Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
¶ … popular film and a work of art? It is often said that popular films simply recycle cliches while works of art show audiences new ways of looking at the world. This is particularly true in regards to gender. Popular films recycle conventional narratives about women pining for love, about the sexually voracious men who cannot commit, and women who patiently bear their husband's or lover's adultery. However, three groundbreaking films -- She's Gotta Have It (1986) directed by Spike Lee, Vagabond (1985) directed by Agnes Varda, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) directed by Pedro Almodovar -- invert rather than restate such cinematic stereotypes.
Spike Lee's film She's Gotta Have It has often been called a feminist film. The central protagonist, Nola Darling, wants a sexually independent lifestyle despite the pressures to commit from the men in her life. Nola is pursued by three men: the gentle and kind Jamie Overstreet, the handsome Greer Childs, and the childish Mars Blackmon. Each man represents a different need, a different side of Nola's character....
Nola refuses to choose between the three of them because she wants sensitivity, a man who can please her sexually, and also wants to have fun.
Nola wants 'the whole package' of the perfect man, and will not confine herself to a single boyfriend until she can find her ideal. Instead of the conventional positioning of the commitment-phobic man who is pursued by several women, Lee depicts a woman who wants to own her sexuality and refuses to allow her identity to be contained. Her sexuality is not shown as voracious, rather it is normal. It makes the men in her life insecure because they wish to possess her and secretly suspect that they may be more emotionally as well as sexually needy than the confident Nola.
However, Vagabond shows the darker side of female independence and a refusal to be connected to a community. Of course, Nola, despite her determination to 'have it' from three men is still part of an extended network of…
Works Cited
She's Gotta Have It. Directed by Spike Lee, 1986.
Vagabond. Directed by Agnes Varda, 1985.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Directed by Pedro Almodovar, 1988.
Their methods, however -- regicide, then more murders to cover up the first one, and finally a desperate civil war in an attempt to kill the throne -- are not exactly worthy of nobility. All prophecies are eventually fulfilled; though Macbeth reigns as king, his line ends with him. Are Shakespeare's witches symbolic or real? Though tempting to interpret the witches as a sort of symbolic force, there can be little
Popular Cultures and Humanities Popular Cultures and the Humanities Modern trends keep changing and their length of time within the society depends on a lot of factors. Of most significance here is how these trends turn from oblivion into being trends. The contemporary society has a lot of idol worship. This comes in the form of people identifying a figure that they identify with and try to do things like them, this
Arts and Humanities in Rosseau's Second Discourse And Other Pieces Of Work Arts and Humanities in Rousseau's Second Discourse and other Pieces of Work In the second discourse, Rousseau changes progress and decries imprisoning in men, in a fabricated logic of civilization. Rousseau uses striking language, "the sciences, letters and arts….." However, he believes that the new arts and sciences portray the appearance but not the reality of virtue, which he believes
Movie Accounting An analysis is done of the accounting methods employed in the world of glitz, glamour, fame and money in other words the movie industry to assess the increasing disparity between the techniques adopted by them to arrive at the financial statement figures as opposed to those stated in the "Generally Accepted Accounting Practices." The standards and regulations of the accounting world have been twisted to give them an entirely different
Popular Film Cultures Have Propelled Civil and Social Rights Culture is referred as shared interaction, patterns, cognitive constructs, behaviors as well as effective understanding learned through socialization and transferred from one generation to the other. In the United States and outside the United States, films have become a powerful tool to transmit cultures. In 2009, there were more than 6.8 billion films released compared to the world population that was roughly
Similarly, the phases of the image evolves from art reflecting basic reality, through three progressive stages that culminate in art that has no relation to reality at all. The same happens with utopian and science fiction writing. The first stage requires no such writing, as the world is viewed as utopian in its current state. The second stage recognizes the world as imperfect, and compensates for this by means of