Now we’ve all heard that walking alone through a city can be daunting for a young woman alone, this is a regrettable fact of society. Now as a man I’ve never experienced this, not during the day, not at night. But this video is eye opening, and it really grants an inside look at how women are viewed as pieces to be put on display. The men in the video are absolutely disgusting in their treatment of this woman.
Below is bunch of information on Anita Sarkeesian, I won’t summarize or post my opinion since we’re all intelligent people and therefore should form our own opinions. Since her recent work was mentioned in class it would benefit discussion to get a little background information.
So below is a link to an article examining what men and women look at when they look at various advertisements. Some of the data is broken down by gender others aren’t but this kind of data explains the differences (when they exist) between genders. It’s a fairly quick read and the data is easy to interpret.
The results are rather shocking however, While you’d expect men to ogle a women’s breasts in an ad the opposite is true, men look more at faces while women take in the body as a whole. Except the opposite is true when looking at male models, men will look at the body, women at faces.
http://www.businessinsider.com/eye-tracking-heatmaps-2014-7
Let me start off by saying that I had a very happy childhood and for all intents and purposes I never really wanted for anything.
However given our discussion of Slaughter’s piece today I feel it necessary to bring up that my mother is a politician. In addition to a Politician she is an engineer. for some background information my mother graduated from Lafayette in 1981, as one of the first female metallurgical engineers, she worked after college at Alcoa in upstate new york overseeing aluminum recycling. For a time she made more money than my Father when that changed she stopped working at Alcoa. Fast forward a few years and some of my first memories are of my mother working as a realtor.
Once again fast forward a few years and my Mother became involved in politics first on the Bernards township environmental commission, then on the planning board, the Township committee and finally she was appointed Mayor in 2013. Given the discussion today of Women, particularly in the political sector giving up either their families or their jobs I feel this anecdote is particularly relevant. I have never once heard my mother complain about how she was treated in any of her jobs simply because she was a women, she did mention of course that she was always in a minority but she never once expressed that she felt in any way oppressed or disadvantaged because of her gender or her choice to have a family.
http://www.bernards.org/township_committee/tc_gaziano.aspx
Bit of a rant but so be it. i just got around to watching the new version of Carrie, for those who aren’t aware its a remake of a 70’s film based on a Stephen King short story about a girl who gets bullied and then develops psychic powers and kills everyone (a very, very sparse summary). My main problem with the remake is the casting choices around the main character. I simply found the new one to be utterly unbelievable. Carrie is supposed to be an awkward bullied girl who quite frankly isn’t very attractive. And in the 70’s version this was believable and the casting choice was on point.
However in the new version the actress playing Carrie is quite good looking and the poster itself is extremely sexualized. Somehow making being drenched in pigs blood sexy. In this case however the sexualization of a character takes away from the film and makes the characters less believable. If the film is about an awkward girl who gets bullied cast someone who is even slightly believable in that role.
In summation Carrie and its remake are a perfect example of the increasing sexualization of hollywood and the increasing desire to use women as marketing ploys through sexuality and forced gender norms around both male and female sexuality.
Since we’ve touched in class on issues surrounding gender and gender identity and the sometimes tragic ramifications of society’s lack of acceptance I’d like to recommend a film that expands on the topic and would help if anyone was doing a paper on the subject.
priscilla queen of the desert follows a band of Australian cross dressing performers as they go on a road trip through the outback. It’s directed by Stephen Elliot and stars Hugo Weaving and Guy pierce.
The film touches on issues of acceptance of lifestyles, transsexuality and gender issues in general.
The film was also adapted to a broadway play and if you like ABBA the soundtrack is mostly ABBA, its a comedy so it’s fairly light though it does touch on a lot of the issues that have come up in our discussion of Boy’s Don’t cry.
Below is a link to the trailer:
So I’ve shared and discussed the following video in other FAMS classes but in all honesty this is my first WGS class. Therefore I’m curious to hear a more varied reaction.
Video
original article
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/construction-workers-yell-messages-empowerment-women-snickers-stunt-156541
The Article is a dissection of the roles of women in noir film, as the title suggests. The article primarily deals with what the author calls the “Spider woman” or the Femme Fatale, the sexy dangerous alluring woman who’s sexual liberty and agency make her dangerous. The Femme Fatale then must be punished as her sexual liberty is within the narrative a crime against men, and for the man’s own protection she must be destroyed.
In stark contrast to the Femme Fatale there is a homey woman who fulfills the more “traditional” role of woman as caregiver, this archetype offers comfort and nurture without asking for much if anything in return. This archetype exists to play the foil to the Femme Fatale character and to maintain the ideals set forth by society at the time. The nurturing woman is to be viewed as good, the femme fatale is bad and if if weren’t any clearer the femme fatale is punished for being the femme fatale.
The article then discusses whether Noir is a genre or a movement, highlighting several points and examples to illustrate the point that Noir is movement and therefore transcends genres and noir stylized films or even noir scenes can and do appear in many different genres of film, the most notable example is included via link. While I couldn’t find a video clip (sorry) Ramrod is a western which heavily features Noir elements and themes.
My notes from the article are below and included links to some of the films mentioned. As are a few critical questions relating to the article.
Which role from the Noir genre as discussed in the article does Bree (Jane Fonda, Klute) fill if any? How about Helen (Dietrich, Blonde Venus) ?
Is Noir a Genre of film or is it a movement and if it is a Movement how is modern Noir accounted for, Usual Suspects for example.
Is the archetype of the Femme Fatale pro feminist or is it a step backwards in how women are viewed in post war america?
The Hayes code was in censorship code imposed during the making of Blonde Venus as the assigned article outlines in further detail. However I felt the article was a bit spartan in terms of the actual realities of the Hayes code while it was in action.
In Blonde Venus there were numerous sexual innuendoes and raunchy humor which were explicitly banned by the Hayes Code. However directors under the Hayes Code were clever, they knew if they were able to fool the censor through metaphor and word play they could keep their content relatively unchanged.
A better example perhaps is the Film Bringing Up Baby. The film is relatively tame under the standards of the Hayes Code however due to a simple visual gag and clever writing the opening of the film is overtly sexual in nature and hilarious once the visual gag is revealed. (look it up on youtube, once you get the joke you’ll know)