Women in Film

Paper Summary:

This paper presents the opinion that women, at least in certain films, are portrayed as the objects of men. The writer uses the archetypal examples of film noir, such as "The Lady From Shanghai", "Gilda" and "Kiss Me Deadly", all of which show a world in which women are the property of men. The writer concludes that the films were all written at a time when men were afraid of the modernizing woman and wanted to show what they believed was the true role of a woman in a man's world.

From the Paper:

"Although it is certainly not an original idea that male artists undress and serve up their female subjects for a variety of different kinds of pleasure, it is still somewhat disturbing and even shocking for us to come across such blatant and not entirely consensual acts of revelation and display of the female flesh as one sees in these films. But a second viewing of such images suggests that the ways in which women are presented is more complex than it at first appears: These femmes fatales are not simply ciphers, not simply signifiers for some of the more problematic aspects of masculine identity. They are other things as well. But first of all they are the subjects of the director's gaze."

More papers on Women in Film:

• Research Paper # 61789 : "Women in Film Noir"
• Analytical Essay # 105672 : "Women in Film"
• Analytical Essay # 115697 : "The Role of Women in Film Noir"
• Analytical Essay # 88698 : "Women in Film: "Jerry McGuire"

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