Representation of Women in Films
In different sources women are represented in different ways. Films
show different cultures. Women in the 50's and women in the 60's and
70's are seen in different lights. It was only until the 70's that
women were seen more as independent.
There are also many differences in the way women are seen in Great
Britain and U.S.A. Different sources such as film posters, still
images and films will be studied and compared to show the varieties of
cultural diversity.
Image 4.9 is a still image from 'creature from the black lagoon' It
was a sci-fi film from 1956.
From the picture we can see that the woman has quite an active central
role, but is not as heroic as someone like Ripley from 'Alien'. She is
seen more as a sex object. In the 50's this was seen as normal as
women were the minority and had little say in what they did in life.
They were made to look pretty and clean. Looking pretty is exactly
what this woman is doing. She may be classed as a sex object by the
way she is revealing the flesh of her arms and legs and her hair is
very long. The 'creature' has picked her up and she looks as if she
has fainted at some point. Her arms & legs sway and her head drops
back to make her hair look longer than its actual length. The
'creature' is holding her as if she is a helpless baby. He has
positioned one arm under her upper thigh and one arm under her neck.
This looks as if he is supporting her.
Women in the 50's were seen as pretty feminine women who like cooking,
cleaning and obeying their husband. The women in the image represents
a typical 1950's woman, stereotyped as soft and pretty.
...
... middle of paper ...
... in the 1950's. Women now have more privileges.
Both 'The Stepford Wives' and 'Educating Rita' display varieties of
cultural diversity. 'The Stepford Wives' mainly displays the change of
women throughout the decades but 'Educating Rita' concentrates on
different classes such as middle and working class. 'Educating Rita'
also does concentrate on women as Rita is a women but it concentrates
on the classes and how they differ from one another in Great Britain.
Films portray lives and issues in the world. The issue involved here
is cultural diversity. Films describe the different types of cultures
and explore how the lives of people are lived. 'Educating Rita' and
'The Stepford Wives' cleverly construct ideas of women in the 50's and
80's and create ideas and messages of how the lives of women have been
in the passed.
Throughout time, women in movies and other similar texts are shown to be generally focused on men. This might make sense if every movie ever made was set in a time where women had absolutely no rights but of course, that is not the case. Older and more modern depictions of women in media, both show women whose lives revolve around men. Even movies that market their female characters as strong and powerful are still shown to be dependent on the male leads and puts them first. Also, since women in movies have more of a focus on men, female to female relationships suffer in the same films. There are very few exceptions to this unfortunate truth.
this sexualised image and make it something to be desired and aspired to. While a girl displaying
Movies are a big part of people’s lives; everyone has a favorite movie, or set of movies. They have impacted people’s lives since they were first made, and continue to do so today. In recent years, movies have cast women to play the roles of heroes. Although women have been playing heroic roles recently, they have always been role models in movies, which have set examples for future generations, empowered women, and have shed light on the feminist movement in the U.S.
The portrayal of African American women in recent films, has served to highlight the negative stereotyping against them and increase awareness to their plight. The negative stereotyping occurred before the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, where African Americans were predominantly bought and sold as slaves. It is only after the passing of the amendment and the Civil Rights Act, were African Americans considered citizens of the United States, granted the opportunity to vote and had the right for equal treatment. As such, this allowed for the empowerment of African American women, allowing them the opportunity of more work options and given the freedom of decision-making. However, the negativity that skin colour represented in the past still pervades, hence, film has become a platform for the exposure of the oppression and restrictions faced by women of colour, and allow for the exploration of the disadvantages that plague them. This has brought about revisionism (Barbu, 2011), which has granted African American women with more compassionate views, as compared to their white counterparts. Although the oppression of African American women are brought to light, their ultimate empowerment is not shown, leaving the audience to question their future.
In pornography, women are contorted, positioned, and posed in awkward, unnatural, and degrading poses that indicate helplessness, frailty, and sexual availability. The poses of submission and instability include the susceptible “laying down” pose, the unstable “knee bend”, looking away in an unconcerned or distant gaze. These poses are also seen in the photo-shoots of female athletes, who initially seem like the epitome of female strength and power. In contrast, men are generally upright, and in stable poses, where capturing female poses would connote
The “white picket fence” American Dream soon dulled out and the original meaning became greater. This was the result of woman soon feeling like they did not a have purpose for being. This feeling was stronger within many of the woman because were merely beckoning at every call of their kids and/or husband. And when Movies like Persona (1968), which shows a woman doing more than staying at home. The main character in Persona is a nurse, who is a women making her own money, outside of the house, and holds more responsibilities than merely domestic chores. As more and more movies like these came out and media promoted these movies and the main roles of woman started to explore outside of the house. Also, only 38 percent of American women who
The Representation of Women in Some Like It Hot and Alien 3 This essay will be about how women are and have been represented in films in the past and how they are represented nowadays. I will be looking at the roles and representations of women in 'Some Like It Hot and Alien 3. Some Like It Hot was made in 1958. Marilyn Monroe starts in the comedy as Sugar Cane, a very feminine musician.
Hollywood’s film noir represents a hard-boiled and cynical portrayal of American life that is mostly about a male-dominated world. Attractive male characters lead the film’s storyline, and female characters such as a femme fatale take their positions that indicate in relation to the male protagonists. Also, in general, the world of dark, corruption and crime are usually described in film noir, and thus it shows a strong sense of social contradictions. “Outrage,” directed by Ida Lupino, strongly criticizes the male-centered society and the film culture during the period. This is largely because not only does she represent an unvarnished image of the inexcusable crime, especially rape, but also provides the audience with the use of mise-en-scene to reproduce the protagonist’s entrapment and emotional distress, and thus makes us understand a legal failure of the attack with logical depictions.
In many classic hollywood action films women take a backseat to the graphic violence that is depicted and stay behind while their husbands are off fighting, however their power is shown in other ways. They drive the actions of their men, and in many cases they significantly alter the plot of the film. In Pulp Fiction and Fargo none of the women ever injure anyone themselves, but some of the dangerous situations their significant others are throw into that result in violence are caused by the women, and the way the audience judges the moral character of the men is based off the way they treat their women. Without the women, though, some of the men would not have been led on the path to redemption. Mia causes Marsellus to allegedly push a man
A few months ago, Jennifer Lawrence caused the men and pearl clutching women of Hollywood to gasp collectively when she published an essay about the gap between wages of men and women in Hollywood. She was unafraid to publicly call her male costars out for making significantly more money than her. She did it with elegance and class. While this was a good step in the right direction, it’s one white woman’s perspective. There are hundreds of other non-white perspectives in Hollywood to be considered. Women in Hollywood have overcome innumerable obstacles compared to their male counterparts, including a lack of diversity within Hollywood itself, stereotypes that come into play in roles made for women, the gap in pay between what male and female
Women have made progress in the film industry in terms of the type of role they play in action films, although they are still portrayed as sex objects. The beginning of “a new type of female character” (Hirschman, 1993, pg. 41-47) in the world of action films began in 1976 with Sigourney Weaver, who played the leading role in the blockbuster film ‘Aliens’ as Lt. Ellen Ripley. She was the captain of her own spaceship, plus she was the one who gave out all the orders. Until then, men had always been the ones giving the orders; to see a woman in that type of role was outlandish. This was an astonishing change for the American industry of film. Sometime later, in 1984, Linda Hamilton starred in ‘The Terminator’, a film where she was not the leading character, but a strong female character as Sarah Connor. She had a combination of masculine and feminine qualities as “an androgynous superwoman, resourceful, competent and courageous, while at the same time caring, sensitive and intuitive” (Hirschman, 1993, pg. 41-47). These changes made in action films for female’s roles stirred up a lot of excitement in the “Western society” (Starlet, 2007). 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. I...
The American black comedy The Wolf of Wall Street directed by Martin Scorsese was released December 25, 2013 and stars the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie. While on face value The Wolf of Wall Street looks like a film about excessive cocaine binges, long evenings filled with men with cigarettes, large portions of alcoholic consumption, having many sexual escapades with various women and even dwarf tossing from time to time, the film is deeply rooted in perception gender within the genre of The Wolf of Wall Street. The word ‘genre’ is rooted into a similar category as
Feminist theory was derived from the social movement of feminism where political women fight for the right of females in general and argue in depth about the unequality we face today. In the aspect of cinema, feminists notice the fictitious representations of females and also, machismo. In 1974, a book written by Molly Haskell "From Reverence to Rape: The treatment of Women in Movies" argues about how women almost always play only passive roles while men are always awarded with active, heroic roles. Moreover, how women are portrayed in movies are very important as it plays a big role to the audience on how to look at a woman and how to treat her in real life due to the illusionism that cinema offers. These images of women created in the cinema shapes what an ideal woman is. This can be further explained through an article 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' written by a feminist named Laura Mulvey in 1975. She uses psychoanalysis theories by Sigmund Freud to analyze 'Scopophilia' which is the desire to see. This explains how the audience is hooked to the screen when a sexy woman is present. In a bigger picture, where Scopophilia derives from, 'Voyeurism' is also known as feeling visual pleasure when looking at another. Narcissism on the other hand means identifying one's self with the role played. It is not hard to notice that in classical cinema, men often play the active role while the women are always the object of desire for the male leads, displayed as a sexual object and frequently the damsels in distress. Therefore, the obvious imbalance of power in classical cinema shows how men are accountable to moving the narratives along. Subconsciously, narcissism occurs in the audience as they ...
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 ...
Portrayal of Women in the Media Gender is the psychological characteristics and social categories that are created by human culture. Gender is the concept that humans express their gender when they interact with one another. Messages about how a male or female is supposed to act come from many different places. Schools, parents, and friends can influence a person.