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Depiction of women in movies
Sexism in movies essays
Portrayal of women in movies
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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. One of the most noticeable and famous part of the 1936 play, The Women, is the fact there are no
Since this winter, I can't watch television or movies anymore without critiquing how women and minorities are portrayed. One unexpected thing that I have picked up from taking this class is a sense of wariness when I counter any piece of written material. I have learned to be suspicious, if not directly critical of any particular part of the media as I experience it; I have been inspired to read and be influenced by some prolific female thinkers. It's all coming together for me, what I want to do; I just have to figure out how.
Fear, more specifically the fear of rejection, is an emotional response that has affected many people at some point in their lifetime. Most individuals typically overcome such feelings with blind hope, while others seem to get lost in translation. Like mentioned before, most get over their anxiety, but what is it like for the people that can’t seem to shake of the frightening feeling of being rejected? The short film, “The Truth About Meeting Women”, written by Paul Gale and directed by T.J. Misny, takes the audience on a comedic journey through the mind of a shy man as tries to avoid talking to the beautiful women that surrounds him. Overall, this short film is truly masterpiece because of the relatable main character and the actually humorous storyline.
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.
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.
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
During the 1990s, feminism was flourishing like ever before through a plethora of films and through the music industry, with special efforts being made to reinforce empowerment and independence in women. Film was able to play the most influential role in doing so though, as many film directors were beginning to bring to light many of the issues women were still facing in society at the time. The repeated images and stereotypes of women depicted in films had gone on for way too long and started to see a drastic change in ‘90s Hollywood films. Many of the feminist films released during the ‘90s are deemed so influential because they still remain relevant to our present-day society and feminism. Such films were able to critique society through
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
There was a bit comparing the girls in Bond to the roles of women in
Women in early cinema illustrated the culture they lived in during the time-period where men expressed their dominance over women. Film helped bring to the forefront these power dynamics through the use of cinematography and mise en scene. Louis Gianette explains in Understanding Movies “In general, the greater the distance between the camera and the subject, the more emotionally neutral we remain (Page 90).” This is significant because it’s through the varying distances of shots that illustrate the emotion women express within the film. In the film Broken Blossoms directed by D.W. Griffith, Lucy the female heroin is constantly shown battling her inner demons as society pushes her into the traditional domestic role of women at the time. In contrast the film Stagecoach by John Ford brings the female character out of the traditional domestic atmosphere and sets them on an adventure through the countryside. The evolution of the female heroin from domestic to adventurers
seen more as a sex object. In the 50's this was seen as normal as
Mainstream movies are about men’s lives, and the few movies about women’s lives, at their core, still also revolve around men (Newsom, 2011). These female leads often have male love interests, looking to get married or get pregnant. Strong independent female leads are still exist for the male view, as they are hypersexualized, or the “fighting fuck toy,” (Newsom, 2011). This depiction has created a culture where women are insecure and waiting for a knight on a horse to come rescue and provide for her as well as the acceptance of women
First things first, starting off with how gender plays a very important role when it comes to heroic films like these. Most of the movies out in the world have all male dominance where they are usually the lead characters and end up saving the world. This is the most stereotypical presentation within the media, which refers to white hegemonic masculinity in the film industry. Simply because they are considered to be far more superior to other races within the United States, one must be white, heterosexual, powerful, affectionate and athletic in build to be able to categorize as hegemonic masculinity. Not to mention that in the end, where the main character called Ben was able to man up and kiss his crush, Kendall. This is what the media portrays to show that women want men who are the whole package of being brave,
Women were represented in different ways throughout the movie Metropolis, but the underlying theme was women were seen as purely sexual. Maria was seen as the nurturer in the film, but also as a sexual object. She was the one who preached for peace and harmony down in the catacombs to the workers. Maria was also the nurturing maternal figure that was seen walking into the garden with all of the poor children. The vamp, on the other hand, was portrayed blatantly as a sexual object. This whole movie was seen through the eyes of the male perspective, which usually portrays women as sexual objects, and robs them of any identity. Lang shows Frederson as having fear of femininity which involves women's emotion and nurturing.
are now taking. A prime example of this can be seen in T & T2 in
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 ...