Forum: Screening Discussion

Use the comments here to discuss the screenings, brainstorm for your papers, etc. A particular scene stuck in your head? Have a question about the rest of a series? This is the place to discuss it! Be sure to give your comments a title so people can track the conversations and participate if the spirit moves.

14 thoughts on “Forum: Screening Discussion

  1. Amelia Furlong

    I’m in love with Buffy. Talk about a kick-ass female character. It’s so refreshing how brave she is. I went back to Battell and watched the second episode. I can feel myself starting to get obsessed…

  2. Eleanor Krause

    A compelling sequence in the “Mad Men” episode was that with the one way window. The men had a voyeuristic experience while the women were unknowingly being watched. I found this uncomfortable (as I’m sure the writers wanted it to be). But, I also found it interesting that such a “masculine-empowering” action actually lead to potential improvements for Peggy in the workplace. The creation of women as a spectacle lead to Peggy being looked at and her talent being noticed. It made me think of how, in this case, being a spectacle was beneficial…

  3. Joyce Ma

    We never found out the name of the female lead in Rebecca. If it was mentioned, it was perhaps only used in the beginning with her employer. Isn’t that a clear sign of how she was objectified?

    1. Amethyst Tate

      She was never identified. I think this was done purposefully not necessarily to objectify her, but to illustrate how all women should be able to identify with her character. She could be any one of “us” (“us” being the female spectator).

  4. Luke Martinez

    Ellie-

    I believe that most of what we glean from media is hardly noticed at the time of absorption. We see things, we read things, then forget them, only to be triggered by a stimulus into instant recall. I am fascinated by this and I can see that (due to this and freud), media is so so so deeply psychological and subconscious.

  5. Eleanor Krause

    So, I was studying in BiHall and suddenly jumped when I heard the elevator bell, my mind flashing back to the beginning sequence of Damages! I think it’s really interesting that while we are watching films it is not just visual stimuli, all of our senses are absorbing the information, and, with good film, remembering it distinctly. I think it shows that media is impacting you in multi faceted ways even if you don’t realize it.

  6. Laura Hendricksen

    I’ll let you tell me what you think about this… after having watched “IT” and read the paper of Sharot…
    Obviously, the representation of women and gender in the movies appears as a compromise between Victorian values and the ones of the « New Woman ». Is it eventually so because it is what the society at that time is ready to accept? Once again, how far can cinema go in the representation of gender in time and space? Is cinema a simple mirror of a given societal reality more than an actual revolutionary tool in terms of gender and sexual identities?
    We notice that the woman is still mainly represented as having to « win » the man with her charms in order to have him ask her for marriage, rather than the contrary (the man having to seduce the woman). Truly enough, a reversal of roles however occurs in the narrative in « It » and makes it particularly interesting. Still, how much can the representation of gender and sexuality in cinema be a symbol of the « achievement of one’s sex »?

  7. Joyce Ma

    I know this is a bit late but did anyone else feel when they were watching Damages, they couldn’t help but compare it to “The Devil Wears Prada?” Damages was darker but during the screening last week, I kept on comparing the characters from the movie to the television series.

    1. Eleanor Krause

      I know what you mean, it has a similar theme – that a coarse business woman takes a smart and determined young woman and transforms her.

      As for tonight’s screenings:

      I thought that “It” was very enjoyable and didn’t fully support Mulvey’s “male gaze” argument. There were scenes that showed men’s gazes towards Betty, but overall she was the most active character physically and in terms of plot. Though, you could say the fact that both men have fetishes for her supports the castration anxiety idea.
      I am wondering about the differences in film between the time of Mulvey’s article (published in 1973) and the filming of “It” (1927), they must have been undoubtedly different and I am curious as to whether Mulvey is responding specifically to films of her era or condemning the cinema as a whole.

    2. Laura Hendricksen

      I agree with you Eleanor about the woman gaze. After having watched “It”, I just thought: what about Laura Mulvey’s reflection? We already said that obviously a good part of her reasoning is missing, but it is particularly interesting to read what Stephen Sharot says, about how women in the 1920’s happened to be the big consumers of movies (and still are today, especially for TV series:)). Not only is there a female audience but the thematics of the movies themselves particularly appealed to women more than they did to men! And of course, men are also shown to be the object of women’s gaze in our modern TV series as well as in « It ». So, what should we think?

    3. Rosalind Downer

      Joyce, I found this but instead of with Damages I found it with Mad Men. The girl with the red hair was like Emily Blunt, and the new girl like Anne Hathaway!

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