Pan's Labyrinth

“Being a woman entails having within one’s body a secret labyrinth of power and mystery”

Pan’s Labyrinth represents women in a negative stereotypical way.

Pan’s Labyrinth is a magical fairy tale set in 1944, five years after the Spanish Civial War. Ofelia’s stepfather hunts the Spanish Maquis who fight against the Francoist regime in the region.

Throughout the film, women are portrayed in a stereotypical way, as being weak and incapable of doing what men do, this adds realism to the film as this was the attitude in what people thought in that time period.

From the very beginning women are shown as un-capable and vulnerable as the Captain demands Mercedes to get their luggage, she does not hesitate and retrieves them immediately. Throughout the whole film the Captain demands Mercedes to do many tasks that he could do himself. This makes the audience believe she is not able to stand up for herself. However, we see her smuggling medicine and food the Spanish Maquis and telling them the Captains next move to try and capture them. The Captain does not suspect anything as he does not believe a stereotypical woman would be smart enough or brave enough to do something like that. Even though he does question her about there being a copy of the key which she is truly hiding, he doesn’t find out because she is good at lying and acting like a stereotypical woman.

Carmen (Ofelia’s mother) is also presented as weak, as soon as she arrives to her new house; the captain makes her get into a wheelchair as she is pregnant even though she says she if fully capable to walk(stereotypical role of women which is to take care of the children). Before the baby is born the Captain is convinced that the baby will be a boy, implying that women are less important and unwanted.

She has fallen very ill with this pregnancy, this shows that women don’t have the strength to fight of something as minuet as an illness. Before she is about to give birth, the captain says to the doctor if you have a choice save my son. This tells us he thinks that a baby boy in the world is more important than his wife and men have more importance to live. As she dies after giving birth, this creates the impression she was over powered by the baby who happens to be a boy.

At first it looks like Ofelia is doing something empowering like not calling the Captain ‘father’ and turning up late for dinner with her new dress covered in mud, but when she meets the Fauno she is doing all the tasks he is setting her, so she is still taking orders off of a male. Even at a young age women are taking orders from men, and with a role model like her mum taking orders from men she doesn’t know much different.

The only time Ofelia didn’t follow her orders was when she ate the fruit she was specifically told not to eat, this shows that women are portrayed as irresponsible and cannot follow simple instructions.

By what the women wear is also a huge factor in what sex is considered best, women wear a lot of really dull colours, like brown, cream and white. Mercedes wears clothes that always look really dirty and unwashed, but all the men take pride in what they wear. Wearing blues and blacks all in uniform which make them all an equal but still look better presented than the women, this makes them look different to women which make them stand out and look better.

Websites used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan's_Labyrinth

Expand Your Mind

Expand your mind

Gays are stereotyped through films, these characters have the same roles, for example in a gay couple there is normally a very feminine person, and a very butch person. Film makers are taking gay people out of these predicted roles and portraying them as they are in real life. 

An example of this is a film by Ira Sach called “keep the light on” which follows a ten year long relationship between two men who meet on a New York phone sex line in 1998. It includes explicit sex and drug use, work Hassel and both gay and straight friends. In this film no one comes out or dies.

This is a good example because most media expectations of gay films is about someone falling in love with their straight friend, or coming out of the closet and trying to deal with how their friends act around them, or how their family feels about it. LGBT movies are mostly about the issues that gay people have and how hard their lives are and how they are not really accepted in the society.

A thing thats highlighted that gay relationships are the just the same as other relationships in film is by adding intimate scenes between two characters.

"If you're trying to do an honest depiction of a relationship, sex is part of that," says Haigh. "There have been a lot of queer films with sex in them and a lot of it has been for titillation or out of happiness that we can show gay sex on screen at all. For me, it's part of the story you're trying to tell rather than a case of trying to shoehorn sex scenes in for their own sake."

"There's so much communication, so much information exchanged between two people when they're having or attempting to have sex," he says. "It surprises me it's not played with more as a story or character device."

Gay characters were hard to find in film before the 80's.Film makers nowadays seek to describe the experience of being queer today through stories that resonate beyond that context. The perception of straight people and the troubles of non-straight people are over. 

Due to the exposure of the gay community by film more people are coming out with the hope of being accepted by the society and more people in the society are accepting of LGBT and are in support of that lifestyle and are willing to support and encourage them. People are more understanding and now in year 2012 “being gay” are seen as almost normal and are now represented by the media positively and in reality which makes the society more understanding and accepting.

Homework

Medium Shot:- In film, a medium shot is a camera angle shot from a medium distance. In some cases, a full-length view of someone is called a medium shot; in this terminology, a shot of the person from the knees up or the waist up is a close-up shot. In other texts, these partial views are called medium shots. For example, in Europe a medium shot is framed from the waist up. It is mainly used for a scene when you can see what kind of expressions they are using.

















Long Short:- A long shot typically shows the entire object or person and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings. It has been suggested that long-shot ranges approximately what would be the distance between the front row of the audience and the stage in live theatre.















Establishing Shot:- An establishing shot in film making establishes the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects. It is generally a long- or extreme-long shot at the beginning of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when, the remainder of the scene takes place.












Medium Long Shot:- A Medium Long shot usually shows most of a person, typically head to knees. This gives you the opportunity to show some of the environment, but also allow multiple people to easily interact.

Dutch Tilt:- Used to portray the uneasiness or tension in the subject being filmed. A Dutch tilt is achieved by tilting the camera off to the side so that the shot is composed with vertical lines at an angle to the side of the frame.

Tilt Up and Tilt Down:- You follow a subject or to show the top and bottom of a stationary object. With a tilt, you can also show how high something is or how low.

Crane:- This works and looks similar to a construction crane. It is used for high sweeping shots or to follow the action of the person or thing you are shooting.

Zoom:- Zooming the lens out gives you the wide-angle shot and more of your subject and surrounding areas are visible. Depth perception is also changed, and the size and distance between objects is more pronounced.To bring objects at a distance closer to the lens, or to show size and perspective.

Dolly:- This designed to create smooth camera movements. The camera is mounted to the dolly and the camera operator and focus puller or camera assistant, usually ride on the dolly to operate the camera.

Tracking:- The tracking shot may also refer to any shot in which the camera follows a subject within the frame, such as a moving actor or a moving vehicle. The camera may be moved in ways not involving a camera dolly.

Handheld:- The camera is held in the hand, or given the appearance of being hand-held, and in many cases shots are limited to what one photographer could have accomplished with one camera. It suggests unprepared, unrehearsed filming of reality, and can provide a sense of dynamics, immersion, instability or nervousness.

Birds eye:- A bird's-eye shot refers to a shot looking directly down on the subject. The perspective is very foreshortened, making the subject appear short and squat. This shot can be used to give an overall establishing shot of a scene, or to emphasise the smallness or insignificance of the subjects.