Critical Investigation 528 words

Critical Investigation

Essay

Investigation into the Representation and Stereotypical Media views of Women in Sport/Martial Arts films.


I will be analyzing two texts, of which consist of two trailers from two Martial Arts/Sport movies. One of which are ‘Dead or Alive’, the movie adaption of the best video game series Dead or Alive, and ‘Million Dollar Baby’ A winner of 4 Oscars. I will be critically viewing differences in how the representations of women are portrayed in these two trailers and the impact the media creates to represent the ideology and view of women. I will also look at the changing roles of women and the way they are newly represented as protagonists in Sport/Martial Arts films. Both narratives in the films of these trailers are different and portray women in different ways.

For the Dead or Alive trailer, the miss-en-scene starts off with a close up shot of a attractive looking woman’s face with the décor being at a well lit, fancy hotel room, The shot changes into her sitting on a swing chair seductively looking at a man in a suit. She slowly pulls on her underwear, with an extreme close up focusing on her upper thighs connoting some sexual desire and lust, a clear tactic to acquire some attention preferably from a male audience; pertaining to ‘The Male Gaze’. According to Laura Mulvey, she states’’ the camera lingers on the curves of the female body and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man’s reaction to those events’’. The film also being an adaption of the bestselling video game series completes the needs of a male audience.
The camera cuts into a long shot view as words are spoken between the two and we are immediately thrown a jolt of excitement as the woman pulls out a gun aiming at the well dressed man. The camera then changes into a high level shot, where the woman performs a fancy fly kick, caused by the force of the woman’s attack the camera angle changes into a bird’s eye view of the business man flown into mid air. Immediately, The woman insists the man to ‘do up her bra strap’, slaving to her demand, the defenceless man does what he is told and is then professionally attacked again by the woman single handily along with another fellow business man. This connotes a sense of power and freedom towards the woman’s representation having total control over not just a man, but two men. This notion of feminine dominance over males isn’t just represented in this film but also in others; such as in many films by Cynthia Rothrock, quoted by the media as ‘The Queen of Martial Arts movies’ where she is portrayed as a protagonist in most of her movies. Her latest martial arts movie Sci-Fighter 2004 and earliest movie being made in 1985 denotes that the roles of women being represented as heroines were valid even 25 years from now. This would go against the concept of Laura Mulvey’s feminist theory; ‘’the concepts of women as objects in media and men as subjects contested in some modern films/adverts today’’, ....