Ladies and Gentlemen we are officially at the middle of the movie, please be seated for Intermission
We are currently at the halfway point of my research of discussing how feminist film theory can be seen through romantic comedies from the 50s to the 2020s. My project aims to figure out if romantic comedies have progressed in the development of complex female characters in either a positive or negative direction. After establishing the goal, I moved on to finalizing my methodology. When researching previous film studies I moved towards the direction of complex characters within other genres such as action and fantasy; and found that majority of these studies used Feminist Film Theory. These included the analysis of three factors: women v woman- are they a caricature or developed character; voyeurism- do camera angles have revealing or sexual undertones; and finally how does the film relate to the period it was released in.
Data Collection Workplace
In the realm of data collection, for my analysis of the movies I have just finished the three movies respectively for the 50s and 60s. I've started my first movie from the 70s, Cabaret, keeping me on track with my progress. Currently the timing of my movies is going well, which was a worry for me. On data collection itself, I found the identification of factors of Feminist Film Theory easier than I expected it to be. This has led me to avoid a lot of the bias that could possibly occur during data collection.
As seen in the image on the side I'm currently struggling with adding images within the research log for every scene. I am able to purchase a few scenes from Getty Images, however, this just has not been feasible. In order to combat it I'm attempting to utilize time stamps to track scenes then during the final paper and presentation purchase the most impactful images. This is helping me accommodate with the feasibilty issue and the hours spent trying to find the perfect image for the scene. I'm hoping to spend the upcoming long weekend to finish updating my time stamps keeping my research log updated.
How the data is being collected
Honestly I've been very shocked by the data collected so far. When starting my analysis I was expecting an upward trend with women becoming more dimensional as time goes on. However, within the 50s and 60s I noticed a reversal of this pattern. In the 50s, movies like Roman Holiday created women with aspirations to escape and find what life has to offer. While see this trend reoccur in the end of the 60s, with Sound of Music, we however see with Pillow talk that she is painted as just a love interest and nothing more. I also believe that we are seeing the shift from "romcom" to "romance" within the 50s to 60s.
I believe this project has made me a lot more conscious of just the impact romantic-comedies have within society itself. I noticed so many of these tropes from the movies during the 50s and 60s, in current romantic pieces of media I absorb. The project has opened my eyes from just progression in movies as time but also in nuances of characters.
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