The Womans Film of the 1940s - Research Paper Example

I. Background Information The Woman’s Film Source: Mary Ann Doane. The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). [All direct quotes in this section from this book. Have mentioned page nos. next to relevant quotes] You can access a limited version here: http://books.google.co.in/books?id=FLWP6SPGQuYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+desire+to+desire&source=bl&ots=xmRwlWNzjD&sig=dhH_7jTdh_UsSrZsmoBt9TwoAbU&hl=en&ei=98nAS-yGYKtrAehiPS6CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false Summary: This book is useful as it categorizes the various sub-genres and themes within the “woman’s film.” She basically divides these 1950 woman films into four kinds: The Love Story, with a heterosexual love story in the center of the plot; The Maternal Melodrama, which revolve around a mother’s love and sacrifices made for her children; The Paranoid Gothic film, in which a newly wed bride is haunted by the fear that her husband may be a murderer; and The Medical Discourse film, in which the heroine/protagonist is laid up with some sort of illness: physiological or psychological. The book also helps define the first woman’s films which led to the more modern films based on female friendships. The detailed analyses of these four categories might not be too useful. Direct Quote1: “The label “woman’s film” refers to a genre of Hollywood films produced from the silent era through the 1950s and early ‘60s but most heavily concentrated and most popular in the 1930s and ‘40s. The films deal with a female protagonist and often appear to allow her significant access to point of view structures and the enunciative level of the filmic discourse. They treat problems defined as “female” (problems revolving around domestic life, the family, children, self-sacrifice, and the relationship between women and production vs. that between women and reproduction), and, most crucially, are directed towards a female audience.” [P.3] II. Specific Movies: 2. Sex and the City: Source: Kim Akass and Janet McCabe (eds.). Reading Sex and the City (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). [All direct quotes in this section from this book. Have mentioned page nos. next to relevant quotes] You can download it here: http://gigapedia.com/items:links?id=34642 Summary: This book should give you a deeper, more probing look into the Sex and the City phenomenon. This essay in particular might be of use in your thesis: “In Love with Sarah Jessica Parker: celebrating Female Fandom and friendship in Sex and the City” by Deborah Jermyn. This essay’s main purpose is to prove how important audience reactions to the characters of Sex and the City are, and how they provide a new reading of the show/film. Direct Quote1: “With four female friendships at its core, Sex and the City is a programme overtly marked by women’s voices, by manifest and unapologetic pleasure in female talk and the personal sphere. Audience research about the programme that engages directly with its female fans, then, seems a particularly potent means by which better to understand its success. This approach mirrors and maintains the programme’s endorsement of women’s voices as a meaningful and valuable form of exchange and insight, where it is not trite to say the personal is (often) the political. Interestingly, Kreuger and Casey define focus-group research as being particularly motivated by the intent to ‘promote self-disclosure among participants’ (2000: 7–8). This description, with its connotations of frankness and reciprocity, indicates a significant and potentially instructive symmetry here, between text and research method. A correspondence exists between the empowering experience of shared talk women are depicted as having in the world of the programme, and the equally rewarding and collective experience of talk about the programme women share in the ‘real’ world.” [PP. 207 – 208] III. Theoretical Material: 3. Feminist Film Theory: Source: Sue Thornam. Feminist Film Theory : A Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999). [All direct quotes in this section from this book. Have mentioned page nos. next to relevant quotes] You can download the book from here: (Password to extract: gigle.ws) http://gigapedia.com/items:links?id=342593 Summary: The book will help you get any relevant theoretical material you might need to substantiate your thesis with. Even if your thesis statement does not involve Feminism, you can use evidence from this book to prove or disprove your findings. The advantage you have is that this is an HTML e-book, completely searchable. Direct Quote1: “One of the impulses generating feminist critical and theoretical work on soap opera and the womans picture is a desire to examine genres which are popular, and popular in particular with women. The assumption is usually that such popularity has to do mainly with the social audience: television soaps attract large numbers of viewers, many of them women, and in its heyday the womans picture also drew in a mass female audience. But when the nature of this appeal is sought in the texts themselves or in relations between spectators and texts, the argument becomes rather more complex. In what specific ways do soaps and melodramas address or construct female/feminine spectators? To some extent, they offer the spectator a position of mastery: this is certainly true as regards the hermeneutic of the melodramas classic narrative, though perhaps less obviously so in relation to the soaps infinite process of narrativity. At the same time, they also place the spectator in a masochistic position of either in the case of the womans picture identifying with a female characters renunciation or, as in soap opera, forever anticipating an endlessly held-off resolution. Culturally speaking, this combination of mastery and masochism in the reading competence constructed by soaps and melodramas suggests an interplay of masculine and feminine subject positions. Culturally dominant codes inscribe the masculine, while the feminine bespeaks a return of the repressed in the form of codes which may well transgress culturally dominant subject positions, though only at the expense of proposing a position of subjection for the spectator.” [P. 154] 4. Freudian Theories: Source: Freud’s complete works. You can download the file here: http://www.mediafire.com/?40ymnoz3kgn (Freud’s complete works archived. Completely searchable e-text. Open the FRCW2.HLP file after extracting it and click on the “Find” tab. Enter whatever keywords necessary.) Summary: Freud’s theories, although much contested, can help you substantiate claims you make on a psychoanalytical basis. Search the text for ‘female Oedipal complex’ and ‘women sexuality’ and so on to get the relevant information. Direct Quote1: “The first was that where the woman’s attachment to her father was particularly intense, analysis showed that it had been preceded by a phase of exclusive attachment to her mother which had been equally intense and passionate. Except for the change of her love-object, the second phase had scarcely added any new feature to her erotic life. Her primary relation to her mother had been built up in a very rich and many-sided manner. The second fact taught me that the duration of this attachment had also been greatly under-estimated. In several cases it lasted until well into the fourth year - in one case into the fifth year - so that it covered by far the longer part of the period of early sexual efflorescence. Indeed, we had to reckon with the possibility that a number of women remain arrested in their original attachment to their mother and never achieve a true change-over towards men. This being so, the pre-Oedipus phase in women gains an importance which we have not attributed to it hitherto.” [Sigmund Freud. Female Sexuality, 1931.] Freud - Complete Works. Ivan Smith 2000-2007. All Rights Reserved. 5. Opinions on Freud: Source: Nancy Chodorow. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). [All direct quotes in this section from this book. Have mentioned page nos. next to relevant quotes] You can access a limited version of the book here: http://books.google.co.in/books?id=pLhb4dAWIAgC&dq=The+Reproduction+of+Mothering:+Psychoanalysis+and+the+Sociology+of+Gender+The+Reproduction+of+Mothering:+Psychoanalysis+and+the+Sociology+of+Gender&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=SI3BS_6EN8bGrAeC5bzqCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false Summary: This book will help you gain one perspective, though not necessarily the correct or an infallible one, on Freudian theories of women’s Oedipal conflicts. Chodorow suggests that both female and male babies take the mother to be the first object of their pre-Oedipal love. A straight (i.e. heterosexual) mother will relate to her daughter narcissistically and to her son anaclitically (anaclitic means having a physical and emotional dependence on another person, especially relating to the dependence of an infant on a mother). This interpretation actually displaces the father as the primary object of Oedipal affection. Look to the Hollinger book for more information and detailed explanation. (Source 8) You can also use this theory to explain female friendships which reflect the mother-daughter bond. Another aspect of Chodorow’s argument is also interesting. She says that as a result of this “double attachment” to both parents, heterosexuality does not establish itself on the female psyche entirely; which is why heterosexual relationships never wholly satisfy women. You could give instances of this being proved / disproved in the movies you’ve watched. Direct Quote1: “A girl does not simply identify with her mother or want to be like her mother. Rather, mother and daughter maintain elements of their primary relationship which means they will feel alike in fundamental ways. Object-relations and conflicts in the oedipal period build upon this pre-oedipal phase.” [P. 110] Direct Quote2: ““A girl is likely to maintain both her parents as love objects and rivals throughout the Oedipal period.” [P. 127] 6. Explanation of Freud’s Stages: Source: David B. Stevenson. Freuds Psychosexual Stages of Development. The essay can be accessed here: http://www.victorianweb.org/science/freud/develop.html Summary: This is more for a general understanding of Freud. Background information to help you process the specific psychoanalytical terms that come up in Freud’s and Chodorow’s works (previous sources). Stevenson explains Freud’s main stages of sexual development: The Oral; The Anal; The Phallic; Latency Period and The Genital Stage. Direct Quote1: “At particular points in the developmental process, he claimed, a single body part is particularly sensitive to sexual, erotic stimulation. These erogenous zones are the mouth, the anus, and the genital region. The childs libido centers on behavior affecting the primary erogenous zone of his age; he cannot focus on the primary erogenous zone of the next stage without resolving the developmental conflict of the immediate one.” IV. Other Movies: 7. Movies for Comparison: Source: Other movies that you may want to include in your research: Duel in the Sun; Thelma and Louise; Single White Female; The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. Summary: Watching these movies in addition to P.S. I Love You and Sex and the City might help give you other perspectives. Single White Female, for instance, is a debunking of female friendship and takes it to an extreme, violent end. V. Categories of Female Friendships: 8. Kinds of Female Friendships: Source: Janet M. Todd. Women’s Friendship in Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). I am unable to find a downloadable copy of this online. Summary: This book is useful only as it categorizes female friendships in literature into distinct kinds. 5 kinds of female friendships are described by Todd: Sentimental, Manipulative, Political, Erotic and Social friendships. These are discussed in greater detail in the next source. NOTE: Also see Source 1 mentioned in Background Information. 9. Close Analysis of Female Friendships on Screen: Source: Karen Hollinger. In the Company of Women: Contemporary Female Friendship Films (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). [All direct quotes in this section from this book. Have mentioned page nos. next to relevant quotes] I will send you the e-book through Admin. Summary: This is the most significant of your resources, I think. It contains references to several other works that touch upon specific aspects of female friendships depicted on the silver screen. Apart from a thorough historical Introduction, Hollinger also talks about Todd’s five specific kinds of female relationships in detail. Direct Quote1: “Sentimental friendships are close, emotionally effusive, dyadic same-sex unions. They are conventionally presented as nurturing and psychologically enriching partnerships that also exhibit a fervent passion that is reminiscent of heterosexual romantic love. Sentimental female friends cry and confide, protest and embrace, and relate so intensely that their friendship acquires many of the signs of a love affair.” [P. 7] Direct Quote2: “Erotic female friendship portrayals can take various forms, but by far the most common are the lesbian romance narrative and the coming-out story, in which the female protagonist embarks on a journey that leads to her discovery of her lesbian identity. Although erotic female friendship films often contain at least one scene of explicitly lesbian lovemaking, they sometimes take a more ambiguous form that renders them almost indistinguishable from representations of sentimental female friendship.” [P. 7] Direct Quote3: “The manipulative female friend shows the signs of sentimental attachment without its substance. She uses her friend, controls her, and rejoices in this control. The rhetoric and gestures of sentimental female friendship are employed to manipulate the friend for selfish, twisted motives. In these films, an ambitious, intellectually isolated, or socially frustrated woman turns against her female friend, and the relationship between them becomes one of predator and prey.” [PP. 7-8] Direct Quote4: “Political female friendship portrayals involve an alliance that leads to some action against the social system, its institutions, or conventions. These films usually involve low-key female bonding, with little of the emotional intensity characteristic of sentimental or erotic friendship portrayals. The friendship stems not from an emotionally intense sense of connection, but from needs that lead to sociopolitical action. […]Freed from the intense intimacy that seems to replace political energy in sentimental friendship, political female friendships are able to move in more socially challenging directions.” [P. 8] Direct Quote5: “Social female friendship portrayals can be seen as the conservative variant of political female friendship. They involve a nurturing tie that does not so much pit women against society as smooth their passage back into it. Through the teaching of female wisdom or the granting of a sympathetic ear, women in these works aid and sustain each other, perhaps by promoting a friend’s heterosexual romance or by easing her pain at the loss of her male lover.” [P. 8] 10. More on Female Friendship Theorists: Source: Janice Raymond. “Female Friendship: Contra Chodorow and Dinnerstein”. Hypatia, Vol. 1, No. 2, Motherhood and Sexuality (Autumn, 1986), pp. 37-48 [Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Hypatia, Inc.] [Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3809895] [All direct quotes in this section from this book. Have mentioned page nos. next to relevant quotes] I will attach this essay also and send it to you through the Admin. Summary: This article seeks to crystallize the idea of female friendship or Gyn-affection along Feminist lines of thought. She begins with Freud’s assertion that women necessarily viewed themselves and each other as “flawed” because of their lack of a penis. The author discusses Chodorow and Dinnerstein’s interpretations of this Freudian theory in detail. She also refers to Kramer vs. Kramer and contends that although this movie shows us a completely fully developed, caring male parent it misses showing us where he will come from. Direct Quote1: “What Dinnerstein and Chodorows end women searching for is the "new man." But the new man is, in many ways, the old man. First, he is a man, not a woman, and women have been traditionally enjoined to seek men, albeit new and sensitized men. Second, he bonds with his own kind, even under the influence of sensitization. We see this bonding at work in the new "sensitive male" films, and we can expect a rejuvenated form of male bonding from the fulfillment of Dinnersteins and Chodorows visions of the male as co-parent. Women are oriented to new forms of hetero-relations here.” [P. 46] 11. Love depicted in Films: Source: M.M. Tomlin. “Love on Film.” Transition, No. 17 (1964). PP. 35-38 [All direct quotes in this section from this book. Have mentioned page nos. next to relevant quotes] I shall attach this essay too. Summary: This essay is useful because it discusses several specific movies and their treatment of sexuality and love. You can use it to compare your own readings of the movies you will discuss. The essay is short and in simple language and not hard to understand. The author’s basic motive seems to lament how obvious depictions of sexuality on screen have become. He also discusses the Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night. Direct Quote1: “In the overwhelmingly visual quality of this funny yet sad commentary on pop music and the modern scene in general, we have perhaps an answer to our question. If there really is an art of the film, this is it. There are no characters in this film-no real people at all. They are all strange, surrealistic-they are beings. There is no story-no actuality, almost. The homo- hetero-surrealist bawdy (Hes very clean is one of their refrains) helps to undermine the tyranny of the camera-the obsessions of realistic representation. The beautiful, at times near-abstract, designs, help to under- mine it more. There is no sentimentality, because this film is not trying to do what the film cant really do; there is no pornography, because the temptations of the camera have been resisted there. The theme is clear- here is the future of our civilisation-not snarled at, but described and accepted, with the appropriate blend of qualified joy and sadness” 12. Additional Suggestions: Anna Despotopolou. Girls on Film: Postmodern Renderings of Jane Austen and Henry James. Will try and send this through Admin also. 13. Possible Thesis Topics: The five kinds of female relationships as described and analyzed in the Hollinger book in addition to your own findings from the movies. Psychoanalytical readings of female friendships, heterosexual or homosexual, as rendered on film. (Use the Freudian and Feminist theory books in addition to the Hollinger book) The changing faces of depiction of female friendships on film. (Use Mary Ann Doane and Hollinger for historical changes in these representations) Read More