Review Of ' Heathers And Hairspray ' Essay

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.

The theme of struggling with identity, present in all three of the abovementioned films, is significant in characterizing the popular views of young women. In The Breakfast Club (1985), one of the leading characters, Claire Standish, is a spoiled, prim, popular princess at first glance. As the film progresses, the 1980’s cultural construction of young women begins to appear and as Claire comes forward with her sensitivity, stresses, and struggles she begins to rebel against the rules of detention by smoking marijuana in the school library and by kissing the “bad boy” that is serving detention with her. Claire’s rebellion reflects the adolescent angst present in the 1980s possibly caused by teenagers’ subjection to new music, more drug use and being further informed about diseases such as HIV and

3) One of the films would be Erin Brockovich, were Erin is judge for being a single mom based on her appearance she is also label as a whore an example would be Ed that tells her that she looks like someone that likes to have fun, these is of course the stereotypes that society inputs on her. Erin in the film does not meet the ideologies of being femininity and at the end we see that she does succeed at work but her love life and family gets scarified by these.

The primary source that I have chosen to analyze is a scene from the movie Grease. This movie was released in June of 1978 and is about a so-called good girl named Sandy falling in love with bad boy greaser Danny over the summer. Once it’s time for class to be back in session, they find out they attend the same high school and challenges face them as to how they can rekindle their prior romance with the eyes of their friends focused on them. Sandy is the typical good girl who obeys the rules and does what she is told. She falls in love with Danny who is a polar opposite to her. So instead of the typical movie ending where the bad boy turns into a good guy for the girl he is in love with, the writers threw in a plot twist and it ends up being Sandy who changes the most. She alters from a goody two shoes into a “hot and sexy bad girl” as co-creator Jim Jacobs states in an interview about the meaning to the ending of the film. I think that this movie is a prime example of the way gender roles have been visualized among society for a very long time. Additionally, it also doubles as an example as to how gender roles have changed as well throughout the decades that have passed by.

In Hollywood film women 's roles have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and period settings. These factors contribute to the different representations of women 's roles in the film they are present in. The roles are diverse going from the traditional maternal role to that of manipulative murderer. Women 's roles in movies can be almost equal to the male roles, and the co-stars are not given the majority of the acclaims just because they are male. Society has set certain standards that women are supposed to follow. The most common image of women is that they are very passive and try to avoid conflict in any situation. More and more in society women are breaking down the social barriers that confine them to their specific roles. The films Rear Window and Resident Evil show women in roles that are untraditional for our society. These two movies help to show how women are rebelling against social norms and that they are taking more active and aggressive roles. In film noir’s we can see women represented as the femme fatale, a woman whose mysterious and seductive charms leads men into compromising or dangerous situations. In action movies we see the heroine who is strong both physically and mentally, and has the ability to use weapons. Women seem to be more trapped than men because they are supposed to live up to society’s standards dealing with beauty and size, which are more physical characteristics. These specific guidelines have been set by

In contemporary film women's roles in films have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and between

This genre is typically modern, perky and upbeat, but the common narrative in all of them is that it features a woman who is strong and she overcomes adversity to reach her goals. There is also a message of empowerment that also struggles with a romantic predicament and using comedy to poke fun at the male characters. Industries are still producing soppy romantic comedies for the female audience but the divide between the standard chick flick and romantic comedy is slowly disappearing. Similarly to the beginning of this essay it is evident that institutions are moving in the direction of women’s place in culture in relation to this film genre; women are usually shown as the super power since they are made to appeal to the female audience. However

This film paints multiple stereotypes and over exaggerates them to emphasize their relevance in society in hopes of changing the audiences' viewpoint of these stereotypes set before women.

Compare and contrast the presentation of gender in two films we have looked at on the course

Teenagers are young, naïve and impressionable. They are also insecure and usually sometimes unable to express themselves so they put others down. They are pressured daily to do things they really don’t want to do. They often find themselves doing something they said they would never do. Because of the influence of those around them, they are trying to cover their insecurities by saying things to make others feel bad about themselves. The traits above describe the two main characters in the short story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”. Both Bernice and Marjorie are young teens dealing with the pressure of being popular and fitting in. Bernice, being the quieter, shyer girl, deals with trying to fit in in a place she feels she doesn’t belong.

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

The movie that I have chosen is a classic film from 1988 called Heathers. Heathers is an American cult black comedy film written by Daniel Waters and directed by Michael Lehmann. The film portrays four teenage girls—three of whom are named Heather—in a clique and a teen named Veronica Sawyer who desperately wants to fit in, as well as a crazy and unstable boy named J.D that plans to ruin it all. The focus of this essay will be on three characters. Analyzing their internal and external battles, as well as their social interactions with loved ones and other members of their fictional society.

The biggest challenge while researching and writing this paper was strictly presenting scholastic and objective arguments in order to avoid bias and reduce critics’ opportunity to discredit or delegitimize my work, especially those who oppose feminism. Presenting a rebuttal statement and then counteracting it with more critical arguments of how that specific repudiation is problematic, acknowledges critical audiences’ concerns while remaining adamantly strong in my stance. I was conscious to pay the respected attention to detail when selecting rhetoric language as it conveys the appropriated tone and mood of the paper to the reader as it represents the film. Just as typical research papers require, my primary source, The Little Mermaid, is immediately and easily identifiable within the paper, and unlike most scholarly works, the analyzed topic is the primary source itself. However, the problematic dynamics the film presents based on the sexist theme it poses, may be too broad and largely based without adequately supportive and specified examples from the film. This was another one of the concerns I had when I first began to construct my paper because there were so many different examples of female

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 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