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Gender representation in cinema
Gender representation in media
Gender representations in media
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Gender representation in cinema
Gender representation in media
Gender representations in media
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Alfred Hitchcock, director and producer of Rear Window, drew his idea for the film from Cornell Woolrich’s short story, “It Had to Be Murder.” He also drew inspiration from 1950s American culture, such as Americans’ suspicion of others during the Cold War era, the overall impending fear of communism, and women’s gender roles. Rear Window predominantly focuses on female objectification and the male gaze through the POV of the subjectively perverted L.B. Jeffries. Hitchcock opens up the movie with a pan shot, where the viewer is introduced to who will soon be called Ms.Torso and Ms.Lonelyhearts.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window has several themes. One major theme is relationships. The lead character, Jeff Jeffries, a photographer and committed bachelor, is involved in a relationship with Lisa Fremont, a model, although the relationship has some tension due to Jeff’s lack of commitment. When Jeff is confined to his apartment recovering from a broken leg, he begins spying through his rear window on his neighbors in a nearby apartment. Through her frequent visits, Lisa is drawn into this spying as well.
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
Rear Window Argues that people should mind their own business. Do you agree? Rear Window, a 1954 romance/murder-mystery by the renowned golden age director Alfred Hitchcock, is a film that explores a multitude of themes and genres through the voyeuristic gaze of protagonist L.B. Jefferies. Jefferies, or ‘Jeff’ as he commonly known throughout the film, is a middle-aged bachelor recently hospitalised due to his high-risk career as a photojournalist. This hindered condition serves as an important foundation on which the movie is built upon as Jeff’s forced lifestyle being in a wheelchair causes an abrupt stop in his usual high intensity way of life and causes him to quench his boredom in other ways, predominantly watching the other residents in his apartment complex through the ‘rear window’ of his apartment.
The movie represents the issues of sexism and authority issues. Most of the male patients have said to been involved with overpowering women in relationships. The role of each woman changed the way the men acted. This movie is representing the roles of women and how they are
“Rear Window” has caused a lot of controversy ever since the Hitchcock movie hit theaters back in 1954. Rear Window is actually based on the short story, “It Had to Be Murder,” that was written by Cornell Woolrich. Years later Woolrich decided to sell the rights of this particular story to a newly production company. That production company later would sell the rights to the story to Hitchock and Stewart. They would later produce the movie known as “Rear Window.”
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, published in 1962, tells the story of men in a psychiatric ward and focuses on two characters called McMurphy and Bromden, and their defiance towards the institution’s system. A critical factor in this novel are the women. The 1960’s played a significant role in changing the norms of social issues, and the perfect idea of women was changing too. Women were no longer just stay at home wives, but had their own voice in society, and many people did not agree with these untraditional views. Kesey’s representation of women in this novel illustrate them in a poor light that makes it obvious that they don’t fit the ideal womanly persona.
I did not know that the writer of the outsiders was a woman until I arrived at the ”speaking with S.E. Hinton …” page at the end of the book. On the page, she talked about the reasons that she disguised her name and her real life experience socializing with boys that led her to write The Outsiders. The novel tells a story of rivalry between two boys’ gangs, the greasers and the socs, from the perspective of a 14 year old boy. Abate (169) acknowledged that, compared to other novels of similar theme, The Outsiders was “lack of true profanity, drug use, and sex acts.” Is it characteristically a touch of femininity that women writer produce when writing about violence?
Camera narration is crucial to the effect the movie has on its audience. It is noticed that the viewer rarely gets close to the apartments or characters across the courtyard. The viewpoint is mainly fixed to Jeff’s apartment, apart from a few occasions where the camera plunges out of the window. The fronts of the buildings facing the main street are never shown either; instead all of the action takes place within the mystery and secrecy of the backyard, hence the title name ‘Rear’ Window. Perhaps Hitchcock realised that many people would not behave the same way in their front facing windows.
In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the author, Flannery O'Connor, demonstrates how a family vacation can quickly face a violent end, caused by a criminal known as “The Misfit.” Looking at the short story through a feminist point of view, one can quickly gather that O’Connor uses the traditional gender roles right from the beginning of the story. As reading the title, it automatically suggests the men in this short story are untrustworthy, not prevalent, and dangerous. With that being said, the female characters in this story are viewed in the eyes of how a woman should act.
The feminist theory is based on finding and exposing negative attitudes toward women in literature. Their goal is to reveal the reality of how women get portrayed in literature due to the fact that most literature presents an inaccurate view of women and are most of the time minimized. In the Catcher in the Rye there is a few female characters such as Sunny, the girls at the club, and Sally who are put in situations that show nothing but stereotypes and puts them in a bad spot throughout the novel. J.D Salinger decides to put some of the female characters in situations that can cause those who read this novel to think bad or leave readers with a bad image of women. This bad image on women is due to the fact that he decided to portray some of
Alfred Hitchcock 's Rear Window explores the lives of those who feel isolated within society. The 1954 film, set in the tenements of Grenwich village, depicts those who are incapable of fitting into society 's expectations, as well as those who feel isolated from common interaction with others. Moreover, Hitchcock displays how its human nature to seek comfort and deeper connection even with those who are surrounded by others. Despite depicting characters as lonely, the progression of the film illustrates how individuals can be freed from isolation. The director asserts the loneliness and struggle that comes from fitting into social mores.
Hollywood has always done a terrible job of depicting real women in film, and although his work has a somewhat misogynistic reputation, Alfred Hitchcock has done so much involving the progression of female roles in Hollywood cinema. Although many of his female victims wind up dead, the survivors have lots of power – and without reliance on their male counterparts. Women remain the central focus in many of Hitchcock’s films, not just because of their beauty, but because the narrative is dependent on them. When you look at his work in the context of this specific Hollywood era, Hitchcock’s female characters are very much out of the ordinary. Looking past the obvious presence of gender roles (male and female) that just so happened to be a part of the social norm during that time, Hitchcock sought to represent women with having more depth, realism, and independence than ever before in women in Hollywood.
Trophies are not always made of gold, or even placed on a high pedestal. That’s right, housewives can be trophies as well (at least, that’s what men thought during the early 20th century). Unless they wore an apron, had food in hand, and maintained an hourglass figure, society forced women to believe that this was the only way the could be housewives, and deserved to be married to a husband. Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie featured Amanda Wingfield, a housewife that is unfortunately a victim of societal pressures.
The novel Pride and Prejudice can easily be picked apart through a feminist lens. The farther into the book one goes, the more there is to critique and analyze through a feminist lens. The book is about Elizabeth Bennet and her relationship with her eventual fiance Mr. Darcy, the ups and the downs of their relationship. Elizabeth was never a woman who only craved the attention and approval of men, she was her own person with her own complex emotions.