Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Gender inequality in the movie industry
Gender inequality in the movie industry
Sexism in the film industry essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Gender inequality in the movie industry
The male gaze has been a prominent theme in movies, music and other areas of culture for a considerable amount of time. This is something that is primarily categorized by someone who is doing the looking. More specifically it is how the audience is viewing the people or person that is being represented. The male gaze is essentially something that in advertizing, and in movies enables women to become a commodity which enables products to sell, because we all know in society that sex sells, and especially in modern marketing. Something to take into consideration is the fact that woman have not had a considerable amount of involvement in film making over the past 100 years, and even today, this is still a fact. Although women tend to be involved …show more content…
Scarlet O’Hara, who is the protagonist in the film, really shakes up the idea of the male gaze for the spectator. Scarlet exposes in the film a different side of gender myths which embody male values that are transformed at the time of a drastic economic change due to the invasion of the Yankees. Scarlet really has an ambiguous gender identity in certain aspects of her life, with relation to economic ideals, her own gender roles and with relation to the current war that took place. In the beginning of the film, we see Scarlett saying to her Mammy “Why does a girl have to be so silly to catch a husband?” We can identify the significance of this quote here as something very ambiguous. Scarlett wants to find a husband, yet she is not necessarily overjoyed at the things she has to do in order to get one. Unlike many films in which the male gaze is something that dominates the spectator eye. What is fascinating about “Gone With the Wind” is that the protagonist that the spectator identifies with is female. What is most important to note is the paradox of personality that she displays throughout the film with regards to Scarlett encompassing throughout the film masculine ideals enclosed in a female form. Laura Mulvey talks about women with conflicting desires. She mentions “the conflicting desires, first of all, correspond closely with Freud’s argument about female sexuality quoted above, that is: an oscillation between passive femininity and regressive masculinity” (Mulvey, 1990 p.
In the movie Gone With the Wind, Scarlett, the main character was a woman with many struggles in her life. She lived on a farm with her father, her mother, and her slaves but when she left to go help the wounded, the Yankees came to her house and used it as a base camp. The Yankees took all of Scarlett?s family?s food, crops, and animals. Also while Scarlett was gone her mother got sick. Once Scarlett came back to her farm (Terra) her mother was dead. When the war ended her family was too poor to pay the taxes so she married Frank, a rich businessman, so she could pay the taxes. After her husband died she remarried a richer man named Rhett and they had a child named Bonnie.
The art in a social justice movement is used to further educate individuals while entertaining them; one example is the 1978s classic The Wiz. The Wiz was created during the Black Arts Movement to illustrate historical and political issues in the African American communities. If one watches The Wiz closely one can see the how the Scarecrow character is used to demonstrate how African American mental mislead. The Scarecrow was told over and over by the Crows he was not smart enough to get down off of “dis here pole”. The Scarecrow believed the Crows and felt he was dumb and not good enough. However, the Scarecrow was very smart, but due to years of being mental beat down he could see it. This has happened so many times in African American history. African Americans have
The three films that I chose for this final project are; Fahrenheit 9/11, CSI season 1 episode 22, and West Wing Season 3 episode 1. These films are connected because they focus on different aspects associated with the attacks on September 11, 2001. Fahrenheit 9/11 is connected to the current topic because its main plot point follows Michael Moore’s narrative of blaming George W. Bush, our president on September 11 2001, for the acts of terrorism. Moreover, the film examines step by step the failures of President Bush before, during, and after the falling of the Twin Towers. The CSI episode took a somber and realistic tone airing an episode that featured Taylor expaining that his wife died when the towers fell. Furthermore, The West Wing,
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.
"Fed Up (Soechtig, 2014)." narrated by Katie Couric, focuses on the growing link between sugar consumption and the obesity epidemic. The film aggressively attacks the food industry, advertising, and the government who, it claims, all contribute to the U.S. sugar-dependent, obesity problem. The film sets out to prove the government, and food industry is knowingly causing an increase in the amount of obese children. It reserves its most critical comments for government advisory panels who make and enforce food and health policy, and its failure to properly regulate the food industry. They claim lobbyists for the sugar board have been instrumental in the removal of negative statistics from research papers worldwide. Instead
modern media is objectified and put on the screen for male viewers. Films are a
In the documentary “Fed Up,” sugar is responsible for Americas rising obesity rate, which is happening even with the great stress that is set on exercise and portion control for those who are overweight. Fed Up is a film directed by Stephanie Soechtig, with Executive Producers Katie Couric and Laurie David. The filmmaker’s intent is mainly to inform people of the dangers of too much sugar, but it also talks about the fat’s in our diets and the food corporation shadiness. The filmmaker wants to educate the country on the effects of a poor diet and to open eyes to the obesity catastrophe in the United States. The main debate used is that sugar is the direct matter of obesity. Overall, I don’t believe the filmmaker’s debate was successful.
“There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world! But that wasn't good enough for them, oh no! They had to have the ears of the whole world too. So they opened their big mouths and out came talk. Talk! TALK!” (Sunset Boulevard). The film Sunset Boulevard directed by Billy Wilder focuses on a struggling screen writer who is hired to rewrite a silent film star’s script leading to a dysfunctional and fatal relationship. Sunset Boulevard is heavily influenced by the history of cinema starting from the 1930s to 1950 when the film was released.
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
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.
What makes a film interesting? What makes it stand out from other films? What makes it unique? The visual design aspects of color and lighting in a film play a major role in giving the film meaning and depth. A lot of thought goes into what colors and lighting should be used that will help convey a mood and theme central to the film. You wouldn’t see dark colors and lighting used in a children cartoon, instead you see bright color and bright lighting. And vice versa; most horror films don’t focus on bright colors and bright lighting. In The Wizard of Oz (Dir. Victor Fleming, 1939) , the director uses bright colors and lighting to portray the moods of happiness, joy and innocence in Dorothy’s life. In contrast, dark colors and lighting that go hand in hand with the evil parts of Oz portray the
In the film, Flight, William “Whip” Whitaker is an airline pilot. Whitaker is depicted as having a substance use disorder (SUD) and more specifically, an alcohol use disorder (AUD). This paper discusses: the film, AUDs, the way Flight depicts Whitaker’s AUDs, an interpretation of the film’s depiction, and possible treatment for Whitaker.
The scene that introduces the audience to Matthew Harrison Brady, in Inherit the Wind, (Dir. Stanley Kramer. With Spencer Tracy, Frederic March, and Gene Kelly. MGM. 1960) uses dialogue, composition, camera work and music to develop Matthew Brady. Kramer reveals important information about the plot of the film in this scene. The scene opens with a bird's eye view shot of the town of Hillsboro, and focuses in on the movement of the parade below. The camera comes to rest on the convertible that transports Brady and his wife. The town of Hillsboro welcomes the well-known politician. He will serve the town by being the prosecutor in a trial about evolution, similar to that of the historical Scopes Trial. This scene, where we first meet Brady, reveals his strong character, and the role of savior that the town expects him to play. Through the development of Brady, Kramer also introduces us to the issues of religion and politics. Stanley Kramer, the director, introduces the audience to two key ideas in the very first shot of the scene. He does this through the use of background tools, like music and scenery. As the camera fades in from the previous scene, music begins to play, and a group of women sing a religious hymn, "Give me that old time religion." The extremely loud music continues for the duration of the parade. At first the audience doesn't know the source of the music, but as the parade comes to an end, the camera focuses on a group of militant looking women, who march and sing. This song draws the audience into the impending controversy over religion. It expresses the entire town's point of view on the issue. The audience can see that religion affects the soc...
Feminism is a movement that supports women equality within society. In relation to film, feminism is what pushes the equal representation of females in mainstream films. Laura Mulvey is a feminist theorist that is famous for touching on this particular issue of how men and women are represented in movies. Through her studies, she discovered that many films were portraying men and women very differently from reality. She came up with a theory that best described why there is such as huge misrepresentation of the social status quos of male and female characters. She believed that mainstream film is used to maintain the status quo and prevent the realization of gender equality. This is why films are continuously following the old tradition that males are dominant and females are submissive. This is the ideology that is always present when we watch a movie. This is evident in the films from the past but also currently. It is as if the film industry is still catering to the male viewers of each generation in the same way. Laura Mulvey points out that women are constantly being seen as sexual objects, whether it is the outfits they wear or do not wear or the way they behave, or secondary characters with no symbolic cause. She states that, “in traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote it-be-looked-at-ness.”(Mulvey pg. 715). Thus, women are nevertheless displayed as nothing more than passive objects for the viewing pleasure of the audience. Mulvey also points out through her research that in every mainstream movie, there is ...
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is a Steven Spielberg science fiction drama film, which conveys the story of a younger generation robot, David, who yearns for his human mother’s love. David’s character stimulates the mind-body question. What is the connection between our “minds” and our bodies?