TASK 2
Below you will find short excerpts that deal with issues of gender in the cinema.
Match the summarising statements 1-12 to excerpts B-J. Excerpt A and statement 0
are an example. Remember that each excerpt may be chosen more than once and
that each statement corresponds to only one text.
Gender in the cinema
A
Example Lesbian Bond’s mission will be to thwart a homophobic state (possibly Russia,
or perhaps a former British colony) laundering money through organisations set up in an
ostensible push towards LGBT rights. But actually, funds are instead being funnelled
through to London to shut down the remaining gay bars in the capital in a push for
further world hetero-normativity. Meanwhile, foreign spies infiltrate the British gay scene
to source information from unsuspecting closeted figures high up in the intelligence
services and Westminster politics.
B
Back in the 1980s attitudes towards abortion on film look pretty darn liberal. Teenage
girls in Fame (1980) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) get abortions and in
neither case is this depicted as a big deal or a moral issue. The whole plot of Dirty
Dancing (1987) is set in motion when a female character needs an abortion and the
only person who is criticised is the thoughtless dude who got her pregnant and ditched
her.
C
With the bar already set much higher for female directors than male, they are also
given fewer second chances. Women with a box office failure don’t get hired again.
“If a movie starring or written by or directed by a man flops, people don’t blame the
gender of the creator,” the writer and director Diablo Cody told Variety magazine last
July. “It’s just kind of weird how the blame is always immediately placed on female
directors.”
D
The most tear-jerking scenes occur on one of Ennis and Jack’s trips to Brokeback
Mountain, where they first struck up a friendship. I’m sure I’m not alone in wincing as a
visibly shaken Ennis recalls being forced to view the mutilated body of a man killed in a
suspected homophobic attack. The unbearable savagery of a person being ripped to
pieces chills me to the bone.
E
In 2005, Geena Davis starred in a TV drama called Commander in Chief in which she
played a female president. True, she ascends to the post from vice-president after the
incumbent dies in office – the gender-blindness didn’t extend so far as to suggest a
woman could actually have been elected – but she did win a Golden Globe for best
actress.
F
The basic truism – teenage girls enjoy sex – is a lesson gleaned far more rarely from films
today. Now, a girl in a teen film who has sex – or even just wants sex – risks being
ravaged by her boyfriend and eaten from within by a vampire baby (Bella in Twilight).
At the very least, she is emotionally damaged (The Perks Of Being A Wallflower) and will
be universally shamed (Easy A).
G
Ghostbusters subverts the sexist tropes of male-led comedies. The three primary
Ghostbusters are all friends. They like each other, they’re amused by each other and
they stick together. There’s nothing eroticised about their friendship, no
overcompensation of macho-ness, no competitive banter. Nor is there any suggestion
that male friendship is so special it must be protected from all outsiders who threaten it
– namely, women.
H
Success stories such as Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win the Oscar for best
director with The Hurt Locker (2009) are extremely rare. When asked why Bigelow broke
through, one Hollywood producer replies without missing a beat: “Because she was
married to [Titanic director] James Cameron. They knew if she fucked it up, he could
step in and save the day”, even though the couple had divorced before she made the film.
For all their heartache LGBTQ-themed films generally leave us with the reassuring sense
that things have got better – and, of course, with a richer, more informed
understanding of how that change has come about. But dangers remain. Many stories
remain unacknowledged; most titles focus on white men, and even within those
bounds, there is the risk that, even if mainstream hostility to alternative sexualities
declines, they are still seen as fundamentally other.
J
Geena Davis, who made the groundbreaking Thelma & Louise (1991), became
frustrated by the fact that, even after a woman’s film proves a huge hit, “nothing
changes”. While staying at home with her daughter, she noticed something odd about
the movies and TV shows aimed at children: there were notably few female characters:
“In family films, crowd and group scenes contain only 17% female characters. Why
would we be training kids to see women as taking up far less space in the world than
0. A transgender agent comes out of the closet to save the world A √
1. A response to a human action that won’t leave you unmoved
2. Some onscreen relationships don’t reflect modern-day morality
3. Attitudes haven’t changed that much despite appearances
4. Double standards are pretty much still alive and kicking
5. “It’s a good idea to have a stand-by on hand – just in case”
6. It seems kids still have to grow up in a men’s world
7. On some issues attitudes seem to have taken a backwards step
8. This is a scenario which is still difficult to imagine
9. Success doesn’t seem to have made women more visible
10. The bottom line is still, “Bad girls have it coming”
11. We aren’t nearly as broad-minded as we’d like to think
12. You don’t have to be misogynist to be good buddies
