Terminator 2: Judgment Day

In the world of film, there is usually a stereotypical role for each gender. For example, the man is usually portrayed as the hero and the woman is in some sort of distress and needs to be saved. Women in movies are generally shown as weak and needing a man to survive. For example, in the Disney movie “Cinderella”, Cinderella lives a horrible and unhappy life until she meets Prince Charming. When Prince Charming rescues Cinderella, they fall in love, she becomes happy, and they live happily ever after. There are a few movies out there, though, which show the opposite. Both “She Done Him Wrong” and “Scarlet Street” are films that portray the main female characters, Lady Lou and Kitty March, as strong and independent women, both acting how

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

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

O’Reagan perfectly explains that The Woman-centred narrative is one feature genre that has maintained an ongoing though minor presence on production schedules, particularly from 1970. Then he goes on to explain that Public campaigns of the domestic feminist movement have been strong, and a prioritising of relationships as a central point of focus in Australian cinema has been necessary because it has had to rely less on action and more on relationships.

The films we watched within the last weeks are really different from one another. From crime movie to musical to French New Wave film. The one thing I found most salient about them is the importance and the different depiction of women in the movies. In Double Indemnity (1944), the female main protagonist Phyllis is a beautiful and alluring woman. In her first appearance in the film, she is almost naked, wearing a white dress and thus seems to be very vulnerable and innocent. But in the progress of the film it turns out, she is not. Especially in the beginning, Phyllis is reduced to her beauty and as a result highly undererstimated. She uses her sexuality and her innocent look to manipulate men to get what she wants. Phyllis is represented

James Cameron’s 1986 film Aliens can be considered a tweener being made up of many genres including a maternal melodrama, woman’s film, war film, body genre, horror, and a science fiction film. Aliens manages to successfully change the classic horror and sci-fi movie to create a story that explores the place of women in these genres and challenges the roles they normally play. This is done by structuring a horror film to play upon the male fears of female reproduction and sexuality as core themes in the film so as to unnerve its dominant men. As a result, a woman’s film is created by placing its female character as the leading role. Aliens takes its central character Ripley, and places her into a position as the gender monster. Ripley is neither totally feminine nor is she totally masculine resulting in a motherly figure that is a true warrior. Even from her first appearance she is in command and a force to be reckoned with. In Aliens the roles of gender are clearly reversed, as Ripley is the strong female character who makes active judgements and survives what is trying to kill her. The male characters are largely submissive, most die quickly, others wait for her command. Ripley stands out as being a well-developed female hero who avoids the standard portrayal of women in horror films as passive, secondary characters, creating a woman that is in charge and motherly at the same time, thus producing a woman’s film.

First off, in Carol Clover’s essay“Men Women and Chainsaws” the argument is focused on how women overcome their challenges throughout various films.  Clover focuses in on a few different films and specifically looks for the “Final Girl” which is the last female standing after overcoming their challenges.  All of this brings a new aspect to film watching because Clover’s theory shifts the viewer's attention from focusing on how the male is essentially tormenting a female to zooming in on how the female overcomes the challenge.  Clover does this because she wants to show the viewers a different aspect of film and genre.  This is because Clover feels that instead of having the audience focusing on a main character which is essentially a male tormentor she has them focus on how the female(s) overcome the challenge and defeat their tormentor.  This perspective opens up a new gateway to film

Many of these filmmakers, through the feminist movement, have taken Hollywood by storm. There are many individuals that believe the feminist movement is a woman’s movement — to further the female agenda — and while, it is true

Though the feminine imagery/symbolism exhibited a lot of malice, the truly abhorrent scenes came into play when the crew was forcibly violated by a masculine-type image. The symbolism turned from life-giving to disturbing when such a symbolic image was introduced and it turned into an invasion of the womb-like ship. Suddenly, the womb-like ship and everyone on it is being violated against their will. Most of the crew become used as incubators or food for the alien, and soon, most of the crew are dead. Their bodies have been used to the alien’s convenience and after they have exceeded their purpose, they were thrown away, leaving only one survivor named Ripley. A female who, in the end, kills the alien. This is a symbol of a woman surviving such a non-consensual violation. And while many people do not speak of that, the body-horror genre was born out of this horrific movie. As described by David Edelstein, a journalist who says: “Although it’s basically an ultra-fancy B scare picture with nothing on its mind except making you feel violated, Alien remains the key text in the “body horror” subgenre that flowered (or, depending on your viewpoint, festered) in the seventies, and Giger’s designs covered all possible avenues of anxiety” (Edelstein, The Vulture). This movie disturbs and violates in a way most movies wouldn’t dare to

For a majority of the people feminist bring on the image of radical women making extremely weird claims, they aren’t treated as threat to society but a nuisance. This perspective is not just from a man but also women, even women believe feminist go too far with their claims. In most literature, the writer or the director tries to give females a leading role or at least an equal role as the man but most of the time they

needs a guy to calm her and get her to loosen up. There are very few movies that depict

On that basis, Film and television play a big role in how we define masculinity. In this essay I will look at how gender is constructed in “The Terminator” and how cultural aspects influence the film. During the late 20th century medias association to defining masculinity became more visible. It was reflecting the current values of masculinity as well as to help shape it into what it would become in the future.

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

Women have always been viewed as passive in real life and in films. They have a certain role they always have to play, whether it is a wife, mother, or the seductive woman out to get men. Gender stereotypes date back to hundreds of years ago when they were denied basic civil rights like voting or working. These unjust treatments have been established in movies as well. While men are the stars of the film, usually because of their appearance or dominance among others, women appear at the sidelines usually being admired for their beauty.

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