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?’
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?’
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’
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.
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).
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.
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.
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