Ladies in the West: An Analysis of Women and Conflict in Western Cinema In 1940s to 1950s cinemas, the representation of men with guns is a prominent attribute to expect when watching a Western, however what about women with guns? According to Robert Warshow in his article “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner” he elaborates on the function of the western archetype represents “lonely” and also “melancholy” characteristics but doesn’t speak much about the weapon wielding female counterparts who in movies such as “Red River” and “The Man from Laramie” represent the juxtaposition to the mans “loneliness”. The reasoning behind Warshow focusing solely on the “lonely male” reveals the intentions of women representing the civilized counterpart …show more content…
However, the two characters end up divided when Matt exiles Tom out of the cattle drive, thus enacting Tom to seek revenge. In the film, “The Man from Laramie” directed by Anthony Mann in 1955, a revenge plot unfolds as the title character finds him isolated in a town where he believes the man responsible for his Brother’s death lives. However, once there he immediately becomes estranged in conflict with a local cattle owner’s son and starts working for competition. Both movies understand the prominence of men with guns, and how it invokes a sense of independence and isolation, as both male leads are alone and don’t “belong” anywhere. However, what separates both films the isolated trope of cowboy is the choice to add female characters into the plot. In “Red River” what complicates the plot that that a simple revenge tale is an echo Tom’s early decision in the movie to leave his love interest behind. This sets the tone for a similar decision that Matt makes after betraying Tom, however Matt’s love interest Tess, chooses to join Tom in the search for Matt. Once Matt and Tom reunite them initially fight each other, only to be broken up by Tess. The fight scene that follows their conflict is extremely important as no guns are used, except by the Tess. In her using a
The 2006 British film “The Queen” depicts events that unfolded after the death of Princess Diana in 1997. In the film, the British Royal Family did not react the way the public expected them to. Due to their lack of grief that was publicly shown towards Princess Diana’s death, it resulted in their actions being heavily criticised by British media and the public. Newly elected Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had to step in to help the Royal Family deal with their bad relations to the public, with the help of Diana’s ex-husband, Prince Charles. From the in-depth movie analysis, this essay will be able to show that the media is able to influence the people and their stance towards certain topics by applying these media theories: agenda setting through gatekeeping, dramatization, and two-step flow of communication.
In the movie “A League of Their Own”, one can see how the more sexist views of the culture in the 1940s and 50s in America was present in the Girls Professional Baseball League. “A League of Their Own” is a movie about what was once the “All-American Girls Professional Baseball League” which was formed when the young men were sent over to serve in World War II. One of the most obvious cultural views that this movie shows is the feminizing of the baseball players to make them “more acceptable and women like”. Unlike men’s uniforms, that include a full shirt and pants, they were to wear skirts that were very short, too short to play baseball in comfortably. This alone shows how this league was just as much about show as it was about the women’s talent.
Sexual harassment is a common problem for women in the workplace. The trauma they suffer as a result is extensive. More than half a million women work in the fields and a majority are undocumented immigrants. The documentary Rape in the Fields, addresses some of the struggles these workers face. Due to their immigrant status the women are powerless, subject to unwelcome sexual advances and unable to seek help from the authorities.
Rape on the Night Shift is a documentary about the sexual assaults that some of the janitors suffer while working at night. This documentary reveals the injustice that these workers have to go through because most of them are undocumented and they don’t know their rights. The experiences of woman in this documentary is correlated with the feminist theory, the idea of seeing women unequal to men and the idea of the men having the power to control women. Indeed, the documentary let us see the gender inequality, exploitation, and the de-valuing of woman’s work. We see the feminist theory in the documentary when the managers or supervisors sexually abuse of their workers.
Madison Avenue advertising executive Roger Thornhill’s (Cary Grant) life changes drastically after he is kidnapped and mistaken for a spy named George Kaplan. After a successful escape from attempted murder by Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), Roger Thornhill begins a journey to search for George Kaplan. On his itinerary, he meets the beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint). A romantic relationship is started between the two, leaving Thornhill to believe that Even Kendall would cooperate and help him to meet Kaplan.
In Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses the ruthless, hypermasculine frontiersman of Blood Meridian has evolved over a period of one hundred years (1849- 1949) into the restless, domesticated cowboy ignorantly nostalgic for the days before barbed wire industrialization and suspicious of the social and political gains of women. John Grady Cole, the sixteen-year-old protagonist in All the Pretty Horses, aspires to embody a cowboy code of behavior, stemming from a strict tough-guy rural hypermasculinity defined by intense self-reliance and recklessness. Ultimately, his failure to do so renders him ironically heroic since success would perpetuate the reckless myth of the hypermasculine cowboy hero. In large part, John Grady’s notion of cowboy hypermasculinity rests in fiction and cinema, where Western writers like Owen Wister and directors like George Stevens created the popular culture Hollywood cowboy, itself based mostly on an abstract notion of the frontiersman. All the Pretty Horses simultaneously affirms and
In contrast to the twentieth century we still see some of this in our current day and ages. Contrasting portrayals of men and women in films leave us with the fact that we haven’t changed. Men and women are sought to have different gender roles within
As of 2017, Western films are one of the least popular movie genres in North America based off of box office revenue. Bringing in a total of 0.99 billion dollars in box office revenue, since 1995, places Western films third to the bottom -- right on top of concert/performance films and multiple genre films (Statista.com). No Country for Old Men is arguably the first film of the twenty-first century to revive an interest in western films. No Country for Old Men is a political western, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, that follows the stories of three men: Anton Chigurh, Llewellyn Moss, and Ed Tom Bell, through a third person restricted point-of-view. As a political western, No Country for Old Men, uses a disjunctive editing style, accompanied
Means Girls is a teen comedy film directed by Mark Waters. This movie demonstrates collective behavior in many ways. Collective behavior is a type of social behavior that occurs in crowds or masses. Throughout the whole film, many different social behaviors occur. Cady is the new girl in town, who has just came back from Africa.
INTRODUCTION “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” -Chief Justice Earl Warren Separate But Equal, directed by George Stevens Jr, is an American made-for-television movie that is based on the landmark Brown v. Board of Directors case of the U.S. Supreme court which established that segregation of primary schools based on race, as dictated by the ‘Separate but Equal’ doctrine, was unconstitutional based on the reinterpretation of the 14th amendment and thus, put an end to state-sponsored segregation in the US. Aims and Objectives:
Femme fatales are usually destroyed in the end, either by being killed or being domesticated, as though they are being punished thinking they can compete with men. Male dominance is always restored by the end of the film. In established film noir, the new economic, social, and sexual freedom that women experienced during the war years as they joined the workplace was quite unsettling to many American men. This fear of strong, independent women and the need to show the danger of this independence was shown, whether consciously or not, in most film noir. The Maltese Falcon, like many films of its era, joins in the distrust of all things foreign.
he idea and message of the documentary ‘Girl Rising’ is very simple and yet very visionary. The aim of this documentary is to highlight the struggle of girls in the developing world by taking real life stories of nine different girls from different parts of the developing nations and reenacting their actual incidents to highlight the aspects of their plight. The aspects include sexual abuse, poverty, child labor, child marriage, bias education system and so on. These girls suffer everyday for education, voice, freedom and human rights in their own countries of India, Haiti, Cambodia, Nepal, Afghanistan, Peru, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone. Richard.
We, the audience are presented with Teddy McSwiney, uncouth, rugged and charming, a caricaturised representation of males usually associated of the era. He states “I can take of you if you let me” to the female protagonist emblematic of masculinity and meekness of femininity. The director though presents an avant-garde as the archetypal male protagonist does not save the female, rather ultimately it is these elements which lead to his downfall. The directors use of avant-garde further stems to other male characters, as Sergeant Farret represents a femininity not usually associated with male characters. The dichotomy between the strong masculine features of Farret’s role of lawman and community leader and his strong effeminate qualities challenge the expectation of male sexuality of the 1950s.
An awful movie I’ve got seen Gone Girl is an awful movie I’ve got seen since its plot is illogical and the characterization of some roles is inconsistent. The movie narrates a unordinary “loving story”, the plot of which is unordinary, suspense and thrilling, while the theme of this movie has nothing to do with it. At the end of the film, Amy came back, standing in the bathroom with her whole body covered with blood, spit out the so-called truth of marriage imperturbably and even remorselessly.
Abstract: In most parts of the world, females have always been the victim of oppressive patriarchy and male chauvinism since ages. This problem has been represented by many people through various forms of creations be it art, literature or films. Films are the most popular visual mediums of entertainment through which a large segment of people can be approached. Like literature, a film is also a work of art which mirrors the society, it also depicts the reality of the society though it has some fictionality in it.