During the Weimar Republic, many considerable changes transpired. One of the more note-worthy changes being the destabilizing of gender roles that were previously deeply engrained in Germany prior to this period. The film The Blue Angel features iconic personality Lola Lola, cabaret performer and marked seductress. She exemplifies the transition that occurred, in regard to what it means to be a woman. Ultimately, the film The Blue Angel remains a significant marker in German film history as it challenges gender roles with the portrayal of the character Lola Lola as “The New Woman” through her choice of dress and overt display of sexuality, gumption as a wage earner, and her uninhibited ability to express herself.
An important attribute of “The New Woman” is a shift from ultra-feminine to androgynous. Lola Lola wears ornate stage costumes that blur the line between masculine and feminine style. She wears frilly underwear, tight corsets, and sports high-hemlines, all the while wearing a top hat and crossing her legs like a man (Williams, 2010). Lola Lola’s over the top costumes feature high
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However, particularly evident is the presence of cultural tensions surrounding sexuality (Williams, 2010) and gender roles. An important feature of the emerged identity is her opportunity to earn a living. The tension surrounding female employment, a theme often disregarded in many of the films interpretations (Kosta, 2009), can be seen when Professor Rath rejects a job offer back home, and the bar manager encourages him to reconsider in order to support his wife. The economic expansion created a realm of possibility for women to exit their domestic sphere and try their hand at being a wage earner (Williams, 2010). Lola Lola chooses to do so in a way that was nonstandard for women prior to this new identity emerging by performing in a
Lola experiences a period of change in her life where she felt the need to alter her physical appearance to create a new identity because she did not like being the perfect Dominican girl for Beli. She says, “I looked at the girl in the mirror for a long time. All I knew was that I didn’t want to see her ever again… So now you’re punk? Karen asked uncertainly. Yes, I said” (Díaz 59). Lola is not comfortable with her life in Paterson, New Jersey and her identity as a young Dominican female, which comes with the responsibility of upholding their societal standards to please her mother. A woman’s hair in the Dominican Republic is a symbol of her beauty, and removing her hair shows her refusal of the beauty standards set in place by the men in society who determine what makes a woman beautiful. Her mother’s visceral response to her decision to cut her hair proves how deep-rooted the beliefs that a woman’s beauty is dependent on her physical appearance is in Dominican culture. Díaz writes, “The next day my mother threw the wig at me. You’re going to wear this. You’re going to wear it every day. And if I see you without it on I’m going to kill you!” (Díaz 59). Beli, like most other Dominican women, is conditioned to believe that the level of attention they receive from a man is a reflection of their beauty. She fears that Lola will embarrass her by disowning the values and ideas she upholds about a woman’s
Starting from the 90’s through to the 50’s, Jennifer goes through a transformation from tight tank tops and skimpy short skirts too buttoned blouses, bullet bras and poodle skirts. By looking at this comparison it is very clear that the way women dressed in the 1950’s was much more modest than the 1990’s.
This essay will be discussing how gender is portrayed in the films Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) and Tacones Lejanos (High Heels), both directed by Pedro Almodóvar. The use of the theatre and performance, along with the audiences that come with it, enables these films to explore the manner in which gender is unstable. Gwynne Edwards writes that Almodóvar often pays tribute to the stage . Almodóvar dedicates All About My Mother “to all the actresses who have played actresses, to all women who act, to men who act and become women” , which is also relevant to High Heels. He uses the stage setting as a platform to show the instability of gender, not only on a physical stage but also in the characters’ lives: “The dialogue of his films has the cut and thrust, and very often wit, of stage plays. There are also soliloquies, and one of them – in All About My Mother – is even delivered to the audience from the stage of a theatre” . Russell Jackson suggests that this is done as a method for the characters to “find the sometimes onerous ability to deal with and describe their past, and to create a future in the face of death and desertion.” The character ‘La Agrado’ in All About My Mother as well High Heels’ Femme Letal (Letal), will be considered - both the manner in which they carry themselves throughout the film, as well as the their performances on stage. In the following paragraphs, I will illustrate how performance and the stage are vital in Almodóvar’s exploration
At the beginning of the story, Lola is a very daughter to her mother Belicia de Leόn, this however quickly changes after it is discovered that Belicia has breast cancer. As this event acts as a catalyst to separate and destroy the relationship between them as Lola’s healthiness becomes a point of contention between them due to the declining health of her mother. On the subject of Society vs Freedom that relationship is reflected by the seeming obligation that is placed upon Lola by her mother after she had her cancer treatment. As after Belicia was diagnosed, Lola was beginning to explore her freedom by becoming a “punk chick” and seemingly out of spite for how she and her brother were treated by their ailing mother who was notorious within the town that they resided within as demonstrated when Lola had decided to shave her head and her friend Karen’s only response was, “What about your mother?” (Diaz 418).
Feminist The gender roles are switched in this novel, with the women as the head of the hospital who are very strong and powerful while the men are the disabled, weaker ones who need the help of the women. Nurse Ratched, the head nurse runs the entire hospital and everyone is beneath her, which is a representation of the beginning of the women’s equality movement that occurred during this time period. The patients view the head nurse as a “ball-cutter” who symbolizes castration. With a woman as the head nurse, the male patients are stripped of their manhood and are excluded from their sexual desires.
Throughout the beginning of the chapter Lola is portrayed as a horrible daughter who rebels against her mother who is dying of cancer. However, when Lola finally gets to speak up for her actions it is finally understood that Lola rebel because of her mother constant emotional abuse. Also, as Lola started speaking her own voice it was clear that her mother made her do everything. She was the one “cooking, cleaning doing the wash, buying groceries, writing letters to the bank to explain why a house payment was going to be late, translating” (Diaz, 56). Lola was forced to be an adult at a young age she did everything and she was even a mother to her little brother Oscar. I think Diaz was as successful in creating a female narrative voice as he is the male one because when reading the novel one can differentiate from the text what gender the character
It is for this reason that the producer of a text targets a specific audience demographic and tailors the text in order to position this specific audience to accept the preferred meaning. For this reason, audiences from other contexts may read the text in a wildly different manner. For example, in Run Lola Run, viewers from a feminist subculture might look beyond the codes that Tykwer has used to position them to see Lola as a representative of feminine power, and feel that she is a poor role model for contemporary females. This alternative reading could be formed because of Lola’s subservience to Manni, and her unquestioning loyalty to him from the very beginning of the movie, despite little effort on his part to save himself. Furthermore, in all three of the film’s realities, Lola’s first source that she seeks for help is a patriarchal figure, her father, in this way demonstrating her overall helplessness despite her appearance of having power. In this way, audience members may form an extreme feminist reading of the text, and thus resist the reading that Tykwer is positioning them to accept. Another alternative reading that may be formed of the text, is that it is offering a misandristic portrayal of the male characters within the film. The audience is positioned to see Manni, Lola’s father and the security guard from the bank, the three males with the
The musicals Billy Elliot and Grease present both conventional and unconventional representations of gender throughout. Both musicals also seem to obscure the message of the underlying gender stereotyping issues by overshadowing them with elements such as music, dance and costume.
Kelsey Bird Intro to Theatre Professor Jennings 5/2/15 Gender roles in Cloud Nine Cloud Nine, written by Churchill, examines the effects of strict, learned gender roles in both men and woman in Western society. Churchill uses the three children, and other characters, and their experiences in the play to show how difficult it can be to learn these roles. To take it a step further, she proves her point by having young Edward be played by a woman, the child Victoria represented in the first act by a doll, and Cathy played by a man.
The role and strength of women in a male-dominated society in biblical times is the fundamental theme of The Red Tent. The red tent is a physical and spiritual place, where the women of Jacob’s tribe—his wives, servants and daughters, could rest while menstruating and childbearing, but more importantly, it became a safe shelter for feminist unity and companionship. The red tent provides all the women a haven to be in their power together, to learn from one another, to be part of a community, and to celebrate their lives without any disturbance from the male chauvinism. In the “red tent”, women such as Leah, Dinah and Rachel are able to play critical and decisive roles—protectors, friends and teachers. First and foremost, there is much
In the world and differing by culture, there are certain expectations for women and men which are defined by their behaviors and attitudes. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey, men in a mental institution encounter a new patient that shows the rest of the patients a new world by challenging Nurse Ratched, the nurse who runs the ward. The battle between these two characters affects all the patients’ lives. Furthermore, gender roles are significant factors that help characterize each character. In the novel, Kesey illustrates gender reversal and reinforcement through his characters and argues that women and men should be expected to follow gender norms.
The first noticeable feminine characteristic in this performance was Ursula’s costume, and interestingly enough, it seems to be one of the leading factors in which a person defines his or herself. In Rebecca Kennison’s “Clothes Make the (Wo)man: Marlene Dietrich and ‘Double Drag,’” she
There were many who often assumed roles or stereotypes recognized by the masses of the female gender before the 1940s, of examples such as the naïve princess or the obedient housewife. It was additionally a time of doubts and indecisions due to stock market crash. The concept of modernity was slowly being represented as a mirror or response to the reality. This paper will discuss the way that the female leads were presented in the film Modern Times and It Happened one Night in response the changing ideas of modernity such as gender, class, and sexuality.
Women have different personalities and motivations, and they form relationships with men for many different reasons. Some of these reasons include love, money, and even lust and manipulation. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett is a novel about Sam Spade, who is a huge figure of the hard-boiled detective genre. Sam Spade goes on a quest to find a valuable falcon, solve murders and jump over the obstacle that surround him on a daily basis. The novel is also about the three women who surround Spade during his quest. The names of these women are Iva Archer, Effie Perine, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and they all have different roles in Sam Spade’s life. In The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, Brigid O’Shaughnessy plays the role of femme fatale, Iva Archer plays the role of Spade’s unfortunate future, and Effie Perine plays the role of Spade’s right-hand woman.
J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan tells the story of “the boy who never grew up.” Barrie paints Peter as an extraordinary character living in a mystical world called Neverland, flying through the air, and fighting villainous pirates. He is also the boy who takes a young girl named Wendy from England back to Neverland with him. The interaction and interdependence of Barrie’s two characters, Peter and Wendy, symbolize and spread cultural gender stereotypes by mirroring the stereotypes embodied by the adult characters in the story—Mr. and Mrs. Darling—and by reflecting the ideas of gender roles of the time and foreshadowing the children’s understanding of reality and expectations, as well as their eventual maturation.