Directors who influenced John Waters

Kroger Babb
William Castle
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Herschell Gordon Lewis
Russ Meyer
Douglas Sirk

Change of direction.

Hypothesis: A close study into John Water's influences and how this is translated in his construction of his female characters.

Approach: How has John Water's influences translated in his construction of female characters?

Peggy Gravel

At the beginning of the film, two male characters are talking about her. We learn that she is a rich woman, and in the opening title sequence we see a maid hoovering next to a rather extravagant piece of furniture. They mention that fact that she has spent some time in mental home, and that it could be too soon to trust her in her natural habitat, meaning her own home - they speak about her like she is some sort of animal.



Just a few moments after, the audience soon see what the two men were talking about.

She is the perfect John Water's character, she is loud and shouts for no reason at children, In reality, she should know better as she is the adult. The children brake her window and she tells them off but then gets carried away. Peggy is over the top, and dramatic. She soon has a complete meltdown, moments before the two men discuss how she is prone to having breakdowns (hence her time in a mental institution).

She is not your everyday housewife. She is very emotional, and often gets upset. She has mini-breakdowns, if you like, throughout the film. (The best breakdown is when moments after her to do with the children, the phone rings...)

"Go home to your mother! Doesn't she ever watch you? Tell her this isn't some communist [1] daycare center! Tell your mother I hate her! Tell your mother I hate you!"

.

[1] A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.

Female Characters in Desperate Living

Peggy Gravel
Grizelda Brown
Mole McHenry
Muffy St. Jacques
Queen Carlotta
Princess Coo-Coo

Film, #1.

Over the halfterm I watched Desperate Living and made notes on the female characters.

Desperate Living (1997)
Plot: A rich housewife murders her husband with the help of her overweight maid, and the two go on the run, ending up in Mortville, a town providing refuge for criminals.

Take a look at this trailer, throughout the woman are just... neurotic, insecure, paranoid, thickle, bipolar, depressed, annoying, loud, mental, stupid, delusional, vuglar, dirty, horny, disgusting, lonely, suburban, housewife, killer, confused, messed-up,

Right from the beginning of the film, we are introduced to a woman, well the hands of a woman.



So early into the film, a stereotypical representation of an American woman can be found: red nails, what looks like a sleeve of a smart/blazer thingy.

Female Representations in Film/Television.

Fact: Men are still represented as TV drama characters up to 3 times more frequently than women, and tend to be the predominant focus of news stories.

Representations of women across all media tend to highlight the following: beauty, size/physique, sexuality, emotional dealings and relationships.

Women are often represented as being part of a context (family, friends, colleagues) and working/thinking as part of a team. In drama, they tend to take the role of helper or object, passive rather than active. Often their passivity extends to victimhood. The representations of women that do make it onto page and screen do tend to be stereotypical, in terms of conforming to societal expectations, and characters who do not fit into the mould tend to be seen as dangerous and deviant. And they get their comeuppance, particularly in the movies.

Housekeeping and raising a family were considered ideal female roles during the 1950s, although that standard was less rigid than in previous decades. With marriage and birthrates booming, women were becoming wives and mothers at unprecedented levels. But more women were entering the work-place as well. During World War II women by the millions took factory jobs to make up for the domestic manpower shortage. After the war the number of working women dropped, but by 1950 it was climbing again, at the rate of a million a year. By 1956, 35 percent of all adult women were members of the labor force, and nearly a quarter of all married women were working.

Discussions of women's representation in the media tend to revolve around the focus on physical beauty to the near-exclusion of other values, the lack of powerful female role models, and the extremely artificial nature of such portrayals, which bear little relation to the reality experience by women across the planet.

rep·re·sen·ta·tion

noun
1. The act of representing or the state of being represented.
2. Something that represents, as:
a. An image or likeness of something.
b. An account or statement, as of facts, allegations, or arguments.
c. An expostulation; a protest.
d. A presentation or production, as of a play.