A 7 page paper on sexism, the "gender war," and the overall treatment of women in film. "Boomerang," "A Stranger Among Us,"and "Man Trouble," are among the many movies used to illustrate the writer's points. Stereotypes and the subtly of sexism are explained as the writer presents some recommended suggestions for change. Bibliography lists 5 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_Sexismfl.doc
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
As far back as the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood was profiting from romantic comedies in which class and sexual conflicts born of cultural difference were happily resolved so that men
and women could, finally, form happy little melting-pot families and realize the traditional American Dream of a classless, democratic society. Looking back at the heroines in those
older films which I have seen, it is rather alarming to realize how much better off women actually were back then. For one thing, the gender imbalance was often
corrected by class advantage. Katharine Hepburn made a career of taming rough suitors like Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart so that they were fit to "hang out" in her
higher class social realm. Rosalind Russell and Irene Dunne often played executives involved with lower-class men in offbeat comedies of gender and class warfare between lovers who were more
or less equally matched. Of course, there was always a down side. Hooks (1993) points out that the dark melodramas and noir crime films
of the time endlessly pitted such women as Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck against a social structure that punished them, usually with death, for being too ambitious or
sexually aggressive. In my own opinion, Mildred Pierce, Jezebel, The Postman Always Rings Twice-these were great tragedies about women of enormous power and desire hindered by a sexist social structure.
From what I have inferred, there are two kinds of "gender war" movies today, just as there were in pre-feminist times. The romantic comedies about
opposites coming together in hokey harmony are about the same as ever; they just seem sillier now because, for one thing, women today are so much angrier, and, for another,