Intersectional Feminism And Hollywood Cinema

Women’s roles in movies have changed dramatically throughout the years. As a result of the changing societal norms, women have experienced more transition in their roles than any other class. During the period of classical Hollywood cinema, both society and the film industry preached that women should be dependent on men and remain in home in order to guarantee stability in the community and the family. Women did not have predominated roles in movies such as being the heroin. The 1940’s film Gilda wasn’t an exception. In Gilda, the female character mainly had two different stereotypes. The female character was first stereotyped as a sex object and the second stereotyped as a scorned woman who has to be punished.

In today’s world, the exchange of information between individuals is largely based on the media alone. Conversations are held through social media sites, the news channels become the deliverers of new waves of specifically chosen stories, and the rest of the media effects the subconscious of the society. Movies, television shows, and “general” knowledge contribute to the rest of the mass media that affects the minds of people. The subconscious of the people can form the characteristics of the young and solidify ideas within the older population. The problem of the current society is that the subconscious ideas transferred to the media is particularly in the favor of Caucasians. This excludes people of African descent, Latinos, Asians, and other recognizably new minorities such as transgender. The overall effect of this subconscious problem is not very measurably but it can have disastrous consequences within each respective culture. Among all the minorities listed, African Americans and people of African descent have a tendency to be the most often misrepresented.

The Miss Representation documentary film by Jennifer Newsom explores how media contributes to the under-representation of women in influential positions. This message is portrayed by delivering content through media and technology as well as advertising partial and/or often degrading interpretations of women. The consequences are becoming more and more dreadful. In today’s world, composed of a million stations, people will tend to do more and more shocking things to break through the crowds. They resort to violent, sexually offensive, or demeaning images. Jean Kilbourne, EdD, filmmaker, Killing Us Softly Author and Senior Scholar Wellesley Center’s for Women states, that “it creates a climate in which

Stereotypes in our society are not uncommon. We come across them every day without realizing it. It is in our human nature to create expectations of the people around us, which could be based upon their ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender or other factors. Stereotypes help us categorize a vast group of people that we may not know anything about, to think that they are smaller and less intimidating. I believe that the blame for these cookie-cutter patterns can lead directly back to the media in every sense of the word. Media is all around us, and affects our opinions and ability to think for ourselves. Whether it’s the latest box office hit or the headlining news, we are getting assumptions from every point of view, which makes it

In the class psychology of women, the class viewed the film Makers Project: Women Who Make America. The film supplied background information about how women were treated prior to the Women’s Movement, as well as during the Women’s Movement, and after. As a result of the Women’s Movement there has been a vast amount of changes impacting society.

In the contemporary context, when one tries to analyze the idea about women from previous decades being an audience and not the crew of a film industry, one wants to question and ask: why were women only an audience or, actors? Maybe there were some culturally held values and beliefs with respect to their contexts? However, with the passage of time, cultural and professional values improved. Technology began to improve and so did the mind-set of professional groups along with the audiences. Film industry has had an impression of providing first entertainment and, second education. Hence those working for the films might have had hurdles in choosing working for films as their career or vocation. At different times in the history, women in different cultural contexts have worked for certain film industries. I want to explore the idea about women and their talent in the film industry. Since I am primarily a viewer of the Bollywood industry and an occasional viewer of the Hollywood cinema, I want to compare the cultural and professional values of those who work for films in different settings. Since the course readings provided information with respect to certain cinema contexts, I wanted to add some ideas providing a comparative analysis of the women talent in diverse film settings.

Media researcher Johanna Blakley made an argument that “social media and the end of gender”. She believes that social media is going to help people dismantle some of the silly and demeaning stereotypes that we see in media and advertising about gender. Now many media companies use very rigid segmentation methods to label to understand their audiences. They believe that the people fall within a certain demographic category are predictable in certain ways. For example, married people will have certain tastes. It is great that the people’s taste is being respected in a way that it hasn’t been before. The people aggregate online is based on the things they love instead of age, gender or income. Also, sharing interests and values are a far more powerful aggregator of human beings than demographic categories. In addition, it turns out that women are driving the social media revolution. She showed some worldwide statistic to illustrate that women outnumber men in their use of social networking technologies in every single age category. It will make the media

Both films reflects how slavery impacted black women’s sexuality and continues to. Throughout Hollywood’s film history, there were stereotypical images of black women’s identity where they were not represented as desirable. The watermelon woman redefines a the manny character, but it also gives audience a new way of looking at black women’s sexual identity. The films fills a gap of black female lesbian missing history in New Queer Cinema and allows black women to identify with someone who share the same lesbian desire. Similarly, the color purple portrays two characters who finds a way to find their sexuality through an oppressed society. It reflects the 21st century where there are many individuals that are still in the closet and needs an

The Screwball comedy is a film genre that found its way onto the screens in the early 1930s and lasted till the early 1940s. They were a consequence of the newly adapted censorship law in 1934 that restricted addressing adult content on screen. They therefore incorporated more comedic and creative ways of symbolizing topics such as sex and homosexuality. Screwball comedies were mainly based on plots that had conflict between social classes as their many premise and always had a happy ending which was almost always marriage. This consistent maintenance of the status quo of marriage is a major aspect of feminism depicted in screwball comedies (Heather 26). While advocating for marriage, screwball comedies highlighted the shift in the

Since the 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone, wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but leading roles are also held by older and unattractive women. In this paper I will show the variations and growth of women’s roles in movies from the 1940’s though the 1990’s.

There are many portraits of women have been put on the screen, but most of them are busy dealing with relationships with men, gossiping about people, and being a hero, or someone’s girlfriend. When men dominate mainstream movies release, these are most what women characters expected to be in the movies. Nominated for seven Academy awards in 2016, and won more than 40 awards worldwide, Carol is a film set in New York City during the early 1950s and tells a romantic love story between two women. Even though this is a lesbian scenario, I prefer to say that this is a movie with two women characters and their attitudes towards men’s oppression. Carol, the awakening of feminism.

The way that colonised women are presented in the Hollywood film is something that Kaplan believes to be heavily associated with the way that imperial travellers originally approached them. She states: “Cinema was invented at the height of colonialism at the end of the nineteenth century. The camera was crucial as a machine used by western travellers of all kinds noted in the introduction—scientists, anthropologists, entrepreneurs, missionaries and the entire array of colonial agents—to document and control the “primitive” cultures they had seen and found.” This is another instance in which the way that colonised people were treated then, is a cause for the way that they are perceived now. Travelling was something that not everyone was able

Throughout motion picture history, women have experienced more transition in their roles, as a result of changing societal norms, than any other class. At first, both society and the movie industry preached that women should be dependent on men and remain in the home, in order to guarantee stability in the community and the family. As time passed and attitudes changed, women were beginning to be depicted as strong willed, independent minded characters, who were eager to break away from convention. The genre of the crime film represents such a change in the roles handed to women. Two films that can be contrasted, in order to support this view, are: The Public Enemy by William Wellman (1931) and Bonnie

As a Communication major, I spend a lot of time studying the human communication process, which is the exchange of verbal and nonverbal messages between a receiver and sender. This communication process does not only apply to face-to-face interactions but also includes mass media, rhetorical, and technological communication. Through these various forms of communication, the sender not only expresses his/her message but also expresses power hierarchies about race, gender, and sexuality that are present in society. Mass media has a significant impact on socializing gender roles and perpetuating gender stereotypes, and to prove that, I am analyzing mass media messages, such as television shows, movies, and advertisements.

In society, women are often perceived as the weaker sex, both physically and mentally. In modern times women have leveled the playing field between men and women, and feminism is a highly discussed topic, but for years, women faced discrimination and prejudice both in life and in the workplace, due to their sex. This way of thinking flooded into the world of film. In their works, the authors of each of the various sources address the limitations and liberations of women both on and off the screen in nineteenth century Film and Cinema. Not every source is completely filled with information related to the research topic, but they do cover and analyze many of the same points from different perspectives. Prominent points addressed in each