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Masculinity and stereotypes in movies
Masculinity and stereotypes in movies
Masculinity and stereotypes in movies
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Roman Polanski's Repulsion
Analysis of an aspect of visual form in the film ‘Repulsion’ In the 1964/65 film ‘Repulsion’ by Roman Polanski, the story is about the conflict between reality and fantasy or sanity and insanity inside the main character’s mind – Carol played by Catherine Deneuve. Therefore the narrative technique of symbolism is used to display visually to the film’s audience what happens to Carol’s mind. In this particular instance, the degeneration of Carol’s state of mind is symbolised.
Carol’s state of mind degenerates, or breaks down because of her repulsion of masculinity in a sexual context. Through Carol’s eyes, we see masculinity as being aggressive, obsessive, crude/sexually suggestive, rapacious and sinister, and although these are masculine traits, they are not a full representation of males/masculinity in society. Therefore one can see that Carol has misunderstood and become very wary of men. She is a very pretty woman and the film uses her to display an almost stereotypical femininity – weak/ fragile and delicately featured – ironically, the complete opposite to Carol’s own view of men. And so, overall, the film basically represents male domination and female vulnerability. Also to highlight the difference between Carol’s reactions to men and her reactions to women, the writer has chosen to place her character in a beauty parlour. This is used to represent a pleasant but superficial world against a nasty one – through Carol’s eyes that is.
From the beginning, one can tell that there are going to be elements of surrealism in the film by the style in which the credits are run. These opening credits run generally upwards (I say generally as some of the credits are at angles – but still maintaining an ‘upward-ish’ direction) over an extreme close-up shot of Carol’s face, and also some credits finishing on-screen at her top eyelids whereas some finish by running off-screen. During the film, we see Carol go to work at the beauty parlour. By the camera-man shooting over her shoulder, a personal view of her life and how she sees life around her. If the camera was used as her eyes, it would have made these scenes too subjective and too unsubtle. We can therefore look at the same things as Carol, but for our own sakes, though this does leave a certain ambiguity. For example, when Carol walks to work, she looks at an empty, da...
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...late with the rotting rabbit and the cut-throat razor on it. This could symbolise that she is on the ‘razor’s edge’ and that it is rotting her mind away.
It is unclear why Carol has become repulsed by men and sex. It is suggested that it is to do with something or even someone in her past, e.g. she might have been sexually abused by an older person. Maybe that is why she is repulsed by the landlord and in her irrationality, she attacks him. She also regards the photo of her when she was young with happiness. That, along with the bells and the sound of girls running around dubbed over the film at that point, could suggest that she went to a convent school, which are all girls, and therefore makes her feel safe and protected, as the beauty parlour does. Carol’s neurosis of life might be that she see men as sexual objects only, not as real people, and so she is repulsed. Then one can ask, why is she repulsed by this? And the only possible answers are that she might have been abused in her childhood, or something else deep and psychological of a very sexual nature affected her back then. But it is extremely hard to say exactly what, since we are never shown any part of her past.
Bix Beiderbecke was born in early 1900s, grew up in the heart of America in a German-American family. Since he was young, he had the talent to pick out while perfectly well play any tune he had come across. He was a musical boy and often listened to New Orleans music that at the time was recorded on initial Dixieland jazz band that featured Nick La Rocca who at the time, was their main trumpet player. He also listened to Louis Armstrong as well as Emmett Hardy and other popular artists at the time on Mississippi banks. He owned a classical piano at his home (Collier, p. 3). He attended piano classes and
Though complex and brilliantly written for its time, the plot of Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo, is only half of the genius behind it. Alfred Hitchcock’s unique presence as an auteur is truly what sets his films apart. There is symmetry to his shots that give the film an artistic feel, as if each frame were a painting. Many times, within this symmetry, Hitchcock places the characters in the center of the frame; or if not centered, then balanced by whatever else is adding density to the shot. For example, as Madeline sits and looks at the painting in the museum, there is a balance within the frame. To counter-act her position to the right of the painting, Hitchcock puts a chair and another painting on the left side, which is visually pleasing to the eye of the audience. The use of red and green not only adds a visual effect as well, but later serves as a clue that Madeline is not actually dead, when the women who looks like her is wearing a green dress.
word “art” which may imply something about the materialistic world that she tries to be a part of. Interestingly, and perhaps most symbolic, is the fact that the lily is the “flower of death”, an outcome that her whirlwind, uptight, unrealistic life inevitably led her to.
Alfred Hitchcock’s film Shadow of a Doubt is a true masterpiece. Hitchcock brings the perfect mix of horror, suspense, and drama to a small American town. One of the scenes that exemplifies his masterful style takes place in a bar between the two main characters, Charlie Newton and her uncle Charlie. Hitchcock was quoted as saying that Shadow of a Doubt, “brought murder and violence back in the home, where it rightly belongs.” This quote, although humorous, reaffirms the main theme of the film: we find evil in the places we least expect it. Through careful analysis of the bar scene, we see how Hitchcock underlies and reinforces this theme through the setting, camera angles, and lighting.
There are four crucial scenes of this film in which Hitchcock shows a change in perspective and identity through the mise-en-scène. Hitchcock’s signature motifs, style, and themes are conveyed through the mise-en-scène.
Moreover, the woman in the ?eye of the Beholder? not only wanted beauty but she felt the need for acceptance. She was denied this when she was taken to a disability camp. It?s amazing how in the movie, people were separated and treated unequally because of their physical appearances, and as result, they could not share the same society. This is in fact is a metaphor for how discrimination was once in extreme existence in this society. For example, African Americans once had to use: different bathrooms, water fountains, and were even segregated to non-white school. They were even isolated to the worse parts of the cities.
Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren is one of the most intriguing and significant experimental films of the 1940’s. Maya Deren is a surrealist experimental filmmaker who explores themes like yearning, obsession, loss and mortality in her films. In Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren is highly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theory of expressing the realms of the subconscious mind through a dream. Meshes of the Afternoon, is a narration of her own experience with the subconscious mind that draws the viewers to experience the events being played out rather than just merely showing the film. I chose Maya Deren for my research because her intriguing sense gives viewers an enthralling experience by taking them to a different, semi-real world of the subconscious mind. Meshes of the Afternoon not only reveals Deren’s success in a male dominant arena, but also provides a sensational and escalating experience for the spectators.
The film Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) is an interesting film with many small details that help shape the film in to award winning masterpiece it is. The mise-en-scène is something that can go overlooked, but is very vital in understanding the meaning of the film. According to the book Film Art, mise-en-scène is all of the elements in front of the camera to be photographed, and because of that, this film technique is one that viewers notice most (p. 112). So this includes things like characters, props, nature and even behavior. Motifs and symbolism are prominent throughout the entire movie. They both help develop the plot either by continuously appearing throughout the film or by having a specific meaning that is a lot deeper than what it looks like on the surface. The mise-en-scène, especially motifs and symbolism, of Psycho plays a huge role in helping convey the meaning of the film.
Others could interpret the women allegorically by seeing the woman as the same woman behind the wallpaper. She is trapped under her duties and culture roles as a woman in the late 1800s, which is submissive and obedient to her husband’s authority with very light questioning of that authority. Charlotte wrote this after her ordeal of leaving her first marriage and doctor while being treated for depression. The correlation of being stuck and not knowing what to do while only having the option to react because you have been placed in a mental corner, is how I see the story and mental journey for Charlotte, as I see her as both the women in this story. This story could be interpreted as Charlotte showing her independence as a women being oppressed in the situation she has found herself in with her first marriage and recently becoming a mother who may have felt bound to a motherly roll the rest of her life. Charlotte seems, to me, to be a writer and working first, and wife and mother
...only known as a funeral flower. This again foreshadows the young bride’s death before her allowance of corruption. The mark on her forehead is a symbol of her mistake, a mistake she is never allowed to forget, this can be linked to the view that women are never allowed to forget a mistake made by them. Angela Carter again shows the position of women in society; once a mistake is made you are an outcast in society. This can also be linked to the biblical reference of Cane, ‘him who became an outcast’.
The link between expressionism and horror quickly became a dominant feature in many films and continues to be prominent in contemporary films mainly due to the German expressionist masterpiece Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari. Wiene’s 1920 Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari utilized a distinctive creepiness and the uncanny throughout the film that became one the most distinctive features of externalising inner mental and emotional states of protagonists through various expressionist methods. Its revolutionary and innovative new art was heavily influenced by the German state and its populace in conjunction with their experience of war; Caligari took a clear cue from what was happening in Germany at the time. It was this film that set cinematic conventions that still apply today, heavily influencing the later Hollywood film noir genre as well as the psychological thrillers that has lead several film audiences to engage with a film, its character, its plot and anticipate its outcome, only to question whether the entire movie was a dream, a story of a crazy man, or an elaborate role play. This concept of the familiar and the strange, the reality, the illusion and the dream developed in Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari, is once again present in Scorsese’s 2010 film Shutter Island. It is laced with influences from different films of the film noir and horror genre, and many themes that are directly linked to Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari shot 90 years prior.
One characteristic of melodrama is the "lavishly artificial and visually stylized scenery (Schatz 234) which is exploited in Magnificent Obsession. Numerous scenes take place in moving convertibles, where the motion of the car is out of synch with the motion of the scenery. Whenever possible, rooms have large picture windows showing magnificent, but obviously fake outdoor landscapes. At one point a scene on the lakeshore cuts directly from a shot of Helen (Jane Wyman) sitting in front of a real horizon to a close-up of her sitting in front of a brightly c...
As a woman Celie is expected to stay home and take care of things around the house. Celie's father puts her out because she was “a bad influence on his... other girl”. If Celie was the one daughter who was ruined he did not want his other girls turning out the same because they actually have “value” something. Celie is the only one that “can work like a man” because that's the only thing she is excelled in. Harpo, for example, beats Sofia only after his father implies that Sofia’s resistance makes Harpo less of a man. That is an example of sexsism because he feels as if he has to be more of a man and take control. Mr.___, also mistreats his family because that is the same thing his father used treat his family. “African American women’s experiences with pornoraphy, prostitution, and rape demonstrate how erotic power becomes commodified and exploited in social institutions”(Collins 167). Shug is viewed as the sexual attractive one. We start to see a sexual relationship developing between shug and celie. There is also a problem with the disruption of gender roles. Harpo's insecurity about his masculinity makes him lose power which eventually causes problems in his marriage. Shug is another fights sexsism by being extremely independent. Celia is pretty afraid to take control of her life and also afraid of men. Shug guided her telling her that she does have what it takes to gain her power back. Once Celia gains
...clear that she has some sort of problem with men as we can see throughout many of her short stories, and hence the title of her collection, Give Me Your Heart, which serves as a double entendre. Men have stolen her heart and she feels it’s right to seek revenge and take “his” heart away, representing all of the men who hurt her, however it can also be interpreted as a plea for someone to love her and to give her their heart romantically as well. She accomplishes her goal of portraying love on several different levels, from unconditional to vengeful to familial, and ties them all together to address the underlying issue that love and life aren’t always the way they seem—that we should try and transcend all the wicked and all the hate and all the negative emotion that goes on in our lives, but as Joyce Carol Oates clearly depicts, it won’t be easy in the slightest.
In conclusion, Shakespeare’s theme of each sonnet is divided in different ways. His expression of love is somewhat similar to both the young man’s relationship and the dark lady’s. The relationship alternates between the force of love, beauty, jealousy, time, and obligation. The youth shows his affection, but it seems to be false. Shakespeare uses figure of speech to compare ‘nature’ for the love he has for the “dark lady”. His initial feelings; lust and attraction is processed throughout.