Gender In Romeo, Juliet And William Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

In a patriarchal society, women are expected to conform to social restrictions by demonstrating reverence and obedience to the males in their lives. Shakespeare's tragic play, Romeo and Juliet, explores the effects of patriarchal authority exerted over women and how the patriarchal structure left no escape from it, save death. Through Juliet, Lady Capulet, and the Nurse, Shakespeare establishes a common understanding of this type of society, but illuminates three different reactions to the social oppression by portraying the responses of a passionate lover, an idyllic housewife, and an attendant.

Throughout Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, there is an overlaying presence of the typical roles that men and women were supposed to play. During Elizabethan times there was a major difference between the way men and women were supposed to act. Men typically were supposed to be masculine and powerful, and defend the honor. Women, on the other hand, were supposed to be subservient to their men in their lives and do as ever they wished. In Romeo and Juliet the typical gender roles that men and women were supposed to play had an influence on the fate of their lives.

Renowned feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey, explores how classic Hollywood cinema is shown through a masculine perspective that fetishisizes women as objects of desire. This perspective is also known as the “male gaze”, which creates a voyeuristic and scopophilic layer to the viewing of film. According to Mulvey, “in their 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 to-be-looked-at-ness.” One of the staples of classic Hollywood cinema is women consistently being put or made into a visually erotic role for both the male characters on screen, and the audience. This staple is of course found in the

Throughout William Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, there is an overlaying presence of the typical gender roles that men and women were supposed to enact. These were the very roles that influenced the fate of their lives. Romeo and Juliet defy the rules placed upon themselves in both subtle and extreme ways. Juliet’s conflicted adherence and rebellion puts her in the position of deciding protagonist as every decision Juliet makes has a domino effect on the other characters in the play.

In conclusion, the film She’s the Man shows the audience how gender gets represented in films. It shows the traditional femininity as well as the traditional masculinity. This illustrates that gender has impacts on power and gender relations to contribute gender inequality. Gender norms are enforced in films which maintain the power inequality difference between both genders. These issues confine the way modern films represent gender and gives a direct effect to the

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.

Stephan Babich 's blog post entitled, "The Fall of the Female Protagonist in Kids Movies", and Richard Lawson and Jen Doll 's article, "The Lies Hollywood Told Us: Love and Romance Edition”, are rhetorical arguments that attempt to support a notion about an explicit aspect of motion-picture theatre. In Babich 's post, he writes about how women are hardly ever the protagonist in kid 's movies. The goal of his argument is to persuade avid animation movie watchers that future films should have a female playing the leading role. The main idea of Lawrence and Doll 's article is to convince men and women who frequently watch romance movies that they should not expect the romantic situations and endings that Hollywood

In the media we see today, and movies that are continually coming out all have a central idea in common. They all show and represent the idealistic perspective of male versus female in society. From cartoons to chick flicks to romances and comedies we notice identifiable differences and trends represented between the two genders. In the movie I watched, “Clueless,” there are many examples illustrating male superiority over female, ideas of what femininity should be, and female appeal towards the male figures in the film.

Patriarchy is described as a general structure where men hold the position of power over women. This could include being the head of the household, ‘upper level’ in the workplace, or leader in society. Cinema serves this patriarchal institution by constantly constructing ideological images of women. Since the beginning, women in film are “made to conform to the ideal image that the man has of them” (Smelik, 496). Essentially, Hollywood cinema is structured for the male audience, and therefore majority of films are classified as patriarchal. A lot has to do with how female characters are portrayed and if there is a male gaze in the film. Although Pan’s Labyrinth is constructed through the classic narrative mode, the film has a female lead and focuses on women. Del Toro demonstrates the female characters overcoming obstacles and stigmas. Ofelia and Mercedes are the two strong female protagonists who are good-natured and act to what they think is right, different from the passive or aggressive protagonists found in traditional fairytales. So, how do these two women subvert and problematize the patriarchal stereotype? In the paper, I will analyze the mise-en-scene of the two different worlds and the inclusion of the male gaze to establish how these women subvert and problematize the patriarchal stereotype.

Women in classical Hollywood films has been historically often portrayed as from the typical patriarchal perspective. The traditional representative of women in cinema is often shown to be the ideal feminine character or as a character that strengthens the ideology of femininity in women and masculinity in men. Women in film have been objectified and cast aside as secondary characters that only relate to a male character while the ideal masculine character is often depicted by an attractive, strong male that is capable of solving any obstacle that comes his way. A “woman’s film”, identified by Molly Haskell, are melodramatic scenes that are supposed to appeal to women because of the implication that women are more emotional than men. It belittles the problems of females and shows them as insignificant little emotional problems that women are overly emotional for. These types of representation that are often found in traditional Hollywood films perpetuate the gender norms in cinema and reinforces the patriarchal view in which the man is superior to the woman. Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone (2010) subvert traditional representations of women in Hollywood film and the archetypal “women’s film” by portraying women in a different light compared to the traditional gender norm of a feminine woman and a masculine man. The film shows representation of women in a way that defies the traditional, patriarchal

The first research entitled “The representation of gender roles in the media - An analysis of gender discourse in Sex and the City movies ” was constructed by Therese Ottosson and Xin Cheng in 2012.

In the early 1990s Laura Mulvey’s thesis concerning the patriarchal structure of an active male gaze has influenced feminist film critiques and Hollywood. Mulvey’s project is to use psychoanalysis to uncover the power of patriarchy in Hollywood cinema. Patriarchal influence upon cinema is found primarily in pleasure (pleasure in looking) or as Freud’s has put it, scopophilia. Mulvey suggests that it may be possible to create a new for of cinema due to the fact that patriarchy power to control cinematic pleasure has revealed.

First and foremost appreciate your stand on the critics logics used on the essay. I also sensed, the reviewers of the three movies focusing on the gender precise critic style rather than centering on the visual, social and historical aspects of the contents. The makers of the movies have their own virtuous vision and concentration on the subject but also unintentionally inherit the gender characteristics of the society of the specific time.

Author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou once said, “How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”. When one thinks of comic books, it is very likely that the subjects that come to mind are Marvel’s Spiderman or DC’s Batman. Although comic books are stereotypically thought to be mainly about super heroes, there are a wide variety of subject matter they could be written about, such as romance. In the 1950s – 1960s, it was common for these romance comics to exploit the social norms of that time and emphasized the subject of gender roles. While the men in comic books were usually illustrated in a brave heroic manner, the women would be portrayed to be what would now be considered a stereotypical “trophy wife”. As a young child reading these comics and taking in these images, they are slowly molding their ideals to believe that what they are reading and seeing is what is accepted and normal in their society. By coding gender norms into the texts, authors are helping mold the ideology of its readers to believe that it is acceptable for both genders to follow specific rules that accommodate to the believed social norms of the time.

Filmmakers use traditional gender stereotypes to produce characters audiences can easily identify with by portraying conventional images of a person with identifiable characteristics. In previous years, the dominant representation of a women in film has been the passive, subjugated protagonist. However, through the development of female empowerment and added feminist representations of film, the female heroine transformed to become strong and independent women in her own right, as an individual character.