For my assignment within my second year of university, Film and screen cultures module we had to pick out a particular film that would be classed as a two tier film and that we can analysis using film theories and also write a proposal on for this assignment. I looked into several different films that I could write about that include different elements that would relate back to different aspects that I could go into depth about.

There were a lot of potential films that I could have look further into and I will eventually analyse however when it came to this particular proposal I wanted to narrow down the selection to films I both enjoy and would be able to analyse using aspects from the lectures in my course.

One of the films I was going to write about before I picked out the final film was an animated film called ‘Over the Moon’ directed by Glen Keane. This film has a range of representation from (found) family to grieving and loss to Chinese and Asian representation which is shown with unique codes and conventions as well as the use of colour/lighting to create specific moods. However, it was not the type of film that I thought I could go far into depth with when it came to the theories and aspects that we have currently been studying.

As these two films had a lot of elements that are fascinating and would allow the films to be classed as a two tier film and involves a range of different representation and aspects of industrial modes of representation I would love to try and analyse these both more in depth in the future.

My other and future analyses that I do during my time at university I will poster her:

Little Women

The film I decided to go with at the end was 2019’s version of Little Women directed by Greta Gerwig. A Sony and Columbia Pictures film set in 1860s telling the story of family, love and loss.

The film even demonstrates how women view themselves during this time in society, this is shown more within the present setting in the film when the character of Amy interacts with the character Theodore and she explains how she has to marry rich to survive but it would result in her basically being the property of the man. So, when I fully analyse this film I will look further into these types of moments and see how her character and society link to different film theories.

My First proposal draft for Film and Screen cultures:

For my proposal of analysing a 2 tiered film, I chose to write about 2019’s version of ‘Little Women’, which is set in 19th century centres around 4 sisters and their stories. This has a heavy portrayal of representation of women and men within this time period and how women are viewed and present themselves. Women within this are represented as elegant through their clothing and each of the sisters personality shows within the different aspects of the film, especially through how they dress an example of this would be the character Amy who dresses in big elegant dresses to show try to show of class compared to her sister Joe who dresses more casually and comfortable.

The women are represented in different ways within the film using the men and society as a way to demonstrate how women are treated as a means of nurture, this is especially shown through the mothers character and these aspects of the film fall into Mulvey’s narrative theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ and how women in film and for the audience are put within film for the viewing pleasure of men. The film demonstrated this idea at different point using some IMR rules to enhance this. An example of this is when the camera is on Joe and the lighting is warm and the camera follows Joe. Throughout the film the lighting clearly switches to indicate the idea of the present and the past as its been written through the perspective of Joe the idea that this is written is shown more towards the end of the film where Joe’s character experiences loss and grief and ends up writing down her life for her sister. This is a clever way ending the film as though it were written, which is suggested that it is fiction through the use of the lighting and how the last couple scenes are presented, that she gives the audience this romantic falls in love with a guy ending to please the view which ends up falling under the notion that Mulvey puts across of Women having to end up with a man in the end (or die) so that the men have this view of control.

With analysing this film I will talk about how this film can be classed as both a 1st tier film and a 2nd tier film depending on how the audience is viewing it and along with this I will look into the IMR and how the film follows a lot of the classical Hollywood style of film. Analysing this will also allow me to see what kind of elements the film could lack and how the author and film uses the common ideology’s of how people view women/feminine presenting people (especially in this time period) to create this idea of a perfect ending.

Watching this film from a two tier perspective allowed me to analysis how the plot line and the way it is produced and uses the rules of IMR and the idea of scopophilia is used both for the audience and with the male characters when it comes to their perspective of the women within the film.

Within the film the women are often shown a beautiful and graceful, especially within the dance scenes, however we do see a side to the women of more personality which doesn’t specifically fall into Murvey’s theory however at the end it still has a lot of moments where the characters are evolved around men. So when I go into a more in-depth look at these different theory concepts and representation within the film Little Women I can approach each of these different theories and aspects in detail with different aspects of the film.

My Annotated bibliography:

Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema PDF. https://files.coventry.aula.education/e091c215d45b33f6eddf7e8d1a4d717dlaura_mulvey_visual_pleasure_and_narrative_cinema.pdf

This book is written by Laura Mulvey who did a feminists perspective of film narrative and IMR. She theorises about how cinema is shown through the ‘male gaze’. Mulvey believes that within cinema women are often shown within the perspective of a heterosexual man.

Within normal old cinema there is a patriarchal ideology where women are viewed as objects for men visual pleasure, this is shown within Hollywood style of film.
Mulvey believes there are 3 gazes: scopophilia, voyeurism and narcissistic.
‘Women as image, men as barer of the look’ shows that Mulvey believes that within cinema women are represented through a way that a man would want to see. Murvel suggests that women are either shown as passive and men are more active when it comes to the gaze of women in narrative cinema.

Burch, N. (1979). Film’s Institutional Mode of Representation and the Soviet Response. The MIT Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/778236

Noel Burch wrote about the making of cinema, and how by the 1940s the cultural ascendancy of narrative cinema was complete. This book goes into how Vertov and Eisenstein developed two different forms of cinema and only one was hugely popular due to the demographic of people who had access to watching film, which then will develop into the Classic Hollywood Narrative that we see in cinema today.

Noel Burch talked about how camera shots were developed and made, as well as lighting, montage and editing put together this Hollywood industry style of film making. How a lot of these elements are meant to be invisible and almost natural to the audience watching, this was part of the development of IMR roles that Noel talks about within the book.

Carroll, N. (1982). The Future of Allusion: Hollywood in the Seventies (And beyond). The MIT Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/778606

This book covers how the language of sixties films is constructed and how there have been changes of the nature of Hollywood symbol systems. This book goes into depth about what allusions are and how they are involved within different films.The book mainly goes into the old vs new on the language of film and the elements that make up film such as genres as symbols. Carroll also goes into how the two-tier model was constructed and what the two-tier model can involve within Hollywood illusionism. Carroll talked about within two-tier film are successful due to being able to create a mass audience and still manages to communicate different messages to select groups who would understand subtleties and Carroll goes into depth on this and how it applies to older films from the 60s/70s.

A Word Doc Version of the first draft: (For my Lecturer only, editing allowed)

Film proposal and Annotated biblography.docx

PDF Version (Public):

Film proposal and Annotated biblography.pdf

Finalising my proposal draft for Film and Screen cultures:

For this proposal of analysing a two-tiered film I chose to write about ‘Little Women’ which is set within the 19th century centring around four sisters and their stories. This film has a heavy portrayal of men and women and how they are viewed and present themselves within this time period. Women within this are represented as elegant and feminine through the women’s attitude towards men and the way they dress, this can indicate the class of the women and the men.   

When I analysis this film in full I will look further into moments in the film that involve intertextuality and blank parody within this film. The film could be reference and compare to both the book and other version of the film which demonstrates similar aspects but has many differences however still manages to create a similar effect to each other. The film as several aspects of intertextuality and relies on nostalgia, the imperfect memory of humans and postmodern feminism.

Within this I would look further into how Gerwig decided to structure the film and uses tone when jumping back and forth between the different presents and parts and how she cleverly uses parallels or transitions throughout the film to do this smoothly.  Along with this I would look into how the choice of actresses effect the performance and could contribute to the theory of Mulvey such as the four different sisters presenting themselves as four different archetypes of femininity by each presenting different aspects of how people view women such as Meg gets married and has children whereas Beth is fragile and weak, this follows Mulvey’s  ‘bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning’ (Mulvey, 1975) and is suggested by several theorists that due to the absence of the father and their relationship with their mother could’ve had an effect on each of the women. The women are represented in different ways using men and society as a way to demonstrate how women are treated as a means of nurture, this is especially shown through the mother’s character and these aspects of the film fall into Mulvey’s narrative theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ and how women in film and for the audience are put within film for the viewing pleasure of men.

There are different points where using some IMR rules to enhance Mulvey’s theory. Examples of this is when the camera is on Joe, the lighting is warm, and the camera follows Joe. Throughout the film the lighting switches to indicate the idea of the present and the past as it’s been written through the perspective of Joe (which carries throughout the film and shows a lot of her emotions and experiences), the idea that this is written is shown more towards the end of the film where Joe’s character experiences loss and grief and ends up writing down her life for her sister. This is a clever way of ending the film as though it were written, which is suggested that it is fiction through the use of the lighting and how the last couple scenes are presented, that she gives the audience this romantic ideology of her falling in love with a guy to please the reader which ends up falling under the notion that Mulvey puts across of Women having to end up with a man in the end (or die) so that the men have this view of control.  

With analysing this film, I will talk about how this film can be classed as both a 1st tier film and a 2nd tier film depending on how the audience is viewing it and I will look into the IMR and how the film follows a lot of the classical Hollywood style of film. Analysing this will also allow me to see what kind of elements the film could lack and how the author and film uses the common ideologies of how people view women/feminine presenting people (especially in this time period) to create this idea of a perfect ending.  

Watching this film from a two-tier perspective allowed me to analysis how the plot line and the way it is produced and uses the rules of IMR and the idea of scopophilia is used both for the audience and with the male characters when it comes to their perspective of the women. The women are often shown as beautiful/graceful however we do see a side to the women’s personality which doesn’t specifically fall into Murvey’s theory and could fall under William’s theory, however at the end it still has a lot of moments where the characters are evolved around men.  

I noticed how the film uses the idea of the 4^th look (surrounding Mulvey) at the end as it grabs the audience’s attention and makes them very aware of their surroundings due to how the ending sequence took place and how cleverly it was designed to make the audience question whether this was reality or not which really enhances the 1^st look due to how the audience watches the film.  

So, when I go into writing a full analysis of this film, I will look more in-depth at these different theory concepts and representation within the film Little Women, I can approach each of these different theories in detail with different aspects of the film. 

The Word Document Version (For my Lecturer only):

Little Women Proposal for Film and Screen cultures.docx

The PDF (public):

Little Women Proposal for Film and Screen cultures.pdf

Finalising the Proposal:

The Word Document Version (For my Lecturer only):

Final Little Women Proposal for Film and Screen cultures.docx

The PDF (public):

Final Little Women Proposal for Film and Screen cultures.pdf

REFERENCES:

Bradshaw, P. (2021, June 3). Little Women (Sony/Columbia Pictures) Review. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/25/little-women-review-greta-gerwig-saoirse-ronan-emma-watson

Burch, N. (1979). Film’s Institutional Mode of Representation and the Soviet Response. The MIT Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/778236

Carroll, N. (1982). The Future of Allusion: Hollywood in the Seventies (And beyond). The MIT Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/778606

Hooks, B. (1992). The Oppositional Gaze. Oppositional Gaze. https://files.coventry.aula.education/21beb43df1ef379f2ce1e816de928bbbhooks_oppositional_gaze.pdf

Jameson, Willemen, & Dixon, W. W. (1995). It looks at You: The return gaze of cinema/video reception. State University of New York Press. https://files.coventry.aula.education/94d1c2662db86a8a9bc477acf247c7abit_looks_at_you_chapter_one_.pdf

le Saux AFC, Y. (2021, June 1). Yorick Le Saux AFC / Little Women. British Cinematographer, Yorick Le Saux AFC. https://britishcinematographer.co.uk/yorick-le-saux-afc-little-women/

Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema PDF. https://files.coventry.aula.education/e091c215d45b33f6eddf7e8d1a4d717dlaura_mulvey_visual_pleasure_and_narrative_cinema.pdf

Williams, L. (2001). When the woman looks. Routledge. https://files.coventry.aula.education/d19c1904f5571d02b1bcaf1e02cb484fwilliams_womanlooks.pdf

Willemen, P., & Goldsmith, B. (1998). To Be Outside and In-Between, Essay On Looks and Frictions: Essays in Cultural Studies and Film Theory. Film-Philosophy 2.1. https://files.coventry.aula.education/0f4de2ecf2d1c34f0d587d8cb8fee2b2essay_on_willemen.pdf

Film Notes:

When watching the film I thought about how this film plays into the theory of Mulvey’s ‘Male Gaze’ due to the fact that this film centres around the portrayal of women and often demonstrates the idea of women having to be married or dead to have successful life which is something that Mulvey stated when it came to film as it ends with men in control of the women, even if the film portrays each women as intelligent with bold personalities.

Typically within film men tend to subtly either objectify, belittle or sexualise women in some form either as control or to be the main protagonist, an example of this is when the main male character, Theodore, confesses his love to Joe (the scene below) he try’s to convince her to love him and get married to him despite it not being what she wants and he talks about how it’s expected of them as though she wouldn’t have a say in the matter even though in this situation she did and rejected him this mentality continues throughout the storyline of women having to marry to have some form of success.