Feminism In American Cinema

Rise of the Strong Female Protagonists - Representation of Women in Contemporary American Cinema"

Cinema has always been an integral part of a culture and has been presenting various ideals of the time such as gender roles. American Cinema has been abundant of gender representation and through many years the roles of men and women have been presented according to the formulaic stereotypes. For a long time up to the present, men have dominated the movie industry and have been depicted as saviours and protectors while women have often been presented as the weaker sex, objects of desire or just as the support of male characters. Even though it is not diffucult to enumerate a few movies such as Avengers, X-men, Fantastic Four, and

Although she was not the very first strong female character in cinematic universe as there were Ellen Ripley and Lara Croft before her, she is one of the toughest protagonists in contemporary American Cinema. The story about Alice is loosely based on a video game and was successfully brought to a silver screen in 2002. Alice 's struggle with the evil Umbrella Corporation and the walking dead creatures lasted for fourteen years till 2016 when the sixth and the final movie of the whole franchise was released. Alice was evolving through the whole series and with every next movie she was becoming more fearless and powerful. Before she became the greatest enemy of Umbrella, she had been working in a rather male profession as she had been Umbrella 's security officer. The audience meets Alice as an ordinary woman with no recollection of who she is and completely unaware of the fact that she is the only one person who was enhanced by the lethal T-virus and thus granted with superhuman abilities. In the first movie she is taken by the strike team to the underground Umbrella 's laboratory to probe why the Red Queen, the artificial intelligence who governs The Hive killed everyone inside it and sealed the residence up. Surrounded by a group consisting mainly of male characters, she sets off on a mission. For most of the episode she stays passive and is rather determined to survive than to become the greatest hero in the world who will set people free from devastating bug and wicked corporation. Led by her will to endure and thanks to the positive effects the t-Virus has on her, she is the only one who survives the mission. Unfortunately, Alice gets out of the frying pan into the fire and ends up alone in a ruined world infested with