Women in Film

The history of the American cinema from 1910 until the present illuminates one underlying concept regarding mass media-as the values of the times change so do the images and issues portrayed on the screen. In each decade since the 1910s, the topics, values and kinds of characters portrayed on screen have been a reflection of the social values in each decade. However, while the portrayals on screen come to us in different versions, with different poses, attitudes, styles and reactions, the underlying concepts where the portrayal of women is concerned have not changed a great deal since 1910. Basically, the underlying archetypes of women that were created at the beginning of American cinema are the ones that have remained to this day, albeit they are presented in each decade in different ways with different surface appearances, attitudes and reactions. Traditionally there are three roles women have portrayed in film: women as workers; women as housewives; women as sex-objects (Masavisut, Simson and Smith 181). Yet, underlying these divisions is the continuous portrayal of women, both the good-woman and bad-girl, as being incomplete without the love of a man. This analysis will discuss how the roles of women on film have changed since the beginning of the American cinema, but argue that underneath all the variations of roles there lies the same archetypal portrayals originated nearly o

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factory assembly lines as a perfect role model of the American dream to immigrant women working by their side. The film was David O’Selznick’s Since You Went Away, and, to make the American Dream all the more complete if unrealistic, it featured a loyal and devoted black mammy who could not leave her poor white employer in the lurch out of loyalty and friendship (perhaps a hangover from Selznick’s success with a black mammy in Gone With The Wind), “The dream is made complete by a black mammy cook, who, though the family can no longer afford her, returns each night, after a full day’s work, to provide free housework, comic relief, and consolation. It’s an image of racial unity that provides a fitting capstone to this relentless celebration of home-front USA” (Quart and Auster 19). Of course, we can clearly see that during the 1940s this type of portrayal represented the Girl-Woman type of character who was pure and innocent and enduring. However, the Bad Girls of this era were women like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Mary Astor who played glamorous sophisticated women who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted out of life and from men-even if it meant murder and it often did. These films often portrayed women who were
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Approximate Word count = 2824
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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