For a long time, women were not allowed to be in film due to preconceived notions about it not being decent for a woman to do. After 1661, when they were allowed to act, women faced an extreme amount of sexual pressure from their superiors who attempted to completely control the actresses they had under gruelling contracts in Old Hollywood. Being a woman in Hollywood meant pain, and giving up much of their autonomy. Many of the horrible things done to these women went unpunished, resulting in them seeing their assailants constantly. It was a fact of being in Hollywood. Actresses could not say no, and if they did, they were silenced. Old Hollywood was controlled by those who owned it, which were five major companies. The companies, Metro Goldwyn …show more content…
How this control was exercised over the actors was through their incredibly specific contracts. They could not disobey their company. The contracts were usually about 4-7 years long, but it meant that the actor could not work for any other company while on contract. With permission, they could be borrowed for a project, but it had to be approved. If it was, then they had to do it. There was no option to say no to a role, and if you attempted it, you would be fired or suspended. Bette Davis was suspended from Warner Bros. for this. Sometimes, movies would be selected for actors to make them fail; if the heads wanted them out of their contract, they would tank their careers so no one else would sign them. Women were made to dye their hair, and some were even made to get plastic surgery to appeal to their studios. Their studios created images for the actresses, Judy Garlands was the girl next door, and Marilyn Monroe was a sex symbol. They had to act like their images in front of the press or face punishment, and the press was everywhere. As a part of this image, sometimes who they were dating was simply a concoction of their studio. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney were made to act like a couple to promote their movies together, and even some marriages were forced. LGBTQ actors were married to women to make sure no one would know. Some marriages, like William Powell and Jean Harlow, were disallowed by the companies (MGM in this case) because of worry that Harlow would lose her sex appeal. These women were not allowed to get pregnant during their contracted period, and if they did they were expected to get an abortion. Even getting time off for weddings is a battle. When Garland married David Rose, she was made to return to work 24 hours later because MGM did not approve. Even sick days were punishable, and the cost of the lost progress would come out of the actors'
Hollywood is a master of revisionist history, especially when that history is its own. One of the defining moments in the histories of both Hollywood and America was the series of Congressional hearings held by the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, and led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the late 1940′s and early 1950′s in order to ostensibly eliminate Communism from the United States. Hollywood was intimately involved in the HUAC hearings, and one of those targeted most viciously in the controversy was acclaimed film and theater director Elia Kazan.
Film making has gone through quite the substantial change since it’s initial coining just before the turn of the 19th century, and one would tend argue that the largest amount of this change has come quite recently or more so in the latter part of film’s history as a whole. One of the more prominent changes having taken place being the role of women in film. Once upon a time having a very set role in the industry, such as editing for example. To mention briefly the likes of Dede Allen, Verna Fields, Thelma Schoonmaker and so forth. Our female counterparts now occupy virtually every aspect of the film making industry that males do; and in many instances excel past us. Quite clearly this change has taken place behind the lens, but has it taken
MGM’s name was derived from the three subsumed companies: Goldwyn Pictures, Metro Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Productions (Hanson para 2). MGM was formed under the finance of Marcus Loew (Collins para 1). Marcus Loew merged Metro Pictures and Goldwyn Pictures on April 17, 1924. After he bought the two companies he went after Louis B. Mayer Productions; he bought the company for $75,000 (Hay 15). Louis B. Mayer was chosen to be the vice president-general manager of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (Collins para 1). The new studio resided in Culver City, California on Goldwyn Pictures’ old lot (Collins para 3).
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).
Women in Film as Portrayed in the Movie, Double Indemnity. Introduction American commercial cinema currently fuels many aspects of society. In the twenty-first century, it has become available, active force in the perception of gender relations in the United States. In the earlier part of this century filmmakers, as well as the public, did not necessarily view the female “media image” as an infrastructure of sex inequality.
The cold war was a dark time in Hollywood’s history. The growing paranoia of communism and the increasing power of Senator McCarthy resulted in the Hollywood Blacklist. The Hollywood Blacklist occurred when the House on Un-American Activities began targeting Hollywood screenwriters, actor, directors, and musicians suspected of involvement in the American Communist Party. These victims would be blacklisted, “barred from work on the basis of their alleged membership in or sympathy to the American Communist party.” (Wikipedia.org) These individuals would be questioned in court and if they refused to testify or give names of other alleged communist they would be further punished. They could even be imprisoned, as in the case of the Hollywood ten. The Hollywood Blacklist lasted until 1960 and it permanently damaged hundreds of victim’s lives.
Largely influenced by the French New Wave and other international film movements, many American filmmakers in the late 1960s to 1970s sought to revolutionize Hollywood cinema in a similar way. The New Hollywood movement, also referred to as the “American New Wave” and the “Hollywood Renaissance,” defied traditional Hollywood standards and practices in countless ways, creating a more innovative and artistic style of filmmaking. Due to the advent and popularity of television, significant decrease in movie theater attendance, rising production costs, and changing tastes of American audiences, particularly in the younger generation, Hollywood studios were in a state of financial disaster. Many studios thus hired a host of young filmmakers to revitalize the business, and let them experiment and have almost complete creative control over their films. In addition, the abandonment of the restrictive Motion Picture Production Code in 1967 and the subsequent adoption of the MPAA’s rating system in 1968 opened the door to an era of increased artistic freedom and expression.
Noted in Yvonne Tasker’s Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema, Goldie Hawn says this about women's role in the film business “There are only thee ages for women in Hollywood: Babe, District Attorney and Driving Miss Daisy” (1998, p. 3). While Haw...
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.
The depictions of women in films have changed in time with society to ensure the films popularity.
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 ...
During this time, women were introduced in a completely diverted way then a male actor. Women
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 ...
There was a lot that went wrong with my groups film. We started off with only three group members. I can’t say that the small group was the cause of all our issues because some great films have been made with tiny crews. If anything it was the people within the group (including me) that were the problem.
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...