Gender Tropes In The Film Chinatown

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A trope is a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression. Media tends to have two kinds of gender tropes that show the ideal types of characteristics each gender is supposed to have. Masculinity tropes consist of having expectations of what a man should be, such as brave and diligent, and that men who have these features are considered real men. Femininity tropes are about women expecting to perform a certain way and having traits such as beauty and grace. These tropes set an “ideal” type of way that men and women should carry themselves.

The 1974 film Chinatown directed by Roman Polanski was a drama and mystery movie. Jake Gittes, a private divorce investigator, meets a woman who pretends to be Evelyn Mulwray, the wife of Hollis Mulwray. Hollis Mulwray was the chief engineer of the Los Angeles water company. The woman asks Jake to investigate her “husband” for his disloyalty to the marriage. Jake’s quest of the case slowly uncovers a huge scheme against a water company and management, land, real estate, and dishonesty through the city, as well as murder and deception. …show more content…

The film sets the center of everything around Gittes. The film opened up with one of Gittes clients, Curly. They were going through pictures Gittes has taken of Curly's wife and a couple of those pictures were showing the wife in a sexual position with the man she was having an affair with. This shows one way women were represented. In the next scene, a fake Evelyn Mulwray asks Gittes to investigate Hollis Mulwray for cheating. The picture set for women is deceitful because this woman pretended to be someone who led Gittes to investigate someone who was cheating, took pictures of him in the act which later ended up in the paper leading the real  Evelyn Mulwray to sue which keeps putting the men in this film in bad

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