Wednesday 11th November 2015
Course Module - BCOP100 Contexts of Practice Lecture - Lucy Leake
Representation of Women
Towards the start of the lesson we had a quick recap on psychoanalysis and film, we were asked to share our findings and research, I talked about Shaun of the Dead and the idea behind super ego, ID, and ego within cartoons.
Women have always been looked at - Quite often the women will look back at you as the spectator, women start to become an object to be looked at by others. Whilst the men admire the women, the women tend to watch themselves, behind every glance is a judgement.
As a class we had a look at a few paintings and we discussed the idea that painters paint how they want to see women.
Laura Mulvey - Theorist who believed that women are portrayed across to look appealing, to entertain the audience who is watching, she also believes that a male character will drive the narrative for a film. She claimed a few things regarding cinema.
A theory that she created was called the male gaze which was the term used to describe two different ways of looking known as Voyeuristic and Fetishistic.
The representation of women, how has it really changed? We had a look at a range of film posters, the front covers to see how the women were portrayed, we went into a bit of detail about the film Alien (1979), the main character who was called Sigourney Weaver, who was a girl but the role was for a male character.
Scopophilia - This word has been derived from looking, when people or images are viewed as erotic objects, known as deviant behaviour i.e. voyerism.
Voyerism - Pleasure becomes voyeuristic when it is dependent on the object of gaze being unaware
Peeping Tom - as an audience we watched a small clip, sort of a spy film, we are viewing a film on film within a film and so it was as if the audience was in on the act.
Fetishism - Objects which replace things that are desired.
Narcissim - Erotic pleasure which is derived from looking at one's own body
References
Alien (1979) Directed by Ridley Scott [Film] USA: 20th Century Fox
21 Jump Street (2012) Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller [Film] USA: Columbia Pictures
http://griid.org/2013/02/12/normalizing-male-dominance-gender-representation-in-2012-films/
Research
Examples of a film for masculinity
21 Jump Street - The film itself stars the two main actors of which are played by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, they go undercover as cops at a high school to track drug dealers. They both play hyper-masculine roles within the film with Tatum being the top boy, not necessarily the bright one and then Hill who is trying to relieve his high school days, works well and wants to be accepted by the cool kids and find a girl. Within the film there are several party scenes where women are said to be objectified, linking back to Freud's theories and Laura Mulvey. However, the two male leads use language that is over the top and dismissive of women. I guess it could be said that for movies like "21 Jump Street" it appears that the men never mature much beyond puberty and women have become available purely for male pleasure - linking back again to Laura Mulveys theory "Male Gaze" where she believed that women are portrayed across in film to look appealing, to entertain the audience, predominantly a male demographic.
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