FEMALE INSANITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL INSTABILITY IN HOLLYWOOD'S POST-STUDIO SYSTEM CINEMA (original) (raw)

Mental Illness and Women in Cinema: “Beautiful and Troubled Women”

International Perspectives on Feminism and Sexism in the Film Industry, 2019

The representation of mental illness and individuals suffering from a specific mental illness in films is a phenomenon encountered since the first years of cinema. Mental diseases in many film genres such as horror, science fiction, comedy, and crime are used as scary, laughing, or drama elements. The representations of various psychopathologies in the films give an idea about these disorders to the ordinary viewer. However, these representations can accurately describe the reality and also have the risk of being defective and incomplete. It is seen that people who have mental disorders in cinema are generally presented in the way that 'dangerous, violent, unpredictable characters' within the frame of limited and distorted patterns. It is possible to say that these cliché representations differ according to gender. Female characters with mental disorders are described as 'beautiful and troubled women' in cinema. Related films were taken as an example in this study and it is aimed examine the representation of female characters with mental disorders in these films.

The Analysis of Female Characters in the Golden Age of Hollywood

BCP Social Sciences & Humanities

The United States experienced a 25% unemployment rate in 1929 as a result of the Great Depression. More than 5,000 banks in the United States announced closure, and more than 80,000 businesses filed for bankruptcy as a direct result of the Great Depression. Everyone was drowning in the woes of being unemployed. However, Hollywood movies provided a pastime for people who were suffering every day during the Great Depression. Although the 1930s was the worst time for the U.S. economy, it was the golden age of Hollywood. The 1930s to the late 1940s are referred to as the Golden Age of Hollywood, in which Hollywood dominated the film industry. Women on screen have many images, but all these female portraits cannot be separated from men. Women's life at that time was inextricably linked with men's. This paper analyzes women's images from the Golden Age of Hollywood movies. The purpose is to explain how the portrayal of women on screen reflects the status of women in society at...

Women in Film and TV productions

2015

Women in Film Productions A closer look at women in film, as directors or as characters, provides a basic understanding of the situation of a society. Within this topic one is able to develop a much greater comprehension of if and how gender equality is represented and understood, through simple application of common sense. Gender role models are constructions, made common and perpetuated by media productions. Movies are reflecting cultural and social relationships in a society, and subsequently have an influence on society as well. Audience, the often-stressed unknown being, also includes women. In cinemas within some particular age groups, women are even the majority. We, the women, are an integral part of society; without us there would be neither society nor civilization. This is truism, but astonishingly enough it nevertheless has to be mention from time to time again. Contemporary movies and TV productions are mostly dominated by male producers, directors, commissioning editors and heads of program, yet tell not only stories from that of a male perspective. Even character design is coined by a male view of the world; among the women represented, female characters are frequently designed in a way that gives an overall impression that women would be unable to act as independent human beings. They could be neither able to act as a director nor as female characters embedded in a story that do more than acting as a secretary, nurse, housewife, shop keeper or sex worker. Those characters often lack a name or intelligent dialogue lines, and can be exploited or tortured and murdered more easily than male characters. Productions like FORBYDELSEN (Dk 2007-2012) or BORGEN (Dk 2010-2013), ARNE DAHL (1 st season, S 2011) still are the exception, not a standard. Having analyzed many movies and TV productions produced during the last decades, one can say about female characters depicted in (especially but not limited to) German productions, that if they are part of the action, they are designed as either bad mothers or cold 'career women'. In other words, female characters can be characterized as that of the 'Weak Woman' or 'Strong Woman'. 'Strong woman' is a term representing the male glance towards women and inheriting dominant conditions of power and the structure of society. This term is corresponding to 'a man from the boys' and is directing towards a peculiarity, which throughout that ironic approach is pointing at a nearly unattainable exception. This is expressing that with either a "Man From the Boys" or a "Strong Woman' a traditional married life will be impossible. Instead, the term is expressing that those kinds of characters are demanding a specific hierarchy and personal freedom. 'Strong Women' in film and TV productions-with the exception of the aforementioned productions-usually have to fail miserably. In terms of dramatic action those women are infringing upon the implicit engraved rules of the society, which in the case of the western German tradition, means women should act firstly as 'good' wives and mothers. Here one can see the long shadow of the gender role models developed and set with that propaganda machinery during 'Third Reich'

The Changed and Unchanged Situation in the Representation of Women in Contemporary Cinema

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Gerakan pembebasan wanita gelombang kedua pada tahun 1960-an telah memberi pengaruh terhadap para aktivis perempuan dalam mengampanyekan perlawanan terhadap budaya patriarkat hampir di semua bidang. Salah satu area yang diyakini membuat perempuan rentan adalah isu perempuan dalam layar lebar. Artikel ini menganalisis perubahan representasi perempuan dalam layar lebar melalui pembandingan empat film, yaitu Stepford Wives (1975), Orlando (1992), When Night Is Falling (1995), and Stepford Wives (2004. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan menggunakan metode modern hermeneutics. Dari hasil analisis yang telah dilakukan, film-film ini menunjukkan tiga aspek perubahan pada perempuan, seperti kesetaraan dalam pekerjaan, ekspresi identitas seksual, dan imej 'wanita pendidikan tinggi'. Film-film tersebut juga menunjukkan beberapa aspek yang tidak berubah terkait representasi perempuan, yaitu aspek keibuan, mitos seksualitas, dan posisi perempuan sebagai korban.

Femininity and Psychoanalysis: Cinema, Culture, Theory

2019

For Freud, famously, the feminine was a dark continent, or a riddle without an answer. This understanding concerns man’s relationship to the question of ‘woman’ but femininity is also a matter of sexuality and gender and therefore of identity and experience. Drawing together leading academics, including film and literary scholars, clinicians and artists from diverse backgrounds, Femininity and Psychoanalysis: Cinema, Culture, Theory speaks to the continued relevance of psychoanalytic understanding in a social and political landscape where ideas of gender and sexuality are undergoing profound changes. This transdisciplinary collection crosses boundaries between clinical and psychological discourse and arts and humanities fields to approach the topic of femininity from a variety of psychoanalytic perspectives. From object relations, to Lacan, to queer theory, the essays here revisit and rethink the debates over what the feminine might be. The volume presents a major new work by leading feminist film scholar, Elizabeth Cowie, in which she presents a first intervention on the topic of film and the feminine for over 20 years, as well as a key essay by the prominent artist and psychoanalyst, Bracha Ettinger. Written by an international selection of contributors, this collection is an indispensable tool for film and literary scholars engaged with psychoanalysts and anybody interested in different approaches to the question of the feminine. "This new and highly readable collection of psychoanalytic essays, which is edited by Agnieszka Piotrowska and Ben Tyrer, provides a timely look at the meanings of femininity and women’s desire as articulated in cinema through a range of stimulating and thought-provoking case studies and discussions. The book, which contains chapters from some notable authors in the field of feminist film scholarship and artistic and clinical practice (including Elizabeth Cowie, Bracha L. Ettinger, Vicky Lebeau and Caroline Bainbridge), deploys the ideas of Freud, Lacan, Klein, Riviere, Horney, Deutsch and Irigaray in order to unpack the complexities of the relationships between femininity, psychoanalysis and difference that will be of great interest to students and researchers who continue to tussle with the meanings of femininity in the contemporary cultural arena of cinema and beyond. The collection covers a lot of ground – revisiting older debates about the feminist politics of visual pleasure but adds a new layer of complexity to those earlier discussions by relating them to psychosocial and cultural concerns in contemporary contexts where the vexed relationship between intersectionality and psychoanalysis often comes to the fore. In so doing, the collection demonstrates its cultural and political relevance by paying attention to the unconscious dynamics of representation and to the raced and classed dimensions of cinematic experience and its relationship to wider processes of power and ideology." Candida Yates, Professor of Culture and Communication, Bournemouth University, UK "This collective effort to think and rethink the psychoanalytic take on femininity could not come at a more appropriate time. Femininity and Psychoanalysis: Cinema, Culture, Theory pursues different facets of this question in a formidably interesting way, following a wide range of authors and critical approaches. A truly engaged and engaging volume." - Alenka Zupancic, Professor of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, author of What Is Sex?

Screen Dossier: The Ladies Take Over: Female-centred Film Series in Studio-era Hollywood

Screen, 2020

This dossier examines a set of four Hollywood ‘B’ film series of the 1930s and 1940s – anchored by the figures of Hildegarde Withers (six films between 1932 and 1937), Torchy Blane (nine films between 1937 and 1939), Nancy Drew (four films from 1938 and 1939) and Blondie (28 films between 1938 and 1950) – which have come to be understood as an ‘empowered women’ cycle. In looking back at this relatively marginalized cycle from a point in time nearly 90 years after the first film appeared, this dossier gives some productive historical perspective to two contested themes that the discursive practices of popular online media commentary tend to present as unique to the current cultural moment. The first is the practice of media serialization, which visibly underpins American popular culture’s preferred formatting choices of serials, sequels, remakes, reboots and other ‘multiplicities’ at the end of the 21st century’s second decade. The practice is popularly regarded with some ambivalence, from a straightforward perception of creative exhaustion to more nuanced reflections that consider the cultural function of nostalgia and revisionism in this historical period. The second theme, contextualized in important ways by the mainstreaming of sexual politics that has developed out of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, is focused on the increased number of female protagonists acting with heightened agency in Hollywood films of the past few years, and debates whether this represents the triumph or the mere commodification of feminism. Looking back to a set of films from the studio era that are simultaneously defined by seriality and female agency provides an opportunity not only to show that these themes are far from new production strategies for Hollywood, but to demonstrate how the two might productively be thought together – that is, to investigate how seriality actually enables the gender politics of the historical cycle.

Representation of Women in Realistic Cinema

The proposed study is an attempt to examine the representation of women in realistic cinema. The study will focus on how women were presented and misrepresented in cinema. Based on feminist film theoretician, Claire Johnston, further analysis is developed on the idea of how feminist theories like counter cinema can be related to realistic films. This study will explore on how with changing times, women-centric movies started gaining popularity. Realistic films helped portray women to play strong and challenging roles and in addition to this, they have been able to make a mark in the mainstream cinema. This study will also briefly discuss how realistic cinema is different from popular cinema or popular cinema.