Is There Hope After All?

Lauren Kruger-Patchin
Is There Hope After All?
02/28/2013
Blog #5

Let's think positively today...




A few weeks ago I started a 10-week, independent study course. It is a women's gender studies course. As I read from the textbook and do the classwork, I can't stop thinking about how closely some of the topics relate to our Comm322 course. Both deal with feminism. Both deal with the way women and men are portrayed in the media. Both talk about first, second, and third waves of feminism. There are a lot of similarities between the courses; they complement each other very well, so it benefits me to be taking them at the same time.

The real reason I am bringing this up is because in the WGS course, we are assigned movies to watch that demonstrate feminist acts. Some of the movies are old and some are decently new. This got me thinking... in class we focus on how the media creates so much pressure and determines how men and women should act, but we forget to mention the movies that stand against this.



Mona Lisa Smile (2003) with Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Julia Styles and other big names, was one of the movies assigned in my WGS course. The movie is 10 years old, but uses actresses that still play roles in movies. In Mona Lisa Smile, a free-thinking art professor teaches conservative 50's Wellesley girls to question their traditional societal roles. The professor is supposed to strictly teach from a syllabus that a man made, but the students know all of the material and the professor tries to stray away from it and teach other material. This was a bold move during the 50s. The movie gives great context about that time period and shows the expected roles of men and women, but how some could fight against it. This is one example of how the media helped feminism views.

Another great example of a very recent movie release, not from my WGS course, is The Help (2011.) I personally, LOVE this movie. It brings out great emotion in the view. It's funny, sad, and encouraging all in one movie. When I think of this movie, I think of two parts: 1) Mini don't burn fried chicken, because it was hilarious and cute the way the black woman was helping and teaching the white woman how to cook for her husband; the privileged woman needed to rely on the "lesser" woman 2) When the housekeeper (black female) taught the young, white child "you is kind, you is smart, you is important" because her own parents didn't pay attention to her or properly care for her. The house keeper may not have had the education and proper English, but she was a better parent to the child than the privileged, white parents were. This movie brings up the issue of culture, race and gender in many ways. Even the white, privileged women were expected to stay home while the men worked, whether they had a housekeeper/child care or not. This movie also gives some historical context. The movie description: An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African-American maids' point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.

My point: there may be hope after all. Some parts of the media may send good messages. They show how in the past there were these huge issues of inequality that we overcame. It gives home that we could overcome the other gender role issues.