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Representations of sexuality in films
Representations of sexuality in films
Sexual portrayal of women in film
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Agnès Varda made several films during the New Wave that were pertinent to women. She herself is in an atypical profession in the male dominated industry of film. She continues to challenge male-dominated filmmaking and creates films and characters that also challenge the traditional role of women. Any preconceived notions of what a woman should be are nowhere to be seen in Varda’s films. Feminism is manifested in many of Varda’s films. She shows the journey of different women in a male dominated society. Cléo in Cléo from 5 to 7 goes through her journey trapped by the male gaze, imprisoned. However, Mona in Vagabond chooses to be free from it, the camera and its gaze does not bind her. These films seem to be strongly interested in the roles women inhabit in French society. Varda is able to present those roles with frank, yet complex honesty. Her women characters are unconventional for her time, especially when compared to other films directed by men like Truffaut and Godard. She does not just put them in the predictable roles like the mother, the caretaker, the maid, etc. Instead she places them in the front of her films and makes them the protagonist. She gives them real issues and conflicts to battle with. She is able to use the cinema as a means of looking deeply into the women’s psyche and personal choices.
In Cléo from 5 to 7, Cléo is the cliché of a woman. She is tall, blond, and beautiful. As a beautiful female singer, she’s subject to the male gaze even more than most women. She doesn’t see herself internally. Instead, she only looks at herself through a mirror, trying to see herself as a man would see her. Varda shows this journey of Cléo, the object of the male desire, turning into Florence, her real self, stripped of ...
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...ive. There is so much diversity between these films, but they each have characters that break the stereotypical mold of femininity. Cléo breaks with the cliché of femininity by becoming an active woman searching for her gaze and true self whereas Mona breaks with the cliché of femininity by being filthy, by defying all the social conventions attributed to a decent young woman. Varda empowers the women and gives them unconventional “women roles” rather than the conventional ones like the domestic, the mother, or the prostitute. Each character must overcome or ignore their societal norm to find their womanhood, their true inner self. Varda’s films are real reflections of society, but they also feature people who don’t quite fit perfectly into that real society. However, what is interesting about her approach is that it doesn’t diminish how real those characters are.
Cleofilas grew up in a male dominant household of six brother and father, and without a mother, she no woman figure to guide her, give advice on life, or how to love a man. Cleofilas turned to telenovelas for a woman’s guidance on love and appearance, and she began to imagine her ideal life through the television series. Once Cleofilas was married she moved away into a home with her husband, were she pictured everything to be like the couples on the telenovelas, but she soon starts to realize life isn 't exactly like how they view it in the telenovelas. In the story Sandra make the statement ‘From what see can tell, from the times during her first year when still a newlywed she is invited and accompanies her husband, sits mute besides their conversations, waits and sips a beer until it grows warm, twists a paper napkin into a knot, then another into a fan, one into a rose, nods her head, smiles, yawns, politely grins, laughs at the appropriate moments, leans against her husband’s sleeve, tugs at his elbow, and finally becomes good at predicting where the talk will lead, from this Cleofilas
...vie, the actresses that played them actually fit the role. Women usually do not have impacts on things, but in this novel, major things happened as a result of these women. These things include dishonest marriages, love affairs, wealth, power, and jealousy. This goes to show that women are not always the innocent ones in novels, or any other type of literature.
In Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, she presents a number of very interesting facts regarding the ways that the sexual imagery of men and women respectively are used in the world of film. One such fact is that of the man as the looker and the female as the looked upon, she argues that the woman is always the object of reifying gaze, not the bearer if it. And “[t]he determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their 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 be connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (487). Mulvey makes the claim that women are presented and primped into this role of “to-be-looked-at-ness”. They are put into films for this purpose and for very little other purposes. However, this argument cannot be incorporated with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; the existence of women in the film is extremely insignificant to an extent that could be considered absent. “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance,” male serves as the dominant figures with which the viewer can identify, women only appear in the film for a very short moment of time. For instance, the appearance of women is only shown when Howard rescues the ill child in the village and his return to the village for hospitality reception...
In what ways and to what effect do female characters simultaneously enact and subvert Vietnamese gender roles.
...hetypes of these primary characters, both of these novels make a parallel statement on feminism. The expectations of both themselves and society greatly determine the way that these women function in their families and in other relationships. Looking at the time periods in which these novels were written and take place, it is clear that these gender roles greatly influence whether a female character displays independence or dependence. From a contemporary viewpoint, readers can see how these women either fit or push the boundaries of these expected gender roles.
Ultimately, The Gender Knot provides explanations regarding misogynistic practices, and the protagonists of “Girl” and “Mona Lisa Smile” demonstrate how damaging these practices are. The caustic effects of the limitation of female sexuality are observed in the multitude of rules for women in “Girl,” and in the prohibition of birth control in “Mona Lisa Smile.” These two works also provide insights into the ways that gender roles constrict the lives of women. Through Johnson’s theories, one can come to a better
The most important events of this film all revolve around the female characters. While there are some male charac...
In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey states that, “Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen.” (Mulvey 40). A woman’s role in the narrative is bound to her sexuality or the way she
...e relationship with men, as nothing but tools she can sharpen and destroy, lives through lust and an uncanny ability to blend into any social class makes her unique. Her character is proven as an unreliable narrator as she exaggerates parts of the story and tries to explain that she is in fact not guilty of being a mistress, but a person caught in a crossfire between two others.
These movies allowed female characters to embody all the contradictions that could make them a woman. They were portrayed as the “femme fatale” and also “mother,” the “seductress” and at the same time the “saint,” (Newsom, 2011). Female characters were multi-faceted during this time and had much more complexity and interesting qualities than in the movies we watch today. Today, only 16% of protagonists in movies are female, and the portrayal of these women is one of sexualization and dependence rather than complexity (Newsom, 2011).
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.
Lerner's words hold true for two women involved in the film I, the Worst of All. Both of them had to "reinvent the wheel" and show their male contemporaries that women can and will find their way out from under the control of patriarchy. Juana Ines de la Cruz and Maria Luisa Bemberg are separated by three centuries of continuous strife for feminists to affirm feminine subjectivity and feminine values. The struggle was/is doubly difficult because of what they have to face. At the time of making the film, Bemberg faced a mainstream cinema in which women were presented as a "function of male ambition" and as objects of possession, display, or currency (Bemberg in Pick 78). I, the Worst of All appeared in the 1990s, a time that we like to think is so different from the convent of 17th-centuryMexico. Bemberg shows us that it is not. Mainstream cinema never looks at women as "beings with ideas," as she says in an interview, but as empty shells, foils for the male characters, so that they can act and think (Pick 78). She had to fight a whole tradition of male filmmaking with her movie, and (re)assert her own feminist values in a film that challenges all the stereotypical filmic representation...
Maya Angelou once said, “you may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” Jean Paul Sartre devotes his second chapter in Being and Nothingness on ‘The Body,’ demonstrating his historical knowledge, following an influence embedded in Hegel’s theory. In the film, Cleo From 5 To 7 , director Agnès Varda demonstrates a reflective perspective on freeing oneself from the bias of what others view as the ideal vision of beauty. Sartre shows that the being-for-itself, or the human being starts to become more aware of his or her own moral existence, only when he or she sees themselves being perceived by another being for-itself. Sartre says that we become more aware of ourselves in the hands or comparison
The films message to viewers about gender and power is that women are meant to take care of the home and play the supportive role, while men go out to their jobs and provide. Men are strong and burly and women are naïve and domesticated. Women need men and men always come to the rescue to save women and give them a happy ending. Power is portrayed in the film both visually and through the film’s script and dialogue. The common idea that women are inferior to men is placed subtly in this movie throughout the plot and how these charac...
The representation of violence exacted upon women in cinema is inextricable from being projected upon all women. To provide a scene that objectifies the female is to reduce the feminine form to its non-dual state, e.g., a sexual object providing a vessel for male gratification (hubris and sexual) rather then being defined by its duality of sentient and physical forms. Those who construct scenes of violence against women are bound to a moral responsibility to subjectify the woman’s perspective, thus reestablishing the female as a victim rather then an object and rendering the act of violence intelligible (deplorable, open to interpretation).