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Influence of media on women
Influence of media on women
Influence of media on women
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Strangers on a Train is one of Hitchcock’s most well-known films. It is typically analyzed in terms of the ways that the two main male characters interact. According to many film critics, homosexual attraction between Bruno and Guy is one of the premises of the film. This may be the case, however, many of these film critics fail to consider the minor characters of the film: the women. Specifically, they fail to analyze the influence of these women on the development of the male characters and to interpret the message Hitchcock is trying to portray about women, especially those with qualities typically not associated with women. To understand why Hitchcock’s portrayal of female characters is crucial to fully understanding the film, it is important to consider the way society worked for women in the fifties. Women “were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents” (Friedman, 16). It was completely wrong for women to try and get male dominated jobs. They were supposed to be housewives who did not have any power in society. “They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home; they wanted the men to make the major decisions” (Friedman, 18). In her book, Friedman continues to explain how most of the women she had interviewed who were housewives felt dissatisfaction with their lives and were ashamed that they felt this way. …show more content…
He probably scared many women into giving up on improving their unsatisfying lives just as most propaganda and media at that time did. Hitchcock created a film that portrayed the feelings he observed in society. A work of art often says something about the culture that surrounds it and Hitchcock told women that they needed to stay in their roles if they wanted to lead a good
Though the idea becoming a wife and mother was the most common occupation for women in the 1950’s and by no means was it simple. Women experienced immense pressure to act and be a certain way. The conformity of the 1950’s frowned upon things that weren’t apart of the established way of doing things. In the movie The Man in the Gray Flannel S...
May begins by exploring the origins of this "domestic containment" in the 30's and 40's. During the Depression, she argues, two different views of the family competed -- one with two breadwinners who shared tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were sharply differentiated. Yet, despite the many single women glamorized in popular culture of the 1930's, families ultimately came to choose the latter option. Why? For one, according to May, for all its affirmation of the emancipation of women, Hollywood fell short of pointing the way toward a restructured family that would incorporate independent women. (May p.42) Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, for example, are both forced to choose between independence and a happy domestic life - the two cannot be squared. For another, New Deal programs aimed to raise the male employment level, which often meant doing nothing for female employment. And, finally, as historian Ruth Milkman has also noted, the g...
It was expected of women to get married, have children, buy a suburban home and do housework. The video, “A Word to the Wives” displays what Betty Friedan calls, “the feminine mystique”. The video presents the dilemma of a woman who is not happy because she does not have the newest house. Her friend has all the new “necessities” in order to successfully complete housework. Women were defined by what they had, not by who they were. Friedan’s research found that despite fulfilling the “feminine mystique”, when women were questioned they realized they were not truly satisfied with their life. The woman in the video would not of been fulfilled by buying a new house, or object. Women were deprived of the need to put their skills and talents to a purpose. The video, “Are You Popular” also shows the expectations of women.. It promotes that appearance, serving others, and rewarding men with “women” gifts such as baking is how to be popular. It condones girls for “parking in cars” but accepts men who do the same thing. Women must earn the approval of men, and men must earn women by doing thing women are “incapable” of. The repression of women in the 50’s is what eventually causes the “outbreak” of feminism in the 60’s. The idolism of the “female mystique” covered the sexism against women in the
The world was a very different place sixty years ago. The men came home from the war to take back the work force from the women and sent the women back into the home to follow traditional domestic roles. All aspects of life had to be cookie cutter perfect, to include the gender roles. The roles of both genders have been portrayed by the BBC Television show, Call the Midwife, as they use to be in the 1950’s. The men were the breadwinners of their family by working arduous hours, protect their family and home, and have zero contact with feminine things and activities; the women were expected to get married early, always look their best, and never indulge in their aspirations for a career outside of the home unless they were single.
Suburban life in the 1950s was ideal, but not ideal for the women. Women were continuously looked at as the typical suburban housewife. In Richard Yates’ novel, Revolutionary Road, we are given the chance to see the dynamics of the Wheeler family and of those around them. Through the use of theme, tone and major symbolism in the novel, we are shown the perspective of gender roles in the 1950s. The author shows the reader the struggles of strict gender roles and how the protagonist of the story will do just about anything to escape from it.
The social perception of women has drastically changed since the 1950’s. The social role of women during the 1950’s was restrictive and repressed in many ways. Society during that time placed high importance on expectations of behavior in the way women conducted themselves in home life as well as in public. At home the wife was tasked with the role of being an obedient wife, caring mother, and homemaker. Women publicly were expected to form groups and bond over tea with a slice of cake. All the while government was pushing this idealize roll for women in a society “dominated” by men. However, during this time a percentage of women were finding their way into the work force of men. “Women were searching their places in a society led by men;
In the 1950’s, a woman’s life path was pretty clear cut, graduate from high school and find a good man while your ultimate goal is to start a family and maintain an orderly house. This is shown when Kingston says to the little girl “Some one has to marry you before you can become a housewife.” She says this as if becoming a housewife is a top priority for a woman. However presently, most women in America hold very respectable jobs and the role as housewife is slowly disappearing from American culture. Another example of modern day women showing strength is portrayed when the narrator’s mother goes on a cultural rampage and forces the narrator to go to the drug store and demand a piece of candy simply because the druggist missed the address of the house. This scene is shown in pages three, four, and five. By doing so the narrator comes off as poor and illogical.
In the predominantly male worlds of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh (Book I)”, the women’s voices are muted. Female characters are confined to the domestic spheres of their homes, and they are excluded from the elite literary world. They are expected to function as foils to the male figures in their lives. These women are “trained” to remain silent and passive not only by the males around them, but also by their parents, their relatives, and their peers. Willingly or grudgingly, the women in Woolf and Browning’s works are regulated to the domestic circle, discouraged from the literary world, and are expected to act as foils to their male counterparts.
In society, there has always been a gap between men and women. Women are generally expected to be homebodies, and seen as inferior to their husbands. The man is always correct, as he is more educated, and a woman must respect the man as they provide for the woman’s life. During the Victorian Era, women were very accommodating to fit the “house wife” stereotype. Women were to be a representation of love, purity and family; abandoning this stereotype would be seen as churlish living and a depredation of family status. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House depict women in the Victorian Era who were very much menial to their husbands. Nora Helmer, the protagonist in A Doll’s House and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” both prove that living in complete inferiority to others is unhealthy as one must live for them self. However, attempts to obtain such desired freedom during the Victorian Era only end in complications.
Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite subject was the superficial placidity of American life, whose clean, bright surfaces disguised the most shockingly moral, political, psychological and sexual aberrations. For Hitchcock, the most striking, funny, and terrifying quality of American life was its confidence in its sheer ordinariness. Beneath the surface, ordinary people and normal life were always ‘bent’ for Hitchcock.
We meet strangers everywhere we go. They come from all walks of life. We can choose to ignore them or to talk to them. I have judged people based on the way they walk, talk, dress or the way they approached me. These judgments tend to stick with me even if I find out who they really are. I don 't think it is right to get judgmental when I first approach a person. I feel so bad when I find out who they really are isn 't who I thought they were. It just seems to happen so naturally. I guess it is just human nature. I can relate this to my senior high school days. Most of the judgments I made about people never helped me because it got me into bad company. In a short story ‘Strangers’, a stranger hurt and lied to Toni Morrison about who she was. She was really hurt by the stranger because she had misjudged her about who she was. She did not expect a woman, who looked so humble, would do such a thing. I can relate to her story because I also misjudged someone and ended up getting hurt.
Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, explains the mind set of society in the 1960s. She writes that the women of the ‘60s were identified only as creatures looking for “sex, babies, and home” (Friedan 36). She goes on to say “The only passion, the only pursuit, the only goal a woman [was] permitted [was] the pursuit of a man” (Friedan 36). This mind set, this “feminine mystique,” is clearly shown throughout the show Mad Men. The side effect of the feminine mystique hurt all the women of this time. Matthew Weiner shows how this conception of the “ideal woman” hurt all of his lead women. The consequences are shown in the two women who bought into the idea, Betty and Joan, and the one who re...
In 1935, Hitchcock introduced to a numerous amount of characters in his film, “The 39 Steps.” Each character having a different story and reason for being involved in this mess really leaves room for gender and feminism analysis. There are many characters that you can analyze and really see how women and men were portrayed in 1935. There are some aspects challenging the stereotypes of both men and women, but this film also spends a lot of time conforming to gender rules. “The 39 Steps,” is the perfect movie for analyzing the gender conformity for its time.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.
Many women in modern society make life altering decisions on a daily basis. Women today have prestigious and powerful careers unlike in earlier eras. It is more common for women to be full time employees than homemakers. In 1879, when Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, there was great controversy over the out come of the play. Nora’s walking out on her husband and children was appalling to many audiences centuries ago. Divorce was unspoken, and a very uncommon occurrence. As years go by, society’s opinions on family situations change. No longer do women have a “housewife” reputation to live by and there are all types of family situations. After many years of emotional neglect, and overwhelming control, Nora finds herself leaving her family. Today, it could be said that Nora’s decision is very rational and well overdue.