Change Your Image
tanyamm223
Reviews
Mean Girls (2004)
popularity reproducing existing stereotypes
Mean girls was catering to a `teeny bopper' audience, however I would like to critique the portrayal of women in this film. The female characters are objectified and demonstrate how women are constantly participating in John Berger's surveyor/ surveyed concept. These so called `plastics' are the portrayal of what highschool girls aim to represent. These girls aim to be perfect and presentable at all times. Not because they want to be, but rather because they are surveyed by others. They also constantly survey each other, but not purchasing clothes without the approval of their fellow friends. Since they feel they are at the center of attention, they strive to be perfect and presentable at all times. This is a perfect example of Foucault's notion of panopticon, `an all seeing eye'; (the idea of always being watched, and developing guilt from not doing what you are supposed to be doing). In regards to race, class, and gender, this movie seems to cater more to a white middle to upper class audience. To show only wealthy Caucasian girls as being popular gives little hope for others to aspire to be popular in their own lives. The `plastics' are dubbed the beautiful ones, showing that beauty relates to being affluent, Caucasian, and having other Arian features. This feeds into existing stereotypes of how highschool popularity is represented. Is this to say that minorities, or other groups who are not seen as affluent or Arian, can not be viewed as popular in American highschools? Not all popular students in highschool are snobby or self-centered. The film should have added diversity, to give a more realistic portrayal of American highschools.
Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen (2001)
femininity as a performance
After viewing Living Dolls, I am now aware of how femininity is a performance. The little girls featured in this documentary showed how certain characteristics of femininity are learned and then performed. During this performance at beauty pageants, little girls are taught to be erotic and are sexualized in order to promote what is called `the total package'. The film exposed the way it could be seen as the parents of these contestants promote the commodification of their children. Watching the actions of the girls participating in the pageant, we can identify the ways class, race, and sexuality intersects in the production of the `total package'.
The girls are objectified then and then play into the notion of being surveyed by the male gaze, where you become a spectacle based the male perspective. But they are not only viewed on the male gaze, we take note how other females also survey each other. The main goal of the contestants in the pageant is to achieve the total package, consisting of modeling a well fit dress, heavy use of makeup, personality based on how they react to the judges. Families will go out of their way to achieve this goal by having fake teeth made to cover where the girl may have lost her tooth, and custom make outfits. The girls learn the value of competition by watching tapes of their rivals performing and criticizing them. By doing so, they learn what to do and what not to do once on stage. This shows how the girls are constructed and splits to be a surveyor of her by looking at herself from a male perspective. The girl begins to internalize herself. The girls are taught to be sexual at such a young pre-sexual age. With practice, they develop the skills to relate erotically to their performance on stage. Stage outfits consist of flashy apparel and slits in the costumes. For the actual performance, the girls are sexualizing their singing and learn how to dance in such a manner. Their routines flaunt erotic and sexualized characteristics, which help them to achieve the total package. Race, class, and sexuality are clearly depicted in the pageant. The majority of these contestants have blonde hair and blue eyes. The maturity of speaking, vocabulary, and diction of the children identify them as being in a particular class. It is also apparent through the clothes the girls model and the stylists that come to the pageants that they must be of a middle to upper economic class. In contrast, educationally, one would put them into a lower class. This is evident from their inability to understand what they are doing to their children. Sexuality is represented when they cut the talent portion of the pageants, yet the modeling portions and the section where the lounge singer sings to the girls remained. This section with the lounge singer displays how these young girls masquerade their femininity on stage. Eroticism is depicted when she sways seductively to the music, smiles invitingly, and the batting of her eyelashes towards him.
This whole segment shows the adult sexualization of these young contestants. The film reproduces existing stereotypes of femininity. This is a performance that is socially learned. Through practice, this behavior is learned and applied to the performing on stage in the pageants, as well as other areas in life. A woman may accentuate her femininity in order to attain something she desires. For example, flaunt her femininity to receive a certain position in the work force. The concept of femininity as a performance, teaches us about gender roles and how they can be interchangeable. Since this is a learned characteristic and performance, we shouldn't assign roles. A woman can be masculine and a man can be feminine as well. The pageant shows little girls having erotic and sexualized characteristics, which help them reach their goal of wining a pageant title.
Das schreckliche Mädchen (1990)
Giving little regards to viewing females
Verhoeven incorporated Brechtian aesthetics in Das Schreckliche Madchen (The Nasty Girl) using dissociation devices. For example, Lena Stolze (playing Sonja) uses a form of acting class gestic. The actor doesn't completely embrace the role, rather resists and narrates it so you can tell the acting is false. Her acting helps us attain insights about stereotypical social relationships, which is an aim of epic theater. Sonja was quoting hyper romanticized behavior in order to make a point. Sonja's character critiques existing stereotypes of the roles women play in society. For example, by forcefully leaning her head on her husband's shoulder after marriage shows that it isn't a natural behavior. It is a symbol of romantic gesturing that we are taught to accept as natural. One can tell this action is produced and dramatized to allow the audience to think about women's roles in society. A woman putting her head on a male's shoulder implies she leans to her husband for support or guidance. This gesture implies women hold a passive and dependent role in society, where they look to the husband for support, and hold non-active roles in the outside community. For example, women are taught to cook and clean in order to be good housewives and to support a family. When a film is passed from one culture to another, it is not marketed as it would be in its original country. I think that American distributors view femaleness with little regards or respect by the way they market films. If they were to give more respect to the way femaleness is viewed, then they would have given this film the correct amount of accuracy it deserved. For instance, as `The Nasty Girl' passed from the German culture to the American culture, the way it was advertised did not represent the film in all actuality. First of all, the title gives a misleading impression. There is nothing nasty about Sonja's character. The title should have been translates into something like `The girl with courage' from having no support from her town in her quest to uncover the hidden truth about the town's involvement with the Nazis. Due to the misleading translation of the title, the film is often put in the adult section of the video store when there is nothing pornographic about the film's content. Also, the outside box cover is red, which symbolized promiscuity. Another example of how the film was marketed poorly in the US is the summary on the outside box cover. The summary says nothing about the historical content or even what it is about; instead it portrays something more promiscuous. This portrays how the American culture's primary concern is making a profit. The marketers of the film feel if they can get it to sound more enticing, more people will view the film. Apparently they will go to extremes such as misinforming the viewer about the content in the film in order to make the film seem more attractive to the viewers' eye. They take the audient for granted, and have no problem in exploiting the viewer's horizon of expectations.