chase her dream of becoming a boxer and encourage her along the way. Although this male encouragement of female participation in sports seems to promote female empowerment, a closer look at Maggie’s relationship with Frankie reveals that Maggie’s only purpose in the film was to be the daughter Frankie lost so that he could redeem himself by being a good father. Instead of portraying an empowered female athlete, Million Dollar Baby reduces Maggie to a tool in Frankie’s redemption of masculinity. As Hannah Hamad explains, “Postfeminist fatherhood is the new hegemonic masculinity.” Frankie’s aging masculinity is thus reversed by his paternal redemption. From the beginning, Frankie is depicted as a failed father, illustrated by the ‘return to sender’ letters that he writes to his daughter Katie who never responds. This suggests that his developing relationship with Maggie is the central story in the film rather than Maggie’s pursuit of a successful boxing career. This is also illustrated as Maggie compares Frankie to her father, telling him, “You remind me of my daddy.” Maggie …show more content…
depends on Frankie for training and he protects her from her white trash, freeloading family. Maggie is thus depicted as his surrogate daughter, underscored by Frankie literally giving Maggie the nickname, “Mo Cuishle,” which means “my darling, my blood.” When Maggie gets hurt in the championship match against “The Blue Bear” and is left paralyzed from the neck down, 40 minutes of the film remain for Frankie to redeem his masculinity by being a good father figure. “After Maggie’s accident, the film becomes an unabashed exercise in recuperating the aging white male and the negotiation of Frankie’s paternal postfeminist melancholia” (Hamad). Maggie is reduced to a “filially signified cipher” in the story of Frankie’s redemption of his masculinity (Hamad). Frankie stays by Maggie’s side at all times and takes care of her. Maggie asks Frankie to end her life because she knows she won’t recover, but Frankie initially refuses because he wanted to keep her with him. When he finally decides to do it, Eddie confirms that it’s the right thing to do. He says, “Maggie walked through that door with nothing but guts.
No chance in the world of being what she needed to be. A year and a half later, she’s fighting for the championship of the world. You did that…Because of you, Maggie got her shot. If she dies today, you know what her last thought will be? ‘I think I did all right.’” As Viridiana Lieberman explains, Million Dollar Baby “literally sacrifices its female athlete for a celebration of the father figure,” (Lieberman 25). The story is not about Maggie’s success, it is about Frankie’s role in getting her there. It doesn’t matter what happened to Maggie in the end, Frankie successfully redeemed his masculinity by being the father he couldn’t be to his own daughter. This is further emphasized by the final shot of Frankie sitting in the diner where Maggie and her own father used to eat. He achieved his purpose, and Maggie was just his tool to get
there. This “façade of female empowerment” in Million Dollar Baby is extremely damaging to female athletes in society because it emphasizes socially constructed gender roles (Lieberman 13). Maggie is a prominent female character, but the story is really about Frankie. As Lieberman explains, “This stands as the most damaging example of a female eliciting change in a male character’s masculinity. Yes, she finally receives the loyal and familial love she’s always wanted, but she gets this at the tragic conclusion of her life. He continues on,” (Lieberman 28), Further, the façade suggests that women are not suited for sports. As Lieberman explains, “We may have met a strong, passionately driven female athlete but in the end she dies for it. Further, she is punished for never posing as an object of the gaze by any male character and never being actively viewed as trying to take that position,” (Lieberman). Maggie does not conform to the
2. Frankie's mother has a baby, Margaret. Because of the lack of money the family can't
His life consists of being with different women all day. As portrayed in the movie, Valentin is very dishonest and irresponsible. As one of his affairs, Julia (Jessica Lindsey), claims her baby is Valentin’s, he has to raise the baby on his own. Julia simply leaves her child, Maggie, with Valentin. The audience can see how irresponsible the mother is as well.
They may argue Maggie could of escape from the slum life and she didn’t have to let it take a hold of her. They may also say that Maggie was her own downfall and demise by letting a boy drag her down to the mud and damage her good name. However, because of her upbringing, it was hard for her not to be affected by her environment and social factors.
After her daughter’s death, she had a heavy and unforgiving heart, but as the story progressed, Ruth was able to forgive and was one of Frank’s biggest supporters. She wrote on a blog as “anonymous” and told people that they should not be so hard on Frank. He is paralyzed for the rest of his life. Plot It only took one night to change the life of seventeen-year-old Frank Marder forever. On a Saturday night, Frank was at a party with his friends, having a great time.
The movie that will be examined in this critical film review is Million Dollar Baby. Million Dollar Baby was set back in time with a girl wanting to fit but the trainer did not want to train her. In the beginning of the movie, Frankie the trainer did not want to teach her how to fight because he does not train girls. As the movie progresses, Eddie “scrap”, a back in the day amazing fighter was able to convince Frankie to take Maggie and train her to be the best. When Frankie starts to train Maggie, one can tell that there is a father/daughter relationship between the two of them all the way up until the end of the movie. Both Frankie and Maggie have negative pasts; Frankie’s past being his daughter wanting nothing to do with him, and Maggie’s
In this story, Maggie is a lot like her mother. They both are uneducated, loving, caring, and allow Dee to run over them. Maggie has been through more things than her mother has though, because of the incident that happened. Maggie has scars like Emily, except Maggie’s scars are from a house fire (319). The house fire has impacted Maggie’s life tremendously, since she is very self-conscious and shy. Walker stated that Maggie is “ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs (318). The mother is protective of Maggie and will be there for her whenever she needs her too. Even though her mother knows all her struggles, she still supports her and pushes her to be better. I think that is one reason she pushes her to marry John Thomas, because she wants her to become her own person and to be strong (319). The mother of “Everyday Use” is opposite from the mother in “I Stand Here Ironing”, because she is there for her children no matter what their financial status
Maggie wanted to show that all her hard graft has given her a new life, but her mother had a different perspective. She has no appreciation of Maggie’s purchase, and she acted like she couldn’t care less. A wide angle shot captures Maggie’s side profile and everyone else in the room. That specific angle shows the seriousness of her mother’s and Mardell’s faces, indicating that Maggie is vulnerable towards them, and to what they are saying. Straight after the camera angle changes, and this time it shows a close up of Maggies face. Depressed and shocked emotions were evident, because her own family did not acknowledge her toil on becoming what she is today. Eastwood uses these direct camera angles to really emphasize on these emphatic emotions and less on the details around them. When Maggie is fighting, her emotions are very different to what is depicted in this scene. Eastwood shows that no matter how hard we try to become successful in a beloved passion, that same success cannot be implicated in the real world. Sometimes we need to admit defeat and just move on with life, without
Masculinity is described as possession of attributes considered typical of a man. Hegemonic masculinity is a form of masculine character with cultural idealism and emphasis that connects masculinity to competitiveness, toughness, and women subordination. Masculinity hegemonic is the enforcement of male dominion over a society. Masculine ideology dates back to the time of agrarian and the industrial revolution in Europe when survival compelled men to leave their homesteads to work in industries to earn a living for their families while women remained at home to take care of family affairs (Good and Sherrod 210). Women did not work in industries then because industrial labor was considered too physical beyond their capacity. This led to definition of roles which placated the position of men in a society while condemning women as mere subordinates who cannot do without men. The critics of gender stereotypes in America describe the following five hegemonic features of masculinity: frontiersman ship, heterosexuality, occupational achievement, familial patriarchy, and physical force and control (Trujillo 4). The advent of the 20th century led to sweeping changes in American masculinity.
Margaret (Maggie), a young, beautiful woman has a marriage on the rocks and a strong dislike towards Mae and her children. For instance, when Maggie starts talking about Skipper during her con...
As reviewer Sean O’Connell notes in his column at Filmcritic.com, Million Dollar Baby was expected to be “a half-baked, rushed-into-awards-season castoff by a respected filmmaker still basking in the glow of his last well-received piece”. Fortuitously, the movie has turned out to be one of the best motion pictures of the year. Once again Clint Eastwood surprises us all with his work as a film director. He gives the audience a chance to consider life from another viewpoint. The movie makes one think about what he or she has achieved in life and Maggie shows us that it is never too late to have a dream fulfilled. After all, this is why we are actually born and live: to fulfill our dreams.
Maggie and her mother the idea of heritage is perpetually subordinate to the fact of a living
Although, Pete is higher in class than they are, they do not want Maggie to disgrace the family by being out with him all the time. They kick Maggie out of the tenement house so she has no choice other than to live with Pete.
Wyman starts off by looking at the main character, Maggie. He explains that in the film, Maggie’s only positive role model was her father. She did not consider her mother a model and eventually developed a father-daughter relationship with Frankie. Wyman believes that Maggie’s scenario falls into the stereotype that women need to be managed by men. She lets Frankie decide when she will train, what her boxing name will be, and whether or not she will die. Wyman then moves on to the next women in the movie, Maggie’s mother. Maggie’s mother, Earline, is shown as a fat, lazy, inconsiderate, and a cheater. Wyman argues that this negatively displays fat people as awful people who are lazy and greedy. She also argues that Earline promotes the stereotype that one of the few options for women is to get fat and cheat the system, like how Earline is on welfare. Wyman then moves on to the final female character in the film, the dirty boxer Billie. Billie stops at nothing to get what she wants and has the attitude of a man. Wyman explains that this enforces the stereotype that women must break the rules and act like
Brick and Maggie’s marriage is like tin because it conducts heat from the fiery arguments around it. This roof of a marriage is also tin-like because it is flimsy, and does not protect the couple, beneath it. The marriage can be seen as a fragile union. She proclaims to Brick, “I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof.” Brick replies, “Then jump off.” Their marriage is hot because it is full of antagonism, animosity, and arguments usually incited by Brick, and it is also full of Maggie’s lust and sexual frustration. With that sexual frustration, one could say she is like a cat in heat. Each character alienates themselves in different ways and Maggie does so by lying (Sahu). Readers can assume that Maggie and Brick’s marriage is basically a lie, because Brick doesn’t really love Maggie, and Maggie made Brick marry her; Tin roofs seem far, far away from the lavish Pollitt mansion, and they remind readers of the miserable poverty away from which Maggie runs. She is looking at getting the mansion to secure herself under the non-tin roof of the Pollitt mansion. Maggie is also a fighter similarly to a stray cat. She states that her father was an alcoholic and that her mother made and sewed her clothes when she was growing up. When Maggie made her debut into southern society, she only had two dresses: a hand me down, and a home-made one by her
... plausible that Maggie was not a disappointment. Having suffered a terrible maternal rejection, Maggie, like by an unsatisfied desire for attachment. Maggie transfers to Tom much of the need to feel acceptance. Later she returns to this relationship,