Gone with the Wind

This weekend I watched Gone with the Wind, a romance movie adapted from the novel by Margaret Mitchell. This movie is set during the Civil War. It centers on the life of a young southern belle name Scarlett O’Hara. She is naive and selfish and a famous anti-hero of film. Scarlett lives a wealthy lifestyle, growing up in the family plantation named Tara. She is forced to mature quickly as the North declares war against the South. Scarlett assists as a nurse during the war and then works on her hands and knees trying to farm Tara without her slaves. This is when she states the famous quote:

“As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me.
I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill.
As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.”

Scarlett soon realizes that the only power she holds in the world is the ability to control men.

Scarlett marries three times in the movie, the first out of jealousy. She discovers that her true love Ashley Wilkes is to marry her friend Melanie, and marries a man she cares nothing for in retaliation. Her second marriage is one of necessity. Scarlett it to lose Tara to tax collectors. She marries a family friend who has money in order to save her plantation. This husband dies in a fight defending her honor. Her third husband is Rhett Butler. Scarlett loves Rhett more than she is capable of understanding. He cares for her deeply. He states that “I love you. Because we're alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names.” However, the loss of their daughter Bonnie and the buried but present feelings she has for Ashley doom their relationship. This changes only when Melanie dies leaving Ashley to Scarlett. Rhett leaves Scarlett without a future exclaiming "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.” Then and only then does Scarlett understand what Rhett means to her.

Gone with the Wind is plagued with racial, gender and economic stereotypes. The most obvious are the overt racial stereotypes in the slave characters. Mammy is a caring motherly figure that watches over the family as though they were her own. Even after the war, she stays caring for the family until the end of the movie. Butterfly McQueen as Prissy (Scarlett’s personal servant) is hard to watch without annoyance. Prissy is depicted as a sniveling frivolous liar, incapable of caring for herself. The movie portrays Prissy as needing the O-Hara family to survive…

Throughout the film, economic status is present in the main character’s lives. They remain comfortable even during the war. Scarlett only has a peek into the world of poverty after the war, before marrying her second husband. All of the soldiers are portrayed as poor and uneducated. It is obvious that they are disposable, while Rhett and Ashley were both not. The socialites in the south still throw parties to raise money for the war effort.

Gender stereotypes are present throughout the film as well. Male characters Rhett and Ashley are depicted as noble and loyal, exhibiting bravery throughout the film. Scarlett and Melanie (their counterparts) are depicted as either conniving or helpless. Melanie is portrayed as a sap, who allows everyone to step on her throughout the film. She dies at the end, still thinking all the characters around her were loyal. Scarlett is depicted as a conniving and backstabbing fiend who marries her way into power. I think these two character choices have plagued female roles throughout history. Female actors are often only offered these two roles to choose from.

Although overt gender, economic and racial stereotypes are present throughout Gone with the Wind, it is a corner-stone of American film history and integral to the construction of modern filmic conventions. It is important to take into consideration the time period in which this film is set and also the period in American history that is was produced. This allows one to be critical of the negative aspects of the film, while still enjoying it as a masterpiece!

Niki

Grandma's Boy

Grandma's Boy is a comedy about a video gaming tester. In the beginning it starts out with Alex getting evicted from his apartment. He decides to move in with his friend Jeff, but is then caught masturbating to an action figure doll in-front of Jeff's mom. He is then forced to move in with his grandma and her two roommates who watch Antiques Roadshow all day. Meanwhile at work he tells everyone that he has moved in with 3 attractive women who keep him up all night. This would have worked if his grandmother had not shown up to his job to drop off lunch. While at work he is supposed to be finishing testing a game, but is not able to do so because his television is being taken up by his grandmother and roommates. He also is working on his own game which one of the game creators, JP, decides to steal. The only problem is that his grandma has played the game and then wins against JP in a game off.

The director plays with gender because a woman is hired at a video game testing place and video games are seen as a man's type of game. Race is not really an issue in the movie because there are no references to it. Sex on the other hand like gender is definitely played up on.

--Samantha

Anchorman

Anchorman, is one of my favorite movies of all time.  I know that it is the slapstick type of comedy, but just something about it's originality does something for me.  I just finished watching it this morning and I could hardly stop laughing.  It becomes so much better every time I watch it just because of the unforgettable quotes that are in it.  If you are unfamiliar with this movie, it's about a anchorman/ his news team in the 70's and they are on top of the news world until a women who defies the rule that an women can't be in the news room.  From there their there world comes crumbleing down till they have nothing left, then it becomes a story of redemption which is spelled R.O.N. 

Cameron Krones

10 Things I Hate About You

Hi, my name is Samantha Meyer and I am currently a freshmen here at SIU. I plan on studying fashion design and merchandising. Obviously I have a love of fashion and shopping, but I also enjoy gymnastics and playing tennis occasionally. In the movie 10 Things I Hate About You I found that there are many stereotypes especially the cliques in the typical 90s teen movie.

In 10 Things I Hate About You it starts out with Cameron "the new kid" being shown around by Michael "the geek." He is showing all the cliques that would be in a high school. While Michael is showing him all the cliques Cameron sees "the it girl" of the school Bianca. He instantly needs to have her and will do anything to have her. Since Michael knows all the groups he ends up helping Cameron try to get Bianca. The only problem is that Bianca is not allowed to date because her sister Kat wont date. So it become this whole web of lie that all come out in the end. But like a typical Romantic movie everyone ends up with someone they wanted in the end.

The director showed all the stereotypes of a high school, yet some were in an exagerated way. The way class is shown in the movie is through the sizes of the houses and the high school. These were obviously upper class students. Gender was shown by the way that the people in the movie acted towards the opposite sex. Race was not really an issue in the movie because they were mostly the same race or if they weren't they were of the same social class so it didn't matter what their race would be.

Quarantine

Before I start to discuss my first movie, I will tell you a little about myself. My name is Niki Habbe. I’m a senior at SIU, graduating this semester with a degree in Psychology. My interest in human nature plays an important role when I watch and analyze movies. I tend to concentrate more prevalently on the characters of the film, and how the character choices that are made for each actor effects the plot. I will pay specific attention to how gender, race and economic status are portrayed through the characters in each film.

I watched Quarantine, a horror movie. The plot of this movie is that a cameraman and reporter shadow firemen to a call about a sick lady. Once inside the apartment complex, it becomes obvious that there is a rabies-like infection spreading through the occupants. All of the characters are sealed inside (quarantined) and they proceed to one by one become infected and kill each other.

Quarantine was filmed through the eyes of a cameraman character. This style of horror film became popular after The Blaire Witch Project was released. It is indented to make viewers feel uneasy, as their view of the movie is usually somewhat limited. This was the case in Quarantine. The cameraman’s light flashed on and off, often with zombie-like people popping out to grab the actors.

I felt that this movie exhibits many of the stereotypes that horror films are prone to. The majority of the film took place in a low-income apartment complex. No one seems to care that the lives of these occupants will be lost if the quarantine continues. Many of the occupants die quickly because they do not speak English. These characters are made to seem stupid, as if they wouldn’t understand to run if someone was trying to eat them… The reporter in this movie was a young, pretty female. She was incapable of making decisions without the help of a fireman or her cameraman. Her feebleness resulted in the deaths of many of the other characters. I also felt that racial stereotypes were prominent in the policeman character. He was conveyed as the “angry black man” whose rash decisions and disregard for the other people quarantined resulted in many deaths.

I think that until horror movies can move past using gender, racial and economic stereotypes, that the genre will continue to release films that viewers are disappointed after seeing.