Gender Studies in Cinema.
Since the coming of sound, Hollywood melodramas such as All that Heaven Allows have been relegated to the lowbrow status of “women’s pictures,” due to their stylistic excess and their focus on the emotional suffering of women protagonists like Cary Scott whose desires violate the social norms of the Culture of Domesticity. This optional extra credit assignment provides you with the opportunity to watch a melodrama that subverts the norm by focusing on a male protagonist and offers you the chance to replace one of your lowest quiz or discussion forum grades. Purpose: the purpose of this assignment is to sharpen your ability to synthesize information and apply learned concepts from the fields of cinema and gender studies to a textual analysis. Choose a film to watch from the list below. Then, pick a specific sequence to analyze that address the requirements of the prompt. American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999) -Lester Burnham Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971) -Harry Callahan Love Story (Arthur Hiller and John Korty, 1970) -Oliver Barrett IV Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993) -William Foster The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) -Jack Torrance Prompt: Draw upon your knowledge of castration anxiety, the male gaze and the abject as well as your understanding of the ideology of the Cult of Domesticity to analyze how the film you choose represents masculinity in crisis. A strong piece will draw upon the film for support and will pay particular attention to cinematic elements of mise-en-scéne, cinematography and editing, while weaving in relevant course reading(s) as a way to contextualize information for your reader.