Gender Inequality In L A Confidential

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Amongst corruption, lies, murders and the rest of the regular and intense, a subtle but important issue lingers in the film L.A Confidential. This issue is gender inequality. L.A Confidential reflects the views and status of many women in real life in the 1950’s, and how they are seen as lesser in comparison to their male counterparts. In the 1950’s, females were seen as the lesser sex as opposed to males. Women’s roles in society were to cook, clean and have a maternal gift. Another expectation of women in the 1950’s that is heavily emphasised in L.A Confidential is to look good. In the film, all female characters, whether dead or alive, look glamorous. When the audience first meets Lynn Bracken, the female protagonist in L.A Confidential, …show more content…

Most of the male characters in L.A Confidential are top policemen and detectives, which are two honorable professions. The women that we see in the film are either prostitutes or administrators. This suggests that as well as being seen as inferior, the women were seen as lowly deserving of ‘decent’ careers, due to the fact that they simply are women. A profession such as prostitution is seen as much less desirable and mostly, respectable, in comparison to a profession such as being a police officer or detective. The low status that the female characters in L.A Confidential hold is further represented by the fact that mostly all of them (except for the female administrator in the L.A.P.D facility) are damsels in distress. The first character that exemplifies the ‘damsel in distress’ persona is Susan Lefferts. The audience first meets Susan Lefferts in a car with Pierce Pratchett with a bandage on her nose and looking highly uncomfortable. Although she is seemingly okay in this scene, her attitude and energy tells the audience that something is wrong. The audience soon sees that something is wrong after Susan has been murdered in the Nite Owl Massacre. The fact that Susan was murdered at such a young age suggests that because she is a female and a prostitute, she has not a lot to

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