Peace

5 Pages 1182 Words

The Women’s Movement
Throughout motion picture history, women have experienced more transition in their roles, as a result of changing societal norms, than any other class. At first, both society and the movie industry preached that women should be dependent on men and remain in the home, in order to guarantee stability in the community and the family. As time passed and attitudes changed, women were beginning to be depicted as strong willed, independent minded characters, who were eager to break away from convention. Since the 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but older and unattractive women also hold leading roles. In the 1940’s women did not have predominate roles in movies. In the few movies that were based around women, a man wrote the woman’s character, and the woman was portrayed as a sex symbol. In the movie Double Indemnity, a woman named Phillis is plotting to have her husband killed because she wants to collect his life insurance and be freed from an unhappy marriage. She uses her sexuality and good looks to convince Walter Neff to help her in her scheme. In this movie, Phillis is a beautiful, sexy, conniving killer. In the end, however, because she does not have the heart to kill her husband, the audience is supposed to redeem her conniving image. In the 1940’s movie Gilda, the women have two different stereotypes. The first stereotype is a beautiful sex goddess. She is so beautiful that any man would love to be with her. The second stereotype ...