Gender Roles In The Film 'The Silence Of The Lambs'

When J. Edgar Hoover took over the Bureau in 1924, he inherited two female agents: Jessie B. Duckstein and Alaska P. Davidson, who both resigned within a few months as part of the Bureau’s reduction of force. In 1972, JoAnne Misko and Susan Malone were the first two women to enter the FBI Academy. In 1978, Special Agent Christine Karpoch (Jung) would become the first female firearms instructor—and she would shoot the coveted “possible,” a perfect score on the FBI’s Practical Pistol Range. In 1990, Special Agents Susan Sprengel and Helen Bachor were sent to London and Montevideo, Uruguay to serve as the FBI’s first female assistant legal attachés. In 2001, Special Agent Kathleen McChesney became the first woman

Wilder highlights the difference in power present in Hollywood between men and women by employing both the young writer Betty and Norma, the silent film star who “ used to be the biggest star of them all”. Primarily, the power imbalance between men and women in Hollywood is made evident through male’s treatment towards women working in the Hollywood world. Wilder embodies this through Betty Shafer. As in the exposition of the film, Sheldrake does not remember her name, calling her “Miss Kramer” instead. Through this, Wilder both portrays and criticizes the disrespect shown to women and the lack of power they hold in Hollywood compared to fellow men.

Picture books through descriptive language and symbolic illustrations can convey many meanings. In requiem for a beast the bull metaphorically represents many issues. On one level it represent anger, violence and hatred. On another level it conveys a road to redemption. The beast also embodies the boys fathers demons from his past mistakes and can illustrate a theme of memories and how they can help us deal with our demons.

In the thirteenth-century French romance, Silence, translated by Sarah Roche-Mahdi, the titular character faces challenges because of her gender-identity for no reasons of her own. Silence is unable to achieve knighthood as long as she is a woman. The French romance was written to test the boundaries of this genre, and proved that in the end, the female archetype found so often in Arthurian literature will always remain the same.

Gender roles have been, and unfortunately still are, evident in our everyday lives for quite sometime. Women are often portrayed as sexual objects, or delicate individuals; a body with no brain or strength. These traits are easily found within many novels and movies- old and new. In Alfred Hitchcock’s films, Rear Window and Strangers on a Train, Hitchcock begins his films representing women with the same characteristics as stated above. They are very stylish, attractive and presented as second-class individuals to males. But after examining these two films, Hitchcock does something that many directors in his time would not have dared to do. By making the women the heroine and arguably the protagonist of the storyline, Hitchcock proves to

The criminal justice system is a male dominated occupation. For many years women have tried to break down the barrier and some have succeeded. But unlike men, women have to fight to be respected and to be heard. There has always been a gender bias. Women have decided to work outside the home and “move in” on careers that were specified as male professions. Females unfortunately have to

The film sets a certain viewpoint on gender. It labels men and woman a certain way. Women in the film are set to be delicate and sex-driven. Men are set to be tough, brutal, workers. Marla was played by a thin, attractive, petite actress. Her clothes were always feminine. Tyler was played by a fit, muscled man that fit society's definition of attractive. The movie made it clear that men are masculine, and women are feminine. Basow said, “Gender is constructed by every socializing agent and force in society: parents, teachers, the media,

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, he introduces a character known as the Wife of Bath. It is her turn to tell the stories, and her tale begins discussing her past marriages in the prologue. Married five times, the Wife of Bath tells us about her own marital issues, and the way she was able to manipulate the gender roles to her own advantage. As interesting of a character as she is, I find Chaucer created the Wife of Bath to deliberately introduce the issues gender roles play in our society. I believe that the role the of the Wife of Bath in the tale was purposely written by Chaucer to twist the traditional gender roles of the time, satirizing how gender plays in society.

Gender inequality still plays a huge role in today’s society. Women comprise only a small percentage of the local law enforcement agencies across the nation. Women have been a part of law enforcement since the 20th century but have only been noticed within the last 40 years. Back in the 1970’s women rarely held positions in law enforcement and if they did it was mainly clerical/desk positions. Even though the amount of women in law enforcement today has increased, women still only make up roughly around 13 percent of the law enforcement work force (Public). Women can make such an impact in the Law Enforcement field if given a fair chance but they may face many problems when doing so. Some say that women don’t belong, while others suggest

Americans think that they have come a long way since a gap of equality between men and women existed. Because of this progress, many people make the assumption that there is no inequality left in the United States and women have the same opportunities as men. Yes, it is true that the American society has come from one of inequality to that one that is more equal. Yes Americans have come a long way, but unfortunately women are still not equal to their male counterparts. This inequality towards women is evident within several different aspects in life, ranging from politics, gender roles, marriage, society as a whole and, especially, women in the Police Force. The history of women in the criminal justice system as police officers has been

Theorist, E. Ann Kaplan in her work, “Is the Gaze Male?”, analyses the portrayal of women in film using Laura Mulvey’s “Gaze’ theory and psychoanalysis. In addition, Kaplan states that historically, females have been the central focus on only the melodrama genre, and while melodrama exposes the constraints and limitations that the family places on women, at the same time, gets women to accept those constraints as inevitable and normal. Kaplan argues that our culture is deeply rooted in “masculine” and “feminine, and dominance-submission patterns. In the end, she concludes that the exclusion from male culture provides an avenue to affect change in film and society. I partially agree with Kaplan that some women take pleasure from being the object of the male gaze as I think that is not entirely true, and specifically, this generalization does not apply to lesbians.

In the Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad they use many different social constructs throughout the story. Among these are family, gender, economics, education and gender, but the one that sticks out the most is gender. From the beginning all the way to the end there is always something about gender and how it pretty much controls everything that has happen or defines the position or the job of a character. Also it separates people and you notice how one race is treated different than the other. At the start of the story when they first entered to Congo River which is in Africa you notice they use the word savage a lot.

When considering Mulvey’s theory of the “male gaze” and patriarchal domination, this film clearly demonstrates this notion. While the film opens with the main protagonist, Nola Darling, defending her actions to what seems to be a documentary camera crew. As the film progresses, the male counterparts are afforded more instances of “gaze” than Nola Darling is. Viewers are often subjected to watching the men watch Nola. When the audience does watch Nola’s “gaze” it is when she is discussing things with the camera crew. In a reading of the film, viewers are looking through male subjects “gaze” more often than that of Nola, proving Mulvey’s theory in this

What if you were born into a world where you were told if you were a woman you had to stay home, cook, clean, and take care of the kids when you got older. If you were a man you had to go out and work; would you be satisfied with that? In the short story “Lamb to Slaughter” by Roald Dahl the story is based a lot off of specific gender roles in the 1950’s. The story is all about how women are the ones who stay home all day and the man goes out and works and brings home the money which ties into the main conflict of the story. Mary Maloney is a conniving criminal aware of and responsible for her lawless action due to her knowledge of being a detective’s wife. Mary Maloney would react to make sure it was not her who committed the crime, she would convince the police to eat the murder weapon, and to have a drink with her to make things seem like they were all better.

The presentation of women on screen is another highlighted issue in many of the gathered sources. Because men were ultimately in control of what went on the screen much of what the audience perceived were women from the male imagination or fantasy. Bernard Beck elaborates in his article Where the Boys Are: The Contender and other Movies about Women in a Man’s World that, “…women have been used to dress up a male story or motivate a male character” (Beck 15). Women were often insignificant and trivial characters. Although, Kathe Davis disagrees to a point. In her article, Davis offers a dissonant opinion to the fore-mentioned insignificance of the female character. She instead describes many female characters as “predators,” and analyzes the roles of lead women in three prominent films of the nineteenth century. In each film, she finds parallels and similarities of cases of “female emasculation” and instances where “women are turned into objects of male desire” (Davis 47-48). Davis does not perceive female characters as being insignificant, just stripped of their power and misrepresented. She discusses how females of power are often portrayed as crazy