Hollywood has recently been under attack by the media for it’s whitewashing of cast and crew, and making sexist films. Even the nominees and winners of awards like the Emmys and Oscars have been criticized for being racist and sexist. While this issue has been going on for decades, it has become a big talking point now a days because of the fast spreading social media environment we live in. Films and art have always played a huge part in the history of mankind. Every culture has its own telling and retelling of stories. Most of the perspectives are from white European people since by World War Two, Europe had colonized 85% of the world. This puts a skewed point of view into art because artists were influenced and repressed by these European people and nations to make sure one story was being told and retold. As film began to take off in the late 19th century, this repressed point of view was still carried out. However, there is a bigger underlying …show more content…
Depending on how the director frames shots, blocks chactarters, and so on, the audience gets put into a perspective and reflects onto it like “the mirror (of the true mirror), and is thus able to constitute a world of objects without having first to recognise himself within it” (Metz, 696). This is problematic for Christian Metz, French film theorist in the late 20th century who specialized in semiotics in film. By the audience reflecting the screen like a mirror, it does not allow for distance to be created from what is being fictitiously presented. Even though the audience “knows that the screen presents no more than a fiction” (Metz, 707), the viewer has to engage themselves in deep critical thought to break through this mass identification issue. However, this is unrealistic since the majority of films are created to keep you immersed in them and not allow for such critical
The film “Think like a Man” directed by Tim Story, centres around four best friends whose lives are shaken up when the women they are pursuing buy the book “Act like a Lady, Think like a Man”, written by Steve Harvey, and start taking his advice to heart. When the men find out about the book, they conspire to use its information in order to turn the tables against the women (Rotten Tomatoes , 2012). While watching this film, I noticed that it continuously emphasised gender inequality, in relationships and in an economic sense, as a discourse of human nature. Throughout the film, the viewer is exposed to scenes where, for a woman, stating that you have a successful career and earn six figures is a turn off as opposed to the fact that if it were a man, it would be considered a good thing. Other scenes are of how men and women differ in how they perceive relationships to be. For example, when the main female character believes she is starting a relationship with a man, the man actually sees it as a one night stand. In this essay, it is important to understand that human nature is a set of assumptions about motives, in an emotional and mental capacity, and psychic mechanisms which are considered as universal traits and characteristics possessed by all individuals living in human societies, whether they are civilized or primitive, modern or ancient (Wrong, 1963). In other words, by human nature, I refer to traits and characteristics expressed by individuals which are purely natural to humanity in any given context (Turnbull, 1973). How this became human nature, gender inequality, can be explained through examining how gender differences and stereotyping was formed, through biological phenomenon, as well as external, cultural, factors. ...
A. A. Is Hollywood America a Good Idea? in Movies and American Society. Ross, Steven T., ed.
Within every history class, English class, and even some science classes, the art of storytelling is a primary foundation for human communication and understanding. Whether it be through myths – Greek, Roman, Egyptian, you pick – or wives tales or even Grandpa telling his old war stories, stories have power. Now, through technological advancements in the last 150+ years (thank you Thomas Edison for your obsession), we have film as a mode to tell stories. Fictional or not, films tell a story; they have the power to give you not only entertainment but enlightenment too. Through continuing advancements, filmmakers have the ability to challenge and manipulate the power of the story through creative resistance; by exploring other elements of storytelling via film, filmmakers can create dramatically different films from similar ideas by using a multitude of techniques. Films are even used to create social commentary.
Diversity has always been one of Hollywood’s greatest weaknesses. For the most part, the industry absolutely strives with its rich narratives, beautiful cinematography, and moving performances but it fails when it comes to diversity. The representation of both women and people of colour have been lacklustre, often with poor characterisations and distasteful stereotypes and character tropes.
Throughout time, women in movies and other similar texts are shown to be generally focused on men. This might make sense if every movie ever made was set in a time where women had absolutely no rights but of course, that is not the case. Older and more modern depictions of women in media, both show women whose lives revolve around men. Even movies that market their female characters as strong and powerful are still shown to be dependent on the male leads and puts them first. Also, since women in movies have more of a focus on men, female to female relationships suffer in the same films. There are very few exceptions to this unfortunate truth.
There has been a pressing issue of the lack of diversity in mainstream media in front and behind the camera. For many years the face of Hollywood was white, occupying roles as actors, directors, screenwriters and other prominent positions in the industry.
During the 1990s, feminism was flourishing like ever before through a plethora of films and through the music industry, with special efforts being made to reinforce empowerment and independence in women. Film was able to play the most influential role in doing so though, as many film directors were beginning to bring to light many of the issues women were still facing in society at the time. The repeated images and stereotypes of women depicted in films had gone on for way too long and started to see a drastic change in ‘90s Hollywood films. Many of the feminist films released during the ‘90s are deemed so influential because they still remain relevant to our present-day society and feminism. Such films were able to critique society through
Low, J. (2014, February 20). Where's the Diversity, Hollywood? 85 Years of the Academy Awards. the open book. Retrieved May 11, 2014, from http://blog.leeandlow.com/2014/02/20/wheres-the-diversity-hollywood-85-years-of-the-academy-awards/
The American black comedy The Wolf of Wall Street directed by Martin Scorsese was released December 25, 2013 and stars the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie. While on face value The Wolf of Wall Street looks like a film about excessive cocaine binges, long evenings filled with men with cigarettes, large portions of alcoholic consumption, having many sexual escapades with various women and even dwarf tossing from time to time, the film is deeply rooted in perception gender within the genre of The Wolf of Wall Street. The word ‘genre’ is rooted into a similar category as
An investigation into exploring the representation of women in horror films. With reference to Resident Evil Retribution 2012 and Halloween 1978
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 ...
Feminist theory was derived from the social movement of feminism where political women fight for the right of females in general and argue in depth about the unequality we face today. In the aspect of cinema, feminists notice the fictitious representations of females and also, machismo. In 1974, a book written by Molly Haskell "From Reverence to Rape: The treatment of Women in Movies" argues about how women almost always play only passive roles while men are always awarded with active, heroic roles. Moreover, how women are portrayed in movies are very important as it plays a big role to the audience on how to look at a woman and how to treat her in real life due to the illusionism that cinema offers. These images of women created in the cinema shapes what an ideal woman is. This can be further explained through an article 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' written by a feminist named Laura Mulvey in 1975. She uses psychoanalysis theories by Sigmund Freud to analyze 'Scopophilia' which is the desire to see. This explains how the audience is hooked to the screen when a sexy woman is present. In a bigger picture, where Scopophilia derives from, 'Voyeurism' is also known as feeling visual pleasure when looking at another. Narcissism on the other hand means identifying one's self with the role played. It is not hard to notice that in classical cinema, men often play the active role while the women are always the object of desire for the male leads, displayed as a sexual object and frequently the damsels in distress. Therefore, the obvious imbalance of power in classical cinema shows how men are accountable to moving the narratives along. Subconsciously, narcissism occurs in the audience as they ...
Julie Aguilar Professor Theresa Geller HUM 185: Film Analysis, Theory, and Criticism 27 November 2014 The Subversive Work of Masochism in Women’s Films Despite the pertinence of patriarchal structures in cinema, psychoanalytic feminist film theory subverts and examines these structures. The tools used to subvert such structures originate from psychoanalytic analysis, like the use of the masochistic model as introduced by Gaylyn Studlar. As a psychoanalytic tool, masochism in cinema highlights the patriarchal values that shape cinematic structures and simultaneously calls attention to the presence of patriarchal values in the unconscious. The masochistic model does not restrict visual pleasure to male spectators and describes the spectator
The purpose of this research is to answer the following question: What is the main cause of the problems within Colombia’s Health Care System? The Health Care System in Colombia has had in incredible improvement over the years, both in quality and coverage. However, the system is not perfect and has flaws. The most serious problem is the fiscal gap that the system has; there is not enough money to pay for the health of all citizens. The goal of this research paper is to understand and identify the main causes of the fiscal gap the system has and propose solutions to it.
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.