Wednesday 2 July 2008

Are the female roles in the film X-men a victory for women or are they still objects of desire?

Hypothesis- This question is about is about the aspects of women that are portrayed in differing ways to the public, which will be part of an independent study that will include lots of binary options that you associate with women for instance smart- dim (like the stereotype of the dim Blondie), beautiful( (the temptress to the male hero) - ugly. What I will attempt to unearth is whether the 21st century version of superhero movies have really changed and developed women roles or if they are and will forever be only casted for desires of the male audience with particular refrence

Summary of topic and texts- I have studied other texts in this genre that are similar to x men 3 like fantastic 4 and cat woman which both have the topic of female empowerment in their respective films

Migrain on trailer
M- lots of fast paced shots and uses of contrasts of light and dark especially in battle scene at the end

I- Marvel known for having a long history of making superhero movies similar to this

G- Action genre or to go further specifically a superhero or superheroes genre, uses lots of connotations to portray that it is indeed an action kind of genre i.e explosions, battles and violence.

R- Represents extra ordinary people as for races only focuses on black or white no sign of any other races among cast

A- Only really targeted at fans of this kind of movie or ones in the past that are similar to these. they are loyal , entuthastics and probably split into 2 groups in terms of age with one being 13-16 year old who are currently fans and the other being 25-35 year old who used to be fans.

I-Violence damage and destruction is seen as a way of life in the movie but no indication that women take back seat or degrading roles based on trailer alone.

N- It follows theory of hero villain etc but in more in depth ways for instance instead of their being one hero their are many and again instead of their being a single dispacther their are multiple ones along quest.

There isn't really a particular theory I'm going to go by into great depth when writing this essay it will be more a mixture and a bit of all the different theories that relate to this topic of discussion.
What i plan to discuss in this is all the factors for each side as to whether the roles of the women in x men really have developed to the extent that they are no longer viewed as sex objects, the research i plan to do is films in the same category at this that have been big hits in the past to see if their is a corresponding pattern of developing women roles. these include weather they make big decisions, physically get involved with stopping the villain or hero and other factors like that.