Final Product - Ariana Aguilar
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A very common and regular activity that almost everybody is able to enjoy nowadays is watching movies
whether it is in cinemas, netflix, T.V, or many other sources
Nevertheless, an aspect that I find extremely interesting is the depiction of females in movies
and the changes they have suffered throughout time
What has the American cinema told its audiences about women's roles in society?
That’s the question I’m aiming at answering.
Hollywood, many times referred to as the home of the American film industry
can be determined as a commercial industry of mass products transmitting
certain ideologies and cultural symbols
How women are portrayed in popular culture has a great political significance
because of the importance mass media has over gender roles
How we should behave and what is considered right
or wrong is not only determined or influenced by our surroundings, our family,
friends or peers, but also by this powerful entity
referred to as Mass Media, which includes: literature
radio, film, television, between others
which also serves as a major source of information
and learning about gender and occupation roles. Nevertheless,
several studies have shown that these images that the media represent are not
necessarily up to date nor reflect today’s society
Indeed, a notorious gap can be easily determined between
the positions women occupy and their representation
in culture. For instance, a 51 percent of the
1970’s population was female and they constituted about a
40 percent of the labour force, yet,
only 26 percent of the characters portrayed on television were female.
What’s more, they represented only a certain number of occupations and
were depicted as less competent and less authoritative.
The Academy awards, are a set of 24 awards for artistic
and technical merit in the American film industry, given annually
by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), to
recognize excellence in cinematic achievements as assessed by
the Academy's voting membership . These are highly watched
and appreciated throughout the whole world. Nevertheless,
it is important to mention that they have favored biographical films, films
that portray the life of a non fictional or historically based figure/s over
fictional films. Furthermore, a clear bias when talking about
gender can be seen, where the numbers of these type of roles have been
twice as large among the men. In addition,
vital qualitative differences can also be determined. Male roles
can be seen that carry a higher level of diversity, both from
a historical and occupational point of view. For instance, they
have portrayed military figures, such as George C. Scott as General Patton,
a notorious and brilliant strategist from World War Two
and political or historical figures
such as Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons
Creating a huge contrast, female roles have been characterised
by show business personalities, between some like musical
star Fanny Brice in Funny Girl; and Loretta Lynn, a
country singer in A Coal Miner's Daughter.
This great difference shown in biographical films depicting real-life
situations may indicate that there have been no prominent female roles
in areas such as literature, politics, the military, between others,
for movies to recreate or imitate such events.
In spite of that, one could argue that films have been unwilling or
hesitant to use “real-life heroins” as a way of controlling the
society and by confining women to certain tasks and roles
such as showbusiness or domesticity, two
traditionally female domains. Male screen roles
can be considered as social types, while female roles as stereotypes.
These two terms carry a big difference. While social types are norms shared
shared between many that show how people are expected to behave,
stereotypes are over generalised beliefs of particular
particular behaviour ways. The use of these stereotypes
from an ideology of dominance is to keep women in their place and
recompense them for not challenging their status quo
Notwithstanding, this view of the female gender was most
popular and mostly seen up until the 70s where the female
cinematic depiction started undergoing a big change
and a new type of screen heroine emerged. The
movie that is considered as the great twist in this beliefs is
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, released in the year 1975,
since it was the first significant movie with a strong
role for a woman, which is also considered to have attempted to put
into question male dominance, both onscreen but also on real life.
This groundbreaking film
is about the struggles that a young widow has to face when
attempting to start a new career as a singer, yet she finally falls
under a dominance again when starting a new relationship.
Nonetheless, this movie was followed by the creation of several others
where women were protagonists and had a major role.
However, what marked the big change in Hollywood’s treatment of women
was when in 1977, four fifths of the Best
Picture nominees of the Oscars´s were about women,
following its predecessor. Films of these following years
saw the birth of this new on screen professional and career oriented
woman. The range of occupational roles allotted to women widened
considerably, extending beyond the traditionally
female professions of actresses or prostitutes.
In recent years, women have played an inimaginable
number of roles, ranging from cooks, to farmers,
to writers, and many, many more. "The new screen woman has
become concerned not only with her career, but
also with asserting her worth as an individual, one whose status
neither derives from nor depends on her familial roles”
says Emmanuel Levy in his article “Stage, Sex, and Suffering:
Images of women in american films”, published in the
year 1990. Nevertheless,
it is important to mention that in the year 2013,
women conformed only fifteen percent
of the protagonist roles and took part of less than one third
of speaking parts in the top grossing domestic films.
However, because of the current rage of female-led
films or movies with vital female characters,
such as the Hunger Games or Divergent may give the wrong impression
of both genders being represented equally.
Even though female representation in movies has changed
drastically over the years and they are seeing greater
representation in roles valued for their intelligence, their strength, and their independence
there is still a long way to go and
many more changes and transformations to face.