Misrepresentation of Women in Cinema - Movie Review Example

 Misrepresentation of women in cinema Misrepresentation and mistreatment of women has been very relevant in our society for a long period. Through cinema, it is possible to see society’s view on women. This is because; the film plays an important role in referring to how society views certain images, attitudes, behaviors, actions, and representations. Production of various types of cinema involves creating new ideas and blending them with the existing ideas to produce something that is more interesting and relevant to the society. In this perspective, the concept of women and its consequences are built also by the influence of cinema and its production of images in everyday life of subjects. Analysts say that culture is an intervention area of ideology and the picture of a woman presented culturally is a stereotypical image. It can also be said that the social construction of woman, that worked for various types media (whether by magazines and advertisements, whether for film and television) is usually based on a criteria pre-established socially and imposes an idealized image of women. Misrepresentation of women in cinema can be in many ways although the most common form of misrepresentation is the objectification of women. Objectification is the treatment of a person like a tool or object while disregarding their dignity. A person is objectified if they are treated as if they are owned by another or like a tool for another person’s purposes. Objectification means there is no concern for their feelings thereby the particular person is denied subjectivity. The most relevant form of women objectification is sexual objectification. It is the treatment of a woman simply like an instrument for deriving sexual pleasure thereby making the particular woman a sex object. Sexual objectification is an important idea in feminist theory and psychological theories derived from feminism. Most feminists view sexual objectification as deplorable and as playing a vital role in promotion of gender equality. One of the feminists Laura Mulvey uses psychoanalysis and her own impressions to enlighten on what would be the female representations within the macho culture. “For the system, there is already an idea of woman as eternal victim: it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence; her desire is to compensate the lack what it means. The woman thus exists in patriarchal culture as signifier of other men, trapped by a symbolic order in which man can express his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning and not a producer of meaning” (Laura, 1989). That is, a woman’s character is described as a frail figure, dependent, submissive, and serving as the object of male desires satisfaction, whether sexual or not. All this for a supposed superiority placed on man by the presence of the phallus. Psychologically, the absence of these features would speak on the girl because of their dissociation with the father figure and identification with the mother figure. Sexual objectification is a major theme that movie directors employ nowadays to increase the marketability of their movie. One example of a movie that has sexual objectification as a theme is the French drama movie And God Created Woman. The movie was directed by Roger Vadim and it was produced in France in 1956. It was introduced in the U.S.A. film scene in 1957, causing a lot of controversial for having a high level of sexual content. To match with censorial standards of U.S.A in 1957, the movie required to be edited heavily. The movie starred Briggite Bardot as she played the role of Juliet. In the movie, Juliet is seen as wanton free-spirit living with her foster parents at St. Tropez. In her dressing and behavior, Juliet oozes sexual energy and ends up acquiring the reputation of a slut in the small community of St. Tropez. Her free spiritedness and sexually suggestive behaviors attracts many men near her. In the movie And God Created Woman, Juliet meets Antoine Tardieu aboard local bus. Antoine’s family owns a small shipyard that businessman Eric Carradine is trying to buy out as one of the parts of a casino and a hotel complex that he is planning to build. Tardieu’s family is not in agreement with this plan and are blocking it. Antoine works for a large company in the port of Toulon and has come during this weekend to see his family at St. Tropez. Juliet loves Antoine and seems to secretly think he is the love of his life. Antoine on the other hand is interested in Juliet but only for occasional pleasure. During this weekend, Juliet and Antoine sleep together but after that Antoine dishonors the promise he had made to Juliet of leaving with her for Toulon. Antoine therefore uses Juliet like a pleasure tool to pleasure himself and does not care about Juliet’s dignity, that’s why he leaves without her even after he had promised he would leave with her for Toulon. A woman is built in opposition to patriarchal oppression of society, demarcating gender inequalities and the supremacy of the man with his wife. The culture has positioned the males as being superior to women and therefore they can use women for their own benefits without considering the dignity or personality of women .According to Gaines & Herzog (1990) women’s bodies is the main point of convergence of power strategies in a patriarchal society. In this perspective, the studies of gender relations is expanded, which point to greater complexity of theoretical discourse and analyzes of what is being man and/or woman in the current complex context. Cinema offers numerous forms of pleasure. Among these forms of pleasure is scopophilia, which is a form of pleasure derived from looking. Looking can be pleasure where one is staring at something and feeling good, it can also happen in the opposite way, where being looked at pleasures the one being looked at. Movie directors have to produce a movie that will induce high pleasure levels when watched. Ina society where staring at sexually suggestive images of women is believed to derive substantially high levels of pleasure, movie producers therefore end up using women in movies as objects of pleasure, completely disregarding their dignity and personality. The movie And God Created Woman is centered around male conflicts. Juliet is used to drive the plot as the object that causes conflict among three men; Antoine, his brother Michel and businessman Eric carradine. These three men desire Juliet because of her beautiful body. Businessman Eric Carradine wants to possess her since her beauty will complement his wealth. He therefore sees her not like a normal human but a good addition to his possessions. Therefore Eric sees Juliet like a good object to add tom his possessions. Antoine Tardieu wants Juliet so that he can sleep with her. Juliet is a beautiful girl full of sexual energy and any man would lust for her. Antoine goes on to sleep with her to pleasure himself. He views her as tool for pleasure and does not imagine marrying her. He even tells his brother Michel who had married Juliet, to leave her claiming she is a whore. In accordance to the principles of the governing belief and clairvoyant structures that have been set up to govern cinema, men cannot endure the burden of sexual objectification. Normally, men find the experience of looking at their exhibitionist like being a nasty experience. The role of a man as the active one is backed up by the fact that there is a division of the film’s narrative part and the spectacle part. The man therefore is actively involved in progressing the story and causing things to take place. He is the controller of the film’s fantasy. In the film, man is portrayed as the symbol of authority because he conveys the gaze of the spectator. Man counteracts the non-diegetic tendencies revealed by the woman as a spectacle. Since the onlooker is identified with the male character, his look is directed on that of his screen substitute. Thereby, the male character’s power corresponds with the dynamic authority of the suggestive look and together they give a satisfying feeling of authority (Laura, 1989). The character of a male movie star is therefore presented as being flawless, comprehensive and more authoritative flawless ego looked upon in the unique instance of acknowledgment at the anterior of the mirror. The female movie star characteristics on the other side are reduced to just those of the erotic object for staring at to derive pleasure. In the sexist beliefs and a film scene controlled by men, female presentation is as to what they epitomize for a man. Through a process of displacement, a woman in cinema is made to represent the male phallus and not herself. A woman therefore is used as a tool for representing male ideas. The law of verisimilitude which directors of movies worked with, shows that a woman is simply one item subject. This law which determines the impression of realism, is precisely to blame for the suppression of the woman’s image and the celebration of woman’s nonexistence(Claire, pg. 24-31).Women are used just like objects to represent male ideas and no one cares about their dignity or how the objectification affects their personality. In cinema, through Voyeurism and our tendency to create images that provide the identification of the ego in anthropomorphic images projected on the screen, the male figure is predominant within the subjective look created by the characters and the camera. However Mulvey puts it even so the female figure is almost unanimous in the classic film. “The presence of women is essential for the performance of a common narrative film, yet her visual presence element tends to run in the opposite direction to the development of history, tends to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation” (Laura, 1989). The woman, according to Mulvey, besides being a dependent element of the male character within the narrative, is a tool to stop development of the story for “sensual contemplation.” In the movie And God Created Woman Juliet is married to Michel, the younger brother to Antoine. Eric Carradine offers Tardieu a stake in his project. Under these circumstances, Antoine returns from Toulon to manage the operation. Even after Antoine had slept with Juliet and left her in St. Tropez on that weekend when she was hoping he would take her with him like he had promised, when he comes back this time, he still sleeps with her at the beach. This depicts Juliet as a passive object being helplessly manipulated by men. She is just an object for fulfilling desires of men. Man does not care about what happens to the particular woman like in the case of Antoine after having sex with Juliet in the beach, Juliet is left feeling guilty and stressed. After having sex with Antoine, she starts behaving in a weird manner. She takes to her bed claiming to have a fever while in real sense the issue of sleeping with her husband’s brother was the cause of her weird behaviors. In the movie And God Created Woman Juliet is used to show male superiority in the society. After she had sex in the beach with Antoine, she confesses to Michel's little brother Christian. Maman hears about it and goes on to tell Michel when he comes home. Michelle goes looking for Juliet but Antoine locks him in the room and tells him to forget that “bitch whore”. Antoine is sleeps with Juliet but refers her as a whore, this implies that the male are more superior to females and rarely are they blamed. In an incident at the bar, Michel wants to shoot Juliet although Eric takes the bullet in his head. Michel sorely blames Juliet for sleeping with Antoine; Antoine is not blamed because he is male. This implies that males are superior and therefore in the case of a mistake involving a male and a female, the female figure has to shoulder the blame. Men tend to use women as an object of deriving sexual pleasure. The female figure possesses the special organs required for sexual pleasure by men. In the society, women use this ability to provide sexual pleasure as a way of getting what they want from men. Men on the other side may still use women and fail to give what they had promised since men view women just as objects of sexual pleasure. In the movie And God Created Woman, when Antoine comes at St. Tropez, he meets with Juliet in a bus. They go on to sleep together with Antoine promising Juliet that he will go with her to Toulon. Antoine,s intention was just sleeping with Juliet for sexual pleasure and nothing more. He leaves her at St. Tropez and does not seem to care much about that. Therefore Juliet is usedas a sex object and she can do nothing about it because the society seems to have placed man as being superior to woman. The culture has positioned the males as being superior to women and therefore they can use women for their own benefits without considering the dignity or personality of women. Juliet is at one point forced to keep silent but gets hurt deep emotionally when she accidentally overhears Antoine telling a friend that she's only good for a one-night stand just minutes after he has told her that he loves her and wants her to move to Toulon with him. Her misery is further compounded the next morning when, after foolishly giving Antoine the benefit of the doubt, she packs her bags and waits for the Toulon bus: Antoine neglects to instruct the bus driver to stop and coldly avoids Juliette's gaze as the bus sails past her. This means that men are in a position where they can use women to derive sexual pleasure and still not give in to the woman’s requirements, since she is just but a sexual object. In the production of films, male and female screen personae are presented in different ways. Female screen personae is presented in terms of ‘types’ which are differentiated depending on involuntary and nearly instantaneous movements of their bodies. On the other side, male screen personae is presented as being not so automatic. Among the males for instance, there are masculine labels such as ‘gangster’ and ‘cowboy’. These labels are career specifications presented by cinema for men. Females screen personae on the other side has terms such as ‘sex goddess’, ‘blonde bombshell’, ‘gamin’, ‘the vamp’ and ‘femme fatale’. These terms represent categories of sexual preference and physical demeanor. This means that cinema presents males in a view of their personality hence terms such ‘cowboy’ represent their career specification. However, cinema does not present females in a view of their personality but instead presents them as objects of sexual pleasure, hence coining terms such ‘sex goddess’ which gives the category of sexual preference for an individual woman(Lucy, pg. 2-11). For any film, there are three types of look associated with it. The first type of look is that of the camera during the filming of the events before the film is produced, the second look is that of the audience as it watches the produced film and the third one is where characters look at each other within the screen illusion. In film production, the third look is superior to the first two. For a fictional drama film to achieve reality, obviousness and truth, the first two looks are removed. This is done to remove invasive presence of the camera and avoid a distancing awareness in the audience. In a narrative fiction film, the image of a woman as a castration threat constantly endangers the words of the narrator. The image of a woman bursts through the world of illusion as an invasive and simplistic fetish. In this case therefore, the irrational needs of a man’s self-image suppresses the two looks significantly present in time and space(Laura, 1989). In this case, the image of women is stolen and used the image of a man. A woman is therefore used just like a tool for cushioning the image of a man. This way, the image of a woman in drama films is therefore misused and misrepresented. How society should change the dominant ideology of male in cinema and try produce a new image of female in film. The society can change the dominant ideology of male in cinema if various steps are taken. For instance, there are very few female movie directors in the film production scene currently. The fact that most movie directors are male means that most of the movies produced represent male ideas. If the number of female movie directors can increase, more movies presenting females ideas will be produced and this will definitely help in creating a new image for women in films. There should be development of collective work among women as a means of acquiring and sharing skills. This would be a great challenge to the male dominated industry. Women working collectively would also present an opportunity for a dialogue about women in cinema so as to come up with what should be the perfect image for women in cinema. In order to counter the objectification of women in cinema, women’s collective fantasies must be released. Ideas that are obtained from political film should inform entertainment film and vice versa(Claire, pg. 24-31). The society should be educated to know the true meaning of beauty. Being looked at and craved after for only a moment is not the most important thing in beauty. The society should made aware that seeing the heart and essence of a person draped in their natural wonder is the true meaning of beauty. If the society can become aware of this, then the image of women in films will surely change and women will become more valuable in films. There should be complete freedom. Most countries will pride themselves as being countries of complete freedom while that freedom is ironically mocked in their own advertising. Men are pictured as being superior to women. This means that there is no equality. Objectifying men and women makes some appear less than they should be. The society should be made in a way that there is respect for each individual’s personality and all gender should be equal. This can greatly help in changing the image of women as portrayed in films today. Work Cited Judith Mayne: Feminist Film Theory and Criticism: The university of Chicago press. 1985 Claire Johnston,ed,,Notes on Women’s Cinema, London: Society of Education in Film and Television, 1973, Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure, and Narrative Cinema. 1989 Lucy Fischer: The image of woman as image; The optical politics of “Dames”: University of Carlifonia press.1976 Read More