Women in Society

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

Women and men are nestled into predetermined cultural molds when it comes to gender in American society. Women play the roles of mothers, housekeepers, and servants to their husbands and children, and men act as providers, protectors, and heads of the household. These gender roles stem from the many culture myths that exist pertaining to America, including those of the model family, education, liberty, and of gender. The majority of these myths are misconceptions, but linger because we, as Americans, do not analyze or question them. The misconception of gender suggests that biological truths no longer dictate our gender roles as men and women; they derive from cultural myths. We, as a nation, need

Gender roles have been, and unfortunately still are, evident in our everyday lives for quite sometime. Women are often portrayed as sexual objects, or delicate individuals; a body with no brain or strength. These traits are easily found within many novels and movies- old and new. In Alfred Hitchcock’s films, Rear Window and Strangers on a Train, Hitchcock begins his films representing women with the same characteristics as stated above. They are very stylish, attractive and presented as second-class individuals to males. But after examining these two films, Hitchcock does something that many directors in his time would not have dared to do. By making the women the heroine and arguably the protagonist of the storyline, Hitchcock proves to

Several film theorists have used a variety of tactics and view points to analyze feature films since their inception. One of the most prominent theorists of those that analyze films from a feminist perspective is Laura Mulvey. Mulvey is famous for her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which presents an array of theories involving the treatment of women in films. Arguably the most notable idea presented in Mulvey’s work is the existence of the “male gaze” in films. This essay will examine Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze in relation to Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo. Vertigo does not fit the criteria of a film that

The author, Jackie Stacey is a British feminist film historian. The main goal of her research is to understand the specific pleasure and engagements of British cinema audiences in the 1940s and 1950s. Stacey received 350 letters from women who went to the cinema 2-3 times a week during this period of wartime as cinema going was at an all-time high. Within the book, Stacey discusses Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze and how Mulvey’s analysis of the pleasures of Hollywood cinema led her to conclude that the spectator position offered is a ‘masculine’ one. She talks about how there are 3 looks within the dominant mode of Hollywood cinema; the camera(man), the editor and the director. She emphasizes on how all of these looks work together to create the effect of seeing the female characters as objects of desire through the eyes of the male characters.

The films Vertigo and His Girl Friday, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks respectively, are good representations of classical cinema. A stigma associated with classical cinema is the film’s portrayal of women. Feminist film theorists believe that the male protagonist play a more prominent role while women are only something to be looked at and acted upon. Both films possess a male and a female protagonist. His Girl Friday casts Cary Grant as a cunning newspaper editor named Walter Burns, as well as Rosalind Russell as former reporter and former wife of Walter, Hildy Johnson. Vertigo stars James Stewart as a former detective named Scottie Ferguson, and Kim Novak as Madeleine Ester, a woman Scottie is hired to investigate. Both films challenge the feminist’s hypothesis with powerful and intelligent women who have some control over men in the film. Yet in both films the male protagonist ultimately has control over the female even though the stigma is tested throughout the entirety of both films.

Modernism is the term of deviating from the norm. In the early 1900s, modernism influenced women’s role in society by providing more opportunities, jobs, and role models for girls today, in society.

Throughout this paper I will be discussing the role of women in the American society. I will reference the importance of gender and gender inequality. The definition of gender aims to clarify for of all the historical framework of the topic, the role of women in the American society. The paper will lead from the role women were given around World War II and then transition into the role women can now choose in the American society today. Addition to the role of women I will also discuss the differences of how the genders are treated in the same places, for example work place. Men and women are culturally molded when referring to gender in the American society. The gender roles play a lead part into how the model family, education, and liberty are. The reason I chose to write about this topic is due to my strong belief that although I don’t agree with the characteristics society gave to gender, I do believe in gender equality.

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 today’s society, there is often a misconception among women and men and the roles they are expected to follow through with. Although there has been advances in the way women are treated, it is unfortunately still an unbalanced dynamic in our society. From an early age, women are often persuaded, even if subconsciously, to follow a certain pathway in life. They are most often associated with staying home, keeping the house clean, cooking, baking, and raising children. Certain mediums that girls are exposed to tend to sway them towards these specific wants and aspirations. The way in which certain products are presented to little girls create an image they feel like they need to master. Men, on the other hand, are taught something completely different. They are regularly habituated with more masculine and self-reliant tasks. From an early age, they are automatically seen as people that deserve to be educated and use their smart, resourceful assets to contribute to society. They are without a doubt going to get a job and become a father and husband that provides for his family. In most situations, even if the woman has a job, men are the main “bread-winner.” Going along with this belief, the products boys are often marketed portray the idea of strength and independence. Whether it is a toy or a book, men are more often than not characterized as the heroic, more capable gender. There are many cases in which different mediums exhibit the ideas of men being the superior

A women's role has changed tremendously and is making its greatest impact in our society today. Many years ago, women's contribution to society was limited and controlled by men. Women are standing tall and are playing a major role in many important areas. Women's role has changed at an accelerating rate and have part in areas such as Politics, Professional Training Jobs, Medicine,Business and Law. Formerly they were not part of any political matter, but they have advanced in many aspects. For example, women have attained power and have been growing in political office.

The result of this research shows that the sexualization of female characters is activated and well in popular motion picture content, this result fits the Freud’s views of scopophilia (Stacy 2013). Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the constituent instincts of sexuality which occur as drives very independently of the erotogenic zones, the mainstream cinema present a hermetically sealed world which unties magically neutral to the presence of the spectator, producing for them a feeling of separation and impacting on their voyeuristic phantasy (Mulvey 1975, p. 8). According to the Feminist film theory’s argument, women are inevitably reduced to the objects of a male gaze in mainstream cinema (Humm 1997, p. 39). Mulvey claimed ‘through this privileged gaze, film audiences, regardless of their actual gender, are treated as masculine subjects’, she also figures cinema as irreducibly shaped by sexual difference, the film is constructed around looks or gaze, it shapes editing and narrative, that these looks are entirely those of men looking at women (Humm 1997, p. 17). The art historian John Berger had succinctly pointed out that ‘the "ideal" spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him’ (Berger, 1972).

Gender equality is still a controversial and prominent issue that lacks support in the arts, particularly in film. Women represented in film often become objects that are there to be looked at by the male gaze, according to Ann Kaplan. In her article “Is the Male Gaze” there are two ways to approach a feministic critique of film. First, a sociological approach that looks at the roles women occupy in film. Second, through psychoanalysis which reveals the needs, desires, and male-female roles that are reflected in film.

Throughout history and today, we women are constant victims of stereotyping from our society. Certain “rules” have to be followed and certain “ideal” women images have to be kept. We are raised in a way to fill certain position where the society wants us to be and as a result, the opportunities are always limited for us and ideas of our importance in the society are diminishing. Even though women gained some independence, where women can work and take various position in society, the society’s idea of typical role of women never seem to change.

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).