. Throughout this essay, gender based issues that were associated with the film character will be demonstrated while connecting to the real world and popular culture.
The attitude towards women has changed dramatically since 1990, the year that this film came out; you will however, find a few men who still have the attitude that women were put on this earth for their enjoyment. In the early nineties, women were hyper-sexualized and viewed as pawns in a game. MTV showed music videos with scantily clad women, which were seen as extremely scandalous at the time. The nineties was also an era of growth, liberalization and sexual discoveries that carried over from the eighties.... ...
The demand for strong female characters in action films grew to a new high when Angelina Jolie starred in ‘Tomb Raider’ in 2001 and then in the sequel, ‘Tomb Raider II: The Cradle of Life’ in 2003 as Lara Croft. Her strong female character was not only masculine, but was also portrayed as a sex object. Most often, strong women in these types of films tend to fight without even gaining a mark. At the end of each fight, her hair and makeup would always be perfect. The female characters in these action films, whether their role was as the lead character or a supporting character, had similar aspects.... ...
The Reasons Behind the Popularity of Action Films In this essay I am going to explore the conventions of action films and their popularity. People love action films, and when they go to see one there are conventions you would expect to see in the film All plots of action films are based on the same outline, Hero and villain meet, there's a disruption of order, and mission, then everything is sorted out when the villain dies and everything returns to normal. There are Stock characters that you expect to see in this genre of film, the hero, the villain and two attractive ladies. The main action is around a male hero, however, modern films have featured female heroines for example Angelina Jolie in 'Tomb Raider'. If the hero is male he is always good looking, intelligent, brave, chauvinistic, and manages to escape from life threatening situations, however the hero will always have a weakness, and if the hero is male the weakness is normally women.
Feminism is a movement that supports women equality within society. In relation to film, feminism is what pushes the equal representation of females in mainstream films. Laura Mulvey is a feminist theorist that is famous for touching on this particular issue of how men and women are represented in movies. Through her studies, she discovered that many films were portraying men and women very differently from reality. She came up with a theory that best described why there is such as huge misrepresentation of the social status quos of male and female characters. She believed that mainstream film is used to maintain the status quo and prevent the realization of gender equality. This is why films are continuously following the old tradition that males are dominant and females are submissive. This is the ideology that is always present when we watch a movie. This is evident in the films from the past but also currently. It is as if the film industry is still catering to the male viewers of each generation in the same way. Laura Mulvey points out that women are constantly being seen as sexual objects, whether it is the outfits they wear or do not wear or the way they behave, or secondary characters with no symbolic cause. She states that, “in traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote it-be-looked-at-ness.”(Mulvey pg. 715). Thus, women are nevertheless displayed as nothing more than passive objects for the viewing pleasure of the audience. Mulvey also points out through her research that in every mainstream movie, there is ...