500 Days of Summer: Gender and Sexual - Essay Example

Gender and Sexual Studies – (Film analysis of 500 Days of Summer) 25 April (word count 788) Introduction This paper examines the film entitled “500 Days of Summer” from the viewpoint or context of gender studies. This film is directed by Marc Webb and the film revolves around the lives of its two main characters named Summer Finn as a young, carefree woman (played by Zooey Deschanel) and Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who seems to be a troubled, anemic young man. These two young people met at the office when Summer applied as a new office assistant where Tom works as a (creative) writer of greeting cards. Summer is not your average woman because she seems to have that elusive “It” factor that attracts men, including Tom of course. Tom thought of love at first sight but Summer seems to have other ideas of her own regarding romantic relationships. They became more than just friends but the two did not get married as somehow their fates were different. “500 Days of Summer” is produced by Fox Searchlight Pictures in cooperation with Watermark and Dune Entertainment. Its production cost was budgeted at US$7.5 million but it grossed about US$32.0 million worldwide. It was released in August 2009 and nominated for Golden Globe awards for best film as a comedy or musical (IMDb 1). But it still won another award for the best original screenplay for its two screenwriters. The film shatters preconceived notions of what love is on how people think. Discussion People have preconceived notions of what love means for them. There are people who believe love at first sight is the true or real love but there are others who think otherwise, like Summer Finn. Many preconceived notions are hard to dispose of because these values and attitudes toward love have been embedded into their consciousness since childhood or due to family upbringing, growing-up environment, and learned behaviors from watching others. An example of preconceived notions is the current discussion on the so-called “chick flicks” or films featuring young middle-class women. “Chick” is the colloquial term to refer to a young woman (like a chick) who is carefree or with no worries whatsoever. Summer is the quintessential example of a “modern chick” who believes in love but not in any long-term relationships because she thinks relationships are messy and bound to hurt people. In the book authored by Professors Ferriss and Young, they contend the explosion of chick flicks today is a part of the growing chick cultural phenomenon that includes “chick literature and chick TV” series depicting young women who are mostly college-educated to be independent-minded. In this regard, chick culture as depicted in the film featuring Summer and Tom showed how the young Summer reflects the contemporary medias address to female audiences. There is now a growing awareness of the significance of (young) women to contemporary culture (Ferriss & Young 3). A deeper analysis of this trend is how media recognizes the complex social position of modern women with regards to continued restrictions imposed by (male) society on women and the new freedoms and aspirations offered by the new feminist movement (ibid.). The chick flick genre encompasses the broader popular culture but the term “chick” is now seen as an empowering form of female address compared to the early days of womens liberation movement when the term “chick” connotes someone helpless, small, and delicate. But in the film “500 Days of Summer” the movie audiences are treated to a diiferent kind of chick who is strong, mature, forward-thinking, quick, and perhaps even socially progressive. The film can be considered on the whole as progressive in terms of sexuality and gender as it shows the character of Summer Finn as someone who is independent, happy, and perfectly able to take care of herself. When Tom first asked Summer if she already has a boyfriend and she replies she does not have one at the moment, Tom is mightily surprised and confused. He asks her point blank if she is a lesbian or something which shows Toms preconceived notions. Tom cannot fully understand the situation of Summer who is beautiful but opts to stay single instead. But to someone who can be said to be “liberated” in a gender sense, Summer is perfectly normal in her own view because the important thing for her is she was happy. There is no need for getting into complicated relationships that she thinks are bound to hurt people. The bar scene in which a rich-looking middle-aged man approaches Summer and offers her a drink (even with Tom present) and Summer declines the offer and instead tells the man to go away shows her independence despite her being a chick. She even rebukes Tom upon getting home that he should not do it again, meaning, to come to her defense because she thinks she can properly take care of herself in those kinds of threatening situations. This scene shatters a male notion that chicks are helpless and fluffy who always need male portection. The film is progressive because it does not subscribe to traditional notions of the male dominance over the female. Instead, it shows how a strong woman like Summer Finn has all the tools to get by in society and be successful in her own right. She has been empowered by her independent thinking, self-reliance, and positive attitudes toward important things in life. She can be considered as a foremost example of a feminist but she has retained her feminity. She is still very alluring even when she was already married to someone else. Tom could not resist the temptation to go and visit the same park bench where he and Summer had spent the wonderful times together before. In the film, Summer is able to get over failed relationships quickly and it is Tom instead who is shattered and takes a long while to recover emotionally. Tom has a tradtional (regressive) male approach to relationships while Summer is progressive in the sense she does not really believe in true love or any permanent commitments but all she ever wants is to be happy and remain as a free spirit. This attitude of Summer exemplies the feminist thinking of being happy and liberated. The film is an adequate projection of the still continuing feminist discussions about female identiy and representation (Thornham 5). The film portrays scopophilia at the beginning portio of the film when Tom daydreams of the body of Summer as something definitely desirable in terms of her beautiful body, legs, mouth, lips, teeth, and fluttering eyelids. In this regard, the film is regressive because it show women as sex objects or the targets of male sexual fantasies. However, toward the end of this film, when Tom was in despair about their breakup, Tom now hates all the things which had originally what makes Summer attractive to him. Tom cites how he hates her crooked teeth, deformed knees and legs, etc. because he is in despair and cannot think straight. The film has shown how Tom fails to respond adequately to Summers advances because he is an insecure person and reacts anemically to Summers overtures while Summer is the epitome of the new woman who is self-assured, supremely confident, independent, and also mature enough. She is often depicted as the one making the first move or taking the initiative in the relationship. Summer is the one who lead their relationship rather than the other way around when it is supposed to be Tom who should have taken the initiatives. Summer is very expressive in the sense she states clearly what she thinks and want, unlike Tom who does not know what to say and often at a loss for words. The film also depicts Summer as the perfect example of the “woman masquerade” because she appears to be feminine on the outside and yet she is very strong on the inside. The “woman masquerade” as portrayed by Summer is merely to assuage the insecurities and anxieties of Tom by putting on her mask of womanliness and feminity. It is a pyschological ploy to put Tom at ease with Summer acting coy at times. In a masquerade, the woman feigns desire to be desired by a man by catering to male fantasy (Craft-Fairchild 54) and willing to become an object of desire although it may be abhorrent for her initially. In the later parrts of the film when Summer decides to get married at last, she is portrayed as the moronic woman because she can hardly explain when asked by Tom why she is now married when before she hates being someones girlfriend. She cannot adequately explain her decision. Summer is portrayed almost throughout the film as someone who is good at critical thinking and yet near the end of the film, she still cannot explain her decision to get married except to say that it is due to Fate. Her statement defies logic when all throughout she almost always takes charge of the events in her life. So in this aspect, the film is regressive because she is shown as someone who cannot even control her own important decisions in life. In the film, feminist film theory is shown in the focus of the film camera on the knees and legs of Summer. It is a clear case of voyeurism in which Mulveys idea of the male gaze is depicted. Further, this film technique encapsulates the fetishism and objectification of the female body (Fol 27). The cinematic angles used by cinematographers depict this dominance of the male gaze with most films overwhelmingly showing what feminists call as “coded male.” This is the most objectionable aspect of films because the films devalue women into mere objects. Conclusion The feminist movement has gained a lot of freedoms for women. There is more chance for women to enter previously male-dominated professions and the so-called glass ceiling has been shattered in many other aspects of society. The suffrage movement started this trend of a womens liberation movement in the eighteenth century and the struggle for womens rights is still continuing today such as in the fight against femicide which is called as a silent genocide. Women today are free to compete with men on an equal footing, so to speak. However, the traditional views of marriage has also been shattered irrevocably by the feminist views about family matters such as childbearing and child-rearing aspects of family. Many femninists had refused to enter into traditional or heterosexual relationships and even in many instances refused to bear children in pursuit of their professional careers. However, it is also conceded that many early feminists have suffered from pangs of regret and depression in the lack of a lasting and loving relationship or the sense of never having given birth to a child. Works Cited Craft-Fairchild, Catherine A. Masquerade and Gender: Disguise and Female Identity in Eighteenth-century Fictions by Women. University Park, PA, USA: Penn State University Press, 1993. Print. Ferriss, Suzanne, and Mallory Young. Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies. New York, NY, USA: Routledge, 2008. Print. Fol, Isabelle. The Dominance of the Male Gaze in Hollywood Films: Patriarchal Hollywood Images of Women at the Turn of the Millenium. Basel, Switzerland: Basel Univeristy, 2004. Print. IMDb. (500) Days of Summer. Dir. Marc Webb. Perf. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Geoffrey Arend, Zooey Deschanel, Clark Gregg, et al. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2009. Film. Thornham, Sue. Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. New York, NY, USA: New York Univeristy Press, 1999. Print. Read More