Women and Film

L

Lucky Winner

New member
I am a media student doing a project on how women are portrayed in film and i need some views to add as my reseach.

Do you think that women are portrayed fairly in films?

Do you think that "feminist" films such as Thelma and Louise are a threat to masculinaty and that all women should be housewives or at least not the main character who has power.

In love stories do women get portrayed fairly as in they are usually the ones who have to wait around for the men.

In battles/fighting they are either kidknapped or have to sit on the sidelines waiting for the battle to be won by the men (wether this battle is metaphorical or phyical.)

also do you think that female directors portray women better, such as Sofia Coppola? or are women portrayed better when it is written by a women and directed by men, such as Bridget Jones' Diary, written by Helen Fielding

Thank you
 
It's a sad fact of life that the lack of imagination in most, usually male, scriptwriters means that women in most mainstream movies are there to fall over at the critical moment to make things even more difficult for the supposed hero.
I think most screenwriters just don't know what to do with women in movies.
At a tangent, I know everyone is supposed to be impressed with RZ's accent in Bridget Jones, but in the little I could stand to watch she appeared to have been dubbed anyway, either using her voice or someone else's. :)
 
I don't have much to say, but I'd just like to point out that Tomb Raider and Charlies Angels and the such like are not feminist films in any way.... writing about that may get you marks. (they are presented as sex objects.... not that people mind)
 
thanks for your reply guys.

films like tomb raider and charlies angels are "action films." they portray women as sex objects but they are also trying to show strong women, as does the recent "King Arthur." do you think that these films convey a positive message to be strong and powerful or do you think that only men like these films to watch the women wearing hardly anything and to look at them as sex object?

personally i dont know many women who like these types of films, as they dont "really" portray real women.

also could anyone mention who is there favourite female role in a film, and why!

thanks again
 
Just a few points:

- I don't think Thelma & Louise is a feminist film, largely due to the ending.

- I do think female directors are usually better at portraying women, and female writers, for obvious reasons.

- I agree with you about action heroines - I don't think any women truly identify with them when they are portrayed so one-dimensionally.
 
thelma and louise wasnt written as a feminist film, but became one. the ending is a feminist statement because they have to keep travelling...(to there death or do they keep going? we dont see them land...), because there is no place for them in this male dominated world anymore they have had no restraints and are not going to begin then, and they know that for the rest of their lives they would be more restrained than before (prision). they had nothing to live for so needed to keep going to keep their freedom. notice how all the police are men and how the only other women they really meet is the waitress who is in the same situation as Louise at the beginning.

thanks for your views anyways! :)
 
It's open to interpretation though - not all viewers see it as a feminist statement. I haven't seen the film for a while but, although we don't see them land at the end, I seem to remember we've seen the terrain and therefore know that they are not going to make the jump. Therefore, this surely can't be a positive message - ie prison or death.
 
Since when did a feminist statement mean that the film has to have a positive message?

and the line "lets keep going" I believe means instead of being locked up, lets be free...

the fact they live or not is of inconsequence, they've been imprisioned by life (metaphorically) and they're not about to be locked away again... to be dead is to be free.
 
Check this out:

http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html

It explains the film noir genre in a nutshell. The leading lady in such films was dubbed the femme fatale; she was usually strong, seductive and manipulative.

This type of female character has been much discussed in courses on film theory, mostly because she doesn't conform to the leading lady stereotype (especially for the major time period of noir films, the 1940s) and there is endless debate about whether she represents a "strong" woman and whether the fact that she is invariably on the road to self-destruction is a good or bad thing.

The best modern version of the femme fatale that I can think of is Linda Fiorentino in "The Last Seduction". It's a role an actress can really get her teeth into and it's a million miles away from the "strong" female type as portrayed, say, by Julia Roberts in "Erin Brockovich".

Another good discussion point of the role of the "strong" female type is whether being strong means acting like a man, e.g. being an action hero like Lara Croft in Tomb Raider or Ellen Ripley in the Alien films, or does strong mean standing up for yourself and not being pushed around because you're a woman, like the aforementioned Erin Brockovich or Meryl Streep's Karen Silkwood.

The book "Working Girls" is a good examination of women in film.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...9553/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_10_4/202-8420344-4602227
 
I think women have to decide what they are first outside the film world, before asking such a question. I personally think it's down to ones own prejudice, as to whether or not gender matters in most films. Saddly enough, I think the most fair representation of women, would be one that women themselves would seem to line-up against.Talking about action movies, well all action movies are exploitation movies of some sort, so I'm not sure they really count in such a discussion. As for Thelma and Louise. I watched it, it didn't threaten me..heh


Female writers- well sex in the city is the most sexist piece of TV done ever(sexist towarRAB women), I think . And that was written mainly, by women.Unfortunately I don't think this has been picked up by most of its viewers.


Also , I think the fact that such a discussion even exists, backs up their own paranoia , pertaining to issues raised within it. And lets face it, there are more shit male roles than there are good ones too, so I think it's just a need to be the victim.
 
I think Hollywood has gone from women being beautiful and not a lot else, to being beautiful and strong and powerful with it, but there's still very few roles for more real characters played by women not considered attactive (and Kathy Bates gets most of them :rolleyes: ). You might think it's all to do with providing eye candy for the men to ogle at, but it's also to appeal to women. Why is it that very attractive women are chosen to model clothes to other women? It's not because of men exploiting them, it's because that's what works, it's what women identify with and want to be.

This isn't a gender thing either, as it seems increasingly male actors are judged on looks over talent too - just look at your average US TV show and count the ugly people. :rolleyes:
 
You could also talk about these two great female directors:

Agnieszka Holland and Kathryn Bigelow. Bigelow makes big action films and until recently I didn't realize that she directed: "K-19: The Widowmaker". You could talk about how her action films are different from say James Cameron's.

Holland makes films in many different countries and sometimes has a woman who is being taken advantage of. The woman usally doesn't get revenge or anything in the end.


Eric
http://www.fellinidoc.com
 
If you are looking for information on women in film then there are only two places you should be looking:

"Feminism and Film" by E. Ann Kaplan
"The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism & Psychoanalysis" by Barbara Creed

Both are excellent books for studying feminist theories: I have used both in essays before myself - they should be fairly easy to find in most learning-based libraries (colleges, universities, etc).
 
I'd recommend "Men, Women and Chainsaws" by Carol Clover. It sees movies with strong female leaRAB, like "Aliens" and "Thelma and Louise", as mainstream versions of video nasties like "I Spit on your Grave" or "Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

The author argues that the predominantly male audience is able to relate to the lead female both when she is victim and when she is victor. In other worRAB, the viewing experience of seeing a woman beaten is masochistic rather than sadistic.
 
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