Alice and Anna: The women of ‘Closer’

Type :

Presentation

Pages :

9 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

12/18/2008

Category :

Arts & media

Sub category :

Film studies

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Summary :

Introduction.
1. Feminist film criticism during its glory days.
2. Dominant (Hollywood) cinema.
3. Hollywood cinema's phallocentric undertones.
The eroticization of women on the screen.
The first image presented to the audience at the start of the film Closer.
1. The opening and a very clear indication of the direction the rest of the film takes.
2. Alice and Dan.
3. Anna and Alice as contrasting symbols.
The begining of Alice's story.
Alice's striptease in the context of her relationship.
Alice's character.
The paradox of Alice within the film.
Alice as a sort of tragic and cautionary tale.
The first scene involving Anna.
Conclusion.

Abstract

Feminist film criticism during its glory days focused on three major themes: the objectification of women on the screen, their marginalized role in the narrative, and the effect that movies as a product of popular culture have on that popular culture. These three perspectives, which began to be articulated with the rise of movies in the popular culture in the late nineteen sixties, are still applicable today. E. Ann Kaplan articulates a major cause of the marginalization of women in the cinema in her essay Is the Gaze Male? Dominant (Hollywood) cinema is seen as constructed according to the unconscious patriarchy, which means that film narratives are constituted through a phallocentric language and discourse that parallels the language of the unconscious. women in film, thus, do not function as signifiers for a signified (a real woman) as sociological critics have assumed but signifier and signified have been elided into a sign that represents something in the male unconscious. The reasons she sites for Hollywood cinema's phallocentric undertones follow: first, film has traditionally been a male-dominated field, with male directors and screenwriters producing most of the films that make it into the pop-culture scene. Therefore, the themes that are expressed, by default, are of a distinctly male perspective.