FINAL - Alternative Approaches to Analysis (IX) Flashcards
What is cultural invisibility and how does it effect filmmakers and audiences?
Stories and themes that reinforce viewer’s shared belief system
- Filmmakers seek to entertain not provoke thoughts.
- Intend to tap into and reinforce the audiences most fundamental desires and beliefs.
How are films both works of art and cultural documents?
- Alternative approaches analyze movies as cultural artifacts than as traditional works of art.
- Search for implicit and hidden meanings.
- Explores cinema’s function within popular culture as well as popular culture’s influence.
How were women and African Americans represented in the early period of American cinema?
- Women were represented as virgin “whores”, damsels in distress, and often ended up dead.
- African Americans were represented as lazy, mixed race, cursed, and dangerous.
How has the representation of women and African Americans changed over the past 100 years?
- They appear more in films as something other than a secondary character.
How did Hollywood respond to 2nd Wave Feminism in 60s? 70s? 80s?
- 60s: Focused on sexual liberation of women
- 70s: focused on “buddy films” and violence against women; reaction to threat against masculinity
- 80s: focused on Action hero. Hypermasculine male. Gender reversals
Who are some of the important figures in those histories?
Alison Bechdel’s test, Laura Mulvey’s “Male Gaze”
Oscar Micheuax, Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins, Lee Daniels, Ava DuVernay
Cultural hegemony:
domination of a group over another so thorough in its manipulation of meaning, that even the subjugated group perceives its suppression as the natural order of things.
2 roles for women in Classical Hollywood?
- The Virgin - often damsel in distress
2. The Whore - often end up dead
What is Blaxploitation?
film where disproportionate numbers of stereotypical film characters show bad or questionable motives, including roles as criminals.
