Feminist film theory

In Janes Gaines’s, White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory, Gaines wanted to show how a theory of the text and its spectator, based on the psychoanalytic concept of sexual difference, is unequipped to deal with a film which is about racial difference and sexuality. “The Diana Ross star vehicle Mahogany (directed by Berry Gordy, 1975) immediately suggests a psychoanalytic approach because the narrative is organized around the connections between voyeurism and photographic acts, because it exemplifies the classical cinema which has been so fully theorized in Lacanian terms” (Gaines, 12). But as Gaines argued, the psychoanalytic model works to block out considerations which assume a different configuration…

talking and writing about professional and academic feminist film critics and its relevance in the future, it is important to outline a few of the central problems it tackles, rooted in its historical frame. For the purposes of this essay, only three will be dealt with: representation of women in film, the problem with naming in feminist film criticism, and issues with authority and authenticity. The representation of women in film has been accurately summarized by Molly Haskell (1974) in the…

the areas in which there exists a large amount of fallacy is gender. This paper will identify issues women face in film, by analyzing top grossing superhero films in recent years. In researching these films, I will analyze how women are portrayed, and the general conceptions created as a result of their portrayal. In turn, I will show that gender roles are still promoted in media today, creating unhealthy attitudes towards women. Ultimately, the goal of is paper is to encourage a healthy mindset…

Gender and representation In Marleen Gorris’s ‘A Question of Silence’ During the mid 1970s and into the early 1980’s, feminists critiqued ideologies and the system of beliefs in the patriarchal society. Feminist filmmaking became key to portraying fairer representations of women in film denied to them in Early Hollywood, whilst also using experimental techniques to give authorial voice to women filmmakers. Marleen Gorris’s Dutch film ‘A Question of Silence’ (1982), is considered one of the…

How and why has the representation of women changed in films since the 1980s? “There is no such thing called unmediated access to reality” (dyer 1993),this essay will be discussing women’s role in film between the 1980s to the 2000s, how it has changed and why. I will be using a Big Eyes, 9 to 5 and Alien as an example to show how female characters were represented and the difference in their contribution to the narrative. Firstly representation means to depict or to show an image of something…

Equality in every shape and size When the feminist movement began to arise in society in the 1970’s it, almost simultaneously, created a different ramification of feminism as well. This ramification of feminism, called Essentialism, manifested itself in, for example, the belief that women were not only supposed to be equal to their male counterparts, but that women were the better sex and superior to men. Therefore, essential feminists believed that women should live up to that potential and…

the modern day understanding of the truth. The literary theory of New Historicism is based off this concept, and its goal is to understand the relationship between history, literature, and cultural context. Feminism is a movement advocating for women’s rights and gender equality, and has not been unaffected by New Historicism. Many do not understand the roots of the Feminist movement because…

Miss Congeniality is an action comedy film that came out in the year 2000. This film starred the very well- known actress Sandra Bullock, who plays an FBI agent who has to undergo a transformation in order to become a contestant in the Miss America pageant. Bullock was later nominated for Best Actress at the 2001 Golden Globes, for her performance in Miss Congeniality. From its opening weekend till now Miss Congeniality has made close to a hundred and seven million dollars. The director of this…

book explores the changing and often ambivalent relationship between the three terms women, feminism and media in the light of these recent debates. At the same time it places them within the broader discussions within feminist theory - about subjectivity, identity, culture, and narrative - of which they have formed a crucial part. Throughout, the book explores key issues within feminist media studies both through specific examples and via critical engagement with the work of major theoretical…

communication is the male gaze theory. In this paper, I will explore how the male gaze is challenged and why are there contradictions in those alternatives that require more research. Male gaze within the psychoanalytic analysis Sigmund Freud was a psychoanalyst who most thoroughly developed the concept of the unconscious (Berger, 2013). According to Freud, all humans are born…