Paradise Bent Film Analysis

1524 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: women gender stereotype in movies

In the films Paradise Bent, Muxes–Authentic, Intrepid Seekers of Danger and the Gender and Sexuality section of Explorations in Cultural Anthropology explore the identification of gender and sexuality (Croall and Altmann 2000)(Islas 2006)(Boyd and Lassiter 2011). The introduction to gender and sexuaity in the book Explorations in Cultural Anthropology, Boyd and Lassiter (2011) discuss how once a baby is born, they are being socialized “into one of the two ‘appropriate’ roles- male or female” (Boyd and Lassiter 2011: 218). The baby is expected to meet the expectations he/she is born into (Boyd and Lassiter 2011). For example, in the films, it is greatly commented by the muxes and fa’afafines that they didn’t follow the gender ideologies, the …show more content…

The pregnant woman said she wished that the baby was a boy so her husband could “rejoice” implying that in her culture’s society, boys/men are seen as more valuable and/or respected (Muxes 00:00:25). Not only that but many times the muxes were beat and rejected by their fathers as their mother was more understanding. (Muxes 00:19:31) Although it is also very common to have muxes in the family, many weren’t as expressive and didn’t attempt to look like a woman as much as fa’afafines did. One of the muxes stated how he felt embarrassed when people would address him as muxes (Muxes 00:21:49) It is quite obvious that some muxes know and understand they’re not women and would rather not look like one (Muxes 00:25:50). The rejection and, sometimes, embarrassment does not give them the positive atmosphere that the fa’afafines have in their …show more content…

They are working as men and in the house they are housekeepers (Paradise Bent 00:09:24). Fa’afafines believe that In the western world they aren’t respected today as they are labeled “Drag Queens” and are considered a different sex as they are known as transgender in the United States (Paradise Bent 00:09:00). In Samoa. fa’afafines are not classified as gays which is what the western world would classify them (Paradise Bent 00:45:05). Moreover, the fa’afafines are aware that the modern world would not be very accepting of them and that they would face racism and homophobia. (Paradise Bent 00:44:45) They perceive the western world as always trying to label people into social groups such as gays, transvestis, and/or transexual and doesn’t explain what a fa’afafines is. The lack of acceptance from the modern world of people different from the common gender ideologies would be detrimental for any fa’afafine (Paradise Bent 00:45:11) In the eyes of the fa’afafine, the western world is seen as closed minded as they attempt to label/analyze

Show More
Related

  • Gender Roles in Dakota Culture

    923 Words  | 2 Pages

    To begin, I think it is important to analyze the difference between “sex” and “gender”. Up until researching for this paper, I though that the two terms were interchangeable in meaning, rather, they are separate ideas that are connected. According to Mary K. Whelan, a Doctor of Anthropology focusing on gender studies, sex and gender are different. She states, “Western conflation of sex and gender can lead to the impression that biology, and not culture, is responsible for defining gender roles. This is clearly not the case.”. She continues with, “Gender, like kinship, does have a biological referent, but beyond a universal recognition of male and female "packages," different cultures have chosen to associate very different behaviors, interactions, and statuses with men and women. Gender categories are arbitrary constructions of culture, and consequently, gender-appropriate behaviors vary widely from culture to culture.” (23). Gender roles are completely defined by the culture each person lives in. While some may think that another culture is sexist, or dem...

    Read More

  • Alain Berliner's Ma Vie En Rose

    906 Words  | 2 Pages

    I watched the foreign film Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink), a Belgian film by filmmaker Alain Berliner. It is a warm, startling, funny, and realistic study of what happens when a seven-year-old boy is convinced, beyond all reason and outward evidence to the contrary, that he is really a girl. His certitude is astonishing in one so little, and his gender conviction is so strong that his belief can't be laughed away as the result of a “phase” or an “active imagination.” Yet the crux of Ma Vie en Rose is not a study of trans-gendered children per se, despite the fact that such sensational subject matter would seem to be surefire material for attention-grabbing moviemaking. You're never even quite certain about the long-term psychological ramifications of young Ludovic's obsession: Is he trans-gendered, a transvestite, gay, or straight? Such determinations are not the movie's concern. What Ma Vie en Rose is interested in is what it means to be a “difficult” child, a child who whose difference always sets him apart, and what it means to be the parents of such a child. Here we see some cultural differences with the characters.

    Read More

  • Saw Film Analysis

    910 Words  | 2 Pages

    Saw is a American horror film directed by James Wan. The film is about a killer who calls himself the Jigsaw. He kills and/or “teaches” his victims to respect life. He watches his victims and then abducts them when learning their problems in life.

    Read More

  • The Gender Blur

    1540 Words  | 4 Pages

    ... drives. There are boys in the mountain villages of the Dominican Republic that lack testosterone and “are usually raised as ‘conditional’ girls” (681). Once these boys reach puberty, “the family shifts the child over from daughter to son. The dresses are thrown out. He begins to wear male clothes and starts dating girls” (681). These boys, also known as “guevedoces,” show biological features that produce in later stages of life rather than birth which determines gender role. My female cousin, who was raised by a single father, grew up acting and playing like a boy. She was very aggressive when she was younger but as she grew older, society and human nature has changed her. She is not only influenced by our culture to act in a feminine, lady-like way, but she is now an adult that wants to have a family and become a mother in order to produce off-springs and survive.

    Read More

  • Learning Gender In a Diverse Society

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    This article was written to bring attention to the way men and women act because of how they were thought to think of themselves. Shaw and Lee explain how biology determines what sex a person is but a persons cultures determines how that person should act according to their gender(Shaw, Lee 124). The article brings up the point that, “a persons gender is something that a person performs daily, it is what we do rather than what we have” (Shaw, Lee 126). They ...

    Read More

  • Don H. Zimmerman's Theory Of Gender

    1822 Words  | 4 Pages

    In their publication, “Doing Gender, ” Candance West and Don H. Zimmerman put forward their theory of gender as an accomplishment; through, the daily social interactions of a man or woman which categorize them as either masculine or feminine. From a sociological perspective the hetero-normative categories of just sex as biological and gender as socially constructed, are blurred as a middle ground is embedded into these fundamental roots of nature or nurture.To further their ideology West and Zimmerman also draw upon an ethnomethodological case study of a transsexual person to show the embodiment of sex category and gender as learned behaviours which are socially constructed.Therefore, the focus of this essay will analyze three ideas: sex, sex

    Read More

  • Sex And Gender Essay

    2354 Words  | 5 Pages

    The relationship between sex and gender can be argued in many different lights. All of which complicated lights. Each individual beholds a sexual identity and a gender identity, with the argument of perceiving these identities however way they wish to perceive them. However, the impact of gender on our identities and on our bodies and how they play out is often taken for granted in various ways. Gender issues continue to be a hugely important topic within contemporary modern society. I intend to help the reader understand that femininities and masculinities is a social constructed concept and whether the binary categories of “male” and “female” are adequate concepts for understanding and organising contemporary social life with discussing the experiences of individuals and groups who have resisted these labels and forged new identities.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in Society

    2016 Words  | 5 Pages

    “Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls”: few of our cultural mythologies seem as natural as this one. But in this exploration of the gender signals that traditionally tell what a “boy” or “girl” is supposed to look and act like, Aaron Devor shows how these signals are not “natural” at all but instead are cultural constructs. While the classic cues of masculinity—aggressive posture, self-confidence, a tough appearance—and the traditional signs of femininity—gentleness, passivity, strong nurturing instincts—are often considered “normal,” Devor explains that they are by no means biological or psychological necessities. Indeed, he suggests, they can be richly mixed and varied, or to paraphrase the old Kinks song “Lola,” “Boys can be girls and girls can be boys.” Devor is dean of social sciences at the University of Victoria and author of Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality (1989), from which this selection is excerpted, and FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society (1997).

    Read More

  • Sociological Perspective On Gender Roles

    959 Words  | 2 Pages

    Human beings have been, and always will be, dichotomized into either male or female. When determining a person’s sex we often look for differences in facial features, body shape or mannerism’s, but another promising way to determine a persons sex and one that is most often used today, is through gender roles. Gender roles are behaviors that portray masculinity or femininity. The theory behind gender roles through multidisciplinary viewpoints is the focus of this paper. Throughout history and in every culture these roles have shifted and transformed into what society says is expectable. In this analysis, gender roles will be examined through a sociological, biological and evolutionary scope.

    Read More

  • The Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality

    1346 Words  | 3 Pages

    Society created the role of gender and created an emphasis on the differences between the two genders. Alma Gottlieb states: “biological inevitability of the sex organs comes to stand for a perceived inevitability of social roles, expectations, and meanings” (Gottlieb, 167). Sex is the scientific acknowledgment that men and women are biologically different; gender stems from society’s formation of roles assigned to each sex and the emphasis of the differences between the two sexes. The creation of meanings centers on the expectations of the roles each sex should fill; society creates cultural norms that perpetuate these creations. Gender blurs the lines between the differences created by nature and those created by society (Gottlieb, 168); gender is the cultural expectations of sexes, with meaning assigned to the diff...

    Read More

  • Masculine and Feminine Norms and Gender Identity

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    Norms in society do not just come about randomly in one’s life, they start once a child is born. To emphasize, directly from infancy, children are being guided to norms due to their parents’ preferences and choices they create for them, whether it is playing with legos, or a doll house; gender classification begins in the womb. A prime example comes from a female author, Ev’Yan, of the book “Sex, love,Liberation,” who strongly expresses her feelings for feminism and the constant pressure to conform to gender. She stated that “From a very young age, I was taught consistently & subliminally about what it means to be a girl, to the point where it became second nature. The Disney films, fairy tales, & depictions of women in the media gave me a good definition of what femininity was. It also showed me what femininity wasn’t (Ev’Yan).She felt that society puts so much pressure on ourselves to be as close to our gender identities as possible, with no confusion; to prevent confusion, her mother always forced her to wear dresses. In her book, she expressed her opinion that her parents already knew her gender before she was born, allowing them t...

    Read More

  • Patriarchy and the Yellow Wallpaper

    1764 Words  | 4 Pages

    Kendal, Diana. "Sex and Gender." Sociology in Our Times 3.Ed. Joanna Cotton. Scarborough: Nelson Thomson, 2004. 339-367

    Read More

  • Gender and Sexuality

    1230 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gender has been around throughout history; however, within recent years, gender has separated itself from the traditional view of sex, e.i., male or female, and has become centered on ones masculinity or femininity. Of course gender is more than just ones masculinity or femininity, gender has become a way for one to describe, he or she, in a way in which they are different from everyone else. Gender has turned into a sense of identity, a way for one to feel different and fulfilled among all of those around them. Of course gender’s sense of freedom would seem outside of structure and only affected by one’s own agency, however, structure is a key component in establishing gender. We can look into both ethnic Mexican’s culture practices regarding sexuality, children songs and games, and see that cultural traditions still heavily influence gender, creating what is masculine and what is feminine and what is the role of each gender, as well as challenging the notions that gender is solely based on agency.

    Read More

  • Taking A Look At Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw

    842 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to Kate Bornstein and their work Gender Outlaw, “the first question we usually ask new parents is: Is it a boy or a girl?” (46). This question creates a sense of a rigid dichotomy, by which individuals must outwardly conform to either being male or female. Individuals who do not prescribe to this binary concept of gender identity find themselves ostracized from much of society – ignored, ridiculed, and laughed at as an insignificant minority. For this group of people, “either/or is used as a control mechanism,” creating a normative group by which power can be derived from (102). According to Bornstein, the concept of the gender binary being the “natural state of affairs” is one of the most dangerous thoughts proliferated about gender within modern society (105). For individuals who do not conform to this socially created structure, they are seen as opposing the natural order of things, and subsequently, their power is stripped by society, and they are deemed as unnatural and inhuman. These oppressive labels create intense feelings of gender dissonance, and the pressure to conform can often overwhelm the individual, directly resulting in often horrific

    Read More

  • Gender Identity In Everyday Life

    1884 Words  | 4 Pages

    Identities are an important part of the human experience. One of the many identities that creates a person is gender. Society, being the entity establishing social norms and social roles, plays a part in effecting the individual’s gender, and how they choose to express themself. The underlying or overlying identities also have the same effect. Gender is not only an identity, it is a lifestyle inside and out. Gender, like race, class, and sexuality; is not limited to the binary scale, and that is normal, natural, and human. The concept of gender is man-made, but it forces one’s hand to analyze the thought processes behind an individual's perception on gender through self, through society, or through the dichotomy and/or correspondence of the

    Read More

More about Paradise Bent Film Analysis

Open Document