Analysis film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Analysis film - Essay Example It is the male that is expected to go to school to provide for the family which is very common among patriarchal families. The female gaze in the film Real Women Have Curves may not have a sexual connotation of looking down at women as mere sex objects but it still bore traditional thinking and relegation of women to be subjects of their family, husband and community. It is imposed on women albeit in the film it was not imposed by a male figure but Ana’s mother played a surrogate male figure of subjecting Ana to gender roles of being domesticated and not to aspire too much. This kind of female gaze that is associated with gender oppression is Laura Mulvey in her work "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema† where the concept of gaze and its dynamics is said to be a manifestation of imbalance of power between the male and the female where the male dominates the female. There may be no dominant male figure in the film but gender oppression was imposed on Ana by making her work in a sweatshop instead of pursuing her dream of going to college. In the film, Ana’s mother played a substitute â€Å"male gaze† because she imposes on Ana the traditional male oriented patriarchal values of not getting an education. This is evident in Mulvey’s theory which Freudian in origin where she â€Å"breaks scopophilia down into an active part, which is always  male, and a passive part, which is always female. Women are the objects that are looked† (Finzsch). In Mulvey’s male gaze, the male’s patriarchal role is extended to the film where the male imposes a hegemonic gaze to Ana as a subject of family to do their wishes even against her will or own ambition. This produces an imbalance relationship as women are reduced to an object of two distinct modes of male gaze where they became Madonna’s in male perspective (voyeuristic) or whores (fetishistic) or in this case, a