Lois Weber's Reinforcement Of Gender Roles

Lois Weber’s Reinforcement of Gender Roles
“Boys are only men grown tall (Weber).” This epigraph, from the film “The Blot,” does not represent a theme that recurs throughout the entire film. This epigraph only represents the theme of the first scene of the film in a university classroom. This is because the first scene is of higher class college students acting blasé towards the lecture, like boys. Whereas the entirety of the film is about income inequality amongst well-educated men, and about how love is about more than money. Although this epigraph does not represent the entire film, it is the beginning of Lois Weber’s pattern of excluding females from subject matter. Her film yearns to educate her audience about unjust poverty. At the same …show more content…
Especially when Reverend Gates and Phil West seem to be in competition to be a better suitor for the beauty that is Amelia. There was also female competition for the heart of Phil West, but the depiction of Juanita made it seem that she was more infatuated with Phil and that it was not as fair of a competition as the competition between Amelia’s suitors. This may have been because of the stereotype that women are prizes to be won and fought for. On the other hand if a woman is not the prize a man wants, she should not fight, she should give up. Following norms in a similar way, Mrs. Griggs is expected to serve refreshments to her family’s guests. Both Mrs. Griggs and her neighbor are expected to stay home, keep up with the house, and cook the dinner for their husbands. Even though Mrs. Griggs is not able to afford luxuries she is stubborn in obeying her gender norms by assembling snacks for her husband’s and her daughter’s guests. Maybe in a more progressive time these women would have still chosen to do all of the domestic work, but I cannot ignore that we do not see anyone in the film bending or disobeying their societally assigned gender roles. Here Weber is reinforcing that women cannot be financially dependent, and they must be the perfect wife, mother, and housekeeper for their husbands in order to survive.
I believe that as a fellow woman Lois Weber should have used the platform that she had to challenge the stereotypes set upon genders, especially women. Obviously, she did not share this belief and in fact was the one leading women away from the film industry by warning them “that they would ‘never get away with it’ [so] the age of the female filmmaker appeared to be over (Mahar