Women and Religion in the Movie Alien and Shelly's Frankenstein
The issue of religion in women's horror is much like the issue of class. In most major organized religions there is a definite patriarchal structure of male dominance. The Father, the Son, the Pope, bishops and priests are all part of this structure that mostly lack woman influences. The religious structure reflects the male dominated society as a whole. As one would expect, women are frightful and perhaps horrified at this exclusionary system and in women's horror the idea of a woman Christ figure has been brought forth. Perhaps women are in touch with the idea of the Christ-like figure, one that is nurturing and motherly and by using a woman with Christ-like attributes, the structure of religion is commented on and destructured. Men's horror, however, works in the opposite direction by struggling to maintain the structure as it stands. While women battle to overthrow the ideas of a patriarchal religion, men battle to keep this disturbance in check and find comfort in the reassurance from male horror in the reassertion of male dominance.
The movie Alien: Resurrection has wonderful examples of the woman's attempt to overthrow the structure of religion by displaying religious motifs as well as paralleling religious stories.
Ripley representing a female Christ figure in the movie. The birth of the baby alien near the beginning is similar to Jesus' birth to the Virginal Mary. Both women conceive their "child" through a way other than intercourse, and both of their births have a huge impact on the future of the human race. After this scene, Ripley is shown emerging from a white cloth draped over her body, much like Jesus did after His ...
... middle of paper ...
... the creation story.
The counterpart to the female idea of deconstructing the religious institution is male horror that assures order only as a result of men controlling the show. The movie The Exorcist is a prime example of male reassertion of power and the reassurance that woman is trouble and even evil. The woman, who is a threat to patriarchal structured religion, is personified in the little girl, Regan, who is possessed by the devil. It is up to the priest, who is seen as the hero of the movie, to defend the institution of religion as it stands and drive out the demon. Throughout the battle, even though tempted by the girl, the priest remains steadfast and eventually the demon is exorcised thus reinforcing the religious structure as it stands. This reinforcement is basically a reassertion of male dominance and control in both society and religion.
Mary Shelly repeatedly shows women in a victimized position, exhibiting to the audience how things should not be.
The Vietnam War took place in between 1947- 1975. It consisted of North Vietnam trying to make South Vietnam a communism government. The United States later joined this conflict because of the stress North Vietnam was putting to South Vietnam to become a government that America did not want. The main reason why America joined was because of a theory called the Domino Effect. America and Russia were going through what has been dubbed the Cold War. The Domino Effect is the theory that communism will spread form one country to another. United states does not want this because our government is a democracy and communism opposes everything we stand for. America fearing communism was growing, stepped into Vietnam with America’s interest in mind, instead of Vietnam’s. There are several reason why American should have not gotten involved with this war. The most important reason was that America government officials made to much of a big deal about communism. This might sound cynical, but America to a certain degree did over react. Let it be said that it is much easier to say this after the fact. By looking back at McCarthyism, we can see the silliness of this fear. There is a serious side though. Thousands of people dies for a government that has no impact of their daily life. What regime Vietnam was going to change over to had no effect on the every day cycle of the United States. So truly, one can say, this can not one thing to do with America, its government and people.
Faded Southern belle, disconnected from reality, and living in their former glory. One would think it was a mid-life crisis but for two women for Tennessee Williams’s pieces of work, “The Glass Menagerie” and “The Streetcar Named Desire”, it’s their everyday lives. This description I described earlier was of both Amanda Wingfield and Blanche DuBois. These women believe that there was no room for failure. In “The Glass Menagerie”, Amanda did all she could to control her children's lives. She sends Tom to work to support the family and she tries to live her life through Lauren. Blanche is lost, confused, and using sexual relations escape. The only thing that makes Blanche happy is living in her own fantasies that she’s young, beautiful, important, and loved by somebody.
... against the societal patriarchal norms, thus coding her as “other” and the facilitator of horror.
For example, both institutionalized religion and society in the USA and many other countries tend to follow a patriarchal system, where men are viewed as leaders, and are generally given authoritative positions. This blatant sexism can be found within religion, as in Christianity the Bible states, “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (2 Timothy 2.12). This passage explicitly states that women are not permitted to hold power over men, and this quote is part of a text belonging to a religion that 73%2(pew research forum) of Americans follow. Whether or not a person is Christia...
Both “The Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” display women discovering freedom from society’s standards during the setting’s time period. In “The Story of an Hour,” Louise locks herself in her room after discovering that her husband has died and at that point in the story she finds herself more confident in herself. She exclaims, “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin 83). After she believed her husband died she finally had reason to take initiative in life and did not have to live a life were nothing was expected of her. She found freedom in locked quarters. Just as John’s wife did in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” As the wife’s sickness progressed, her anxiety over the yellow wallpaper increased. The patterns developed within the walls showed the image of a woman creeping along, and as the shadows of the bars from the window cast across the woman. This can symbolize how she is like the shadow, imprisoned in her room and mansion. As time moved forward, the wife fully identifies with the image in the wall, and by the end of the story she locks herself in her room and frees the woman behind the bars by pealing off most of the wallpaper.
I have always found the role of women in religion to be a fascinating and diverse subject, varying from community to community. Sometimes, the role of a woman in society is so closely linked to her religious role, that the two are indistinguishable. For example, why is it that some women are expected to upkeep the home and children without question? How are such gender roles assigned? Are these gender roles created by religion and upheld by culture or created by culture and upheld by religion? Where do such social expectations stem from? What does the daily life of a woman in religious groups that hold such expectations look like? And given these questions, is it possible for such roles to evolve? Has social change within gender roles occurred in the context of religion? In order to find the answers to these questions and questions like them, one must seek further insight of religion itself and the social context within which it exists.
While some view religion and the Bible as a form of liberation, many others think otherwise. In fact, Elizabeth Cady - Stanton, a women's rights leader once said, "The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation."
Within Frankenstein, the level at which a female is portrayed is quite low. Like we have heard in class, women were not necessarily respected as much as men were when the novel was written. Published in 1818 by Mary Shelley, her story tells of the adventure of young Victor Frankenstein and the creation of his creature. Though deep within this narration of Frankenstein’s life, there seems to be an underlying theme seeping through Shelley’s writing. Shelley seems to venture into the idea of feminism and grotesquely show how men are treated much better than women. Her novel includes various concrete examples to support this hypothesis.
The problem of free will and determinism is a mystery about what human beings are able to do. The best way to describe it is to think of the alternatives taken into consideration when someone is deciding what to do, as being parts of various “alternative features” (Van-Inwagen). Robert Kane argues for a new version of libertarianism with an indeterminist element. He believes that deeper freedom is not an illusion. Derk Pereboom takes an agnostic approach about causal determinism and sees himself as a hard incompatibilist. I will argue against Kane and for Pereboom, because I believe that Kane struggles to present an argument that is compatible with the latest scientific views of the world.
...her and daughter goes deeper than the surface, where mother daughter banter seems normal in this day and age. In actuality, during this oppressive state between Britain and the Caribbean, the mother favored British lifestyle and all that was affiliated with it, yet in opposition, the girl was anti- imperialism, therefore causing conflict among each other. In what seems to be a sort of monologue, “Girl” goes onto contain a theme involving political overtones less apparent and contrary to that of “A&P.”
The Vietnam War started off as a nationalist struggle before turning into a class struggle as foreign powers became involved in the war. However, it is the view of many Vietnamese scholars that see the conflict as mainly a nationalist struggle for national independence and reunification (Marr). Although the role of exogenous factors is acknowledged, it is, according to this view, the force of Vietnamese nationalism and patriotism that motivated and encouraged th...
When reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, one cannot help but notice that the women characters seem to have little substance compared to the male characters. This may have been caused by the time period in which she wrote: one in which females were considered inferior to males. This difference between the sexes can be looked at using a variety of different perspectives. Johanna M. Smith, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, discusses this issue using feminist eyes in her essay entitled "'Cooped up': Feminine Domesticity in Frankenstein." The main points in Professor Smith's essay are that the female characters are there only to reflect the male characters, and that the Frankenstein family has a weird style of living, which she describes as a "bookkeeping mentality" (Smith 279).
According to Creed, there are seven possible faces of female monstrosity in the cinematic language: archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire, witch possessed monster, deadly femme castrator, and the castrating mother. These elements of the female form in cinema help Creed’s definition of the female body as alien and an oppressive realm that provokes feelings of disgust. Creed states that “Horror emerges from the fact that woman has broken with her proper feminine role as she has ‘made a spectacle of herself’ and put her unsocialized body on display” (46). She goes on to relate this to the film The Exorcist (1973) and the young girl’s gradual possession, “with its emphasis on filthy utterances and depraved acts, seems so shocking… mockery of all established forms of propriety, of the clean and proper body and of the law itself define her as abject.Yet, despite her monstrous appearance and shocking utterances, she remains a strongly ambiguous figure.” (46). Creed also makes another fascinating point that highlights the films use of male and female characters. Besides the mother and daughter in the film The Exorcist all law enforcement, doctors, healers, archaologists, and priests are
Women are asked do domestic duties and know little. The excerpt demonstrates women social role and support the representation of women portray by the beliefs of men and religion. Overall in this passage, science and religion is used to justify the subordination of women. The use of religion in the passage illustrates the contribution it has in identifying female identity. Religion oppresses women through negative references and social roles are depicted through the article to support and define female identity.