Hollywood's Portrayal of Women

The images of women in films reflect Hollywood's preoccupation with and fear of women, as well as that of American society at large. Hollywood has portrayed women in the prescribed roles that it felt comfortable seeing them in but has always maintained a veneer of the artificial that constrained women from expressing their real selves on the screen. From the femme fatale role depicted by Marlene Dietrich, in which woman was mysterious and profound, never to be understood completely, to the bimbo played by Marilyn Monroe, all sensual charm oblivious to what is transpiring around her, women's roles were rarely designed to reveal the real nature of women. They were caricatures that concealed living, breathing women whose true complexities were obscured, distorted, and constrained to fit the mold of the Hollywood stereotypes. Why did Hollywood keep women at arm's length instead of allowing them to open up and reveal what was most alluring about them-their real selves, with all the permutations of character and personality and their depth of soul?

There were several reasons. First, Hollywood had a vested interest in ensuring that their films were profitable, and once a particular type of role had resulted in a box office hit, Hollywood attempted to repeat it as many times as possible to obtain the same results. Like a substance abuse addict, a Hollywood producer would reprise the same plot lines and characters repeatedly, until the distinctions among movies

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ng women not only by making them out to be prostitutes but also by suggesting that they are gold-diggers. Butch Cassidy can be compared and contrasted with Thelma and Louise on several levels. First, both films are primarily road trips. Butch and Sundance are on the road to escape their captors, and Thelma and Louise are on the road to escape the consequences of a murder. Second, while Butch and Sundance are rough and wild men and somewhat disdainful of women, Thelma and Louise are rough and wild women that are disdainful of men. The role reversal is interesting, especially since little more than 20 years separates the two films. Third, Thelma and Louise are buddies in the same sense that Butch and Sundance are, and thus the two movies make possible a comparison of like nature. Fourth, as Christopher Morris points out, although Butch Cassidy ends with Butch and Sundance in freeze-frame, etched forever on the viewer's memory, "Thelma and Louise end their film not as emancipated selves but as ignorant performers playing parts created by the media, parts as banal as the conventions of the western or the monotonous voice of the unwatched television in the desert" (24). Both Butch Cassidy and Thelma and Louise w

Category: Film - H