Assessing Williams Idea That The Female Spectator Is Attracted to Film Essay

I’m working on a film question and need a sample draft to help me learn.

This is the prompt I have attached the readings,. lecture notes and will attach the class recordings that will help you answer this prompt 🙂

Prompt: After the work of Laura Mulvey, which called for the rejection of Classical Hollywood Cinema because it was “cut to the measure of male desire,” many feminist film theorists wrote essays that explored the pleasure that female spectators took in Hollywood films. Linda Williams investigated the melodrama Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937) and uncovered motifs and structures of identification that helped to explain the continuing popularity of the film. What does Williams find in the film? Are there any recent films that might be analyzed in a similar way, that is, “against the grain,” to reveal a submerged message?

class recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SlO4iXACFBSTGuD-p…

class recording 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SlO4iXACFBSTGuD-p…

please use all the feedback as usual that i have given you in the past 500 word essay questions i need help with also in terms of writing style here is a classmate’s notes: Beginning from William’s essay and her concluding that people accept the female hero’s acceptance of fate, not questioning any of the storyline, I am just wondering if in today’s world we start questioning it more than at the time this essay was written? Truth is, the naïve audiences still don’t understand the female hero’s role in the world. As an example, even the contemporary superhero film that have a leading female hero will always rely strongly on the male superhero, as if they cannot do it by themselves. Do people that are not experiences in the Classical Hollywood Cinema realize what is happening on the screen in front of them? Sometimes I feel as if they don’t really realize what is going on.

Gunning’s essay covers the idea of attraction in cinema, how they were constructed to be aesthetically pleasing above anything else, and how the rules they chose to create early on, taking the road of the narrative, shaped the cinema in ways that still exist today. As quoted in the essay, the role of film way to make images, and not really to show anything in particular. If we think about it, most films that are well-known are those that do not portray anything but an easy-to-follow storyline. The more controversial or difficult films, the experimental cinema and such, are not for the unexperienced cinema-viewer. Only the films that are attractive can maintain their fame, meanwhile all the others are just there to be heavily criticized or “fame-deprived”.

Will the world ever want to embrace a cinema where attraction isn’t the main ingredient? Or, will the filmmakers that create more experimental films find ways to take on a more “attractive” approach when making film, hoping that it wins over a few audience members?

Please read: Gunning, Tom, “The Cinema of Attractions” (1989) 69-76

Williams, Linda, “Something Else Besides a Mother” (1984) 725-39

and watch: SCREEN: STELLA DALLAS (King Vidor, 1937, 106m)