Coursework: Film Catalogue

Saira Begum

Explore how the roles of female characters have developed in films today

Item 1 Focus film 1: Bend it like Beckham (2002)

The protagonist Parminder Nagra in this film is very useful to depict how women are signified, which interlinks to context of ethnicity. The film is a cultural mirror of its time, with women of Asian background to construct stereotyped lifestyles and depend on family honour that controlled their life. This is a typical representation of Asian women in Britain.  This is a very interesting starting point for ethnic roles highlighting the importance of marriage, family honour, etc. towards the end of the film with her being allowed to strive for the goals that were restricted at the time.

Item 2 Focus film 2: Gone Girl (2014)

The antagonist Amy in this film is suitable to present the empowerment of the female protagonist had over her husband. This explores how trapped the husband feels due to the wife and how she portrayed her false vulnerability at the beginning of the film, giving the audience the illusion that her husband was dominant. This film breaks the stereotype of women being dominated by a man, creating a film to publicise that men are victims in marriage too. Amy is the antagonist and plays a distinctive role as wife that emotionally blackmails her husband.

Item 3 Focus Film 3: Wonder Woman (2017)

This film is valuable to explore female superhero in a DC comic’s film. It is centred on Diana being a strong independent woman that doesn’t rely on a man, and lives in women dominated empire. This film challenges an ordinary superhero movie breaking the stereo type of a male superhero. Steve falls in love with Diana, but Diana doesn’t understand the meaning of love as her life with her family didn’t encourage it at all, which is interesting. This is thus an incredibly useful movie to show how far film has comes with its representation of women.

Item 4: Media, gender and identity (David Guantlett, 2002)

This book helped me identify the stereotyped gender roles in today’s society and what is what like in the past. This helps me recognise the difference of how the gender roles theory has changed over time, which helps back up my point with this contextual research.

Item 5: Teaching women and film (Vivienne Clark, 2003)

This book gives a wider perspective of women in the film industry, which discusses women’s roles in films. This also discusses the construction of women overall in the film industry, which helps and adds complexity to my study.

Item 6: ‘Why, in 2016, are women still (mostly) silent film stars?’

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/12/women-film-speaking-roles-2016-study-hollywood

This article by talks about how women are often described as sexually desirable figures.  This article is useful to study how women are seen in the film industry and how my focus films can argue against this study.

Item 7: ‘Has feminism had an impact on films?’

https://www.headliners.org/has-feminism-risen-in-film

This article talks about the feminist theory and how it has impacted the role of women in films. This article talks about a range on genres and how women have developed a variety of roles in the film industry. In majority of the films studied in this article talks about how women have independence. This article is relevant to my study of how women have developed in the film industry.

Item 8: ‘A woman’s place? How Hollywood learned to love superheroines’

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/26/women-female-roles-hollywood-films

This article talks about how there are superheroines in the film industry are becoming more common. This article covers a range of topics of public figures and films of different genres. Furthermore, it talks about my focus film ‘Wonder woman’ involving other movies like this that have women dominating the market in 2017.

Item 9: http://www.filmeducation.org/pdf/film/Bend_It_Like_Beckham.pdf

This material further analyses my focus film ‘Bend it like Beckham’ as it covers ethnic issues as well as gender issues. This is useful to research in depth about my focus film as it analyses my both stars Parminder Nagra (Asian origin) and Keira Knightly (white origin).

Item 10: http://time.com/3472314/gone-girl-movie-book-feminist-misogynist/

This article talks about whether one of my focus films is agreeing with feminists or misogynists. This material is useful to my argument as it analyses the views of the protagonist and the antagonist and shows how Amy depicts an abnormal role as a wife.

Item 11: https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/oct/06/gone-girl-female-stereotype-women

This article is about how the film ‘Gone girl’ breaks the stereotypical role of a husband and wife and is useful to analyse how Amy plays powerful role in this film. This is useful to distinguish the role of the antagonist and protagonist. Furthermore, this article talks about Amy was able to ‘get away with murder’ whilst formerly playing a victim.

Item 12: Bidding for the mainstream? Black and Asian British film since the 1990s

This book is useful as it talks about my focus film ‘bend it like beckham’ and is an analysis of how the female protagonist is portrayed in the male dominated sport of football. This is useful to my study to show not only how women have evolved over the film industry, but also ethnicity. The book stated ‘it isn’t seen as a ethnical issue, it is seen as a British issue’ which is indicative that the ethnic minority have become a part of the society with their issues being consider as ‘British’

Item 13: the ‘f’ factor: women: where it’s at (2004)

This is useful to show women filmmaker’s feels about the female representation in and behind the camera. This is useful to see if it the impacts of women director are the cause of women evolving in the film industry or if male filmmakers have the same attitude to see how women are represented.

Item 14: In Papaji’s house: representation of the father/daughter relationship....’

This article talks about ethnic issues with interlinks highly with my focus film ‘bend it like beckham’ as it analyses the whole issues of ethnicity and gender issues of father and daughters in these film including other films that are similar to my focus film.

DESELECTED ITEMS

Men, women and chainsaws- focuses on one genre, narrows my search and study

This article talks about women roles, however it is only narrowed into one genre of horror, which isn’t useful to my study as my focus films don’t consist of this genre.

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/women-lead-roles-in-movies-study-hunger-games-gone-girl-1201429016/

This talks about a one sided view of women in the industry and doesn’t support my argument as it talks only about how women are still are unequal in the film industry. This also talks about they’re considered as ‘second class citizens’. 

Item 14: In Papaji’s house: representation of the father/daughter relationship....’

This article talks about ethnic issues that doesn’t interlink with my focus film ‘bend it like beckham’ as it analyses the whole issues of ethnicity of father and daughters in this film. Although it doesn’t show aspects of gender issues, it talks about the ethnicity of the father and daughter relationship being similar and this would disregard my research topic of gender issues.

Coursework: Film Presentation Script

Film Presentation Script

Visual:

Screen (Slide 1) - showing first slide of the Posters of ‘Bend it like Beckham’, ‘gone girl and ‘wonder woman’ and title

Presenter:  

Hello and welcome to my presentation. We are going to investigate how the roles of                    female characters have developed in films today in three films of different genres.

Screen (Slide 2):

Presenter: How were women roles represented in films in the early era?

·         How was women represented in films? In the early era, many feminists criticised that the portrayal of women in films was ‘disturbing’. Women was portrayed as inferior to men, was stereotyped into specific roles and seen as sexualised figures.

·         The first woman actress was Margaret Hughes in England in the 18^th century and women of this time had very stereotyped ‘housewife’ roles. Furthermore, middle class women followed a ‘fashionable’ trend of wearing makeup, perfume and dressing a particular way. Could this be the reason why women had sexualised roles as they were desired to look like this from the beginning of 18^th century?

Screen (Slide 3):

Presenter: What will you uncover from this presentation with my selected films and items?

·         Women have evolved over time and started to have equal roles to men. There are many films to showcase this and my ranges of focus films are able to depict this

·         My three focus films are of different genres and type of films that men would usually have the lead of. This gives a broad representation of women from a range of genres and they have evolved from having stereotyped, inferior roles to empowering, independent roles.

·         In this presentation I am going to focus on how women have evolved of female gender roles over the centuries breaking the stereotypical roles.

Screen (slide 4):

 Visual of ‘Bend it like Beckham’ Poster

BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (ITEM 1)

Presenter:

·         Bend it like Beckham is a British drama film portraying the life of the Asian female protagonist Parminder Nagra.

·         This film represents the stereotype of women limitations of achieving their goals, which conflict with the values of the Asian culture.

·         This film also showcases the contextual studies ethnicity and how they are presented to contrast with the British culture.

·         Football is also seen as male stereotyped role, and this film shows a team of girls playing

·         The ending of the film showed that her family was willing to compromise with her interests in football and allowed her to strive for her goals.

·         Another female protagonist is Keira with a white background; despite the different ethnical backgrounds, both Keira and Parminder’s mothers share exactly the same negative thought about their daughters playing football as it wasn’t feminine to.

Screen (slide 5): ITEM 12

Presenter:

·         This film wasn’t regarded as an Asian drama, in fact it was stated to be ‘it isn’t seen as an ethnical issue, it is seen as a British issue’ which shows it was considered as a British issue (Item 12)

·         This shows that the idea of the male dominated sport is seen as a British issue where not only our protagonist Parminder is having trouble striving her goals, but also the white protagonist Keira is undergoing issues with her passion for football.

Screen (slide 6):

Visual: poster of ‘wonder woman’

WONDER WOMAN (ITEM 3)

Presenter:

·         This is a DC superhero of a female hero.

·         This breaks the stereotype of a ‘male based’ superhero by using a powerful female hero called Diana.

·         She is brought up in a world that has no male domination, presenting that she is centred to know and be dominant.

·         This film presents a lot of integrity and independence of women in this film.

·         This again supports the answer of women evolving and display empowerment in roles in the film industry today.

·         Feminists agree with this film showing how women are influential and do have independence and specifically desire the role of Diana as she shows that nobody can control her decisions.

Screen (slide 7) ITEM 8

Presenter:

·         ‘Women are dominating the market’ (ITEM 8)

·         Diana is presented more powerful than the elite organisations of the military; that are seen as a dominating force.

·         This was based in the World War 2, which contrasts Diana highly with the exposure of women during this time period.

Screen (slide 8): Visual of ‘Gone girl’ poster

GONE GIRL (ITEM 2)

Presenter:

·         This is an American thriller, which represents the portrayal of a dominating husband yet soon to realise that the husband was the vulnerable person in this relationship.

·         This film supports the argument that women have evolved from their traditional husband and wife roles.

·         This hugely breaks the stereotype of traditional husband and wife roles as she is displayed as an abusive, emotionally blackmailing wife.

·         Amy (female antagonist) uses her ‘vulnerable gender’ at her advantage to get away with abusing and manipulating her husband.

Screen (Slide 9) ITEM 6

Presenter:

·         Women are seen as sexually desirable (Item 6), which is shown through a scene where she sexually controls a man to lead him to his death, which again shows how Amy took advantage of her sexuality.

·         Amy is presented as such a powerful female antagonist.

·         Shows Amy as ‘not knowing the possibility of knowing of other, even of most intimate relationships, marriage’.

Screen (slide 10)

Visual: Video of ‘Gone girl- cool girl monologue’ from Gone Girl

Presenter:

·         Amy’s dialogue presents her as an abnormal wife (ITEM 10)

·         Amy begins to cut her hair off and a voice over of Amy begins, which is indicative of her insanity as she is talking to herself. The performance by Amy is powerful to display a change in character from Amy showing she has form instability and a rather cunning motive against her husband.

·         She stresses that her husband (generalises all males) having interest in a ‘cool girl’, which was a label given to the most desirable women that Amy pretended to be for him.  This shows how she turned the insecurity her husband gave her into anger; a form of revenge that women cannot fulfil.

·         Throughout the clip her performance displays that everywhere she goes, she covers her tracks.

·         This is interesting to see how Amy voices every woman with the same issues and how she chooses to act upon it.

Screen (slide 11)

Visual: video clip of ‘that’s marriage- gone girl’

Presenter:

·         Here, the husband presents his confusion to her and in other words asks her ‘why have you done this?’ and she states ‘its marriage’ as if what happens in marriage between two people is typical and normal.

·         The theme of delusion is portrayed here as Amy thinks this behaviour is normal and gives up; believing that the conflict that has occurred between Amy and Nick defines marriage in general.

·         Nick’s words contrast with his typical role of a husband. His character presents the evolution of women in marriage as he is in a vulnerable position.

Screen (Slide 12) Visual: comparing two pictures of first and last shot of Amy ‘Gone Girl’

Presenter:

·         The before and after picture is of Amy from the first and last scene of the film; the scene imitates and repeats itself which indicates that the husband is trapped and isolated in this dysfunctional marriage.

·         He is emotionally manipulated into being with Amy and Amy takes advantage of her role.

·         You see a change in her role, from looking innocent and vulnerable, however towards the end of the film we discover how she takes advantage of her role to actually play dominating and daunting role towards her husband.

Visual: end of slide show

Presenter:

In conclusion, all three films depict how women roles have developed from their stereotyped roles in my focus films. These films were chosen from diverse genres to show how their roles have developed in different films. From a range of traditional roles of footballers, superheroes and marital relationships

Thank you for listening and if there are any questions please don’t hesitate to ask.

focus film: City of god

Break down of a scene

City of God is a 2002 Brazilian crime film directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, released in its home country in 2002 and worldwide in 2003. The story was adapted by Bráulio Mantovani from the 1997 novel of the same name written by Paulo Lins, but based on real events. It depicts the growth of organized crime in the Cidade de Deus suburb of Rio de Janeiro, between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1980s, with the closure of the film depicting the war between the drug dealer Li'l Zé . The film received worldwide critical acclaim, receiving four Academy Award nominations in 2004: Best Cinematography (César Charlone), Best Director (Meirelles), Best Editing (Daniel Rezende) and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) (Mantovani).

The tagline is "If you run, the beast catches you; if you stay, the beast eats you" this is indicative that the story presents the idea of poverty, violence and drugs being the lifestyle that is inescapable. At the beginning of the scene, there was close up and flashing shots of people drinking, cheering, sharpening a knife and plucking chickens. Through this culture is presented and the theme of violence is continuously presented through the sharpening of the knife. Furthermore, performance of Lil Ze is presented as he was the first person to be shown in this scene, which is key as we can already depict that he is the antagonist of the film as he doesn’t carry a good impression from this very scene. He is holding a gun and laughing, the performance here presents Lil Ze in superior yet intimidating way. Furthermore, the camera angle looking up at Lil ze presents him with dominance showing that the director wants the audience with dominance. And could be potentially showing the power he has, which he hadn’t had before. 

Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore

Bowling for columbine is a drama crime documentary by Michael Moore. This documentary explores the use of weapons used in America and how they have an effect on the country. This film was released in 2002, which is in sync of events that occurred that involved what the documentary is about. This has a box office of $58 million and won various awards.

In America, it is normal for one to have a gun in their household and as a protection to the individual and this documentary explores people with guns and their reasons behind having one. In one scene, an individual was buying a guy and had to sign a form ticking whether they had mental issues or not. This shows how easy it was for someone to receive a gun, and can easily tick to confirm their mental state through a piece of paper. People owned a gun because they are viewed as an accessory of power and this explains why people may own one, particularly men.

“Are we just a nation of gun nuts or are we just nuts”; a quote from Michael Moore spoken on his documentary ‘Bowling for Columbine’ where he displays his unique process of integration and analysis to come to the truth about America’s necessity of guns. Michael is careful when he faces stereotypical views, such as Americans love guns and that most Americans feel that guns are a necessity, although he does paint a stereotypical view when the documentary displays a cartoon about the history of the relationship between American and firearms.

Nerve (2016)

Nerve

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PR9MOPTI7g

‘A high school senior finds herself immersed in an online game of truth or dare, where her every move starts to become manipulated by an anonymous community of "watchers.”

Nerve (2016) is an American thriller film and themes that run throughout this film are revenge, greed, love, and sacrifice. This film was written by Jessica Sharzer and directed by Henry Joost and based on the 2012 novel. This film stars Emma Roberts and Dave Franco that are really famous actors/actresses, which again made the film really popular, engaging a wide audience. The cinematography was by Michael Simmonds and distributed by Lionsgate. The budget of the film was $20 million, but the box office was $81 million.

The film has visual effects throughout the film making the film very colourful and engaging to the audience.  You could see what they’re doing on their phones, beside them indicating in a sense that the audience is involved in the game with Venus. Venus and Sydney showed a theme of greed when they wanted to keep playing more and more without knowing the consequence of their actions. Again, the girls showed the theme of defeat and revenge when they kept playing the game more each time.

In the opening scene, music is played in the absence of light, then appears the Mac opening password control, where someone types in their password, automatically the audience feel like there virtually in this with this person. After this scene, a wide shot of a necklace is shown, named ‘Venus’ indicating to the audience that this person is a female protagonist in this film, which is shown in the first 1.20 duration of the film. Sydney introduces the game ‘nerve’ through a video chat with Venus. The game is addictive, which a lot of teenagers take part of to do dares and gain money. Venus’ act of doing more and more dares can reflect on her lifestyle, loss of her brother and her Mother wanting her to go college, but can’t afford a dorm, so making her stay at home. This is all shown through Venus writing up a response to not going to her college.

The meaning of Nerve:

This film brings all these various threads together, highlighting the potential dangers of social media. It queries whether anonymity can absolve you of responsibility; whether you should do reckless or dangerous things to be popular, in response to peer-pressure, or for money; whether you should allow an app complete access to your digital footprint and banking details.

It (2017) by Andy Muschietti

IT is a 2017 American supernatural horror film directed by Andy Muschietti, based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Stephen King. The screenplay is by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman. A second instalment is planned. The film tells the story of seven children in Derry, Maine, who are terrorized by the eponymous being, only to face their own personal demons in the process. The novel was previously adapted into a 1990 miniseries.

The difference between the classic IT and the 2017 version is the special effects, which I found made the film more unique and created a ‘jump’ effect to the audience (as watched in cinema). Nicholas Brooks was the overall visual effects supervisor, and visual effects company Rodeo FX worked on most of the visual effects on It. Amalgamated Dynamics worked on the special makeup effects.

 

Furthermore, in this film the protagonists are all children, which can gain empathy towards them, especially with the opening scene creating fright knowing the little boy in the yellow jacket would be attacked by Penny Wise and left the audience wondering whether he will survive.

The film was set in an almost humorous way that made the audience engage more with the multi protagonists.