‘I hope you’re packed, little housewife, ‘cause we are outta here tonight.’
‘It’s a normal source of companionship, Don 't’ tell me you’re trying to be some kind of man hater.’
The Woman Men Don’t See by James Tiptree, Jr (1973) and Thelma & Louise (1991), directed by Ridley Scott teach audiences that attitudes and stereotypes are the strongest form of control. These texts instruct audiences to believe that attitudes and beliefs that differ from the norm are responsible for creating oppression, alienation and discrimination.
Throughout both The Woman Men Don’t See and Thelma & Louise, the idea of, oppression has a profound impact on the characters. This ideological concept is highlighted in both mediums through the theme of Institution
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Don goes on to describe Esteban, displaying the motif of sexual references present in both mediums, “Are they having fantasies about Esteban?” Don often reverts to reluctant romanticised image of Mayans. Throughout the novelette, Don presents himself as superior to Esteban as he demonstrates him imperialistic and white superiority/colonial mentality: “[The Yucatan people’s independence] comes from never having been conquered.” The Might is Right concept is a clear form of suppression from a powerful institution or people group that see themselves as superior. As demonstrated in the novelette, women are also subject to this oppression. Ruth Parsons’ character explores the female experience in the Second Wave of Feminism (1960s-70s) through the motif of sexual innuendos, “classic penetration target.” A subtle form of oppression is highlighted when Ruth says, “Men live to struggle against each other; we’re just part of the battlefield,” Parsons places significance on the fact that men either treat women as collateral damage that can be tossed away, or be ‘kept’ as prizes and trophies which only serves to objectify women, “We’ll be back where we always were: property.” Additionally, Thelma & Louise emphasises the oppression females face through sexual references and being sexualised through the character of Harlan and his predatory archetype.
In the early 20th century, a male author, John Steinbeck, wrote about women’s oppression in the short story, “The Chrysanthemums”. It was different than other stories about women’s oppression because it was in the male point-of-view rather than a female’s point-of-view. This brilliant short story is narrated by a third-person narrator and has some interesting characters such as Elisa, Henry and the traveling salesperson. In John Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums”, the juxtaposition between female and male norms and the symbolism throughout the story illustrates how women were perceived as simplistic and weak people reflected by the gender expectations in the early 20th century.
When considering Mulvey’s theory of the “male gaze” and patriarchal domination, this film clearly demonstrates this notion. While the film opens with the main protagonist, Nola Darling, defending her actions to what seems to be a documentary camera crew. As the film progresses, the male counterparts are afforded more instances of “gaze” than Nola Darling is. Viewers are often subjected to watching the men watch Nola. When the audience does watch Nola’s “gaze” it is when she is discussing things with the camera crew. In a reading of the film, viewers are looking through male subjects “gaze” more often than that of Nola, proving Mulvey’s theory in this
The role of the patriarchal society and its impact on the oppression of female characters
In conclusion, the film She’s the Man shows the audience how gender gets represented in films. It shows the traditional femininity as well as the traditional masculinity. This illustrates that gender has impacts on power and gender relations to contribute gender inequality. Gender norms are enforced in films which maintain the power inequality difference between both genders. These issues confine the way modern films represent gender and gives a direct effect to the
The two movies I am going to compare are Thelma &Louise and North Country. The sexual harassments to women both happened in these two movies, but the solutions of the main characters were different, and the outcomes of them were disparate, therefore, I wondered how did the main characters in each movie responded to the sexual harassment, and if it is different, why was it? By focusing on the different situations and personalities of the characters, especially Thelma and Josey, I’m going to compare and analyze the motivations that lead them to make such decisions and the ways that they dealt with the harassments.
In the novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Juniot Diaz you start to notice a cultural gender role and how there is certain expectations of them. The novel is based on a young boy named Oscar Wao and the hardships that one event has caused to an entire family. Even though the novel is focused on Oscar the author always went back to his sister and his mother. The author described the women as “real, strong women, even though they were being filtered through a somewhat distorted male point of view” (Stevenson 1). These two women play an important roll in this novel, they ultimately don't show the cultural gender role and what is expected from them. All the important female rolls in Oscars life are independent and strong women but they all have one thing in common, being mistreated by men.
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.
The film mentioned the gender inequality and social stratification as well as struggles against racism during the Mexican-Americans miners’ strike in New Mexico. It shows how the miners were discriminated from white people who had higher ranking on the social ladder, and how the women were inferior to men economically and politically. The miner workers had same concept with Functionalist theories on the lecture where mentions “what is best for society means what is best for men”. However, at the end of the movie shows the entire working class community could all come together in a shared political action both men and women in the grim affairs of the strikers, and of the strong determination of the women to participate in the carrying on of
In the poem The Odyssey, women play a major role, although it may not appear to be that way. The poem is centered around Odysseus adventures to return back to his wife Penelope. Without Penelope, there would be no story, which shows that the woman are a bigger part of this poem than people think. The women in The Odyssey are either seen as goddesses or they are treated as if they are a monster. Some even being turned into slaves.
The motion picture tackles difficult issues of marginalization of race, and discrimination of gender, rendering the women’s point of view to the forefront alongside racial discrimination. Although both groups are arranged together according to race, there is segregation in the familial unit between men and women. It is through overcoming this boundary and establishing unity between the oppressed, the marginalized are empowered to carry out their picketing.
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.
She comments on the oppression experienced by woman through three distinct lenses: that of biological differences, that of the psychoanalytical perspective, and finally through the lens of historical materialism.
The 2016 historical film, Hidden Figures directed by Theodore Melfi which explores the themes of racism and sexism in America during the 1960’s. Melfi uses visual and verbal features of dialogue, costume and symbolism to display that sexism and racism is hard to abolish. The messages that Melfi conveys to the audience is that unequal pay and expected sexist uniforms are still present, but if we do something about it, it can be removed.
Filmmakers use traditional gender stereotypes to produce characters audiences can easily identify with by portraying conventional images of a person with identifiable characteristics. In previous years, the dominant representation of a women in film has been the passive, subjugated protagonist. However, through the development of female empowerment and added feminist representations of film, the female heroine transformed to become strong and independent women in her own right, as an individual character.