Feminist film, a theory that started in 1920s where they look at woman’s expression of her own subjectivity. The theory only became matured in the late 1960s after the radicalized feminist movement of sexual liberation and political debate of female representation.
Feminism is a set of political practices seen through the analyses of the social or the historical position of women as subordinated, oppressed or exploited in dominant modes of production such as capitalism or by social relations of patriarchy or male domination.
Films are often viewed as a reflection of the society and with it, we are able to seek out the ideological and social construction of women in films.
Feminist film included explored themes such as discrimination, stereotyping, objectification, oppression, and patriarchy.
According to The Imaginary Signifier, Christian Metz argues that viewing film is only possible through scopophilia (pleasure from looking, related to voyeurism), which is best exemplified in silent film. Despite of Metz’s opinion, Laura Mulvey championed the discussion of the visual pleasure of females on screen, known as “the Gaze”.
The Gaze, as Mulvey have founded, introduced cinema as a medium of voyeurism where visual pleasure is derived with the perspectives of looking.
3 Perspectives of Looking:
a) Male character looking at the female character in the film.
b) Audience in cinema looking at the female character in the film.
c) Audience in cinema looking through the eyes of the male character who is looking at the female character.
Through these three perspectives, we can then compare and discuss what meaning is borne by the visual pleasure depicted in context of the various themes found in feminism.
The melodrama is a good example of female representation in films, while a different genre, namely, woman’s film (films addressing female audience) that allows the central role of female protagonist and female spectator to relook at genres, studying the aesthetic and political consequences of gender difference.
How to look at feminism in films:
l Assumed predetermined sexual identity to expose the misrepresentation of women in films. The assumption here being female repression by a patriarchal society.
l Look at the various female representations in the film and compare them, seeking out the final resolution of the ‘preferred’ female representation.
l Looking at the female representation of the film from the female spectator’s point of view.
This week’s goal is to achieve the evidence of the Feminist Film’s elements from the movie produced in the year 2001, Legally Blonde by Robert Luketic.
The theory that being applied in this week’s movie is called the genre and semantic/syntactic approach by Rick Altman. In semantic/syntactic approach, semantic represents the visual aspects and syntactic represents the thematic aspects of the film. The approach uses both semantic and syntactic complementarily to do a proper genre analysis on a movie. The problem that genre in film encounter is films cannot be imposed by a generic definition as genres are not static but evolutionary as the changing times. Genres evolve according to times and many sub genres or minor sub-genres have been spun out which in turn become hybrids of original genres or a mixture of several genres.
There are 3 condition under Genre. The first condition is that the film must possess universal/general semantics and syntaxes that are particularly found in corresponding genres. For an example, a western must possess the specific costumes and settings along with the cowboy that will display an aural of justice with a theme of good vs. evil. The second condition is that the spectator’s expectation and hypothesis must be present. To cite an example, the act of audience guessing the ending of the film. Thus, genres have to audience based, following the expectations of the industry. The third condition is that the genre exists like a paradox for being conservative and innovative at the same time, as long as they repeat “formulas” to display old conventions while modernizing new ones.
Let the analysis to look for evidence of Feminist Film from the film, Legally Blonde commence!
Legally Blonde, a film about a fashion merchandising female student with a personality of a half valley girl and a half Malibu Barbie, Elle Woods has it all. She wants nothing more than to be Mrs. Warner Huntington III. But there is one thing stopping him from proposing, saying that she is too “blonde” for him. Elle rallies all of her resources and gets into the law school, Harvard, determined to win him back.
There is stereotype elements found in the film. An example can be given is from the restaurant scene at night where Warner, Elle’s boyfriend has something important to announce to her. Warner says that he needed to start becoming “serious” for his future so he decided to break up with Elle instantly. Elle was shocked from that situation as she thought that he was gonna propose to her. Warner also gave the reason for not proposing to Elle because of how blondes are not smart and they think about shopping all day. There is one scene where Vivian, Warner’s fiancee after breaking up with Elle, saw the professor’s hand trying to touch Elle. She thought that Elle, being like any other blondes, use any seducing methods to ensure a success.
There is objectification elements found in the film. To cite an example, Elle’s girlfriends wanted Elle to win back Warner so that she would work hard and get good grades to get into the same law school that Warner went, Harvard. The term “win back” being used shows that she wants to own or have Warner back like an item instead of having him like a person.
There is discrimination elements found in the film. When Elle passed her LSATs (Law School Admission Test) and arrived at her law school, she is constantly discriminated against and referred to as the “Alpha Barbie” due to her fashion choices and living lifestyle. Nobody believed that she is actually smart due to her image of being too pretty and “blonde”.
All in all, this film successfully showed a feminist film with their upbeat girl-power style of filming. The gender biases and the male dominance over the legal field is so blatantly obvious it would be hard to miss it. In my opinion, this film is definitely not to be missed as it educates the society to see things in a different perspective rather than traditional thinking which can help reduce the chronic problems of equality between male and female.
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