Representation of women in film

I happen to have written an essay for school about this very subject. Check it about below, if you want.

kinopravda23.blogspot.com/2013/06/sexism-in-film.html


kinopravda23.blogspot.com

The representation of women in modern cinema has definitely declined. According to a recent survey by the University of Southern California,it has declined in the highest grossing films to its lowest point for five years.While there were 3,222 speaking roles for actors in the top 100 films of 2012,there were only 1,253 for actresses.And of those who did speak nearly a third wore sexually revealing clothes.
This lends validity to Laura Mulvey`s critique although it works best when applied to certain directors such as Hitchcock or De Palma and less for those like Hawks who feature strong,independent women or to take a recent example,the role of Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty but that is definitely a rarity. There also can be a slightly different representation of women in certain European films,often those featuring Isabelle Huppert. In The Piano Teacher ,for example,she is the character who drives the narrative forward and who as it were appropriates the male gaze,which is probably why this film made so many male critics and viewers uneasy.

Women are underrepresented in film. There are many great classics focusing on men but there aren't very many classic films with a woman as the lead. I hope this changes and we get more female characters.

Because female characters are annoying.

When they're weak and feeble - annoying
When they're a brain dead house wife - annoying
When they're a butt kicking bad girl - annoying
When they're independent women who can live on their own - annoying

I'm from Paris... TEXAS

Men are going to make films where the leading lady is attractive to them and the male characters in the film, unless the director is a homosexual. End of story. Laura Mulvey can take her jargon-ridden phoniness and put it where it belongs. Poseur. (Or should I say "poseuse"?)

Feminists like Mulvey are responsible for the lack of female speaking roles because they, more than anyone else, made it unfashionable to produce "women's films" and perpetuated the myth that men and women are the same underneath their obviously different exteriors, (although let's deemphasize that as much as possible, too). Starting in the late 1970s and picking up steam with each decade, the trend has been to show women in traditional men's roles, and throw out basically everything that might (even possibly) raise the ire of American feminists as being "stereotypically female", so you can have Sigourney Weaver killing monsters or you can have basically the same picture with a man saving the day, but you can't have films like "Letter from an Unknown Woman" or "Daisy Kenyon" or even "Imitation of Life". Well, given the choice, which do you think is going to be more popular: Rambo played by Sylvester Stallone or by Julia Roberts?

There are many classics with women in the leads. There are comparatively few in today's films.

re: Ethan_Ford -- the operative phrase is "top 100 films." There are few things as cinematic as action (including violence), and those films tend to feature male characters. So when Meryl Streep complains of lack of roles for women over 40, I think she really means that women over 40 get paid much less than men over 40. This is inevitable because no character drama is going to gross as much as Transformers or Iron Man.
We hear so much about "the male gaze," well what about "the female pose"?