Film Review : Blood Diamond

Hollywood is a very powerful modern day institution, where a star's image can characterize, shape and circulate societal myths and ideologies. The construction of a star's image as a commodity of their societal myths and ideologies has the extraordinary power to exert messages so that even the smallest details become significant yet not overtly obvious. How a star's image is produced and then consumed can justify a society's relationship with that image and therefore aid in explaining the social construction of what society deems as their 'reality'. A star's image is created through a range of representations churned out by Hollywood. Capitalism from the commercialization of these images has made Hollywood the dominant force it is

Today, Film and Television are among the most internationally supported commodities. Financially, their contributions are enormous: both industries are responsible for the circulation of billions of dollars each year. Since their respective explosions into the new media markets during the mid-twentieth century, film and television have produced consistently growing numbers of viewers and critics alike. Sparking debate over the nature of their viewing, film and television are now being questioned in social, political, and moral arenas for their potential impact on an audience. Critics claim that watching films or television is a passive activity in which the viewer becomes subconsciously

Feminists that approach analyzing popular culture proceed from a variety of theoretical positions that carry with them a deeper social analysis and political agenda. Popular culture has been a critical part of feminist analysis. “Cultural politics are crucially important to feminism because they involve struggles over meaning” (Storey, Intro 136). Analyzing a piece of pop culture through a feminist viewpoint, whether it be a music video or any sort of media, opens up a broader discussion about the structure of our patriarchal society and the ways in which politics are constantly portrayed and

We see clearly in the movie how the factors of production is used: land, labour, and entrepreneurship. Land is the resource where diamonds are found, and in Blood Diamond we see how the RUF uses a form of alluvial mining and open pit mining on the land. The men would find the diamonds by digging and shoveling in rocks that are eroded by rivers and streams. The result of this is disastrous to the land because of the enormous amount of soil that is removed to obtain the diamond. Also wasted rocks from the mining can leak harmful substances back into the water. Blood Diamond did an admirable job at depicting the realities of how

As explained in Judith Lorber’s excerpt from “‘Night To His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender”, gender is a socially constructed concept that everyone unconsciously adheres to (Lorber). As a socially constructed concept, representations of gender roles can reinforce or challenge the stereotypical images. In Killing Us Softly 4, Jean Kilbourne analyzed the advertisement industry’s representation of women and argued that the media plays a huge role in shaping gender formations (Kilbourne). Although objectification of women is still a prevalent issue, Kilbourne acknowledged that there are efforts nowadays that challenges the unrealistic representations of women and femininity (Kilbourne). Inspired partly by Killing Us Softly 4, the project is my way to reflect on how the Disney movies I had watched as I grow up represented gender.

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. Today, contemporary audiences and critics have become preoccupied with the role the cinema plays in shaping social values, institutions, and attitudes. American cinema has become narrowly focused on images of violent women, female sexuality, the portrayal of the “weaker sex” and subversively portraying women

Today’s filmmakers have three areas to focus on: the event or theme of the film, the audience who will be watching the film, and lastly, the individual characters and the roles they play and how they are portrayed and interpreted. Many of these films bottom line objectives are to focus on the “erotic needs of the male ego.” The focus on fetishistic scopophilia tend to slant the view such that we see the world as being dominated by men and that woman are

Blood Diamond is a 2006 film. Directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou. The movie is about diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies across the world. Blood Diamond is an adventure, drama and thriller type of movie. The movie is not based on book but is based on the real life happenings in Sierra Leone. Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz, Charles Leavitt and C. Gaby Mitchell are the writers of the movie and is directed by Edward Zwick.

David Archer illustrates the government in its greatest moments and downfalls. His experiences and sufferings corrupted him and turned him into a cynical self-important person he is at the start of the movie. In his journey to find the diamonds, he eventually redeems himself. He views the cycle of the blood diamonds as a never-ending cycle fuelled by the shady characters behind the government, the diamond business, and the very people who unknowingly purchase these diamonds.

The structural inequality of the film industry reinforces social norms through the development of films that exemplify gender inequality. As of 2013, 30.8 percent of speaking roles belong to women, 28.8 percent of women wore sexually revealing clothing, and 26.2 percent of women got partially naked in the top 500 films in the past decade (New York Film Academy 2013). These inequalities articulate themselves into various marketable film archetypes that have proven to sell, despite being based upon societally constructed gender roles and painting women in a negative light (Mantel 1990: 173-183).

Until 1974, Angola had been a colony under Portuguese jurisdiction since 1576. “The combined forces of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), and the National Union for the Total Independence succeeded in their struggle in removing the Portuguese colonial government in April, 1974”[1]. A bloody transitional period ensued throughout the next year, where a struggle for control of Angola’s government erupted between these three groups. The FNLA quickly disappeared from the scene, and the main battle for power evolved between the MPLA under Jose dos Santos and UNITA under Dr. Jonas Savimbi.

The movie "Blood Diamond" was released in 2006 and featured Leonardo Di Caprio as an arms smuggler whose main goal is to obtain a seemingly priceless diamond from a villager during the civil war in Sierra Leone. The film, although it has been called mild in comparison to reality, depicts the brutality that inhabitants of diamond villages were subjected to. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, and won numerous other awards.

Durkheim writes that education of youth cannot be taught by the family nor the state because they are either too distant or too close to understand the child, therefore, there needs to be an institution located in between the two (Durkheim, 1991, 193). This institution is school (Durkheim, 1991, 191). School is one of the only places where social life is prevalent (Durkheim, 1991, 192). Secondary institutions like school aims to aid children in internalizing hegemonic ideals of the group (Durkheim, 1991, 192). The cinematic production “Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood, and Corporate Power” demonstrates this by showing how mediums like Disney movies teaches dominant ideologies of society. For instance, when looking at gender representations of females in these types of films, the ideologies implemented in this film is that girl’s appearance will get them what they want or that they need to be saved (Mickey Mouse Monopoly, 2001). These ideologies are internalized by youth without them noticing. Girls and boys will play with one another, and the former will play the role of the victim waiting to be saved by the latter (Mickey Mouse Monopoly, 2001). This contemporary examples signifies that secondary institutions has moved far beyond school and that education can be done through mass media. Interestingly, Mary Wollstonecraft (1993) states that women are taught to care for their appearances and

Since its humble beginnings in the later years of the nineteenth century, film has undergone many changes. One thing that has never changed is the filmmaker’s interest in representing society in the present day. For better or worse, film has a habit of showing the world just what it values the most. In recent years, scholars have begun to pay attention to what kinds of ideas films are portraying (Stern, Steven E. and Handel, 284). Alarmingly, viewers, especially young women, are increasingly influenced by the lifestyle choices and attitudes that they learn from watching these films (Steele, 331). An example of this can be seen in a popular trope of the “romantic comedy” genre in this day and age: the powerful man doing something to help, or “save” the less powerful woman, representing a troubling “sexual double standard” (Smith, Stacy L, Pieper, Granados, Choueiti, 783).

The BBFC has commissioned me to undertake research as part of a project to ascertain to what degree films can be regarded as powerful within contemporary society. In this assignment, I will comprehensively explain the relationship between audiences and films with well explained examples. I refer to the different sectors relating to the topic that include the following: