Stars

Icons, Role Models & Modification

I am starting to think about stars in relation to the way an audience view them. They tend to be put on a pedestal, as only the glamorous aspects of their lives are shared with the world. A false representation of the whole being is created, linking to the ideas of fantasy explored by Laura Mulvey and Richard Dyer. Although women are viewed often as a sexual object, the idea is overseen by the fact that a 'star' is playing a role. Because they are seen as a role model to women, the way they appear and act is to be looked up to.

Damsels in Distress

'The damsel-in-distress or persecuted maiden is a classic theme in world literature, art, film and video games. This trope usually involves a beautiful young woman placed in a dire predicament by a villain or monster and who requires a male hero to achieve her rescue.'

The portrayal of a damsel-in-distress links to the ideas I am looking at in my practical work around fragility. There are a great many films whose plot centre around this, and became a trend in western cinema in particular. Just to name a few...

King Kong, The Dark Knight, Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, Spectre, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Casino Royale, Spider Man 2, Knight And Day, Fast & Furious, Star Wars, Dead Pool, The Accountant, Iron Man, San Andreas, Man of Steel, Die Hard

Fragility

The idea of the fragility of female roles in and out of the cinema is something I have been thinking about during my research. Exploring the idea of this through line and found image was the best way for me to develop my visual journal. Using the images of female film icons I started making them into objects (John Berger - Objectification) that demonstrate the notion of crumbling away at the hands of a man, i.e. the male gaze (Laura Mulvey).

Focus - Modification & Audience

My practical work so far has led me to thinking about audiences in relation to film and ultimately the impact on society of what people see on-screen. Stories can be made relatable to a person and told more thoroughly using film. In this way the 'norms' of what is acceptable can be explained and established to an audience member, almost subconsciously, which can then influence their everyday life and the way they see the world - I am thinking about this especially in relation to people making decisions to change their appearance and the way they outwardly present themselves to the world.

NY Film Academy - Gender Inequality

https://www.nyfa.edu/film-school-blog/gender-inequality-in-film/

I found this info graphic on the New York Film Academy website which looks at the ways in which women are treated in the film industry. I wasn't surprised to learn that there is a ratio of 5:1 men to women working in the film industry as it is evident in the way that gender roles are portrayed on-screen.

I was however surprised at some of the other figures shown, only 30% of speaking characters are women and in relation to fashion/clothing, 28.8% of women wear sexually revealing clothes in comparison to just 7% of men. Following this, 26.2% of women actors get partially naked, while only 9.4% of men do. There is a clear difference between men and women in all of the statistics shown, which pinpoints the way this evidently filters down in to the narrative of the stories we see.

Fashion, Culture & Identity - Fred Davis

Notes from Text

• Chapter 3 - Ambivalences of Gender: Boys will be Boys, Girls will be Boys.
• Gaultier's 1984 fall men's collection - sarongs and pants-skirt... 'They'll share the same wardrobe, but they'll wear it differently. Men will stay masculine and women feminine'.
• 'Looked like the sort Marlene Dietrich would wear. His boutiques turned out to be a lot more popular with chic women than with men' - Pierre Cardin, Paris, late 1950's.
• 'Small wonder then that feminists, rather than viewing current androgynous style as symbols of sexual equality, regard them suspiciously as but another subtle sexist device for muting the egalitarian demands emanating from the women's movement'.
• 'the boyish androgynous look, it is alleged, serves at one and the same time to appeal to latent homoerotic impulses in men and assuage fears over a loss of power to women' - Dietrich.
• Chapter 2 - Identity ambivalence, fashion's fuel.
• 'Dress, then, comes easily to serve as a kind of visual metaphor for identity and, as pertains in particular to the open societies of the West, for registering the culturally anchored ambivalences that resonate within and among identities'.

• Ambivalence definition - the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.
• Androgynous definition - Partly male and partly female in appearance, of indeterminate sex.

Film Fashion - Icons & Audience

After researching into people like Marlene Dietrich who changed the way women dress and consider their appearance I decided to look into a breadth of fashion 'icons', for example wearing trousers instead of skirts and being able to choose either. I also wanted to explore this in relation to an audience, so whilst drawing out the different faces of actresses and characters I set them out in the way an audience may sit when viewing a film/television show. Exploring collections of people and the variations within each category is very interesting for me and highlights the areas of diversity in the industry at the moment. When looking at female characters it became evident that there is a certain type casting - either a damsel in distress, psychopath or the romantic interest, especially in the less recent roles. I want to explore these different roles further.

Study Task 8

Rationale

• What is your theme?

My theme is based around the impacts of fashion within the film industry and how this links to the way women view their own appearance in a patriarchal society.

• How are you exploring it visually (methodology)?

I have been exploring this theme beginning with line and collage in relation to the topics of aesthetic within society (more generally) and then narrowing it down to looking at fashion icons within film and primarily their audiences.

• Why are you doing it this way?

To start with I wasn't too sure which part of my research I wanted to focus on, so I began with a breadth of different responses to the theme, now I am focusing more on a particular area (audience and film).

• Materials?

Using collage I can manipulate images that already exist and make them into something new, describing the issues (such as the alteration of appearance) I acknowledge within my research. Also, I want to use line to reflect the regimented views within the film/fashion industry as to what is/isn't acceptable, as well as the male gaze and journey of the industry through the decades.

• Any key theorists who have influenced this?

The views of the male gaze have been influenced primarily by John Berger in 'Ways of Seeing' and Laura Mulvey in 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'. The key theorists I am looking at link somehow to audience and they way they are affected by what they see in film. I want to explore this further and re-focus my practical work on this.

Re-focusing

I have decided to focus on one element of my research in relation to patriarchy as it feels like it is getting a bit chaotic. The main problem for me is that I am finding it difficult to think about how to narrow down my research and pinpoint one theme within everything I have been exploring so far. Do I focus on consumerism and product, the fashion industry, film, makeup, trends, advertising or role models?

After much deliberation, I have chosen to focus on female fashion trends and icons in relation to gender roles within the film industry, as this is where my research is headed. Keeping this in mind as a theme may start to help me navigate my way through the essay a bit better. This is also a subject I am very interested in and feel that I could produce some interesting visuals from it.

Fashion Influence/Product

I am trying to focus my practical responses a bit more as I am nearly on the second side of the concertina. I briefly thought about product and the influences of celebrity on consumers, however as I progress and research more for my essay I realise that I am most interested in the styles and trends that people follow within the fashion industry. For now, I want to research more around this - linking to male gaze, and see what I can find out and move forward with.

Study Task 7

Study Task 6 - Development

Women in Suits - Clothes for boys, clothes for girls

Women increasingly wore trousers as leisurewear in the 1920s and 30s. In the early 20th century female pilots and other working women often wore trousers. Actresses Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn were often photographed in trousers from the 1930s.

I did a quick illustration inspired by Marlene Dietrich. She was one of the first women to wear trousers on screen, which helped to set a trend along with women's rights to work in everyday life. Similarly, today there are many women, for example Angelina Jolie, who work in the film/television industry that honour this idea, instead of following the traditional standards of wearing a traditional dress to a red carpet event, will join the men in wearing a suit. This is a demonstration of empowerment as the very notion of a suit conjures up associations of being 'the boss' or someone very important.

Key Text - Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey

Notes from Text

• 'Demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form' - The patriarchy is the basis of how film is made.
• 'the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer, not maker of meaning' - Women are there to support the role of the man.
• 'associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to controlling and curious gaze' - Freud.
• 'conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world' - Male fantasies, safe.
• 'In reality the fantasy world of the screen is subject to the law which produces it'.
• 'Woman as Icon'.
• 'She is isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualised'.
• 'But as the narrative progresses she falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property, losing her outward glamorous characteristics, her generalised sexuality, her show-girl connotations... subjected to the male star alone' - Association through the male.

Further Notes

• 'Stars provide a focus or centre both to screen space and screen story where they act out a complex process of likeness and difference (the glamorous impersonates the ordinary' - Examples of identifying, role models.
• 'plays to an signifies male desire' - Pin ups and strip tease.
• 'Mainstream film neatly combines spectacle and narrative'.
• on Hollywood film... 'it always restricted itself to a formal mise en scène, reflecting the dominant ideological concept of cinema' - follows the trends of the time.
• 'the alternative cinema provides a space for the birth of a cinema which is radical in both a political and an aesthetic sense and challenges the basic assumptions of the mainstream film'.
• 'A politically and aesthetically avant-garde cinema is now possible'.
• 'Unchallenged, mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order' - Mainstream film.
• 'the central place of the image is the woman... analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it'.
• 'The conventions of mainstream film focus attention on the human form'.
• 'She is one, or rather the love or fear she inspires the hero... In herself the woman has not the slightest importance'.
• On showing one part of the female body (camera angles)... 'it gives flatness, the quality of a cut-out or icon, rather than verisimilitude, to the screen'.
• 'physical structures... the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification'.
• 'structuring the film around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify'.
• 'In contrast to a woman as icon the active male figure (the ego ideal of the identification process) demands a three-dimensional space corresponding to that of the mirror recognition'.
• 'The male protagonist is free to command the stage'.

Role Model Case Study - Beyonce

https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/460282024389687965/

A prime example of a contemporary feminist working within the media is Beyonce. She is an active feminist with many references to her own stand point evident within her songs. As well as this, she exudes a general presence of power and fierceness, which in my opinion isn't apparent enough for females within the entertainment industry.

Songs that focus on female issues/empowerment

(there are too many to name, but here some examples)

Pretty Hurts - Aesthetic expectations

If I were a boy - Male/Female gender roles

Run the world - Female empowerment

Single Ladies - Solidarity

Flawless - Includes quote from Ted Talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc

We should all be feminists | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | TEDxEuston 

We teach girls to shrink themselves to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, ‘You can have ambition but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful otherwise you will threaten the man.’ Because I am female I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. A marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support, but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors, not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they can not be sexual beings in the way that boys are. Feminist: A person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes

Literally every song on the Lemonade Album - Female empowerment

Powerful Women - Collage

This is the starting point in my visual journal to explore ways in which women have made it to the top, often working in male dominated industries (from researching into role models). Finally I have found something that really interests me and that I want to make work from.

I want to start to develop this idea further, to work more for advertising/campaigning for equality (based around collage and fashion), piecing things together using images of powerful women.

Changing Fashion

http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/g4201/famous-feminists-throughout-history/?slide=24

Marlene Dietrich

Coco Chanel

Diane Von Furstenberg

My research so far has led me to this point, looking at women who have started to make a change in regards to how women present themselves. Even now, if someone draws a woman, they would more than likely be wearing a dress. However, as we know, this is not a real representation of how women dress today. We have more choices. Thanks to people like Coco Chanel, it is now acceptable and normal to wear jeans/trousers rather than a dress, a woman is not judged by whether or not they decided to wear a dress that day!

Role Model Case Study - Elizabeth Garret Anderson

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/garrett_anderson_elizabeth.shtml

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was an English physician and suffragette, the first woman to qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon.

After school she was expected to marry well and live the life of a lady. However meetings with the feminist Emily Davies and Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman physician, convinced Elizabeth Garrett that she should become a doctor.

In 1872, Anderson founded the New Hospital for Women in London (later renamed after its founder), staffed entirely by women. Anderson appointed her mentor, Elizabeth Blackwell, as the professor of gynaecology there.

Anderson's determination paved the way for other women, and in 1876 an act was passed permitting women to enter the medical professions. In 1883, Anderson was appointed dean of the London School of Medicine for Women, which she had helped to found in 1874, and oversaw its expansion.

Role Model Case Study - Female Pioneers

I did some research into women who are not necessarily 'celebrities' but have made a huge contribution in paving the way for gender equality as well as achieving so much in their lives. In my mind, people like this are the best kind of role model, especially for young girls who are constantly bombarded with media images of what an 'ideal' woman is.

https://www.biography.com

Marie Curie

Chemist and physicist Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903, for her work on radiation.

http://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Edith-Wharton.jpg

Edith Wharton

First to be awarded the distinguished Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921 for her novel The Age of Innocence.

http://resources2.news.com.au

Kay Cottee

The first female sailor to perform a single-handed, non-stop circumnavigation of the world. It took 189 days.

http://prod-upp-image-read.ft.com/b8649f28-6139-11e3-916e-00144feabdc0

Malala Yousafzai

19 year old Pakistani Activist.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk

Serena Williams

Athlete with a record number of Olympic gold medals.

Role Models & Fashion
I want to link the idea of a role model to the fashion expectations in society today. Clothing can be an expression of identity, but often the role models within fashion are not encouraging especially for young girls. Using these kind of examples to promote garments would be a much better way of setting a good example - maybe even changing the way society views appearance. I want to explore how this could be achieved in my visual journal.

Feminist Activists

Who are the best role models for young girls?

I have started to look at Female Feminist Activists. People I believe would make better role models in the media than the celebrities constantly bombarding it at the moment. I want to explore individual stories in relation to the inspiration they could provide for young girls, rather than concerning them with outward appearance. Maybe making campaign-like imagery, linking quotes with images and exploring how to encourage people to aspire to be someone who is not just labelled for their looks.

Lingerie - Her or Him?

Making women's underwear 'pretty' or 'sexy' - floral patterns.

Whilst experimenting in my sketchbook, I thought about the very notion of wearing 'sexy' underwear. Men don't really have much of an expectation to wear anything special, however women do - even if it's just to wear a bra and pants that match. There is such a range and even shops dedicated to women's underwear.

Ann Summers is probably the most well known shop of this kind in the UK. I had a look on their website to see what kind of imagery I could find. As I expected, women are the primary focus of the sales. The question that comes to mind for me is - Are these images a demonstration of empowerment of women, women controlling their own sexuality or just playing in to the hands of a patriarchal society?

In my opinion, I think to buy lingerie is an empowerment, presumably you wouldn't buy it if you didn't want to wear it. The problem within the fashion industry is that it tries to pressure people in to conforming to what they label as 'sexy'.

Looking through the site I came across some tip pages. It mentioned corsets which made me think about how long women have been changing their appearance, through fashion choices, stemming from the desires of men and what they find attractive. And in some cases, suffering in the process! I am sure corsets aren't much fun to wear at all.

Today's Values

Some may argue that the privileged lifestyle we are now accustomed to has made us shallow. We are now so concerned with the outward appearance and superficiality within society that we forget about the things that really matter, things people are still fighting for all over the world every day. The Suffragettes were too concerned with making sure our generation had a women's vote to worry about their own appearance.