First Paragraph

Title:
How has the stereotypical view of women been reinforced throughout the film "Material Girls"?

Throughout this, essay I will be dicussing the ways in which the film, "Material Girls" is able to conform to the main sterotypes which are given towards young blonde females in society, therefore emphasising the fact that women are being "underrepresented" and shown to conform to the "male gaze" showing to the audience what there main roles are in the film and what is expected from the stereotypical blonde female characters to do throughout the film. The media tend to exploit the faults in which blondes make highlighting them to be degrading to all blondes. Having blonde women constantly in the media like paris hilton can only justify the label in which blonde women are given which makes it evident that they would be the perfect roles to have in comedy films such as material girls.

Films like mean girls and legally blonde are able to show the audience the familiar roles in which blondes girl have within films of this genre. There roles are often comical and heavily sterotypical. Compared to the 1940s film "Double Indemnity" the female role differs to the one in which is shown in material girls. Even though the chracter is blonde she is very powerful in terms of the way in which she is able to manipulate the male charcter with her good looks.

3 contemporay adverts

Diet coke advert

The difference with this advertisemnet for diet coke is that the man is being objectified by all of the women which makes a change to how women are represented as it its no longer the male gaze but the female gaze. This advert suggests now that there is a role reversal to the audience due to the fact that the men have to now identify with the women as they are given the point of view of what the females see in the advert.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4uL-YMCJlRY

GAP Advert

This advert portrays to the audience the life of what its like for a single man. Its clear from how the man is represented that the target audience for the advert is for men however this does comply with the female gaze as all the shots are of the man throughout the advert. This adevrt portrays the man in a more material role due to the fact that the advert shows the man looking after himself and shows him living on his own. Male audeince would identify with this man in the advert and may believe that this is the perfect image of what a man is supposed to be like.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=egBh9lauQDg&feature=related

Kate moss advert

This advert begins to portray how the female character is objectified. The advert links to greer theorys that all women are only interested in beauty products and looking good. This advert shows that its both for the male audience as kate moss is being objectified in order to meet the needs of the men that may be watching the advert. The adverts target audience is females however its shown through the close up shots which are used in the advert that some aspects are shown to meet the needs of men. This can also link to walters (1998) theory that women enjoy fashion and beauty and enjoy looking good which constrasts with the idea that this advert is only shown in order to target and comply with the male gaze.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jeZc6hjW22c&feature=related

3 Historical Advertisments

In this advert the women is portrayed as the typical housewife. It is a typical, however stereotypical representation of what women are like. The advert links to Scheibe (1979) theory that the only concern for all women was cleanliness, family values and pleasing others.



The flash advert again portrays the women as being the typical housewife. From this advert it is made clear to the audience that they want to encourage women to go out and buy the product. The fact that a female is being used as the voice over for the advert shows a way in which the company are trying to sell its products to the main target audience, being females. This links again to scheibe who stated that womens interests were in the house and pleasing others, also is argued with Gunters theory (1995) which stated that women were shown in adverts to have low paid jobs or in the familiar housewife role.



This fairy liquid advert shows the audience that the typical role of the mother. She has to explain to her son about the uses of the product. This may imply that the mother is trying to persaude her son to fulfil the roles in which she is doing as she explains to him about what the uses of the product is as she answers all of his questions. The advert may be trying to show through the young boy the attitude to which men have to helping around the house as they are unaware of what they are supposed to do.

5 female directors

Gurinder Chadha -directed such films such as bend it like beckham, angus thongs and perfect snogging and bride and prejudice.

Amy Heckerling - is an American film director who is one of the few female directors to have produced a number of box office hits. Some of her films include: I could never be your women (2007) Look whos talking too (1990) and clueless( 1995)

Sofia Coppola - is also an American film director and an academy award winning screen writer. She was the third female movie director to be voted for a academy award for her directing and was also an actress beforehand. Films that she had directed included: lost in translation (2003) and marie antionette (2006)

Martha Coolidge- was born on the 17th of August 1946 and directed such films like materials girls (2006) and the prince and me (2004)

Kathy Bates- was born on the 28th june 1948. She is a film director who directed such films like ps I love you (2007) and faliure to launch.

3 ways to get more female directors

1) To encourage female directors to send people their projects. This way more females would be encouraged to become directors.

2) Another way in which women may be encouraged to get the higher roles in film would be if there were more female role models. If there are more female role models doing well then this would encourage more females to achieve the higher roles in film.

3) From an early age people should encourage girls that it would be possible for them to become film directors. Therefore promoting to young girls that it would be possible for them to become female directors.

Subertisements

" I only do the cooking at home when I have a day off from work









"The men like it when women get dirty"

"I don't really like the colour purple, but these men say I look good in it."

Why are women directors such a rare sight?

1) Female directors just dont seem to send in their projects, possibly suggesting that they dont want to become directors.

2) Having children may also play a part in influencing womens decisions to become directors. To become a director it would mean that you are giving part of your inner self and wouldnt have enough time for children.

3) The film industry itself is a heavily dominated male area which would make it even harder for women to try and break into the industry.

4) There are a small list of screenwriters in this country. It is not expected that 50% of working directors would be female.

5) Women are better organisers and traditionally more estoteric or creative.

Bibliography

Name- Tasker, Yvonne

Title -Working Girls, Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema

Year published- 1998

"The 1980s and early 1990s saw the emergence of a few female action heroes defined by a quality of muculinity" pg 70

How this book is useful to me.
This book outlines the changes in which women had in film. It mostly explains the changes in which women were represented in film and the different roles that they had to play. This would be useful for my independent study as i would be able to make references to the way in which women have been portrayed in film.

Name- King, Geoff

Title- Film Comedy

Year published- 2002

"When the girlis confronted by the knife-wielding killer in her hallway, a table presents her with a selection of objects from which to choose. She selects the banana(exaggeration of the generic assumption of victim-dumbness)" pg 127

How this book would be useful to me.
This book would be useful to me as it offers me information about how different charcaters are used in order to create humour for the audience. From the quote above it shows how some women are represented in comedy films.

Name- Hayward, Susan

Title- Cinema Studies

Year published- 2000

"Man as producer, Women as the reproducer"

How this book would be useful to me.
This book would be useful for me to use throughout my independent as the book is more like an A to Z of different media terms and key concepts which I could include throughout my independent study.

Name- Silver, Alain
Ursini, James

Title- Film Noir

Year published- 2004

" While there are many female protagonists in film noir, most of them exist in tandem with a male figure"

"No matter how dominating the women may be, without a male figure to equal prominence there is no story, without a man to destroy there is no femme fatale"

How this book would be useful to me.
I believe that this book would be useful for me throughout my independent study as it outlines the history of film in great detail and explains how the characteristics of the roles in film have changed over time.

Name- Gauntlett, David

Title- Media Gender and Identity

"Overall men were more likely to be assertive, whilst women were more likely to be passive"

How this book would be useful to me.
This book would be useful for me to use throughout my independent study as it gives some insight to how the roles of women have changed in films over the years.

“Gaunter (1995: 13-14).”-pg 43

“The role of a woman in a film almost always revolves around her physical attraction and the mating games she plays with the male characters”.

Name- Fauldi, Susan

Title- Blame it on Feminism, Introduction to Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

Year published-1991

"If women have "made it," then why are nearly 80 percent of working women still stuck in traditional "female" jobsñas secretaries, administrative "support" workers and salesclerks?"

How this book would be useful to me.
This book would be useful to me throughout my independent study as fauldi is able to explain in detail on how women are in society represented. I would then be able to link her views to my independent study as both her ideas and the way women are represented in films are different.

Name- Rosen, Marjorie

Title- Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies and the American Dream

Year published -1973

"the Cinema Woman is a popcorn Venus, a delectable but insubstantial hybrid of culture distortions"

Name- Humm, Maggie

Title- Feminism and Film

Year published- 1997

"Film often and anxiously envisions women stereotypically as good mothers or baf hysterical careerists"

Title- Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era

Name- Jeffords, Susan

Year published -1993

“Good mother icons are pretty thin on the ground too; we’ve probably got more good fathers these days.”

Reading list......

Title- Impossible bodies, Femininity and masculinity at the movies

Name- Holmlund, Chris

"Exploring whether independent films grant them greater freedom than do mainstream movies and examing how audiences understand the "service" roles they play as spitfires maids and mamas asked to provide sexual favors, perform household chores and proffer emotional glue" pg 111

Title- The media students book third edition

Name- Branston, Gill
Stafford, Roy

" Stereotypes work by taking some easily grasped features presumed to belong to a group putting them at the centre of the description and implying that all members of the group always have thoese features" pg 92

Title- Introducing media studies

Name- Sardar, Ziauddin
Van Loon, Borin

"women are constantly portrayed in the media as objects of the male gaze" pg 82

"Patricia's role is to remind the audience of men's natural intended "rightful" place for women, raising beautiful children and duitfully supporting the more "important" work of men" pg 138

Title- The cinema book 2nd edition

Name- Cook, Pam
Bernink, Mieke

feminist counter cineam theory emerged in the 1970s in tandem with the critique of hollywood developed by Clare Johnston and Laura Mulvey

"If we accept that cinema involves the production of signs the idea of non intervention is pure mystification. The sign is always a product what the camera is fact gasps is the natural word of teh dominant ideology. Womens cinema cannot afford such idealism the truth of our oppression cannot be captured on celluloid with the innocence of the camera. It has to be constructed/manufactured. New meanings have to be created by disrupting the fobric of the male bourgeois cinema within the text of the film". (Johnston 1974) pg 118

"Both argued that since the narrative conventions, iconographic traditions and identicatory structures of mainstream film were shaped by their development in a patriachal society, a change in content alone would mearly reproduce the bias in the system" (Mulvey 1979)

Title- Action and Adventure cinema

Name- Tasker, Yvonne

"The term action babe heroine is intended to capture the yoking together of soft and hard elements which comprise this fantasy figure. Beautiful young women- a babe and equally importantly she is fit". pg 205

Title- Bollywood cinema, Temples of Desire

Name- Mishra, Vijay

" Since the spectator identifies with the male protagonist any shift in the sexual dynamics of the women and the protagonist leads to a kind of mediatized eriticism on the part of the spectator because the protagonist possession is read as his own"
"There is also a considerable weakening of woman as icon of desire" pg 95

Films

1950s



Film High Noon (1952)

This clip is of the opening of the film High Noon (1952). The film, being a western, clearly portarys the men as being the most dominant chracters throughout the whole film. The men are represented as being powerful, assertive and confident whereas the women are prsented as being weak and always needed to be protected. The men in the film are the most powerful and are the main charcters in the film. This was very common within the western genre as films like this one would show men to be men. Meanining that they would have the same attitudes to what men would have at the time. The men in western films like this one would be shown to be the ones which do all of the fighting and the ones which have the most power in films.



The Men 1950

1960s



Film Dr No (1962)

The film Dr No shows the female character played by ursala andress from the point of view of the male character james bond. The cinema clearly objectifies the female character which then means that the female audience are forced into a role reversal as the audeince are positioned to see the women from bonds point of view. This would mean that teh women would have to see from the view of the male character. This can be related to "saturing" as the female audeience have to make a cross gender identifcation with the male character.

Film The sound of music (1962)



This film contrasts with the ways in which women were represented throughout films as in this film the main character is a women. This women is presented to the audience as the madonna and is represented to the audience as a motherely figure throughout the film compared to the whore in fatal attraction. The fact that the women is played in the film is the main character shows the changes in which film had, due to the fact that there were more central roles for women in film.

1970s



Film Alien (1979) This film clip is from the flim alien. At this point of time women began to get more central roles in films. This was the second wave of feminism which took place were women wanted to become more independent. The film helped to show the audience that film was changing compared to the way films used to present women throughout the 50s and the 60s. The female charcter is represented as being strong and independent highlighting the change in which women had in film.

Star Wars



The star wars film was centred around the female character of princess leia. She is shown to hav ea certain amount of power in her own ways however she does need the assitance of male charcters to help her.

1980s



Film Aliens (1987)

This film clip is from the film Aliens (1987). At this point of time there was a second wave of feminism which allowed women to become more independent as some were starting to get more job opportunities. This film played an important role in changing the ways in which females were represented in film compared to the earlier years. The main charcter "Ripley" the main female character of the film contrasts in the way in which other females were represented in film. Her charcter in the film however is superior and strong. Dyer had found out that in the 80s there was a change which had more women in central roles in programmes.

1990s



The film Fatal Attraction (1987) saw that there was a male backlash as "faludi" found out that there was a backlash against women having careers and being independent on themselves. The film is able to expolit the different roles in which the women play throughout the film, one being the Madonna in the film is the housewife shown to be caring and innocent compared to the other female charcter she is the Whore as she is the one who uses her sexual appearence in order to get what she wants.

Die another day



The shot of actress hallie berry on this film coming out of the sea again aims to make the female audience indentify with the male character as they are again given the view of the female charcater from the point of view of james bond.

Representations Of Gender Today

During the 1990s and into the new century, gender roles on televiion became increasingly rqual and non steroetyped, alothough the majority of lead characters were still male.

In prime time tv shows between 1992-1993 men took 61 per cent of the total number of speaking roles with women having the other 39 per cent

In addition to this, Prime-Time T.V shows presented women as single, young, independent and free from family and work place pressures.

The 1992 1993 study found that only 3 per cent of women were represented has housewives as thier main occupation.

Tv sitcom Friends was good for showing the equality between both the male and female characters. The males were presented in having all the masculine qualities although characteristics of gentleness and sensitivity. Whereas the females are shown as intelligent and independent and not housewifey.

Buffy the vampire slayer made an impact on teen tv and showed the audeience a role reversal in this typically male dominated world of the sci fi genre. The creator Joss Whedon stated that " Buffy is a good role model for not just girls but for everyone becasue she uses her wits and physical strengh to win"

In film, female roles have become tougher eg Angelina Jolie.

The film Charlies Angels presented women in a way for an audience who enjoyed seeing women with power. The film was critised mostly by male film critics.
Micheal Thomson of BBC was upset due to the fact that the films message was feisty but also feminine.

Today women an men tend to have similiar skills and abilities in films