For my final paper I looked at the relationship between true stories and cinematic representations of them.
I was pulled into that question because I was still very intrigued by the film Boys Don't Cry (which I wrote my mid-term about) and the fact that this was based on something that actually happened.
A blurb on Director Yimou Zhang and his films Hero and House of Flying Daggers
I decided to do my final paper on how feminist filmmakers seek “real� stories to make their films about such as Kimberly Pierce and Lourdes Portillo.
A feminist analysis of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s films can reveal that despite his appreciation of women’s creativity, beauty and complexity (as each one of his heroine are well rounded characters), the Three Colors trilogy retell and enforce the existing order of patriarchy. In each one of these films a woman challenges patriarchy as she chooses to live without a man (in Blue), engage in unauthorized sexual activity (White) or just live far away from the man in her life (Red), but each one of these films concludes with the heroine surrendering her power to men or being forcibly surrender by it.
Continue reading "The Roles and Representations of Women in Trois Couleurs" »
My paper discusses the relationship between true stories and the cinematic representations of them that filmmakers create without first-hand experience of the story they are trying to retell.
Read on....
Oh my god, I've written that title so many times within the past week because of this project, I hope I never have to write it again.
Anyway, I did a film project about the Asian stereotype "the ideal minority". I remember the first time I heard someone refer to Asian people as the ideal minority and was both intrigued and grossed out by the term. I wanted to try and get a better idea of why Asian people would be labeled this.
(This is a picture of my sister, Megan, that I use in the film, I also incorporate other images of Asian people-models, actors, and even a Korean politician's wife who's name I could not find-that are empowering images in their own way, without being too stereotypical.)
Continue reading "The Ideal Minority: Resisting Stereotypes with the Gaze" »
Hollywood has a history of suppressing subcultures, and drag queens are no exception. When gays were beginning to be given more positive representations, drag queens came along for the ride. This subculture, however positively portrayed, was still ultimately marginalized by mainstream cinema. In the film Too Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar , drag queens are shown as positive, but still as others through a process of deification. In Connie and Carla , drag queens are still portrayed as okay, but even more marginalized, since the title characters have the power, as women, to inherently outdo them at their own game of cabaret.
Both of these films subvert the subversiveness that originally ran thick through drag acts. In order to oppose this appropriation, drag needs to take a new path in subverting common ideals, specifically gender. The film Hairspray does take drag in a different direction. While the casting of men in women's roles is not new, it is uncommon in modern cinema, but the casting in Hairspray not only subverts gender roles in cinema, it also subverts stereotypes of drag queens. Instead of hyper-glamorous, hyper-effeminate, and hyper-catty, the drag queen in Hairspray is ugly, motherly, and as much an actual woman as she needs to be.
Drag is in danger of complete appropriation in the cinema, but if future films take the same tack as Hairspray, there may yet be hope for the subversive ideals that drag is founded upon.
I decided to look at the way these two movies employ an oppositional gaze, and the ways in which they are feminist films. Fire is a challenge to the politics of sexuality, but it shows that patriarchy is at the root of the problem of control over one's sexuality. Some people may challenge the naming of one root cause, but this movie, and some of the critiques written about it make a good play in showing that some things can boil down to one cause, even if they affect people in very different ways. Water is a challenge to the politics of religion, this is also linked to patriarchal heritage, where-in the church is the largest patriarchal institution out there. I found one quote to be particularly interesting because it is a church man who says that the widows do not know that it is legal to remarry because the church "ignores the laws that don't benefit them". Also Narayan says "disguised as religion, it's about money". This is a very strong historical fact and it makes the movie all the more powerful of a critique. Deepa Mehta is a wonderful auteur who is able to critique the values of her home country while still making the country feel beautiful and rich in different values.
