The Representation of Women in Some Like It Hot and Alien 3
This essay will be about how women are and have been represented in films in the past and how they are represented nowadays. I will be looking at the roles and representations of women in 'Some Like It Hot' and 'Alien 3'.
'Some Like It Hot' was made in 1958. Marilyn Monroe starts in the comedy as Sugar Cane who is a very feminine musician. 'Alien 3' on the other hand was made 40 years after and is a sci-fi horror. Sigourney Weaver is the star of the film and plays the character Lt. Ripley. Unlike Sugar Cane, Lt. Ripley is a very tough and manly character.
'Some Like It Hot' is about two musicians. They witness a massacre and try to
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This shows that all a woman's ambition is, is to be a wife which represents women to be very shallow and needy. It is ironic that the man Sugar Cane describes as the one she will never fall for, is the type of man she does fall for.
In the film, Tony Curtis plays Joe who is one of the musicians on the run. When he cross dresses, he becomes Josephine and becomes close with Sugar. He lures her in and encourages her to confess her dream husband. He then transforms himself into this character called Junior so he can get her. In the end, when he confesses that he isn't Josephine or Junior, Sugar Cane doesn't get annoyed that she was fooled by him. Instead, she runs away with him. This portrays Sugar Cane to be a very narrow-minded character that has nothing else on her mind.
There are other representations of women in 'Some Like It Hot'. The two musicians who are on the run have to cross dress as they have got jobs in an all female band. Tony Curtis plays Josephine and Jack Lemmon plays Daphne. While dressed as women, the two men experience how much women are discriminated against and used. They react to this by acting how they would expect to women to act and experience yet even more discrimination. However, their minds don't change in the slightest and both have Sugar Cane on their minds. They both compete to win her heart and both try getting very close to her as women.
An
Seventeen seconds into the song an additional instrument possibly the sound of a top hat are added and enter with a
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“ You cannot talk about genre without talking about gender.” Initially, this would appear to be a simplistic statement. On closer analysis, however, one fact becomes evident. It is the representation of gender which informs the genre of the text. Ismay Barwell , in her essay ‘ Feminist perspectives and narrative points of view’ states that “ Every text is gendered since every act of narration…..involves a process of selection….and the nature of that selection implies certain values” ( p.99). She makes the point that “ The desires, attitudes and interests which guide any choices made must be either male or female”( p.98 ). It is within this frame of reference, that the two texts will be analysed.
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In contemporary film women's roles in films have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and between
In society we have a lot of women actresses. Some tend to play the motherly type, some play the manipulator type and some even play the victims of abusive relationships. No matter what women seem to be coming up in the industry of movies in more ways than before. The three movies I have chosen to analyze in my critique are Heartbreakers, Baby Boy and Stepmom. These three movies all have women in them that either play a major role or the main role. All their roles are very different in character and none of the women in these three movies play a similar role.
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.
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.
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