The Blind Girl in Charlie Chaplin's Romantic Comedy “ City Lights and Kitty King in Buster Keaton's drama film “ Steamboat Bill Jr” both compare and differ to each other from their social standpoint, treatment in the films, and the directors’ different portrayal of them. Both these women in the films share a lot in common in the films’ forte of treatment of women. Both the women in the films have to be wooed or liberated by the main characters the Tramp and William Canfield Jr acts of kindness and actions to win their heart over. In Both these women also, we see that there is a sense of approval they have to gain from the women's elders such as the Blind Girls grandmother and John James King, the father of Kitty king and liberation. In “
The woman in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and the woman in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire both struggle with discrimination. Celie, a passive young woman, finds herself in mistreatment and isolation, leading to emotional numbness, in addition to a society in which females are deemed second-rate furthermore subservient to the males surrounding them. Like Celie, Blanche DuBois, a desperate woman, who finds herself dependent on men, is also caught in a battle between survival and sexism during the transformation from the old to the new coming South.
Blanche duBois is one of the main characters in Tennessee Williams’ drama “A Streetcar Named Desire” for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1955. Blanche is a very complex character in this play because she has many different and opposing personality traits. Blanche has lost everything she has ever known. Her true love, parents and property are all gone. On top of that, and very important to her, her looks are fading. All she has left is her sister. She is best described as snobbish, flirtatious and manipulative. Although these appear to be her primary traits, it becomes obvious as the plot unfolds that these are a cover-up of her true self, a very insecure person. Ultimately, Blanche’s snobbery, sexually promiscuity and manipulative dealings with other characters reveal an ironic cover up due to her overpowering pride and desire to be someone that she is not.
Blanche Dubois provides as Williams’ core personage throughout ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Her vulnerability in a changing society and monomania with her appearance, along with her mental fragility both cumulates pathos from the audience and draws in our attention. Furthermore, the contrast between a pure southern belle and a cheap seductress, as well as her relationship with Stanley, allows Williams to explore ideas relating to the patriarchal society of the time. As the play progresses and the audience observe Blanche endure an exigent predicament, we see her come forth as the conspicuous protagonist in the play and a victim of circumstance.
The setting of both stories reinforces the notion of women's dependence on men. The late 1800's were a turbulent time for women's roles. The turn of the century brought about revolution, fueled by the energy and freedom of a new horizon…but it was still just around the bend. In this era, during which both short stories were published, members of the weaker sex were blatantly disregarded as individuals, who had minds that could think, and reason, and form valid opinions.
One main usage of symbolism that Williams implements is the use of the symbolism of blindness. When Blanche first arrives at Stella’s house, she is blinded by the sun, which symbolizes her start of being blind to others and her own problems (Williams 16). Blanche throughout the play has instances of blindness, which all together demonstrate the blindness that Blanche has towards her own sanity and the circumstances that she is in. Even when the blind street peddler arrives at the door Blanche exclaims that “the blind are even leading the blind” (Williams 44). What Blanche said is even true to herself and her circumstances where Blanche is blindly following her path and too is setting herself up for in the future a mental breakdown. Blanche’s
Thus, impressionable girls will not expect to go far in life, believing that as long as they catch the attention of a handsome rich man, they will live a life of happiness and luxury. Unfortunately, there seem to be a lack of wealthy men on the prowl for damsels in distress. On the other hand, girls who do not desire to get married, those who wish to work for themselves, will see the failures of independence as a woman, and might lose confidence in themselves. If a princess, with looks, kindness, and intelligence could not succeed, then the poor girl should, by rights, have no chance. Disney weaves these messages into uplifting movies so completely, all the little child receives is the faint impression of anti-feminism. If children constantly receives the same detrimental; theme, the information will become ingrained in an unconscious part of their mind, so when they desire to succeed, they must overcome their internal ideals
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.
During the course of the play, Blanche smokes cigarettes, the two most prominent instances being with Mitch during one of their first romantic interactions and with the Young Man whom Blanche kisses without his consent. These two instances assist in portraying Blanche as a vain woman who is fixated on reliving her exciting past, in which she was constantly receiving attention from potential admirers and was in love with her husband who later committed suicide due to Blanche’s cruel mistreatment. Although the 1951 film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire portrays Blanche as a vain creature in these scenes, the film ultimately showcases her as a helpless, sympathetic woman who is incredibly fragile due to how cruelly the world has treated her. Because of censorship restrictions placed upon the film’s producers, her husband’s homosexuality is not mentioned in the film and her own promiscuous nature is greatly reduced. Moreover, the use of lighting, shadows, and point-of-view further reinforces Blanche’s desire to relive the times where the world was not working against her. While the use of light and dark in the dialogue and stage directions in the play encourages readers to see Blanche as a vain person who is obsessed with receiving the attention she once did when she was young and beautiful, the film’s use of lighting, shadows, and point-of-view encourages viewers to see Blanche as a fragile woman who has only ever been treated in a harsh way by those she cares about and is thus deserving of
The films The Joy Luck Club (Wang, 1993) and The Story of Mothers and Daughters (Weimberg, 2010) portray various types of the mother daughter relationship. Through these mother and daughter relationships, both films focus on the tension and love in the older years of the daughters lives’ but The Story of Mothers and Daughters focus on the all of the stages of life.
The 1991 movie My Girl tells the story of 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss who, having lost her mother at birth , lives with her dementia-ridden grandmother and her job-oriented father in the funeral parlour that he owns and operates. The story follows Vada, an extreme hypochondriac who has many strange misconceptions about death, through a variety of life-changing experiences, including the engagement of her father and the devastating loss of her best friend, Thomas Jay. Through these experiences, the audience witnesses Vada’s social, emotional, and intellectual growth, as well as her changing views of death.
He introduces a character from the book named Maureen who gave an accurate but incomplete summary of the film, based on Fannie Hurst's 1933 bestseller, illustrating her and her community's adoption of Hollywood's image of beauty: "black" is” ugly," "mulatto" is "pretty," showing that a white child actress named Shirley Temple is still prettier (Bishop). Shirley Temple was the main representative of Hollywood’s image of beauty that shaped the self-images of the novel's black community in general and the Breedlove family in particular. Bishop talks about how her reference to the movie shows an illustration of how white cultural values shape the black community's idea of physical beauty. He goes further into the connection between the movie and the novel by talking about the similarity between the mother in the film called Aunt Delilah and Pauline Breedlove from the novel. Bishop talks about how Pauline was an avid moviegoer and has imbibed Hollywood's implicitly white version of beauty (Bishop). However, her daughter Pecola who is repeatedly described as "black" and ugly" is shown to have let down her mother for not measuring up to the standards of beauty in the eyes of Hollywood and looking like the pretty light-skinned daughter in the film, as referenced in the
Portrayal of Women in The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer, and Period of Adjustment
The following outline reveals how the power of inequality is created through stereotypical female characters, overlooked traditional beliefs, different job occupations, and sexual objectification. With this in mind, I assembled a collage with images, words, and colours that convey these themes. The overall atmosphere of my analysis is established through a fiery red background colour. The colour red depicts the feelings of tension, fear, love, and frustration that are recurrently circulating among the female characters in the film.
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...
Tennessee Williams is great author with a unique writing style that got the drama A Streetcar Named Desire a pulitzer prize and became an American classic. A Streetcar Named Desire has many themes but sex is the most significant theme. The principal character Blanche Dubois and her sister Stella has an excessive desire towards men in their lives. The animalistic character Stanley use sex to get what he wants. Sex is perceived as the answer to everything. In Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire "Sex is a powerful aspect of life, and like human nature has life it own duality" because it creates illusions, it the answer to every