Representation Of Women's Sexuality In Film

[niasha]

Hie everyone! this is my first post on this site and i hope i can get some help with this!!! i am doing a research project for media and my project title is: REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN'S SEXUALITY IN FILM: LIBERATION OR EXPLOITATION?

basically do you think women being nude in films, or where their sexuality in shown or in "sex scenes" a liberation of women's sexuality or is it an exploitation of women for the enjoyment of men? also in films which are thought to be liberating, how much of this liberation can be exploitative? in other words, you get an actress in a leading role, for example Halle Berry in Catwoman, & she is obviously a strong character with a leading role BUT at the same time she is still mostly just eye candy.

i am looking at these movies: school for seduction, the secretary, last tango in paris, american pie(the 1st one with 'nadia') and straw dogs. so if you have seen any of these movies can you let me know what you think of the way the women are represented.

[foha80]

Hello Niasha
If you watch your listed films and come back with your thoughts and outline the the way you plan to proceed with your project,I am sure you will get a better response.There is a wealth of knowledge in this forum and there are many who will be able to offer their insights as well as historical perpective but to do so they will require your take first.I mean this kindly and no criticism is implied.

Terry

[Moor Larkin]

I'm not really answering the question either but I find it more annoying that women scream when frightened. They stood still and screamed in the Forties and Fifties. Then they ran around and screamed in the Sixties and Seventies. Now they take all their clothes off and scream in the Nineties and Noughties.

But it's the screaming that really bugs me.

Praise the Lord for Pam Grier and Sigourney Weaver.......

And that bird from the original Assault on Precinct 13, Laurie Zimmer........

[ChristineCB]

And Dakota Fanning's piercing shrieks will always keep me from seeing Cruise's WAR OF THE WORLDS again... I don't know how she could be a Ph.D dietician in scenes and then a screaming mimi in others. Good grief...

Una O'Connor, however, completely delights me with her shrieks and hand-waving flights. Absolutely hilarious - the best Scream Queen of all.

[ChristineCB]

Originally Posted by niasha LIB OR EXPLOITATION? School Of Seduction... The Secretary... Last Tango In Paris... American Pie... Straw Dogs...

What are these actresses saying in DVD bonus interviews or commentaries? And have their opinions of their film roles changed from their original publicity-tour statements?

LAST TANGO makes me think of Calendar Girls because it was Brando's last (only?) chance to do a nude scene (unless the rumors are true and he really WAS Jabba the Hutt).

STRAW DOGS seems a bit too male-fantasy-laden for me.

One film I totally disliked was Jenny McCarthy's DIRTY LOVE, but at least she wrote it - or is taking credit/blame for it. I cannot recommend this film one bit, but it's portrait of female characters might create a more complex study than AMERICAN PIE or the other two newer films in your list. Nora Ephram claims a high degree of control over her films, too - how does she view lib vs exploitative issues among her female characters? And were her actresses pleased with their roles?

I'm not sure film roles can be well-discussed in terms of Exploitative Portrayals vs Liberating without tempering the discussion with the Actress Portraying The Character. Is she feeling exploited or liberated by the role AND the paycheck? Did she refuse the role until the dollar-amount soothed her concerns? Or did she accept less because she loved the role?

How many characters are created solely for exploitative or liberating purposes? Is John Wayne's appearance in STAGECOACH a liberating experience for him, giving him self-assurance that, in real life, he can line up against savage redskins in some bleak desert outpost? Or did he feel later that, every time he was trapped in desert outposts, he was exploited because of that character years ago?

I'm not sure how many film-makers are writing roles for Exploitative Purposes or believe they're liberating groups with another fictional character.

Look at so many Clint Eastwood films, stocked with many, many male characters throughout but often with only one female. Dirty Harry's MAGNUM FORCE, SUDDEN IMPACT and DEAD POOL. A PERFECT WORLD. IN THE LINE OF FIRE. Only one central actress yet a lot of male actors. It's almost formulaic for him - but is it exploitative, liberating OR merely "it's a required formula to include at least one romantic lady in each film"? And if that's the case, then is the FORMULA the liberating or exploitative issue?

Is LIVE NUDE GIRLS exploiting men or liberating the few included in that film?

Or are they just stories, and is that about all that film-makers are trying to put out, despite any publicity-foisted claims?

EDIT:
And one final consideration: is my DESIRE for Liberation greater than my tolerance for Exploitation? And how does this color my opinion about how a character is perceived or judged by me? Do I end up thinking, "Gee, I'm coming out of the theatre and women aren't liberated at all! The world is almost exactly the same as it was 90 minutes ago!" Do I then revert to some "so they tricked me! It's exploitation!" mood where rocks go flying into windows with scrawled messages? (Oh wait - that's a bit too HIGH ANXIETY... "I got it, I got it... I don't got it...")

[Ascoyne D'Ascoyne]

Hello, Niasha. I suggest you read a little about the original blonde bombshell, Mae West. An extremely gifted woman, she wrote a play in the early years of the last century called "Sex" which broke taboos and opened the floodgates on Broadway for other writers to deal with the subject in a more open way. She went on to write plays dealing with homosexuality and mixed-race relationships.
Her films incurred the wrath of the guardians of public decency and were heavily censored. Some of her most outspoken critics were men!
I'm sure Mae would have regarded what she did as a liberating thing for the female of the species...if anyone was exploited it was the male with his brains in his underpants who she was able to twist round her heavily-bejewelled fingers.

[niasha]

ooh thanx i will look for that

[knobbykins]

Originally Posted by niasha ooh thanx i will look for that

I hope you've finished the washing-up first,Poppet.:

[WiseFilms]

niasha,
If it's not too late, I think Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a far more interesting study of women's sexuality than Straw Dogs. But that might not be something you can change now.
American Pie --that's just standard issue eye candy fluff, nothing to analyze there.
Last Tango --analyzed to death already. What new can be said?
The Secretery --the most promising of the bunch; for two good points of comparison, I'd watch Luis Bunuel's Viridiana & Barbet Schroeder's Maitresse.
Shainberg also ripped off element's of Belle du Jour, and Maggie Gyllenhaal does an admirable job at simulating a complexity, and depth for a character, that was written rather shallowly, in a male-fantasy vain....

Shame that the choices couldn't have been along the lines of The Silence, or Onibaba, or Repulsion. I'd have a lot to help with there.

[niasha]

its not too late at all i can stil look for the other movies and i will study those instead if theyr much better. thanx again for your help

[ChristineCB]

There's a brief nude scene in OBJECT OF BEAUTY with John Malkovich, Andie MacDowell, where she's become exasperated with a meddling bellboy, and drops her window-curtains and strolls across the room, which runs the bellboy off quickly.

Definitely not a sex scene, but one certainly inserted to shock the scene's characters. And probably the audience, too.

While I believe most naked-woman scenes are there to entice the teenage-boy ticket purchasers, exactly who's manipulating who? The audience for sitting thru such drivel for a few glimpses? Or the actresses who hope to leap from the casting couch to celluloid to ??

And then the whole CALENDAR GIRLS film, where those actresses are using their calendar nudes to make charitable money. It's a film that addresses some of these Who's Manipulating Who issues.

While not a nude scene, there is a semi-seduction scene in the Bogart THE BIG SLEEP, where he's gone into a rival bookstore to watch Geiger's store. While there, he and the shop girl (Dorothy Malone?) share some rye and that rainy hour or so. After he asks her if she "needs to wear" her glasses, it's her that drops her hair out of the school-marm bun and really opens his eyes.

Or in the same film, the woman cab-driver (Joy Barlow) gives Bogie her number and invites him to call if he needs anything else. He says, "Day time?" and she says, "No, call after 6 - I work days..." with a smile.

Those two little clips show a lot of the women's sexuality of that era and while muted by today's standards, there's no doubt of the intent.

[WiseFilms]

Originally Posted by niasha its not too late at all i can still look for the other movies and i will study those instead if their much better.

I feel like a bit of a fool, being the only one telling you what to look at and what not to. By all means --it's your decision all the way. If you feel more comfortable writing about American Pie than Repulsion go at it.
And frankly, I believe most teachers will expect a certain style of Bergman-analysis from the students, being that Persona was such a pinnacle of over-analysis. It might be too hard to try and offer anything new about a Bergman, particularly one as difficult as The Silence.

As for Onibaba, I'd say look into that, it's very good.
And as for the Peckinpah's, whichever. I thought Balled of Cable Hogue tho, because the Stella Stevens character was so out of the ordinary, as the frontier Gay Lady (not to say homosexual) with heart of gold.

Camille Paglia wrote a nice thing for BFI about The Birds that might be of help, if you wanna do a Hitchcock.
The most interesting Eric Rohmer's, would be the two starring Beatrice Romand (Generations apart): Clare's Knee & Autumn Tale
Catherine Breillat certainly has plenty to say, if she's your style: A Real Young Girl, Fat Girl (To My Sister), and Anatomy of Hell I think are the best.
Another recent french one I saw, that you might like, is Anne-Sophie Birot's Girls Can't Swim.
Barbara Stanwyck has always been my favorite Hollywood actress:
Baby Face, from early in her career, and Crime of Passion & Forty Guns are two late-'Fifties studies in sexual perversity.
I couldn't not mention my favorite American director's ghost story, The Haunting, which no doubt has plenty of psycho-sexual elements to mull over, with Julia Harris & Clare Bloom.
Another with Bloom, Cukor's The Chapman Report, gives a quaint glimpse at what was considered "shocking" in the early-'Sixties.
Bob Rafelson's Black Widow, with Debra Winger and Theresa Russell, is another favorite of mine.

The list could go on & on, of course. I've tried to limit it to what is readily available on video, and what hasn't been written about ad nauseum already (Persona, Last Tango..., etc.)
I wish you luck!

[Moor Larkin]

Originally Posted by ChristineCB exactly who's manipulating who?

Should women 'sexualise' just in order to achieve a career goal?
Aspiring actresses can only get off the casting couch by getting on it?

The strangest thing is why, given the amount and easy availability of pornography, there still seems this huge excitement at a 'respectable' actress flashing her bits. There is something weird going on but I can't quite grasp what it is...........

When does a Calendar Girl become a Call Girl?

I suspect much of the use of naked flesh and 'Sexuality' signifies unimaginative Directors and inept Writers who haven't written enough script to fill the time allocated. The Plot goes nowhere.

in the Bogart THE BIG SLEEP, where he's gone into a rival bookstore to watch Geiger's store. While there, he and the shop girl (Dorothy Malone?) share some rye and that rainy hour or so. After he asks her if she "needs to wear" her glasses, it's her that drops her hair out of the school-marm bun and really opens his eyes. Or in the same film, the woman cab-driver (Joy Barlow) gives Bogie her number and invites him to call if he needs anything else. He says, "Day time?" and she says, "No, call after 6 - I work days..." with a smile.

The good thing about Censorship is that it makes people try harder



The display of naked bodies can have an artistic element, like paintings.
They're just nice to look at, rather than 'sexual'.

[ChristineCB]

Moor, you make two important assertions - where writers-filmmakers are using 'bit flashing' instead of good writing, good direction, etc; and "sometimes it's just nice to look at". I think so, too.

I'm not educated enough in the pre-Code film days, but I get the feeling that nudity then was basically "bit flashing", or clothes changing - something as a bit of naughtiness or shock value. Or perhaps "nice to look at" scenes.

I have a feeling that Sexual Scenes and Nudity weren't put together for mainstream acceptance until the late '60s. And in watching clips of the Bettie Page-Stripper-Nudist Camp films of the '50s and early '60s, Nudity + Sexual Scenes weren't even done in those early 'porno' films. Maybe 'stag' is the more appropriate title for that genre since it's only nudity, no sex.

I see a lot of episodes where film-makers rely on shock-visuals to move their script instead of good writing - throw in petro-chemical explosions, naked women or both - and then all they need is tens of millions of marketing dollars, and audiences show up.

Good Film Writing must be incredibly difficult because I see far more Mushroom-Cloud Explosions and Naked Women than well-written films.

[ChristineCB]

Originally Posted by Moor Larkin The plot goes nowhere... the good thing about Censorship is that it makes people try harder...

The other giggle you gave me was this "censorship makes people try harder". In those two clips from BIG SLEEP, both the Bookstore Flirtation and the Cab-Driver Flirtation go nowhere in the script except as a snickering device to move the plot along, to give some wink-winks to the audience. Instead of gasoline explosions and bit-flashing.

But both seem more memorable than explosions.

I suspect those two clips may originate in the book but at least the screenplay author recognized useful scenes if, in fact, he didn't write them in himself.