Current Search: Women in motion pictures (x)
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(1 - 6 of 6)
- Title
- The Meryl Streep mystique: a study of gender, aging, Hollywood and a female star.
- Creator
- Allerton, Tracy., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, School of Communication and Multimedia Studies
- Abstract/Description
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This thesis employs a star study of Meryl Streep, incorporating pertinent feminist, reception and culture-studies theories, to investigate biases within the Hollywood film industry. The actress has enjoyed a resurgence as a leading lady at age 61. Streep's star persona, acting prowess and career arc are examined across three theoretical platforms - production of culture, textual analysis, and audience analysis - or clues as to why she has been singled out among her peers. This thesis posits...
Show moreThis thesis employs a star study of Meryl Streep, incorporating pertinent feminist, reception and culture-studies theories, to investigate biases within the Hollywood film industry. The actress has enjoyed a resurgence as a leading lady at age 61. Streep's star persona, acting prowess and career arc are examined across three theoretical platforms - production of culture, textual analysis, and audience analysis - or clues as to why she has been singled out among her peers. This thesis posits that Streep's unique star image and surge in popularity have helped her break out of hegemonic articulations of gender and aging that privilege youthful beauty, putting female stars at a disadvantage within the capitalistic film industry. Also considered is the cultural significance of Streep's late-life success: Does she represent new openings for older actresses (and concomitantly, an increase in film representations of aging women), or is she merely an anomaly within the entrenched patriarchal system?
Show less - Date Issued
- 2010
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/2867329
- Subject Headings
- Criticism and interpretation, Sex role in motion pictures, Women in motion pictures, Middle age in motion pictures, Women in popular culture
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- An Examination of Recurring Misogynistic & Intersecting Sexist/Racist Female Character Tropes in Popular Science Fiction & Superhero Films & Television Since 1996.
- Creator
- Ronson, Jeannette H., Caputi, Jane, Florida Atlantic University, Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
-
The representation of lead female characters as sexually threatening or naturally deceptive, hysterical, or evil, especially non-White or non-gender conforming characters, in popular science fiction and superhero film and television productions over the past few decades is concerning in that these films promote misogynistic and intersecting racist and hetero/sexist tropes in genres that typically appeal to younger audiences. Within their historical roots as cheap print entertainment, i.e.,...
Show moreThe representation of lead female characters as sexually threatening or naturally deceptive, hysterical, or evil, especially non-White or non-gender conforming characters, in popular science fiction and superhero film and television productions over the past few decades is concerning in that these films promote misogynistic and intersecting racist and hetero/sexist tropes in genres that typically appeal to younger audiences. Within their historical roots as cheap print entertainment, i.e., pulp magazines and comic books, directed at White working-class boys and young men, these genres have historically, and unabashedly, featured scantily clad, sometimes racially stereotyped, sexually titillating temptresses such as the Dragon Lady and Catwoman that threatened the hyper-masculine hero as well as humanity. Ignored by literary and cinematic critics throughout the twentieth century as juvenile male fantasy entertainment, the science fiction and superhero genres in film and television now dominate Hollywood productions. Unfortunately, these genres in the twenty-first century still often promote damaging female tropes that suggest women as naturally defective, deceptive, power-hungry, irrational, raging monsters reminiscent of historical patriarchal myths of women. Additionally, a recent popular Netflix television series includes a character assigned female at birth (AFAB) who presents as gender non-conforming and carries attributes such as irrational rage and murderous violence that follows the historic cinematic trope of the “gleeful gay killer” as seen in Psycho (1960) and Dressed to Kill (1980). Although these themes in film and television are fantasy, they also mirror and bring to life the political and cultural anxieties of a significant number of men in our country who support the ideology of the manosphere that includes anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ+, White supremacist, and racist beliefs. This dissertation examines three popular Hollywood films and one Emmy Award winning Netflix television series from the science-fiction and superhero genres since 1996 that reveal damaging female tropes that still prevail in popular entertainment.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014313
- Subject Headings
- Women in motion pictures, Tropes, Misogyny, Superhero films
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Doing it for themselves: sexual subjectivity in cinematic depictions of female autoeroticism.
- Creator
- Tomei, Megan., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Abstract/Description
-
Whereas male masturbation has generally been normalized by being the butt of friendly jokes and a popular subject in romantic comedies, the predominant discourse surrounding female masturbation, both in society and the movies, is silence and stigmatization. However, female masturbation is symbolically powerful because it signifies a female sexuality that is not dependent on male presence. This thesis seeks to explore depictions of female masturbation, specifically looking at how female...
Show moreWhereas male masturbation has generally been normalized by being the butt of friendly jokes and a popular subject in romantic comedies, the predominant discourse surrounding female masturbation, both in society and the movies, is silence and stigmatization. However, female masturbation is symbolically powerful because it signifies a female sexuality that is not dependent on male presence. This thesis seeks to explore depictions of female masturbation, specifically looking at how female characters who engage in autoeroticism are stigmatized, controlled or silenced. This thesis will also explore the minority of depictions that show the act as liberating in films like Pleasantville (1998) and Better than Chocolate (1999).
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3359163
- Subject Headings
- Female masturbation, Women, Sexual behavior, Feminist theory, Women in motion pictures, Sex customs
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Disney's representations of gender and family in three animated films: The construction of myth in popular culture.
- Creator
- Siemens, Linda Beth., Florida Atlantic University, Budd, Michael N.
- Abstract/Description
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The tremendous changes in the lives of American women and the dynamics of the American family have gone unnoticed by Disney in some of its animated films. Aside from a few superficial changes, representations of Disney's heroines consistently depict them within the limiting boundaries of stereotypically traditional women. Disney's families also remain firmly within the traditional patriarchal mold. This thesis applies ideological film criticism to Disney's films The Little Mermaid (1989),...
Show moreThe tremendous changes in the lives of American women and the dynamics of the American family have gone unnoticed by Disney in some of its animated films. Aside from a few superficial changes, representations of Disney's heroines consistently depict them within the limiting boundaries of stereotypically traditional women. Disney's families also remain firmly within the traditional patriarchal mold. This thesis applies ideological film criticism to Disney's films The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), in the contention that these films function to refine and promote a static, sexist, and decidedly patriarchal myth.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2002
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12956
- Subject Headings
- Walt Disney Company, Animated films--Criticism and interpretation, Popular culture, Women in motion pictures
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- One yard shy of empowerment: cinematic portrayals of female athletes.
- Creator
- Lieberman, Vividiana., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Abstract/Description
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Sports are a primary zone of masculinity and sports films are a popular genre. One is hard pressed to find many leading female roles as athletes in male-dominated sports storylines. The cinematic portrayal of women athletes represents social attitudes and values and whether or not the women's movement has been able to influence representations and, concomitantly, social understandings of women and athleticism. My discussion of films featuring female athletes begins with National Velvet (1944)...
Show moreSports are a primary zone of masculinity and sports films are a popular genre. One is hard pressed to find many leading female roles as athletes in male-dominated sports storylines. The cinematic portrayal of women athletes represents social attitudes and values and whether or not the women's movement has been able to influence representations and, concomitantly, social understandings of women and athleticism. My discussion of films featuring female athletes begins with National Velvet (1944) and ends with Whip It (2008). By examining select sports films centered on all female teams, co-ed teams and individual female athletes, I show how their storylines and resolutions do or do not capitulate to patriarchal ideology. I find a general capitulation, with some concessions to women's equality. I conclude with a call for a degendering of sports and a redefinition of strength, competitiveness and aggression as human, not masculine.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3342205
- Subject Headings
- Women athletes, Feminism and sports, Competition (Psychology), Minorities in motion pictures, Sex discrimination against women
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Women, film, and oceans a/part: the critical humor of Tracey Moffatt, Monica Pellizzari, and Clara Law.
- Creator
- Senzani, Alessandra., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, School of Communication and Multimedia Studies
- Abstract/Description
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The politicized use of humor in accented cinema is a tool for negotiating particular formations of identity, such as sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and class. The body of work produced by contemporary women filmmakers working in Australia, specifically Tracey Moffatt, Monica Pellizzari, and Clara Law, illustrates how these directors have employed critical humor as a response to their multiple marginalization as women, Australian, and accented filmmakers. In their works, humor functions as a...
Show moreThe politicized use of humor in accented cinema is a tool for negotiating particular formations of identity, such as sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and class. The body of work produced by contemporary women filmmakers working in Australia, specifically Tracey Moffatt, Monica Pellizzari, and Clara Law, illustrates how these directors have employed critical humor as a response to their multiple marginalization as women, Australian, and accented filmmakers. In their works, humor functions as a critical tool to deconstruct the contradictions in dominant discourses as they relate to (neo)colonial, racist, globalized, patriarchal, and displaced pasts and presents. Produced within Australian national cinema, but emerging from experiences of geographical displacements that defy territorial borders, their films illuminate how critical humor can inflect such accepted categories as the national constitution of a cinema, film genre, and questions of exile and diaspora. Critical humor thus consti tutes a cinematic signifying practice able, following Luigi Pirandello's description of umorismo, to decompose the filmic text, and as a tool for an ideological critique of cinema and its role in (re)producing discourses of the nation predicated on the dominant categories of whiteness and masculinity. The study offers a theoretical framework for decoding humor in a film text, focusing on the manipulation of cinematic language, and it provides a model for a criticism that wishes to heighten the counter-hegemonic potential of cinematic texts, by picking up on the humorous, contradictory openings of the text and widening them through a parallel dissociating process., Finally, critical humor in the accented cinema of women filmmakers like Moffatt, Pellizzari, and Law is shown to constitute a form of translation and negotiation performed between the national, monologic constraints of film production and cinematic language, the heteroglossia of the global imaginaries that have traveled since the beginning with film technology, and the local and diasporic accents informing a filmmaker's unique style and perspective.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2008
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/186293
- Subject Headings
- Women motion picture producers and directors, Feminism and motion pictures, Criticism and interpretation, Local color in motion pictures, Intercultural communication in motion pictures
- Format
- Document (PDF)
