Accurate female representation in movies is important because what we see on-screen reflects the society that we live in. If we are choosing to only show women in typical female tropes, then women in society believe that they should fall into these categories as well. In this paper, I am only suggesting one solution to this problem, that solution being the inclusion of more villainous characters that are female. I think that the portrayal of women is too one-sided, it’s too “good.” There should be more representation of women who aren’t perfect, who make mistakes, and stray from the norm. Women aren’t just expected to fit these societal norms but are punished when they stray from them. The addition of more female villains in movies seems to be a good balance to the perfect cookie-cutter female characters that we still see all too often.
Author: Bridget C.
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The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union”
If a woman is confident, she is “vain.” If she is assertive, she is “bossy.” If she is a working woman, she is “selfish.” If she is a stay-at-home mother, she is “lazy.” Women are held to unattainable and insurmountable standards by society. In order to be taken seriously, they have to be the best. Unfortunately, even if they are the most qualified person in their field, as Rebecca Solnit explains in “Men Explain Things to Me,” women are still belittled and not taken seriously.
Kate P., “Male Mediocracy”
“The Feminist Perspective in Film Studies”
This article was written by Dr. Ann Kaplan, who, at the time, was developing her course on women and film at Rutgers University. She sets out propose potential solutions to the issues regarding female oppression in the film industry.
One of the main takeaways from the article that I want to utilize in my research, is that Kaplan gives details about how to view a film through a feminist perspective. She states that if you just look at the overall representation of female characters in film, the sexism is obvious. However, she claims that the feminist perspective is not so simple. She wants people to understand that the portrayal of women in film goes beyond just the woman’s role in a film, you have to look at the film in the context of the society that it was created in, as well as the directors and producers who were involved in the creation of the film.
Even though Kaplan acknowledges that these additional levels of analysis complicate the feminist view on film, she says that this approach will raise people’s consciousness about women’s oppression overall.
The in-depth approach would counteract a too simplistic charge of sexism. It would help us see the complex roots behind sexism, and how attitudes to women are intertwined with a director’s entire way of seeing the world
Dr. Ann Kaplan
Kaplan goes on to continue to talk about how women play a passive role in film. The reason behind this being that women are typically viewed as being a part of a man’s world rather than existing in their own. Even though females are typically viewed through the male gaze, we can still learn a lot from these films. Women can see how they are being represented, and in turn, voice their own opinions, and realize that their opinions are more generalized than isolated.
Representation of women in film is important because film typically reflects society and can shape social attitudes.
Response to Heller
In “The Big Uneasy,” by Nathan Heller, many different opinions about student activism are acknowledged. Heller specifically talks to students and faculty from Oberlin College located in Ohio. Heller doesn’t mention much about his own opinions on the issues discussed, he just mentions a bunch of other conflicting ideas and then leaves it up to the reader to determine what they want from the interviews that he conducted. I think that the main issue of this article was where to draw the line when it comes to student activism. If you’re too hard on the students then they will fight back, however, if you’re too easy on students then they’re not being challenged enough.
“A president’s job is to push past contradictions, while an activist’s duty is to call them out. The institutions that give many people a language and a forum to denounce injustice are, inevitable, the nearest targets of their criticism.”
Heller
The whole point of college is to challenge its students. Heller mentions that there are some people who believe that if a college protects its students from unwelcome ideas, then that college isn’t doing its job in preparing its students for the real world. I’ve heard this term “real world” so many times in my college career and I have yet to fully grasp its concept. What is the real world and what makes it so different from college? What will happen if students don’t face enough challenges in college and are then thrown into the real world? I don’t know if I agree with this huge distinction between college life and the real world because it almost diminishes all the experiences that students have during college. What you face during school aren’t “real” challenges. However, Heller mentions some examples of students who facing some very real challenges.
One student, Megan Bautista shares that exposing herself to opinions that were different from her own just exhausted her. She tried to engage in activism outside of campus but due to the impact on her grades, this idea quickly fizzled. Students tried to compromise with the college asking for activism to be looked at like a job that should be paid, or by having a minimum grade that the college couldn’t go below while their students were involved in activism outside of campus. These ideas were rejected and students felt like they had to choose one over the other because doing both seemed impossible.
“Today they are told that they belong there, but they also must take on an extracurricular responsibility: doing the work of diversity.”
Heller
There are students who feel like they aren’t being reflected in their college community. Jasmine Adams leads a discussion about Oberlin’s indifference towards racial oppression. Adams, as well as other students, bring up the issue that they feel like they are being forced to conform to the standards of their college and these standards don’t reflect what they have experienced in the real world. They aren’t going to change who they are for four years of their life just to satisfy the college’s expectations.
The problems that students are facing on campus extend to the faculty as well. One teacher, Wendy Kozol, had to disband the class because the class seated themselves by race and weren’t communicating with each other. Another teacher, Roger Copeland, who has been teaching at Oberlin for over 40 years, noticed that his teaching style wasn’t being well received by his students recently. He spoke sharply to a student once who reported to the dean that Copeland was creating “a hostile and unsafe learning environment.”
Heller mentions a lot of different views about student activism that all seem validated. It’s hard to organize my own thoughts on this idea because I feel like in order to understand what’s happening, I have to respond to each individual that’s mentioned. There are a lot of issues that are talked about that seem circumstantial, but bring each issue to light and the school is having to deal with students clashing with teachers, teachers clashing with students, and students clashing with students. Which, I guess is all ok, if the point of college is to challenge its students right?
Response to Rodriguez
In Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire: Personal Reflections on Learning ‘Basics,’” Rodriguez highlights the struggle of balancing an academic career with his home life. When he throws himself into his studies at an early age, he quickly notices the implications that it has on his home life. This struggle is especially reflected in his relationship with his parents. He mentions that whenever his parents would ask him about what he learned at school, he would keep his answers short and vague, not wanting to share too much. He would read often, which caused him to engage less with his family, staying in his room, so he wouldn’t be distracted by the sounds of his home. He mentions that he felt his parents “were always behind” him. His parents gave him and his siblings the means to succeed academically, however, it also caused them to distance themselves from each other. Rodriguez’s interest in academics didn’t only affect him, but it also his parents as well.
There’s no denying the sense of pride that Rodriguez’s parents feel towards his academic success’s, however, Rodriquez mentions that they began to become dismissive of his intelligence. Whenever there was an argument in the house, his parents would defend their statements by simply saying “It’s what we were taught in our time to believe,” which immediately ended the discussion. Even though Rodriguez has had more academic success than his parents, they are still his parents and still have authority over him, which makes it easy for them to discount his statements.
Rodriguez has conflicting emotions when it comes to his academics. He feels a draw towards learning that seems to overpower the guilt that he also feels. This guilt coming from the separation he notices between himself and his home life. He feels like he is responsible for this change that has occurred in his home.
“I kept so much, so often to myself. Sad. Guilty for the excitement of coming upon new ideas, new possibilities. Eager. Fascinated. I hoarded the pleasures of learning. Alone for hours. Enthralled. Afraid. Quiet (the house noisy), I rarely looked away from my books – or back on my memories.”
Rodriguez, 243
Even though his schooling caused him to distance himself from his home life, he also became appreciative of it later on. His studies gave him the knowledge to look back on his childhood and try and recover what he lost.
“I needed to understand how far I had moved from my past – to determine how fast I would be able to recover something of it once again.”
Rodriguez, 254
I feel like many of us can relate to the fear of coming home with a report card to show to our parents, scared that they aren’t going to be pleased with the results. Maybe the few times they weren’t, it caused tension in the house, with maybe a grounding or two to follow. Rodriguez has a whole different take on it, which I never really considered before. He was scared to succeed rather as well as fail. Rodriguez was a good student (although he highlights he was really only good at mimicking, instead of forming his own ideas), and he felt like he had to hide this from his parents. If he shared his successes with his parents, he felt like they wouldn’t understand, but when he keeps his thoughts to himself, he’s separating himself from his parents.
Trying to relate to Rodriguez, I can think of one example. I remember when I entered high school, the only thing that I knew about politics was what I heard about from my parents. However, the more educated I became, I began to form my own opinions, which opposed the views of my parents. I remember expressing some of my views and immediately being shut down. It felt similar to when Rodriguez would try to have a discussion with his parents, who wouldn’t really listen to his side of things. I learned to stop bringing up my own thoughts whenever the conversation turned to politics. I learned to keep quiet because I knew I would upset my parents if I said anything contradictory. Although this is only a small piece of my home life that has been affected, it seems like Rodriguez is expressing a shift in his own home life which has a much greater magnitude. “In place of the sounds of intimacy which once flowed easily between us, there was the silence.”
Collision of Language
While reading Mellix’s From Outside, In, I couldn’t help but notice the irony in it. Throughout the whole piece, Mellix was explaining the frustration that she felt when trying to learn “standard English.” However, that article was extremely well written; there was no trace of the lack of understanding of “standard English” that she explained in the article.
Mellix talks about many of the issues she felt towards learning standard English when she grew up understanding, and speaking in, what she refers to as, “black English.” One of the main issues that she addressed multiple times in her writing, is that she felt that she had to adjust her language depending on the situation that she was in. She explains that she would use standard English when she was in the presence of “other” people. She uses the term “other” frequently in this article. What she means when she refers to “others” are “‘proper’ blacks, transplanted relatives and one-time friends who came home from the city for weddings, funerals, and vacations. And the whites.” Referring to the people who spoke standard English as “other” seemed very isolating to me. It seemed like she was purposely separating herself from the “others”. Maybe this was a way for her to understand the two languages better. There seemed to be a divide to those who spoke black English and those who spoke standard English. The only way to cross this divide was to learn standard English. Although it doesn’t seem fair to deem one vernacular more correct than another.
I was particularly interested in Mellix’s struggle in learning how to write in standard English. It’s not a simple as translating one to another; things (and feelings) weren’t being represented correctly. She often felt that she was at war with herself. There was a part of her that wanted to advance further in society by learning how to write in standard English, but there was the other part of her that felt like she was betraying the side of her that identified with black English. “It was the voice of my desire to prosper, but at the same time it spoke of what I had to relinquish and could not regain.”
Language can be a big part of our personality. I’ve heard of cases where bilingual people tend to have different personalities depending on which language they are speaking. It seems like Mallix is experiencing a similar situation. She felt less confident when she was speaking in standard English, and saw a similar feeling reflected in her parents whenever they went out and were in the presence of “other” people. Growing up speaking black English has prevented her from feeling free to express herself creatively through writing in standard English. Even when she showed improvement in her writing, she still expressed how it felt forced. I wonder if she feels the same way about this article? Will she forever be critical over her ability to express herself in standard English?
Imperfections
I remember when I was little, my older sister broke her arm. She had to get a cast and I thought it was the coolest thing. My childhood ignorance prevented me from seeing the pain that she had to go through in order to get the cast. I was just jealous of all the attention she got from it; everyone wanted to sign it. I even went so far as to cut one of the sleeves off one of my shirts to mimic a cast. My mom wasn’t too pleased about that. I found my older sister’s broken arm fascinating, even though it was an imperfection.
“…The grace and balance found in asymmetry,” that Lambeth talks about in her article can be found in everyday life. Some imperfections are more obvious, like a broken bone. Other imperfections are less obvious, like a freckle on your right arm, but not your left. Sometimes you can even seem the imperfections, or asymmetry, like the fact that our left lung is slightly smaller than our right to make room for our hearts. Imperfections are a necessity in life.
E367: Writing and Diversity 