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Theme Of Patriarchy In Vertigo

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Framing the Female Gaze Through Patriarchy: Scopophilia in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo When the male gaze drives a film, especially when that gaze derives pleasure from participating in watching a woman, one must ask what agency the woman has in the film and what her gaze is. Throughout this essay, I will investigate the effects of scopophilia, or the act of looking, on Madeline’s in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey aims to expose and dismantle the patriarchy that is prevalent in cinema. She begins her argument with stating that cinema exists in an already patriarchal society, as the world of cinema exists much like the real world and the subject of the film, man, is existing in a place that has been crafted for him. In order to shift this gaze and privilege, the woman in the film must work much harder to prove her contribution to the plot. In Vertigo, Madeline exists …show more content…

However, Scottie does not become disadvantaged for long. As soon as he is released from the hospital he begins a new quest to fill the void that Madeline’s death has left. This is where he becomes entranced by the similarities between Madeline and Judy and sets out to transform Judy into a Madeline duplicate, despite her disinterest and desire for him to love her as the person she truly is. “He will not be satisfied until the ghost [Madeline] is made flesh, until he has created a living woman out of the dead one,”(Keane 236) Marian Keane explains in her essay “A Closer Look at Scopophilia.” She goes on to say that this recreation of Madeline is not an act out of wanting to fetishize Madeline, but to fulfill Scottie’s own “vision,” once again creating an example of the power of man in film, as he gets what he wants at any

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Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock depicts men and women in the 1950's and how they are different and the same when representing their gender roles. There are circumstances in the movie where the gender roles change and switch around. When jeff has a broken leg he needs two women to help him around the house. Nurse Stella and his girlfriend Lisa both take pride in taking care of jeff. There were many different roles depicted in the movie, there were happy couples, sad couples, happy singles, and sad singles.

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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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This is suggested by Helen Simpson who stated that Carter centralises ‘latent content of fairy-tale’ is that women are objects of male desire hence patriarchal discourse establishes male supremacy to which Carter does this to challenge contemporary perspectives on the place of women by revealing the oppression that society inflicted. The Marquis is an overt example of male ownership of female bodies. Similarly, where Atwood exposes the harsh realities of oppressive patriarchy through the female body, Carter utilises the construct of the Marquis in the eponymous story ‘The Bloody Chamber’ as a grotesque embodiment of patriarchal control. In her essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Laura Mulvey coined the feminist term ‘male gaze.’ She argues that men are the audience and women are to embody the male perspective of women as objects of satisfaction.

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In this essay, I will discuss how the film is about film itself. The notions of gaze will also be analysed, through a discussion of voyeurism and Jeff and Lisa’s relationship. This brilliant film about watching the neighbours simultaneously represents a self-reflexive film about the cinema and filmmaking. “[…] Jeff embodies the activity and passivity of both the film maker and the spectator; the director creates and waits, while the viewer

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Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo (1958) was voted the “best film ever made” by the 2012 British Film Institute, and for good reason. The plot is elaborate and intriguing and the cinematography is legendary. On top of this, the characters, like good characters should, all have their own needs and wants that are evident in the film. The needs of these characters affect each other and they affect the story and they all follow one common theme: control. Our protagonist, John “Scottie” Ferguson’s wants and needs differ greatly throughout the film, but his only constant is his yearning to get over his acrophobia, or fear of heights.

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In her feminist film theory essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Laura Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to criticize and scrutinize the fetishism, scopophilia, and eroticism in Hollywood mainstream cinema. What Daughters of the Dust executes impeccably roots from radically abandoning the cultural conventions that depict women as subservient and submissive to patriarchal

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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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Introduction The documentary, Miss Representation was written, directed and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Miss Representation highlights how the media and our culture objectify and belittle women and girls in society. The documentary begins with Newsom’s childhood story and the life and future, she wants for her daughter. The media is used as the main source of information.

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Cinematic techniques of mise-en-scene, cinematography, and editing helped to exhibit this underlying meaning. The technique cinematography focuses on the male gaze by incorporating a peeping-tom impression with its camera angles, and reflecting on the way in which women treat other women as if to comment on female empowerment. While mise-en-scene helped tackle the topic of reproductive rights, and innocence through the prop of blood and costumes. Lastly, editing further examined this theme of feminism by including motion and slip-screen to show total control, and liberation. The film views feminism as becoming self-aware, and taking control of feminine power even if it means causing destruction to a system that causes

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Ridley Scott’s ‘female buddy movie’ Thelma and Louise centres around issues of male dominance and the freedom of release from society. Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon) are women suppressed by the men in their lives. They take a vacation to escape for a few days and after an attempted rape and murder they end up fugitives on the run for their lives. This unintended event ends up being for them the best adventure of their lives, as they are able to divest from the rules of society and become the independent women they are. By subverting the traditional role of gender in the genre, the film shows how feminism impacted the film industry by challenging Hollywood and the gendered myths and social patriarchy, providing women with a voice, and changing how spectators view how women are looked at through women’s eyes and their experiences.

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What are body genres? Body genres allude to sorts that affect the audience's body. These genres create a physical impact, getting the body in the grasp of an extraordinary sensation or feeling, influencing the body to show a physical response. In the article "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess," Linda William evaluates the three genres of films with the crucial components of sex, brutality, and feeling.

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However, film critic, Robin Wood, argues that ‘since Psycho, the Hollywood cinema has implicitly recognised horror as both American and familial’ he then goes on to connect this with Psycho by claiming that it is an “innovative and influential film because it supposedly presents its horror not as the produce of forces outside American society, bit a product of the patriarchal family which is the fundamental institution of American society” he goes on to discuss how our civilisation either represses or oppresses (Skal, 1994). Woods claim then suggests that in Psycho, it is the repressions and tensions within the normal American family which produces the monster, not some alien force which was seen and suggested throughout the 1950 horror films. At the beginning of the 60’s, feminisation was regarded as castration not humanization. In “Psycho” (1960) it is claimed that the film presents conservative “moral lessons about gender roles of that the strong male is healthy and normal and the sensitive male is a disturbed figure who suffers from gener confusion” (Skal, 1994). In this section of this chapter I will look closely at how “Psycho” (1960) has layers of non-hetro-conforming and gender-non conforming themes through the use of Norman Bates whose gender identitiy is portrayed as being somewhere between male and female

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The construction of a self-conscious female gaze is the prime objective of feminist theatres everywhere. British feminist theatre practice as elsewhere is an attempt made by women to claim their rightful space in the creative realm of theatre that was deliberately denied to them by patriarchy. The public gaze on women was always the male gaze, one that always wished to see women as objects. It was an ideological position that patriarchy sanctioned as the normal way of looking at women. Women were always the secondary sexual objects for the gratification of male sexual fantasies.

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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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