About gender in film

G'day!

This could appear to you as a bit of odd post. A mixture of societal anger and philosophical curiosity. But sometimes I think stuff like this and my blog is about 50% about stuff I think about (3 abouts in one sentence! Success!), the other 50% being about stuff that happens to me. So... Expect more of these sometime in the future.

This is going to be a difficult subject to handle. After all: we are raised into our genders since childhood and it's perhaps one of the strongest identification points in ourselves.
Anyway, I'm just going to scratch the surface here. Gender roles go way back and I'm not really a professional in this. But... the subject came up today and I feel like talking of it. Even though I have talked about it many times before. Perhaps I write more about it someday.

People are different and unique in their own right and regardless of the gender. However it seems that men have much broader scale to express themselves within. This is best exemplified by how women are represented in films.
A few months back I was attending to a lecture about film industry and its relation to other aspects of culture. One of those other aspects was gender. In films, most women fall into few categories:
(I can't remember them all now, but I'll update as soon as I get my hands on my notes)
1. The Love Interest / The Sex Object
2. The Femme Fatale
3. The Loving and Wise Mother
4. The Innocent Child / The Cutie
5. The Big Momma

Of course there are exceptions, like Sarah Connor in Terminator or Ellen Ripley in Alien. But could we categorize all the male roles in films into 4-7 roles? I doubt it. We'd need about 20, at least.
Let's try. Here's all the roles for men I care to remember at the moment.

1. The Heroic Hero
2. The Tragic Hero
3. The Villain
4. The Comic Relief
5. The Boss
6. The Traitor
7. The Coward
8. The Mastermind / The Scientist
9. The Brawn
10. The Mentor
11. The Rival
12. The Father
13. The Ladies Man
14. The Smart Mouth Kid
...
And so forth.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jpmoore/men-ups-manly-men-in-classic-pin-up-poses

Rise to equality is difficult process. To overcome old societal differences between genders while minding the genetic differences. To achieve this we should pay more attention to the ways society subconsciously alters our perception of men and women. Like the roles women play to us and how they are represented. These are in a way more dangerous differences than the more tangible ones, because our "defenses" aren't up. We take it as it is.

When I studied to matriculation examination I read a comic book about philosophers. I liked it. But the ending was truly surprising. The book basically said that everything you've read so far has been from the perspective of men. Almost all great philosophers are men, they inspected the world from their manly point of view, and some of them even disliked women and doubted their intellectual ability. There have been great female thinkers as well, but they have been knowingly pushed aside by their male counterparts. So, congratulations! You've read a comic book about philosophers of history, but know shit as all of it is compromised by peers and historians lynching the thinkers representing the other 50% of the people because of their gender.

I fucking loved the ending.

J

A lovely song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj5RUNLQBQE