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How can the theme of sexism be represented in film
Gender representation in cinema
Winston churchill's role in ww2
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Recommended: How can the theme of sexism be represented in film
In the past decade, there were a lot of people would like to explore about what is gender and how can gender connect with the film. Normally film is someway people could express their own idea of everything in life and use different methods to represent in film.( ) For example the film I would like to discuss here is The Darkest Hour(2017), which shows the culture and language in 1940 that filmmakers always be the masculinity and hardly talked about femininity.
Talking about the representation of gender, so what is exactly representation means? Stuart Hall argued that representation connects meaning and language to culture and it means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people.(
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At that age, hardly any women in Britain could play key roles in the film such as filmmakers and women who worked in film was still be spectacle.( ) Therefore, gender could be expressed as the patriarchy society. …show more content…
As Mike Figgis said Lighting is whatever you want it to be.( ) In The Darkest hour, the filmmaker used yellow light to express Elizabeth Layton, who was the last surviving personal secretary to have worked for Churchill during World War II, supported Churchill all the time as a sensual woman. And when King George VI meets up with Churchill in Palace, they were standing separately under two strong and distinct white lights so that can reflect their strong opposition or even in the same light, they were both standing on the edge of the place. Churchill dropped out of the royal study, and a strong white light hit him again. Leaving the field, he was headed for another, bigger battleground, the house of Commons. In history, Churchill was famous for his powerful speeches. Throughout the film, Churchill had four speeches, three of which were in the house of Commons, two of them at the venue, at the beginning of his presidency and when he was determined to fight. Churchill’s power was not secure. Therefore, the director deliberately arranged a light to cast a strong and isolated white light in the prime minister's position to highlight his solitary struggle. What’s more, When Churchill knew about the state of the war, he sat in a small stall in the light, smoking a cigar and grilling his face. Leighton, on behalf of the general public, encouraged Churchill to think about war from an emotional
Led by Laura Mulvey, feminist film critics have discussed the difficulty presented to female spectators by the controlling male gaze and narrative generally found in mainstream film, creating for female spectators a position that forces them into limited choices: "bisexual" identification with active male characters; identification with the passive, often victimized, female characters; or on occasion, identification with a "masculinized" active female character, who is generally punished for her unhealthy behavior. Before discussing recent improvements, it is important to note that a group of Classic Hollywood films regularly offered female spectators positive, female characters who were active in controlling narrative, gazing and desiring: the screwball comedy.
The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema - Phil Powrie, Ann Davies and Bruce Babington.
Today’s culture sees a gap between the male and female gender. This is evident in everything from the films we watch, music we listen to, and even in our everyday lives. Historically, this issue has seen an even larger gap, and can be observed in the films that were made during that time. Vertigo and Citizen Kane both show the objectification of women by controlling them, writing them in supportive roles, and placing their value in the way that they look.
These movies allowed female characters to embody all the contradictions that could make them a woman. They were portrayed as the “femme fatale” and also “mother,” the “seductress” and at the same time the “saint,” (Newsom, 2011). Female characters were multi-faceted during this time and had much more complexity and interesting qualities than in the movies we watch today. Today, only 16% of protagonists in movies are female, and the portrayal of these women is one of sexualization and dependence rather than complexity (Newsom, 2011).
In the thirty years since its release, Alien has become a film of various debates amongst film theorists. Academic analyses of the film draw attention to many differing themes, most popularly with feminism. Most critiques, academic and otherwise, ultimately conclude that Alien is a feminist film because of its representation of the workplace as a home to equality and a place where traditional gender roles have been obliterated. What is ultimately revealed by Alien is the anxiety of men during the era of second-wave feminism in which the film was produced. This film provides a step forward for feminists, but imagines men taking two steps back in equality.
Westford, Massachusetts: The Murray Printing Company. Company, 1978 Kulik, Sheila F. Home Page. 17 Feb. 2000 http://www.feminist.com/femfilm.html. Rosenberg, Jan. “Feminism in Film.”
Students of feminisms and masculinities can benefit from this article and general people can also enjoy reading it. I could relate this article to the concept of movies today, how we as an audience perceive it, also various aspects the actor’s role (acting), the use of sound, lighting, camera movement, all plays a major role in explaining what exactly the movie is about. And the author in his article speaks about various types of movies and the role of male heroes and the changes that occur later on. Overall the article is useful and interesting as the increasing focus is on masculinity,
Gender and the portrayal of gender roles in a film is an intriguing topic. It is interesting to uncover the way women have been idealized in our films, which mirrors the sentiments of the society of that period in time. Consequently, the thesis of this essay is a feminist approach that seeks to compare and contrast the gender roles of two films. The selected films are A few Good Men and Some Like it Hot.
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
Williams, Linda. "Film Bodies: Genre, Gender and Excess." Braudy and Cohen (1991 / 2004): 727-41. Print.
In the 1930s, aspects of pre-feminism in Hollywood movies were rampant (Hugel 1). This helps to explain why women were given limited roles in the movies. The women were portrayed as symbols of love. The women never participated in other active roles. Because they were weak creatures that could not perform other challenging roles in the society (Horowitz 41). The women were also presented as victims of the environment in which they lived.
Also, the film revealed women empowerment and how superior they can be compared to men. While demonstrating sexual objectification, empowerment, there was also sexual exploitation of the women, shown through the film. Throughout this essay, gender based issues that were associated with the film character will be demonstrated while connecting to the real world and popular culture.
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 ...
Women have made progress in the film industry in terms of the type of role they play in action films, although they are still portrayed as sex objects. The beginning of “a new type of female character” (Hirschman, 1993, pg. 41-47) in the world of action films began in 1976 with Sigourney Weaver, who played the leading role in the blockbuster film ‘Aliens’ as Lt. Ellen Ripley. She was the captain of her own spaceship, plus she was the one who gave out all the orders. Until then, men had always been the ones giving the orders; to see a woman in that type of role was outlandish. This was an astonishing change for the American industry of film. Sometime later, in 1984, Linda Hamilton starred in ‘The Terminator’, a film where she was not the leading character, but a strong female character as Sarah Connor. She had a combination of masculine and feminine qualities as “an androgynous superwoman, resourceful, competent and courageous, while at the same time caring, sensitive and intuitive” (Hirschman, 1993, pg. 41-47). These changes made in action films for female’s roles stirred up a lot of excitement in the “Western society” (Starlet, 2007). The demand for strong female characters in action films grew to a new high when Angelina Jolie starred in ‘Tomb Raider’ in 2001 and then in the sequel, ‘Tomb Raider II: The Cradle of Life’ in 2003 as Lara Croft. Her strong female character was not only masculine, but was also portrayed as a sex object. Most often, strong women in these types of films tend to fight without even gaining a mark. At the end of each fight, her hair and makeup would always be perfect. The female characters in these action films, whether their role was as the lead character or a supporting character, had similar aspects. I...