Lesson 12: Gender in Film

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Lesson 12 Gender in Film

• Professor Aaron Baker

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Previous Lecture

• Movie and Stage Actors
• Stars and their Images
• Julia Roberts

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Todays Lecture

• Hollywood and Gender Equality
• Film Representations of Women and Men
• Gender in Gas, Food, Lodging (1990)

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Part I Hollywood and Gender Equality
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Women Underrepresented

• Women More than 50 of U.S. Population
• 2007 15 of Hollywood Directors, Executive
  Producers, Writers, Cinematographers, Editors are
  Women (Martha Lauzen San Diego St. Univ.)
• 2006 Only 3 of top 50 earning Hollywood films
  were women focused
• (Entertainment Weekly)

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Martha Coolidge

• Former President of Directors Guild
• Director of Rambling Rose (1991), Introducing
  Dorothy Dandridge (1999), Material Girls (2006)
• "I'm not seeing the hiring of women directors
  improving at all. It's a terrible testament to
  where the industry is going.

http//dir.salon.com/story/ent/movies/feature/2002
/08/27/women_directors/index.html
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Historical Patterns

• Between 1949 and 1979, only 1/5 of 1 of the
  films released by the major Hollywood studios
  were directed by women.
• Only two women directors worked regularly in
  Classic Hollywood Period 1930s-50s Dorothy
  Arzner and Ida Lupino.
• --Historian Barbara Koenig Quart

Ida Lupino
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Socialization

• Women socialized to be passive, supportive
• Directors Role Assertive, in Control
• Dorothy Arzner
• If one is going to be in the movie business, one
  should be a director. He note her choice of
  subject pronoun was the one who told everyone
  what to do. In fact, he is the whole works."

Dorothy Arzner
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Have Done Important Work

• Three main jobs that women have often done in the
  American movie business
• Screenwriters
• Actresses
• Film editors

Thelma Schoonmaker
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Appearance/Support

• These three roles fit traditional ideas of
  femininity
• Look good
• Be smart, creative--but in a supportive role
• Let men take the credit

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Progress Toward Equality?

• Women More Authority in Hollywood in Recent
  Years
• Sherry Lansing, Former CEO Paramount
• Oprah Winfrey
• Amy Pascal, Chair of Sony Pictures

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Why Still So Few Female Directors?

• Women at the top in film are under the same
  commercial pressures as men and so most are
  similarly reluctant to take risks by employing
  other women.
• --Critic Cherry Potter, The Guardian 2004

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Michelle Citron, Choice for Woman Filmmakers

• Control Own Films, Small Audiences
• or
• Compromise Within Industry

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Allison Anders

• "The only place for women directors in this
  Hollywood system is to not have personal
  vision to do very big-budget romantic comedies
  or broad comedies.

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Part II Film Representations of Women and Men
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Active Men

• More Roles
• Do More in Films
• Many movies have active male characters who make
  the important decisions and perform the decisive
  actions. (Lehman and Luhr, Thinking About Movies
  p. 265)

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Theorist Laura Mulvey

• Men More Active in Film Narratives
• Most films also look at their narrative world
  through male characters eyes
• Female characters are generally
• -Erotic objects for the male gaze
• -Problems in the way of male goals

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Mulvey Uses Psychoanalytic Concepts

• Female characters often present a castration
  threat to the male character
• Male asserts his control by objectifying her as a
  sexual fetish
• Or by containing her assertive action

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Mulvey Narrative Cinema Uses Two Looks

• Scopophilic We see women as sexually
  attractivethrough male eyes.
• Narcissistic We look at male protagonist as
  model of action and control.

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Rear Window (1954)

• Photographer Scottie Breaks Leg
• Disinterested in Settling down with Lisa
  (Castration Threat)
• Suspects Neighbor of Murder

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Lisa Contained

• She Investigates Neighbor Assaults Her (Control
  of Assertive Woman)
• Scotties Interest in Lisa Increases
• Please watch this clip.

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These Gender Assumptions

• Translate into two common roles for women in
  Hollywood films
• Supportive of men and/or children
• Independent and selfish

Out of the Past (1947)
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Rocky (1976)

• Adrian (Talia Shire) defines herself by how she
  supports her husband, Rocky.

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Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)

• Mom, Kate (Bonnie Hunt), raises 12 kids, writes a
  book (about family) and returns early from her
  book tour to solve a family crisis.

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Mother/Whore

• This either/or representation of women is
  sometimes called the mother/whore dichotomy.
• Female characters are either pure and generous or
  sexual and selfish.

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Femme Fatale

• Deadly Woman
• Challenges male control in narrative
• Male protagonists who dont control femme fatale
  are destroyed by her

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Not Just in Hollywood

• In the Italian film, The Star Maker (1995), a
  woman has sex with a man she hopes will put her
  daughter in movies.
• This affirms both sides of the mother/whore
  dichotomy with one character.

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Underlying Message

• Independent, sexual women create danger,
  violence.
• The society is more stable with women helping
  others and under the safe control of a man.

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Steven Neale Action Films

• Exemplify this assumption about male activity,
  responsibility and ability.

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Representation of Male Body

• Not only do women and men play different roles
  in movies, they are shown differently.

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Neale Male Characters Also Attractive

• But Hollywood films will often distract us from
  any objectification of the male body by
  emphasizing the productive activity or conflict
  in which hes involved.

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Male Body as Erotic

• Disrupts the idea of men as active--rather than
  passively observed.
• The assumption that men look rather than get
  looked at.

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Raging Bull

• In these scenes the idea of male body as sexual
  is raised and displaced by violence.
• He aint pretty no more.
• Please watch this clip.

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Movie Representation of Gender

• Reflects, justifies social status quo
• Patriarcharchy Men More Social Power
• Masculinism Way of thinking that assumes what
  men do more constructive, important.

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Theorist Jane Gaines

• Challenges Mulveys analysis
• Can women in movies only be seen, passive, or
  controlled by men?
• Are no other options possible for women in film?

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Gaines Psychoanalysis Effective?

• Elite discourse. Who knows it?
• Always arrives at same conclusion about gender
  relations
• -Men concerned about castration (lost power)
• -Try to control, fetishize women
• But if gender not natural, socialized, can be
  changed

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Narrative Patriarchal?

• Mulvey
• Story films always about men
• Constructed by their looks, desires
• These looks see women as controlled
• Counter (Non-narrative) Cinema

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Gaines

• Narrative not fundamentally patriarchal
• Stories can be about women instead
• Feminist movies need to be accessible
• Stories important way to understand world

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Part III Gas, Food Lodging (1992)
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Allison Anders

• Writer, Director
• UCLA/McArthur Grant 1995
• Uses Narrative
• But in stories about womens lives/issues

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Nora

• Single Mom
• Has had difficult experiences with unreliable men
• Struggling to raise two teenage daughtersto
  provide material necessities gas, food, lodging

Brooke Adams
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Trudi (Ione Skye)

• Trudi
• Was sexually assaulted
• Low Self Image
• Looks for affirmation in attention from boys

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Shade (Fairuza Balk)

• Wants a traditional family
• Looks for father has never had John (James
  Brolin)

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Media Images

• Both girls get ideas about identity and
  relationships from media images.
• Pictures on Their Bedroom Walls
• Shades Love for Mexican Melodramas

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Shade Plays Olivia Newton John

• Shade tries to objectify herself for Darius
  (Donovan Leitch) in imitation of the media images
  of women she has seen.

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Dank (Robert Knepper)

• Trudi finds a man who respects her and treats her
  well.
• His love of rocks symbolizes how hes grounded in
  the real world.
• Why does Anders kill him off?

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Anders Own Story

• Was sexually assaulted as a girllike Trudi
• Met a British man on a Greyhound bus
• Moved to England and had a child
• The relationship didnt last

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Shade Visits Her Dad

• Goes to ask him for 50 to buy a nightgown for
  Trudi
• Wants to be able to rely on him
• Please watch this scene and her subsequent visit
  to Javiers home.

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Discussion Question

• What does Shade realize about her ideas of
  family from seeing her dad and then visiting
  Javier and meeting his mother?

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End of Lecture 12
Next Lecture Race in American Film