Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

G.I. Jane (1997)

The recent film G.I. Jane (1997), directed by Ridley Scott, combines the familiar with the supposedly daring. On the one hand, this is the familiar story of a military recruit working through the rigors of training. On the other, the film wants to be seen as daring and controversial because the main character is a woman fighting to be accepted in a male military unit. The film seeks to be consciously feminist in that is represents the female as more than just something "to be looked at." However, the film may wish to challenge traditional stereotypes, but in its own way it merely creates a new one. The film fails in its intent because it is dealing not with real people and issues but with stereotypes at every level, and it substitutes several male film stereotypes for the prevailing female stereotypes or merges the two into a new combined stereotype.

There is one way in which the film itself both challenges a prevailing female stereotype while at the same time giving in to the creation of a new one. The conventional wisdom in Hollywood holds that only male stars can bring people into movie theaters, and this is reflected in the number of films with male leads that are made as opposed to those with female leads. It is also reflected in the types of films that are made--action films predominate over any other genre--and in the salaries paid to the stars--male stars earn considerably more than female stars. It was not always this way, and indeed female stars were a vital mainstay in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. Today, Hollywood believes that female stars can bring audiences into theaters only rarely, and the truth is that this has become another self-fulfilling prophecy as decisions as to what films are made are based on this maxim, after which the maxim is reinforced by the fact that all the successful films star males while the few female-starring films have fallen by the wayside. Here we have a film which features a ...

Page 1 of 6 Next >

More on G.I. Jane (1997)...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
G.I. Jane (1997). (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:23, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1693171.html