Alfred Hitchcock has a tendency of making pictures that deal with the female role of being submissive. In Psycho Marion Crane steals a massive amount of money and in her escape is stabbed to death by Norman Bates. With the Stealing of the money many feminine roles have been broken but with the stabbing to death she is again dominated by a man. In the end of the film Norman Bates is about to kill Lila Crane when Sam Loomis stops him at the last moment. The idea of Sam stopping Norman�s attack is typical of the classic damsel in distress situation. In Rear Window L.B. Jeffries (Jeff) is left in a cast in his apartment and spies on his neighbors to pass the time. He discovers that one of the neighbors that he has been spying on has killed his wife, and has his girlfriend and nurse investigate for him. This film presents the theme of the male manipulation of the woman, by placing his girlfriend in with investigating the murder in the neighbor�s apartment while he sits in his wheel chair and watches from a distance. These ideals of female behavior have changed in Hitchcock�s films but also kept many of the classic male dominating themes.
It is from the ideas presented on film that people are told what to believe, but there are many social communities that strive to change the way that many view minorities in film. These past few years many people in the general public have complained that not enough African Americans have won awards for their work in the motion picture industry. In the 2002 Academy Awards three awards where given to African Americans, and the following day headlines read that the awards ceremony belonged to the African Americans. This I think is a sad statement that awards are measured by the color of the skin of the recipients. If a community wants more of their members to win awards then more members of there community should make movies. Let us now take a look at a social and community movement in the film industry to catch a better understanding on how minority groups are viewed and treated.
The Feminist Film Movement has been growing in its numbers since before 1969. �In 1972 there were not more than 30-35 feminist film makers; by mid-1976 the number had grown to over 2000.� (Rosenburg) The reason for the sudden increase of the feminist filmmakers is simply the increasing understanding of the movement at younger ages by their role models who shared or practiced the feminist ideals.
Production notes:
Coyote Ugly    Moll Flanders

David McNally: Director   Pen Densham: Director /
Scott Gardenhour: Executive Producer Producer / Screenwriter
Mike Stenson: Executive Producer  Morgan O'Sullivan: Executive Producer
Jerry Bruckheimer: Producer  Richard B. Lewis: Producer
Chad Oman: Producer   John Watson: Producer
Gina Wendkos: Screenwriter

Cruel Intentions   Evita

Roger Kumble: Director / Screenwriter Alan Parker: Director / Producer /
Chris J. Ball: Executive Producer  Screenwriter
Michael Fottrell: Executive Producer Robert Stigwood: Producer
Bruce Mellon: Executive Producer  Andrew G. Vajna: Producer
William Tyrer: Executive Producer  Oliver Stone: Screenwriter
Neal H. Moritz: Producer

When we look at the foretold production notes we will notice a pattern. In a total of thirty-seven film credits only two are women. It should be noted that in the most recent feminist films that where made mainly by men, the women become successes and fight against the male oriented world through their sexuality. By using sex they manipulate men into doing their will. Is this a form of oppression of women in film? Is the fact that men are making movies that are considered to be feminist changing what many think feminism should be? I believe that it does.
    We want a form of propaganda that polarizes, angers, excites,
    for the purpose of discussion-a way of getting at people, not
    by making conscessions to where they are, but by showing them
    where you are and then forcing them to deal with that , bringing
    out all their assumptions, there prejudices, their imperfect precautions.
       (Kramer)
�The story of women in film is primarily a history of how men have presented them� (Erens) With filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder making movies of women being suppressed into the power and will of a masculine figure (Psycho, Rear Window) or films of ditsy women being manipulated into the hands of a man (Some Like it Hot) it is easy to see how female roles in film are looked down on. In horror genre film �utilize disguised eroticism and sexuality and how �desire becomes inseparable from fear.� As victims, women serve sexual objects, weak and vulnerable sacrifices to a horrible monster.� (Erens) Women are not just looked at as sexual objects in much of film but also as �glorified women who were young, beautiful, highly moral, and ready to drop job and glitter for a good man.� (Erens) These classic recipes for the woman�s role have stereotyped her into a gender role in the realm of the film. But at the same time lessons are made if a woman tries to change her position in her role. �In the noir thriller, women often appear as victims of fact or circumstance who frustrate male desire.� (Palmer) The woman in the realm of the film is now oppressed with the rule of the male locked into place. If a woman tries to free herself from the male�s rule, then she may succumb to consequences that she is not prepared to handle. What these characters teach the viewers is that not only is it right for men to be dominate over women, but it is the woman�s duty to obey, or suffer the consequences.
�Feminism because the issue of how individuals recognize themselves as male or female, the demand that they do so, seems to stand in such fundamental relation to the forms of inequality and subordination which it is feminism�s to change.� (Rose)
The duty of the feminist filmmaker is to change the feminine roles that are exposed to the world. If women want to make change in the world of film then more women should become involved with the production process. This however has it�s own dangers involved.
Many men involved in the cinematography industry have looked down on woman. These view points develop from opinions like �Female forms are associated from the very start with beauty and artistic adornment and its contradictory and often dangerous�� to let women be a major part of the production process. (Pietropaolo) An interview with producer and director Kavery Dutta reveals that in her experiences when she would walk into a film lab for equipment the workers would start up with stories of �a neurotic woman who was there last year, a woman who didn�t know what she was doing.� (Miller) Then again when a man would walk into the equipment house they would not trigger stories of such intolerance. Dutta later in her interview points out that the pressure from the male film community places more pressure on the women film makers to succeed.
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