Female protagonists...

It is widely felt that female characters in film have been restricted to the easy categories that classical narratives and familiar genres demand of them (the typical complaint is that women in films are either 'virgins, mothers or whores'). There is certainly some truth in this view. However, across the history of British cinema we can see the development of an impressive variety of female characters and protagonists.

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/824016/index.html

This is taken from the screenonline website on woman being the protagonists in films recently. It gives information such as how more females now have the protagonists part.

ECONOMIC CONTEXT
Below shows the amount of money Charlie's angels 2 made in a chart of 100 films. It came 35 telling me that it was a successful film.

32.Aladdin
$21,142,730,5969

33.Enemy of the State
$20,990,391,8038

34.The Lion King
$20,763,220,9428

35.Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
$20,523,363,5098

36.A Time to Kill
$20,292,806,230937

FURTHER INFORMATION!!!
Released in US
June 27, 2003

Total US Gross
$100,814,328

Production Budget
$120,000,000

Prints and Advertising Budget
$40,000,000

Worldwide Gross
$227,200,000

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for action violence, sensuality and language/innuendo
Running Time:106 minutes
Highest Combined Star Gross:35
Franchises:Charlie's Angels
Genres:Gratuitous Cameos, Visual Effects
Distributed by:Sony Pictures
Source:Sequel
Major Genre:Adventure
Country:United States
Production Method:Live Action
Creative Type:Contemporary Fiction
Director:McG

Claude Lévi-Strauss


















Claude Lévi-Strauss born November 28, 1908 a French anthropologist who developed structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture.

LAURA MULVEY







This is a pichure of Laura Mulvey!!!






Laura Mulvey (born August 15, 1941) is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at Oxford and is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck College, London She worked at the British Film Institute for many years before taking up her current position.

Laura Mulvey's theory is relevant to me because her theory is on the 'MALE GAZE' and could be useful as my independent study focuses on representation of woman and how they are seen as sex objects to entertain and pleasure men.

Mulvey's best known for her essay on "visual pleasures and narrative cinema". She argues that in Hollywood cinema males are there for the figure of the woman on screen as the object of desire. Viewers are made to identify with the protagonist of the film, who tends to be male. Meanwhile, female characters are, according to Mulvey, coded "to-be-looked-at-ness"

She also mentions the active/male and passive/female leading to the 'male gaze'. In my chosen text Charlie's Angels 2 they are shown to entertain men using their bodies such as when they pole dance to distract the villain.

LAURA MULVEY





THIS IS LAURA MULVEY!!!








The reason im going to use laura mulvet as one of my theorists is because her theory on 'MALE GAZE' is relevent to my independent study topic as im focusing on females being represented as sex objects to entertain and pleasure men.

In Mulvey's best known essay, 'Visual and othe pleasures' she argues that woman in films are on the screens as a object of desire. She says that in classical Hoolywood cinema, viewers are encouraged to identify with the protagonist of the film, who tends to be a man. Meanwhile, female characters are, according to Mulvey are there to-be-looked-at-ness.

From the showgirl to the topless bar made, the body of the woman is used to make a profit from the male’s sexual desire. The body itself becomes an object of desire for a man, and the amount it signifies, is merely sex.

WIDER CONTEXT-ECONOMIC

this is another webite that will be useful to be so i can tell how successful it was and how much money was spent on the film!!!

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2003/CHAR2.php

This is the website that tells be how much the film cost to make and some background information!!!

wider context- Economic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie's_Angels:_Full_Throttle

http://fp.advertising.msn.com/wwdocs/user/es-es/research/1

This is a power point of charlies angels i found on the internet with information on audience and budget. It includes things such as pie charts and relevent information.

Google Print
http://books.google.com/

Representation on women-google book search
http://books.google.com/books?q=representation+on+women%20&spell=1&oi=spell

This is a website i found by going on to google websearch to see all the different books i could use to help me to give me information on representation on women for my independent study.

BFI Research Guides
http://www.bfi.org.uk/filmtvinfo/library/publications/16+/

16+ source guides: Strong Women
http://www.bfi.org.uk/filmtvinfo/library/publications/16+/strongwomen.html

This website is useful because it has some information on woman and how they are just as strong as men and how their roles are changing.

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/
The Media and Communications Studies Site

The Portrayal of Women on Television
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/hzi9401.html

This is amother website form the del.icio.us tags that i found useful. The actual website is right at the top but the link i found useful is shown below it. This website talks about woman shown on the television and can be useful because of the information which is useful to my independent study.

BBC NEWS: Entertainment
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/default.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/films/reviews/charlies_angels.shtml

Diaz, too, doesn't see her spark snuffed totally by the dire material. But she's too good an actress for this drivel - a fine, charismatic performer whose $20-million role just requires her to wear very little and shake her backside at McG's hyperactive camera. Some call it girl power. Others demeaning.

Screenonline: UK Film & TV Archive
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/

This is a very useful site because it talks about woman and film in the past helping me with the representation with the wider context, (historical to be specific)
Below is the link to the website

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/824060/index.html

Mediaknowall: Webguide for Media Students

http://mediaknowall.com/index.html

This website is very important because it has relevent information on gender representation for my independent study. It tells me in a table what a typical male would be and a typical female.

http://mediaknowall.com/gender.html

Above is the link form the actual website on gender representations.

http://scf.ifl.net/cgi-local/snpfiltered.pl?t=c&u=http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze09.html

This website is useful because it gives information on the gaze.

http://theoryhead.com/gender/

This link is useful because it is about the theorist that im going to use, David Gauntlett and will be useful to me as it has information for my independent study.
Below are some links i got from the website:

http://theoryhead.com/gender/about.htm

http://theoryhead.com/gender/extract.htm

http://www.jahsonic.com/2006Feb.html
This is another website that i decided to use for my independent study because it explains all the theories that will be relevent to my study.

http://www.jahsonic.com/Feminism.html

The link above is for the feminist theory that i got from the website and found useful to my independent study.

http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/
This is the website from the del.icio.us tags of rotten tomatoes!!!

Below are 2 film reviews and a a section form each that i found useful for my independent study and below that is the link for the actual review.

Full Throttle" isn't about any rational story; it's about Diaz, Barrymore and Liu wearing as many outfits as possible, winning a series of fights while looking sexy and uttering catchphrases, and generally treating filmgoers as though the audience members all have attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder.

http://regulus.azstarnet.com/entertainment/story.php?section=movies&subsection=movies_reviews&title=Charlie's%20Angels:%20Full%20Throttle

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" is rated PG-13 for violence (fist fights, martial-arts combat, gunplay, stabbings, explosive mayhem and violence against women), crude sexual humor (including innuendo and sexual references), scattered use of strong profanity and gratuitous shots of women clad in bikinis and other scanty clothing. Running time: 105 minutes.

http://deseretnews.com/movies/view/1,1257,355000204,00.html

5 key words useful to my independent study

Pleasure
This is motivating factor in the consumption of media texts.

Pleasure has often been ignored by researchers seeking to explain the motivation of audiences but is reflected in uses and gratifications theory, self-gratifying and consumption orientated cultural environment

This key word is useful to my independent study because it is included in my question and my whole study focuses on pleasure and how films pleasure men to entertain them.

Feminism
This is political movement to advance the status of women by challenging values, social constructions and socioeconomic practices which disadvantage women and favour men.

The movement emerged from the liberations culture of the 1960’s, although individual feminists argued for women’s rights from a much earlier time.

Feminism has provided an important perspective for the critique of media products, especially from the standpoint of representation and has sought to challenge dominant ideologies which reinforce patriarchal values.

Feminism encompasses various perspectives, e.g. black feminism, liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, radical feminism and post-feminism.

This is an important key word because my independent study it focuses on representation on women and a talk about feminism and how the roles of woman is changing in contemporary society.

Male gaze
Male gaze a term used by Laura Mulvey in her essay ‘Visual pleasures and narrative cinema’ (1975). This is what she used to describe what she saw as the male point of view adopted by the cinema for the benefit of an assumed male audience.

Mulvey viewed the practice of the cinema lingering on woman’s bodies as evidence that woman were being viewed as sex objects for the gratification of men. She argued that the central active characters in films are male and that the male audience identifies with them in their viewing of the passive females. Woman in the audience are also positioned by the narrative to identify with the male gaze and see the world through male eyes.

This is useful because I will be mentioning Laura mulvey’s theory on male gaze because I am going to do my study on women being represented as sex objects and how the male audience views them.


Representation
This is the process whereby the media construct versions of people, places and events in images, words or sound for transmission through media texts to an audience.

Representation provides models of how we see gender, social groups, individuals and aspects of the world we all inhabit. They are ideological in that they are constructed within a framework of values and beliefs. Representations are therefore mediated and reflect the values systems of their sources. No representation is ever real, only a version of the real.

Representations are part of cultural mythology and reflect deep-seated values and beliefs, e.g. of such places as the north of England, Scotland and America.

Representation is the key to many media debates and is usually described as being positive or negative, depending on the view of the group being represented. Achieving positive representations (versions that they agree and approve of) has been a goal of minorities groups who have criticised the perceived negatively of media stereotypes e.g. gays, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, disability groups and woman.

My study is on the representation of woman in films and how they are being represented by the audience especially the male audience.

Sexism
A representation that discriminates on the basis of sex, especially against woman, which is seen to derive from and sustain patriarchy.

Some feminists would see any media representation of woman that confirmed a stereotype as sexist, for example, the display of women’s bodies as sex objects in lad’s magazines for the entertainment of men.

In a post-feminists environment, challenges are launched at representations of men that show them as sex objects or as being humiliated at the hands of women.

This is a key word because males are seen to be dominating (patriarchy) and sexist against females. Stereotype on woman are sometimes seen as sexist such as woman’s bodies displayed as sex objects in male magazines to entertain them.

Information from my power point presentation!!!

DAVID GAUNTLETT

•Argues that in contemporary society, gender roles are more complex and that the media reflects this.
•He points out that female role models today are often glamorous as well as successful in a way that they were previously not.
•He argues that much is due to ‘girl power’ in the media. Through identities constructed by music artists such as Destiny’s child as well as contemporary actresses for example who are demanding less passive film roles.



LAURA MULVEY

Her theory links in with DAVID GAUNTLETT on how women’s roles in films are changing from passive to active. Laura Mulvey’s theory is that women have the passive ’house wife’ role and the males have the active ’hero’ roles.
Charlie’s angels 1 & 2, Kill Bill, my super ex-girth friend, Tomb raider, Cat woman are all contemporary films that challenge Laura Mulvey’s theory.
Charlie’s angels challenges the theory however some can say that they are still playing the ’passive’ role because they are taking orders from a mysterious voice, a male voice.



DESTINY CHILD

Destiny child had a soundtrack for Charlie’s angels. Independent women.

Society has changed a lot and now women have as much freedom as men. They are not seen as the stereotypical house wife.

Women in films are becoming more active e.g. Charlie’s angels promoting the independent woman.

This would challenge a patriarchal society because women are becoming more independent.

Because the song was called independent women, it is directly speaking to women who are independent.

INDEPENDENT means:
•Unaided
•Uncontrolled
•Self-ruling
•Self-reliant
•individual


PINK

Pink features in the film during the bike race and also has a soundtrack for the film- Feel good time.
Pink is represented and acts like a tough woman. She does the sort of things you would see a man do, changing the gender roles. She is not seen the same as other women, like a calm housewife but the leader of a noisy, motor bike race, which the audience would assume would be male. A stereotype that men are more into bikes than females.

Her fashion style and hair style is also different to other women.


VLADIMIR PROPP

•The hero in the films are the angels (Diaz, Liu, Barrymore)= PROTAGONISTS
•The villains are Seamus ‘o’ Grady (Justin Theroux), and Madison Lee ( Moore)= ANTAGONIST
•The dispatcher is Charlie
•The false hero is Madison Lee
• The helper is Jimmy Bosley

The character roles for women are changing in contemporary films from the males being the protagonists to the females.


TZVETAN TODOROV

•The storyline focuses two important rings. The rings are safe at first then… they get stolen then… they are returned to the wrong person who than steals them again finally the resolution, the rings are returned safely.
•
•The locations they end up such as the STRIP CLUB, BEACH, AND the PUB to get the rings are used to entertain and pleasure the audience. Men are shown throughout the film especially the scenes I’ve mentioned above like they are having entertained by the females.


Claude Lévi-Strauss

•In action films the main binary opposition is good vs. evil.
•
•In Charlie’s angels it is the angels vs. Seamus ‘o’ Grady
•
This changes the role of women, especially in
action films as the hero’s in action films were males,
however changing in contemporary films.
In Charlie’s angels the hero’s are the three FEMALE
Angels.


ROLAND BARTHES

•Bathes enigma code is used in Charlie’s angels to create suspense and keep the audience entertained.
•When Madison Lee shots the angels, its all in slow motion and they fall of a tall building. The enigma is built because we are not informed if the girls are dead or what happened. This this makes the audience come up with their own conclusion.
•
This is another alternative to pleasuring

Barthes enigma codes are useful in entertaining the audience without the use of other pleasures such as women. It keeps the audience entertained and as a result less bored while watching the film.


WOMEN

The sex discrimination act (1986)
ensured quality of representation for both genders in the media and in industry.

•Women's roles have changed over the decades. Before, the males were the dominant in society (patriarchy), however in contemporary society, roles have changes and is becoming more equal for females. Compared from before (around 1950's) more woman are getting jobs and having a successful career, whereas, before woman were 'housewives' staying at home, doing the cooking, cleaning and looking after the children while the males worked. Even in films as I've mentioned before, women are becoming more 'active' from their 'passive' roles. HOWEVER, they are still seen as sex objects for pleasure of men in films such as coyote ugly, sin city, cat woman and Charlie's angels 1 & 2.

•The statistics on the amount of woman who are in employment is shown on my blog.


FEMINIST THEORY

•Feminism is the response to society’s assumptions that women should be second important to men. Until the emergence of feminism, women were treated almost as objects, passive agents in a male world.
•
•The roots of the feminist movement extends back to the eighteenth century but the run of the suffragette movement to the which fought for the vote for women in the early part of the twentieth century and the land girls and other women who moved into many occupations during the second world war.


Coyote ugly (2000)

•The majority of the scenes in the film are situated in a pub with the bar girls dancing on top of the platform and pouring alcohol over themselves and the men glued to them. This would pleasure as well as entertain men because the dancing is to entertain the men.


When they are dancing in the coyote ugly bar they are wearing revealing clothes. They are also tight clothes so their figure can be seen clearly


This would entertain and pleasure men because all the people dancing on the platform are all females and the audience who have come to watch them are all males enjoying themselves because of the women.


AMERICAN PIE(the wedding)

Michelle takes it upon herself to start pleasuring Jim under the table


A stripper was invited at the bachelor party for the men’s pleasure in the film.


Having a stripper in the film also entertains and pleasures the men who are audience as well using females and the objects for their satisfaction.


Stifler is represented as a sex addict because he talks and thinks about sex constantly in the film.

http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/charliesangelsfullthrottle/index.html

When you go the site to watch the trailer, let the little box come up because the teaser trailer is shown on that.

This trailer is very useful for anyone doing representation of woman because it reinforces LAURA MULVEY'S theory on the 'MALE GAZE' because of the way they are shown in the trailer.

All the scenes i mentioned such as the beach are shown in the trailer to help you understand what im going om about.

The people that my blog most links with and the people i posted up my points on...

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34031519&postID=115840809100835162

Navdeep

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=32340875&postID=115806519647894144

Anika

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34158691&postID=115807174750892776

Kiranjit

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34065324&postID=115799060927370573

Dinveer

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=34131960&postID=115792775318661338

Avinash

This is the book by laura mulvey

Description
The essays collected in this book reflect some of the commitments and changes during the period that saw the women's movement shift into feminism and the development of feminism's involvement with the politics of representation, psychoanalytic film theory and avant-garde aesthetics. The essays also tell, implicitly, a personal story: of someone very gradually learning to express themselves in writing through feminism and becoming visibly more articulate over the course of time. Central to the collection is Mulvey's famous polemic 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'.

http://www.crimeculture.com/359/FemmesFatales.html

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/824060/index.html

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/syllabi/images_women_men_media_222_303/

http://www.mediaknowall.com/gender.html

ALL THESE SITES ARE ON WOMEN

A media studies book i have used for my independent study...

AS & A2 Media Studies
Longman
Jacquie Bennett
27 july 2005

CHARLIE'S ANGELS-FULL THROTTLE

WOMEN IN 2000

Some facts about women’s participation in the labour market

The UK female level of employment is at record high levels.

In Spring 2000 there were a record 12.5 million women (aged 16 plus) in employment in the UK.

The number of women in employment has risen by 843,000 since 1990, while the number of men is only 33,000 higher.1

However, over the last 3 years, the growth in employment has been higher among men than women.

http://www.isis.aust.com/iwd/stevens/70s80s.htm

This is a website on women in the past and what was happening in that decade.

http://pblmm.k12.ca.us/projects/discrimination/Women/WomenThroughYears/PDW.html

women in the 90's

WOMEN IN 1970's

The Right to Work:

The broadsheet referred to all the polishing, sweeping and other work performed by women for no wages and argued that women should have access to all paid occupations without having to carry a double burden of paid and unpaid labour.

Equal Pay - one rate for the job:

Some 20 percent of women workers, such as the NSW teachers in 1959, and the meatworkers in 1969, had won equal pay for equal work, but the average award rate was still $45 for men and $32.57 for women. In both these industries women were performing the same or similar work to men but no advance had been made in revaluing the traditional areas where the majority of women worked. One rate for each job, irrespective of the age, sex, or race, was demanded. While, in December 1972, the Whitlam government began to phase in equal pay for all women workers, its long term effects still left a gap between male and female rates and a new equal pay demand still needs to be made.

A protest to get equality between males and females in 1972.

TOMB RAIDER-
WEARING TIGHT CLOTHES, SWEATY, SHORT SKIRT















AMERICAN PIE- THE WEDDING-
a STRIPPER ID USED TO ENTERTAIN THE BASHELOR PARTY FOR THE MALES










COYOTE UGLY-
DANCING ON THE BAR PLATFORM WITH ALCOHOL POURED OVER THEM

CATWOMAN-

WEARING TIGHT, REVEALING CLOTHES, CAN SEE HER FIGURE-FOR THE PLEASURE OF MEN

WOMEN IN THE 1990's

By 1999, 60 percent of women work outside the home, making up almmost half (46 percent) of the labor force. The concept of "male" professions doesn't apply by the end of the 20th century. By 1997, women are earning over 40 percent of medical, law and doctorate degrees.

WOMEN IN THE 1980's
6, over half of colledge graduates are women. women are earning over half of the master's degrees, and more and more of them are entering professions such as law, medecine and bussiness. In 1986, women earned 30 percent of first professional degrees, up from 15 percent just 10 years earlier.




In 1985, about 9 percent of officers and enlisted personnel in the armed forces are women, an increase from less than 2 percent in 1972.

Name: Antonio Gramsci

Birth: January 22, 1891 (Ales, Sardinia)

Death: April 27, 1937 (Rome, Italy)

School/tradition: Marxism

Main interests: Politics, Ideology, Culture

Notable ideas: Hegemony

Influences: Karl Marx, Benedetto Croce

Influenced: Louis Althusser, Edward Said, Judith Butler, Alain de Benoist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

Marxism theort site

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_theory

Feminist theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci

Gramsci theory on hegemony

MEDIA, GENDER AND IDENTITY

A BOOK I WILL BE USING FOR MY INDEPENDENT STUDY.

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/feminism/gaze.htm#Mulvey

LAURA MULVEY

THE VILLAIN!!!

Women In the 1970’s- MORE...

Activists in the early 1970’s were battling for womens’ liberation and equal opportunities at a time of great unrest and social disturbance for many social groups. The sex equality act was not passed until 1975.

FEMINIST THEORY

Feminism is the response to society’s assumptions that women should be second important to men. Until the emergence of feminism, women were treated almost as objects, passive agents in a male world.

The roots of the feminist movement extends back to the eighteenth century but the run of the suffragette movement to the which fought for the vote for women in the early part of the twenieth century and the land girls and other women who moved into many occupations during the second world war.

CHARLIE'S ANGELS-REVEIW S

http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2003/06/27/charlies_angels_full_throttle_2003_review.shtml


http://www.contactmusic.com/new/film.nsf/reviews/charliesangelsfullthrottle


http://www.dailyinfo.co.uk/reviews/feature/504/Charlies+Angels+Full+Throttle/


http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/reviews/charlies_angels_full_throttle.html


http://www.virgin.net/movies/interviews/charliesangels.html