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Sexism in movies essay
Women gender stereotype in movies
Women gender stereotype in movies
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Rebecca is largely constructed by the narrator and by what we hear the others say about her in the novel. How does Hitchcock’s ‘construction’ of Rebecca differ from the novel?
Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.
- Simone de Beauvoir
The continuing appeal of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic-romance, Rebecca1, is tribute to its popular and academic influence. Published in 1938, du Maurier employs refined complexities and sophistication to provide an evocative investigation of the power of the past and its disturbance on the present. Du Maurier’s use of a naive and easily influenced narrator ensures the reader is completely reliant upon the narrator’s interpretation and presentation of Rebecca. Furthermore, du Maurier’s construction of Rebecca questions patriarchal gender stereotypes whilst also critiquing other notions that underpin and aim to preserve patriarchal order. Contrastingly, Hitchcock ultimately alters and weakens du Maurier’s didactic through the adherence to film censorship regulations and the masculine lens of cinema. Furthermore, due to the masculine gaze of the director and producers, the objectification of the woman as the spectacle is perpetuated throughout the 1940’s film. Although the gothic suspense of the novel is transmogrified into a sense of gothic glamour in the film, the adaptation unfortunately produces the inescapable conflict of character construction when a film endeavours to translate a female’s story within the male-dominated 1940’s Hollywood.
Du Maurier’s construction of the intoxicatingly magnetic Rebecca De Winter is derived primarily from the imagination of the young na...
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... Censorship, and Audiences of Questionable Type: Lesbian Sightings in “Rebecca” and “The Uninvited”. Cinema Journal. Vol. 37, no. 3, pp.17.
Castle, T (1995). The Apparitional Lesbian. New York: Columbia University Press.
Cixous, H (1976). The Laugh of the Medusa. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
De Beauvoir, S (2009). The Second Sex. Random House Books Australia: Sydney.
Mitchell, M 2009 ‘Beautiful Creatures: The Ethics of Female Beauty in Daphne du Maurier’s Fiction’. Women: A Cultural Review. Vol. 20, no. 1, pp.28.
(Modeleski 1988). The Woman who knew too much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory. New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall.
Pateman, C (1988). The Sexual Contract, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
White, P (1999). Uninvited: classical Hollywood cinema and lesbian representability. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Margaret Atwood’s speech ‘Spotty-Handed Villainesses’ is an epideictic text, which explores the significance of having a multi-faceted depiction of female characters within literature as a means of achieving gender equity, centring on the fictional presentation of women as either virtuous or villainess. The title of the speech
Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca Rebecca has been described as the first major gothic romance of the 20th century; Mrs. Danvers’ character is one of the few Gothic interests within the novel. Her unnatural appearance and multi-faceted relationship with Rebecca provides scope for manifold interpretations and critical views. Furthermore, Mrs. Danvers connection with Rebecca and Manderlay is a sub-plot in itself, making Mrs. Danvers the most subtly exciting character in the novel.
According to Sherrie A. Inness, “The Captive was hauled by critics as the first play on the American stage to deal openly with what one reviewer called a “repulsive abnormality.” Ten years prior, God of Vengeance was scorned for offending rabbis, Jewish men and women’s religion and abusing the significance of the Torah. Critics and reviews failed to deliver their remarks on the intimate lesbian love, but in The Captive, the lesbian undertones are concealed and carried out in a strategic fashion, yet these moments were censored and triggered. Due to these moments where the acts of lesbianism were not apparent, it was deemed with obscurity, causing the play to fall short overall. Similar to God of Vengeance, The Captive was confronted with “obscenity charges in the United States, and after a run of less than five months, the play was raided and closed down by police” (Inness 304). With this framework in mind, my case study is not diminished by the greater public opinion, rather Edouard Bourdet’s strategic approach to lesbianism and the way in which is portrayed in society juxtaposed the emergence of lesbianism in the United States in the early part of the twentieth
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.
Post World War II America was a society full of anxiety. In the late 1950s Americans were deeply troubled by so many social shifts. Major changes were occurring both internally and externally. They were in the midst of the Cold War, and were vastly approaching the atomic age. There was a communist scare and fear of Russian expansion. Joseph McCarthy was hunting down major celebrities for their communist involvement and the 'Red Influence' seemed to be everywhere. The move toward suburbia and the growth of multinational corporations were flourishing. People seemed to be pulled in every direction. Another change that would have a major impact on society for years to come was the re-identification of gender roles. In Robert Kolker's book, Film, Form and Culture, he states that, "During the time of the Cold War, the political and the personal, the power of the state, the workplace, the family and the sexual all became confused and self contradictory" (Kolker, 83). The gender confusion of the time would cause major conflicts and can be seen in many forms of popular culture from the mid-to-late fifties, from magazines to movies. By the time Alfred Hitchcock was starting production on his forty-fifth film Vertigo, gender had become a major issue. This is obvious through watching the film and looking at the main characters, both male and female. In Hitchcock's Vertigo, the struggle for socially recognized gender roles is acted out, mostly through a battle for sexual domination between Scottie and Madeline/Judy. The film also supports the idea of the submissive domestic female, through the character of Midge. This film is definitely a marker of its time.
Works Cited Cowie, Elizabeth. A. A. Representing the Woman: Cinema and Psychoanalysis. Minneapolis, MN -. University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Hitchcock was a tenacious and dedicated director. He received his education at St Ignatius College and London County Council School of Marine Engineering and Navigation, which left him with an outstanding work ethic. Nevertheless, his Catholic upbringing instilled a fear of authority along with complications with intimacy, hence, gives one possible explanation of his opinions about women. He also fantasized about travel and exploration as a child, so his experience, curiosity and fear of the unknown produced his “Master of Suspense” personality.
...ere. Only when they are presented to us do we acknowledge them, similarly, when Norman gets arrested he realizes that there is something wrong with him. Hitchcock’s style of film really allows for spectators to develop a relationship with Norman through the desire to not want to lead a similar life. As Norman, he is a fine person and spectators would be more than happy to maintain a healthy relationship with him; however when he presents his alter ego, his mother, spectators are immediately dissuaded from wanting anything to do with Norman. Hitchcock creates this very personal relationship for the spectators, as they want nothing to do with the way Norman acts about, and as, his mother.
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 chapter two of A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf introduces the reader to the uncomfortable conditions existing between men and women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Woolf’s character, Mary Beton, surveys books about women at the British Museum and discovers that nearly all of them are written by men. What’s more, the books that she does find express negative sentiments about women, leading Beton to believe that men are expressing “anger that had gone underground and mixed itself with all kinds of other emotions” (32). She links this repressed anger to man’s need to feel superior over women, and, wondering how and why men have cause to be angry with the female sex, she has every right to be angry with men.
The gothic romance and mystery of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca show the style in which a deep, dark secret is held at the beautiful Manderley, and a young love is influenced by the haunting of Manderley’s former mistress. Using the harrowing style of suspense, Daphne tells a tale of a young woman trying to live a life in the home of someone who has not quite left yet. With extraordinary scenery, strong symbolism, and plenty of hidden irony, Daphne du Maurier has made an everlasting psychological thriller.
Williams, Linda. "Film Bodies: Genre, Gender and Excess." Braudy and Cohen (1991 / 2004): 727-41. Print.
In the book, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, there exist a big emphasis on social class and position during the time of this story. When we are introduced to the main character of the story, the narrator, we are right away exposed to a society in which different privileges are bestowed upon various groups. Social place, along with the ever present factor of power and money are evident throughout the story to show how lower to middle class groups were treated and mislead by people on a higher level in society. When we are introduced to the narrator, we are told that she is traveling with an old American woman; vulgar, gossipy, and wealthy, Mrs. Van Hopper travels across Europe, but her travels are lonely and require an employee that gives her warm company. This simple companion (the narrator) is shy and self-conscious, and comes from a lower-middle class background which sets up perfect for a rich man to sweep her off her feet. The narrator faced difficulties adapting to first, the Monte Carlo aristocratic environment, and second, to her new found position as Mrs. De Winter, the new found mistress of Manderley.
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
His way of leaving the audience on their seats while still telling a good story was what made Hitchcock an outstanding director and writer. His 50s films are known for their interesting cinematography. This includes people hanging off Mount Rushmore and The Statue of Liberty. Or the classic scene of Cary Grant being chased by a airplane. The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them,” is what Hitchcock said about his film making. He had this to say “Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.” These movies would lead Hitchcock in to one of his most classic film, Psycho. These are also the movies that pave the way for horror and suspense films. Hitchcock said this once about building suspense, “Four people are sitting around a table talking about baseball or whatever you like. Five minutes of it. Very dull. Suddenly, a bomb goes off. Blows the people to smithereens. What does the audience have? Ten seconds of shock. Now take the same scene and tell the audience there is a bomb under that table and will go off in five minutes. The whole emotion of the audience is totally different because you've given them that