Contemporary adverts

Advert for Calvin Klein - Secret Obsession

Click to view:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wQr1ka_YG6c

The advert portrays Eva sexually, through the distorted camera vision. The way she moves her limbs, pouts her lips and generally moves the duvet, implies she is having an orgasim, because of the product- perfume. She is shown to be an object of male gaze [Laura mulvey]. This advert, as a result of the sexual connotations, was banned from showing on TV.


Kinder Beueno


The 20 second advert shows the female is portraying herself as a 'ditzy blonde' to get the males attention. The advert suggests the male and the chocolate- with its phallic shape are the same things, hence suggesting the female is eating a phallus.
It also suggests the female has to get the males attention by showing herself as a victim- she has fallen of her bicycle.

Paris Hilton in Burger King ad



Paris Hilton is shown to be a stereotypical blonde, who has fun. She is an object of male desire because of her clothing- or the lack of, she is wearing a black swimsuit. She is advertising for Burger King, but is washing a car, whilst eating a burger. The advert also implies she is having sexual fantasies, because of eating the burger, which distracts her from washing the car, She is also in a variety of positions which connotes sex.


Microsoft XP






Senstitive Teeth- Sensodyne



Two GHD adverts





The two GHD adverts portrays the females negatively, because they are shown to be 'whores' and not Madonnas. In the first advert they are stealing the males away from other women, showing them to be 'bad'. Because they would do anything to get the man.
In the 2nd one, they are shown to be a variety of things.
1- Jealous
2-In considerate
3-Whore/Promiscuous
4- Gold diggers
Overall, both adverts show them to be image obsessed.
It can support Greer's theory of young girls being persuaded into being image obsessed, because they would think it is the only way to find a man.

Historical Adverts

This Twix advert implies that all females love chocolate, particularly Twix , because of its phallic shape. They also want a "break from the Norm" therefore are going against society and wearing short clothes, objectifying themselves.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TudE9SC77Do

In this clip, the female is seen as a 'whore', becasue she is having an affair, and the first male is dominant and the 2nd is stylish, and is not seen as 'bad'.

"She" as the male voice over keeps referring to her as - suggests she has no identity, portrays her as a stereotypical housewife. However they do try to oppose it by saying "She" forgot to clean.

Website

I found this site that objectifies and dehumanizes females....etc


http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/sea0361l.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/b/big_breasts.asp&usg=__82JoNUYHDwXuVTeNKIawuvLAfWM=&h=400&w=354&sz=29&hl=en&start=43&um=1&tbnid=urIBowDJyopwUM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=110&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfeminist%2Bchanged%2Badverts%26start%3D36%26ndsp%3D18%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rls%3DHPEA,HPEA:2008-49,HPEA:en%26sa%3DN

Ways to improve female representation of screen...

1) Encourage current producers or actresses even to start directing, as it will benefit themselves and encourage young girls to want to do the same. This has happened to many males so why cant it happen to females? eg. George Clooney, Robert Redford, Sean Penn and Clint Eastwood

2) Female directors can try and doing joint directing with males, to gain knowledge in the field.

3) Encourage males to participate with household and family duties- challenge the stereotype of females being housewives!

4) Make more film festivals for females, to celebrate their success, and encourage them to direct more

Why are women directors such a rare sight?

1- According to Sarah Radclyffe, thinks it might have something to do with children. She says when you've had a child its not easy to go back to making films.

2- Its about who you know- to get into the industry you need to have links, and there is already a lot!! of males, therefore it would be harder for females to emerge.

3- Mike Figgis, suggests the same, as there are "100 to 150 large men" in charge of filming etc.. so there is already a hierarchy set in the industry, with males way at the top.

4- There is already a small list of scriptwriters, so we don't expect to see any film directors.

5- The overall fact is, females don't believe in themselves. Many young girls are being put off, because there are no directors for them to aspire to, which at the end has a negative outcome, because they then believe they will not be capable of doing so, thus ending all their dreams =[

5 Female Directors...

1) Debbie Allen
Deborrah Maye “Debbie” Allen (born January 16, 1950) is an American actress, choreographer, television director, television producer, and a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities She is probably best known for her role as Lydia Grant in the hit 1982 TV series Fame.

Director
Girlfriends
Everybody Hates Chris
All of Us
Life Is Not A Fairy Tale
That's So Raven
The Jamie Foxx Show
A Different World
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Family Ties
Fame (1982 TV series)
Polly
Polly: Comin' Home


2) Mira Nair
Mira Nair (born October 15, 1957 at Rourkela, India) is an Indian-born, New York-based film director and producer. Her production company is Mirabai Films.
She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay! (1988), won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. She used the proceeds of the film, to establish an organization for street children, called the Salaam Baalak Trust in India.[1]
She often works with longtime creative collaborator, screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, whom she met at Harvard.
She is awarded India Abroad Person of the Year-2007, which was presented by Indra Nooyi, Chairperson and CEO, PepsiCo, Inc, and India Abroad Person of the Year-2006

Filmography
Salaam Bombay! (1988)
Mississippi Masala (1991)
The Perez Family (1995)
Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996)
My Own Country (1998) (Showtime TV)
Monsoon Wedding (2001)
Hysterical Blindness (2002)
11'9"01 September 11 (Segment - "India") (2002)
Vanity Fair (2004)
The Namesake (2006)
Migration (2007)
New York, I Love You (Segment - "Kosher Vegetarian") (2008)
8 (Segment - "How can it be?") (2008)
Amelia (2009)
Shantaram (2009)

3) Wendey Stanzler
Wendey Stanzler is an American television editor and director from Flint, Michigan, where she was co-editor and associate producer of Michael Moore's documentary, Roger & Me in 1990. She also co-edited Moore's only fiction film, Canadian Bacon (1993). Stanzler was hired as an editor for Sex and the City and went on to be a guest director during the final season of the show. Stanzler has also edited for the NBC series, Ed and Now and Again. Stanzler currently is a regular director on the ABC series, Grey's Anatomy and has directed several episodes of Desperate Housewives also on ABC. She won the American Cinema Editors' Eddie Award twice: in 2004 for the Sex in the City Episode "American Girl in Paris-Part 2" and in 1990 for Roger and Me.

Television director
Sex and the City (1998)
episode 6.14 "The Ick Factor"
Monk (2002)
episode 5.16 "Mr. Monk Goes to the Hospital"
episode 6.04 "Mr. Monk and the Bad Girlfriend"
Desperate Housewives (2004)
episode 2.11 "One More Kiss"
episode 2.21 "I Know Things Now"
episode 3.03 "A Weekend In the Country"
episode 3.08 "Children and Art"
episode 3.20 "Gossip"
Grey's Anatomy (2005)
episode 1.09 "Who's Zoomin' Who?"
episode 2.04 "Deny, Deny, Deny"
episode 2.10 "Much too Much"
episode 2.19 "What Have I Done To Deserve This?"
Love Monkey (2006)
episode 1.05 "The Window"
Six Degrees (2006)
episode 1.03 "A New Light"
Ugly Betty (2006)
episode 1.14 "I'm Coming Out"
Men in Trees (2006)
episode 1.13 "History Lessons"
Private Practice (2007)
episode 1.09 "In Which Dell Finds His Fight"
90210 (TV series) (2008)
episode 1.10 "Games people plays"

4) Gail Mancuso

Select TV work
30 Rock (2006–present)
Scrubs (2002–present)
Teachers (2006)
Living with Fran (2005)
Rodney (2005)
Joey (2004)
Two and a Half Men (2004)
The Tracy Morgan Show (2004)
Married to the Kellys (2003–2004)
My Big Fat Greek Life (2003)
Gilmore Girls (2001–2003)
Becker (2001–2003)
Reba (2001–2003)
Inside Schwartz (2001)
Three Sisters (2001)
Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place (1999–2001)
Yes, Dear (2000–2001)
Dharma & Greg (1997–2001)
Ellen (1997–1998)
Friends (1995–1999)
Roseanne (1991–1996)

5) and we have to mention...Gurinder Chadha!
Gurinder Chadha, OBE, (born 10 January 1960) is a British film director of Indian origin. Most of her films explore the lives of Indians living in the UK. She is most famous for the hit films Bhaji on the Beach (1993), Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Bride and Prejudice (2004) and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008).

Filmography
Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008)
Paris, je t'aime (2006) segment "Quais de Seine"
The Mistress of Spices (2005) (screenplay only)
Bride and Prejudice (2004)
Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
What's Cooking? (2000)
Rich Deceiver (1995), BBC two-part drama
A Nice Arrangement (1994)
What Do You Call an Indian Woman Who's Funny? (1994)
Bhaji on the Beach (1993)
Acting Our Age (1992)
Pain, Passion and Profit (1992) (V)
I'm British But... (1990) (TV)

Women in Film

http://www.geocities.com/albanystudent/wif.html

In order to examine popular culture and its reflection of American society, we must look at America’s most beloved form of media, film. Film historians and researchers have found out that men play a disproportionate amount of leads and heroes.
They were also depicted as employed professionals, as opposed to the percentage of women who were depicted as unemployed housewives.
In a study of 100 films released in 1941 and 1942, “eighty percent of films focusing on the love/hate problems of a man had a good bad girl as the main female character. In 50 percent of the films, the good bad girl successfully opposed a bad girl,” (Butler, 141).
In a study of the films from the 1930s to 1970s, historians have categorized four dominant types of roles that women played. The first one is the “Pillar of Virtue” types played by Doris Day or Julie Andrews. This category also features mothers and mammies such as Hattie McDaniel’s character in “Gone with the Wind.”
The “Glamour Girl” range from sex goddesses such as Marilyn Monroe in “Bus Stop” to femme fatales such as Marlene Dietrich in “Blonde Venus.”
The “Emotive Woman” is the sexually frustrated Rosalind Russell in “Picnic” and the seductive Elizabeth Taylor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Thus, the last category, the “Independent” woman or the Katharine Hepburn type, is Barbara Streisand in “Funny Girl,” or Jane Fonda in “Klute,” the liberated woman.
Throughout much of film history, women have been depicted as manipulative, sexually repressed, or sexually overt. There was also a lack of sisterhood and films with women interacting with other women in a positive light.
In the 1950s, especially, we witnessed an era of “reaffirming male dominance and female subservience; movies showed women as breasts and buttocks, again idealizing women who were ‘pretty, amusing, and childish,’” (Butler, 145).
Much of this female contempt has endured and remained, although it may not be as obvious as the previous decades. Nowadays, we see more sensationalized sexual roles for women as the trend began in the 70s. Women now are also shown as waifs similar to the 60s trend, which was a severe contrast to the idea image of the 50s. All in all, women are becoming an endangered species in films and taking increasingly less leading roles.
Ever since the 1960s, the women’s movement has been concerned with media portrayal of women. Major studies of the most pervasive medium, television, and particularly its commercials revealed the same subordination of women we saw in film. In commercials, most voice-overs were done by men and overall, men were featured more often than women. The women who were featured were limited to family roles. Women were shown doing housework and men were the beneficiaries of their work. On the other hand, men were employed, had careers, and were doing something outside the home. More significantly, even though the age of the female population is bit higher than the male, commercials featured a disproportionate number of young women as opposed to men.
“In commercials during children’s programming, women and girls were seen less than men and boys,” (Butler, 93).
In television programs, such as soap operas, quiz shows, prime-time dramatic shows, and public-affairs programs, we saw similar trends as well. Once again, “men are more often employed than women and have higher status jobs. Also, the woman’s marital status is known more often,” (Butler, 93-94). She is marked by her relationship with men.
Some new discourse has been generated to the negative media portrayals of women as well. Let’s take the film noir genre for example. “These were thrillers made in the 40s and 50s, usually shot in dramatic black and white, with sensual stars who would use their attractiveness to manipulate luckless men,” (Root, 17).
Film noirs such as “Double Indemnity” and “Sunset Boulevard” are such examples where the characters of Barbara Stanwyck and Gloria Swanson trap men into their evil ploys. “The women usually die too, however, punished for their relentless attempt to satisfy their own desires and the threat that they represent to the stable world of marriage, family and female submissiveness,” (Root, 18).
However, of late, feminists have begun to have a new view of film noirs, suggesting that these films show women who are outside their standard role of femininity. Although they use their sexuality, they derive power from it and use their intellect to get what they want. They represent strong, active women and these virtues override the male-centered moral it is to enforce upon the audience.
Another alternate approach to this is understanding some of the dynamics of the rock video, which embodies the opposite of the male gaze. Rather than omitting the possibility of voyeurism for the female audience, it almost works as a gender blind construct.
“The rock star body, and in alliance with videos, is always coded to be looked at whether male or female,” (Brown, 105).
For one thing, rock videos contain “performance, a direct address, which produces a different kind of gaze than those that pertain in film, and fantasy, in relation to dominant cultural definitions of pleasure and desire,” (Brown, 10). Although some videos highly objectify women, these are examples of studying oppression to draw new conclusions and findings.

1980s.....

The 80s saw equal opportunities, such as Supergirl [1984] or Ripley becoming stringer in Aliens [1986]. But the heroic male still featured in the film.
The film Three Men and a Baby, show the males to be like heroes because they are taking care of the baby, it also subverts the stereotype of all females being maternal - however the mum does come back to get the baby. But the males are still seen as irresponsible, because at first they cannot take care of the baby, but it changes.
The Rambo series, suggests the female is a princess [PROPP] that has her princess. She is attractive and supports the male in what he does.

Three Men and a Baby



RAMBO 1985

1970s...

The 70s still showed females as sex symbols, but also gave them more power, and decent roles! For instance, Princess Leia in Star Wars.
The film ‘Frenzy’ by Alfred Hitchcock, portrays the first female shown in the trailer as weak, as she has been murdered and is floating in the river. She is seen as the victim… “The women usually die” [ROOT, 18]. Similarly the film Superman, shows the female as the helpless victim who needs saving…[Proppien theory] she is a princess and he is the prince who saves her. However other films such as Alien, show Ripley to be the saviour subverting the stereotype.

FRENZY



SUPERMAN 1978- just the making with various clips

1960s...

The swinging sixties stereotyped females as housewives and males as dominant, and intelligent. The Sound of Music confirms to this stereotype, as the female is given a maternal role- to look after the children and sing with them. Aslo, the clothes she is wearing makes her seem reserved and almost 'obidient'.
However, the film The Manchurian Canidate, shows a complete differnt view of females. She is seen as dominat, through her body langauge, as she is tanding up giving orders to the male who is itting down, and listening to her.


THE SOUND OF MUSIC


The Manchurian Canidate

1950s Representation

In the 1950s, the males made the decision, and the females were seen as support characters. However the film, Some like Hot [1959], starring Marilyn Monroe, one of my favourites, challenges the masculine and feminine roles. She is seen from the opening as “an object of male gaze” [MULVEY] as the male is trying to gain her attention and has fallen in love with her. The pretend female is portrayed as a desperately in need of help, when trying to carry her suitcase. The film shows “women as breasts and buttocks, again idealizing women who were ‘pretty, amusing, and childish,’” (Butler, 145). This is similar to the film Touch of Evil [1959], because the female needs protecting from her surroundings, however since he is in her 'country' it can suggest she is in control. The shot of the couple walking together shows him holding and protecting her.

SOME LIKE IT HOT




TOUCH OF EVIL

'Bibliography: Books'

"In 1970s action-adventure shows, only 15 per cent of the leading characters were women".

Gauntlett, David (2002): ‘Media, Gender & Identity : An introduction’ PUBLISHER: (pg 43)

"Arguably however women within the superhero genre were not actually women but a sexual fantasy projection".

Dowd Todd Hignite,D.B. (2006): ‘Strips, Toons, and bluesies’ PUBLISHER: (pg 71)

The male gaze projects its fantasy on to the female figure, while in their traditional exhibitionist role women are both displayed and, as it were, coded to connote “to-be-looked-at-ness”.

Waugh,Patricia (2006): ‘Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide’ PUBLISHER

(pg 510)

" ....and women being displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified"

Photography: A critical introduction’ Liz Wells, (2004), pp 172

“In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, only 20 to 35 per cent of characters were females. By the mid- 1980s, there were more women in leading roles, but still there were twice as many men on screen”-pge 43 “Gaunter goes on to show how studies in the 1970s consistently found that marriage, parenthood and domesticity were shown on television to be more important for women than men"

“Gaunter (1995: 13-14).”-pg 43

“The role of a woman in a film almost always revolves around her physical attraction and the mating games she plays with the male characters”.

(1972: 13)Smith, Sharon (1972) ‘The image of women in film: some suggestions for future research’, Women and Film, 1, 13-21.

-“In Hollywood films, then, women are untimely refused a voice, a discourse, and their desire is subjected to male desire”.

(1983: 7-8)Kaplan, E. Ann (1983) Women and film: Both sides of the Camera, London: Methuen

-“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantansy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitions role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-lookes-at-ness.”

From- Laura Mulveys article ‘Visual Pleasure and narrative cinema’ in 1975 (reproduced in Hollows et al., 2000)

-‘Men looking at women; women watch themselves being looked at’,

as John Berger had put it (1972: 47).Berger, John (1972) Ways of seeing, London: Penguin

-“Even with more marriage the changes have been profound as more and more women have entered the labour force and gender roles have become more homogenous between husbands and wives”.

(Smith, Tom W. (1999) ‘Marriage wanes as American families enter new century’, National Opinion Research Centre at the University of Chicago

At school, for example, studies have suggested that British girls with non-traditional career aspirations are let down by their teachers and career advisors, who still shuttle girls ‘into “feminine” jobs such as supermarket sales for work experience’

(Apter, 2000).”(Apter, Terri (2000) ‘Bland Ambition’, Guardian, 6 April)

In the past the two stereotypical female images seen were Madonna, or whore

Madonna as the postmodern myth” by Georges-Claude Guilbert

“symbolic annihilation of women by the mass media”

G TUCHMAN - Issues in Feminism: A First Course in Women's Studies, 1980 - Houghton Mifflin College Div