Film Analysis: A League of Their Own

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A League of Their Own (Marshall, 1992) explicitly characterizes an American era when a woman’s place was in the home. Even our modern perspective implicitly follows suit. Although women have gained rights and freedoms since the 1930’s, sexism remains prevalent in America. This film offers an illustration when men went to war and big business men utilized women as temporary replacements in factories, sports, and so on. Here, course concepts, such as gender socialization, gender expressions, role stereotypes, emotion expressions, and language, correspond to the film’s characters and themes.
A central theme in this film correlates to the first concept of the 7 principles describing gender socialization in the United States (Rozema, notes, 2014). This film pervasively focuses on males as the more valued sex (Rozema, notes, 2014). Here, women should easily partition back into a doll mold or submissive role apart from the masculine roles women were called upon to fill during the war. The importance of men never left the focal point. For instance, the black and white scene presenting all the heroic baseball players enlistment to fight for their country, the announcer praises the men for fighting for America, yet questions, “what does this mean for baseball” (Marshall, 1992)? How would baseball continue without men? Ostensibly, a women’s baseball league was a desperate attempt saving rich men’s pocketbooks. Initially, most sport lovers and supporters (mostly male) viewed the women’s league as a superficial and an insignificant replacement to the “real” male version. Just as Dottie expressed to her daughter in the opening scene as she is packing her suitcase, “It was never important to me, it was just something I did” (Marshall, 1992),...

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... disregard the female team as real (Marshall, 1992). Similarly, Jimmy aggressively handles his conversations with the female ball players. For instance, his initial reaction when a ball player messed up was yelling and directly stating what they did wrong; specifically, Jimmy’s reaction towards Evelyn resulting in her crying (Marshall, 1992). Later, Jimmy approaches Evelyn shaking angrily yet calmly offers constructive criticism resulting in a smile and a nod (Marshall, 1992).

Works Cited

Gamble, T., & Gamble, M. (2003). The Gender Communication Connection. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.
Killerman, S. (2013). My TEd Talk Understanding the Complexities of Gender.
Retrieved from: itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2013/05/my-ted-talk- understanding-the-complexities-of-gender/. Marshall, P. (Director). (1992). A League of Their Own. [DVD].
Rozema. (2014). Class Notes.

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