Laura

Laura Mulvey, in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), reveals how traditional cinema is imbued with an active male gaze that communicates dominant and sexist ideologies. She argues that classical Hollywood movies reflect the patriarchal system in which they are produced, with women being “looked at and displayed” for the (assumed) male spectator’s pleasure. While the success of several recent female-led blockbusters seem to indicate a shift toward greater female representation, I…

Magic Mike XXL, the sequel to the widely popular film shedding light on the male entertainment industry, is a film that is geared towards heterosexual women and their viewing pleasure. The audience follows Mike, a male stripper-turned-furniture business owner, as he reunites with his former stripper buddies and travels to Myrtle Beach for a final appearance at a male stripper convention. Delving into the themes of the sexualization of the male body and fulfillment of female pleasure, Magic Mike…

“A film is made up of a hundred or more hidden things,” Vincente Minnelli once said in an interview. The quote seems to sum up Minnelli’s layered film making style. In this essay I will be exploring the themes of feminism, one of the hundred or more hidden things in Minnelli’s work. The essay will move through the life of Minnelli, analysing films from both the beginning and end of his career in the context of the time in which they were made. Vincente Minnelli was born Lester Anthony Minnelli…

Andrew Milner cites Laura Mulvey and her idea of the Male gaze and Scopophilia in his article Darker Cities. Mulvey believes that in film, audiences have to view characters that are often female from the perspective of a heterosexual male. Certain features of Male Gaze includes the camera lingering on the curves of the female body and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man’s reaction to these events. Milner in his article talks about Ridley Scott’s film Blade…

In today’s media, specifically music videos, there are quite often distinct gender representations. This is shown in the music video “Girls on Film” by Duran Duran. This music video was published in 1981, expected to be played at night clubs and the “Play Boy” channel (Girls on Film, n.d., para. 4). The raunchy video created an uproar, and it was consequently banned by the BBC and heavily edited for MTV (Girls on Film, n.d., para. 4). This caused the band to gain more spot light and furthermore,…

Back in the 1930s, society grouped and showed prejudice against those who weren’t the “perfects” that society visualized. Everyone with defects, disabilities, etc. were put underneath one label that expressed society’s feelings about them. Laura Hillenbrand, the author, used several very strongly connotated words to describe a majority of the nation’s view and attitude towards these people such as “undesirable”. The disabled or “feeble-minded” were seen as keeping the nation back from achieving…

Spring Breakers (2012, dir. Harmony Korine) could be described as an actuality film, or a film that has no real purpose. Through his use of editing, lighting, and sound, Harmony Korine is able to create affects in the viewers. Some argue that this film is a feminist work, but after analyzing the film, I must disagree. Media changes how we perceive things and can be used to expand our perception. Film directs where our attention should be, and allows us to live what is happening on the screen.…

Nonetheless, ownership of property does not only apply to things, but also to people such as Maria. She is an asset to the studio that employs her as an actress until she is not. Maria is also a property of Carter as her husband, at least that comes from an actor in the elevator she meets. (Didion, 23). Helen May reaffirms this sentiment of property, like any other women in entertainment business, a statement mentions “That women are nothing more but a prop” (May, 9) taken from the word “use” in…

“Unbroken” “Memory, when it juts, retreats, recovers, shows us how to hold the darkness, how to breathe.” drew Myron. The book “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand is a biography of Louis Zamperini. Where it describes difffuclt circumstances which he experienced. He suffer from a plane crash during World War II being stranded on the Pacific Ocean, with two of his crewmen. They where stuck on a raft, exposed to hard adversity for fortyseve days. Finally, they were captured and taken to a POW camp.…

Laura Mulvaney, in her 1975 article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, describes the male gaze as being driven by “ the unconscious of patriarchal society” which is demonstrated through the “sexual differences which controls images, erotic ways of looking…