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James Bond Gender Theory

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How does the gender theory enable the critical understanding of on-screen femininity) Discuss in relation to specific films

In this essay, I am going to talk about the idea of the male gaze theory. The male gaze theory is about how women are viewed from the men’s point of view to entertain men and their desires in the Hollywood cinema. I am mostly focusing on the James Bond films and how the female characters are represented in those films. Females are often just attractive images for the heterosexual male audience. The heterosexual men used to be the target audience and therefore the audience experience the films from a male perspective. Throughout the James Bond films the female characters have maintained their role to be Bond’s love …show more content…

The Feminist movement focused on eliminating gender inequality and tried to make a change toward more equal salary between women and men, also tried make an improvement on women’s rights. (Lisa Funnel) In 1970’s feminist film critics argued that women were represented unrealistic ways in Hollywood films. (Taylor Lisa)The films did not show the realistic way of women in the society. Women were often put under the media’s microscope and a great example of this is a James Bond franchise. The gender roles were really noticeable, for example, how women were presented in the film posters. In the film poster ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’, the main characters Bond and Anasova posed in formal clothing. The Bond girl’s evening gown showed her legs in a very revealing and sexualised way. This image showed the expectations of the traditional gender roles in the films. (Lisa …show more content…

The objective point of view shows to the spectator what the filmmaker want them to see. Usually the shots are objective shots, because the subjective ones show us what the character is seeing. According to Mulvey, this kind of Hollywood film editing has a lot of power what comes to gender dynamics. Females are many times situated in a position where they are being looked at. One of the reasons is that often the main target for many Hollywood films are the heterosexual male audience. (America on

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In contrast to the twentieth century we still see some of this in our current day and ages. Contrasting portrayals of men and women in films leave us with the fact that we haven’t changed. Men and women are sought to have different gender roles within

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Through movies people were able to see how the old image of women changed into this new image of women. Movie manufacturers and exhibitors changed the way movies were portrayed before and amped up the glamour, sensations, and romance (Peiss 153). This deviant behavior was being shown through movies, films that at this time a lot of people went to watch during free time. There were attempts by reformers like the Young Women’s Christian Association to keep these ‘rebels’ in line with old fashioned teachings (Peiss 166) but it didn’t seem to appeal to the middle-class female culture that was now shaped into this new idea of women. Their idea of culture was a lot different than these reformers.

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Throughout history, women have been held to certain stereotypes that place societal expectations upon them. These expectations can be viewed through various outlets of media, a major one being movies. In the movie Rear Window, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, women are portrayed as dependent on men. Through the portrayal of Lisa and Jeff’s relationship and the showcasing of Miss Lonelyheart’s isolation, Hitchcock conveys the perception of a patriarchal society by utilizing various cinematic elements and film techniques.

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Sad-frown. Use corresponding face with corresponding emotion (French Kiss, 1995) 5 Princess Anne 5 Kate 6 Joe Bradley 7 Luc Tessier 7 Side characters: 8 Gender studies 8 Conclusion 9 Abstract This article presents the roles of a man and a woman in two different eras through two movies: Roman Holiday (1953) and French Kiss (1995). The focus is on the analysis of the characters, their differences and similarities and messages directors wanted to send considering gender roles in society during the 1950s and 1990s. The method is to make the structure of the essay similar to the structure of filmmaking and pay attention to many elements and symbols that influenced the viewers, consciously or unconsciously.

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Women were interested in love but the men viewed them as hungry for status, money, or success. Men were also presented as reluctant to taking action, until they got pressed by the women’s desire to solve the mystery. Hitchcock presents the basic roles for both men and women in the movie Rear Window. The women are presented as sexually appealing objects.

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Rear Window (1954) has been viewed from a feminist perspective by critics. Laura Mulvey the feminist film theorist and the author of Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema (1975) calls Lisa Fremont a “passive image of visual perfection” (qtd in Keith 1). 1950s is a period marked by the rise in consumer culture, Beatniks at its zenith and the beginning of cold war. The period was struggling hard to find a harmony between innovation and progress on one side and conformity and tradition on the other. Sticking to gender roles was the only solution to achieve a happy and secured life thought politicians and creators of popular culture.

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In Laura Mulvey’s article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” she writes about the relationship between voyeurism, cinema, and gender. She begins by describing the concept of scopophilia, which means to gain pleasure from looking. She writes that scopophilia is inherently active/masculine, and that pleasure is derived from looking at other people as mere objects. On the other hand, the passive/feminine is derived from the experience of being looked at (pg.188). Mulvey sees this binary relationship between viewer and object being viewed as a part of our culture, and the greatest example of this is found in cinema.

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Furthermore, according to Mulvey, when women are displayed on screen, they possess a quality called “to-be-looked-at-ness,” which means that a woman’s appearance on screen is constructed to be put on “visual display” and she is expected to“exhibit herself to our gaze.” Ultimately, Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze can be summarized as the idea that women are always viewed through the eyes of men, who act as dominant observers. The male gaze is seemingly perpetuated to the tee in Mad Men through numerous devices such as imagery, film techniques and dialogue, however on closer inspection the certainty of this notion becomes less clear as the characters don’t act in exact accordance with the principles of the

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Throughout the years femininity in Hollywood cinema has changed quite drastically. The industry has gone through several phases that changed how femininity was viewed. This paper will address the postfeminist phase in Hollywood, while focusing on the film Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001). It will show how postfeminism is viewed in cinema as well as the characteristics that make a film considered to be postfeminist. Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001) showcases all the characteristics needed in a postfeminist film which makes the film a great representative of postfeminist attitudes in media.

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(Bodenner, 2016). Many theories have surfaced since women have started their fight for empowerment and equality, and one of the most famous theory is “the Male Gaze” theory, founded by Laura Mulvey in her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” This essay will look into the sources of opposition the theory of “male gaze” faces, and how the theory is disrupted by other possible theories or pieces of media. As mentioned before, the Male Gaze theory was introduced in the essay Mulvey wrote in 1975.

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Laura Mulvey’s article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema was published in 1975, has set out the concept of visual pleasure and explains it under a system looks in cinema. Her theory points out that men looked at women, men are the subjects of women, and to look at the object position; (women) accept their role of being looked at and creating visual pleasures for men as well as in the social reality. Her approaching is to use the same “political weapon” (“psychoanalytic theory”) that “the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form” (the way men used to oppress women) (Mulvey 483), with the hope to leave “the past behind without rejecting it” (Mulvey 485). To analyze that the main bias of cinema lies in the obsessive psychological

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Gender itself is a very complex concept to understand and portray onscreen, the concept of gender performativity was introduced by Judith butler in her book Gender Trouble: Gender Performance and Performativity. It is important to note that Butler

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Abstract: In most parts of the world, females have always been the victim of oppressive patriarchy and male chauvinism since ages. This problem has been represented by many people through various forms of creations be it art, literature or films. Films are the most popular visual mediums of entertainment through which a large segment of people can be approached. Like literature, a film is also a work of art which mirrors the society, it also depicts the reality of the society though it has some fictionality in it.

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