Cherneff, Jill BR. " Dreams Are Made like This: Hortense Powdermaker and the Hollywood Film Industry." Journal of Anthropological Research. Vol. 47, No. 4 (Winter 1991), pp.429-440. JSTOR. 9 Apr. 2008. <http://www.jstor.org/action/showArticle?doi=10.2307/3630352&Search=yes&term=dreams&term=hollywood&item=5&returnArticleService=showArticle&ttl=3533&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhollywood%2Bdreams;gw%3Djtx;prq%3Djeepers%2Bcreepers;Search%3DSearch;hp%3D25>.

           

            This article largely chronicles and responds to Hortense Powdermaker’s study of Hollywood culture in the late 1940s.  In the book, she wrote following her study, Powdermaker highlights the struggle between art and business and Hollywood and suggests the social underpinnings of Hollywood culture determine what types of films are made.  Powdermaker’s original contention is that the Hollywood film has had an impact on human behavior as dramatic as that of the wheel’s invention.  Powdermaker observed that the power of movies lies in it’s depiction of apparent reality—that what appears on the screen looks real and thus must accompany real values and ideas to be absorbed.  The remainder of the article focuses less on Powdermaker’s conclusions and research in order to focus on analyzing the research itself.  The author discusses the challenges facing Powdermaker in reporting on a population unlike those most anthropologists focus on.  Further, the author notices the absence of women in important roles behind the lens in Powdermaker’s research and contextualizes this historically as well as socially. 

            On a superficial level, it is interesting how Powdermaker’s journey in conducting her research mirrors that of Tod in the film The Day of the Locust.  Both leave a successful endeavor at Yale and go to Hollywood for a sociological investigation of sorts—Powdermaker an unbiased anthropological study and Tod an emotional snapshot of Hollywood’s locusts.  Some of Powdermaker’s research sheds light on the images of the industry contained in the film, such as the hierarchy of production and the social constructs behind the films. 

Carty, Victoria. "Textual Portrayals of Female Athletes: Liberation of Nuanced Forms of Patriarchy?" Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 26.2 (2005): 132-172.

In Victoria Carty's article, she explores the portrayal of female athletes in today’s media by looking at print ads and television and radio commentary within the context of the radical feminist and post-feminist discourse. Carty states that while radical feminists embrace women’s increased opportunities to participate and thrive in competitive sports, they argue that the commoditization and subsequent exploitation of female athletes’ sexuality not only diminishes their athletic accomplishments but also reinforces the strength of the patriarchal system. On the other hand, post-feminists do not accept the objectification of women, but instead choose to work within the male-centered system that their radical feminist counterparts abhor. By choosing to use their sexuality as strength, post-feminists work to change the system from within by using the attributes that were once deemed as impediments to their advantage. Carty ultimately argues that female athletes and their supporters must ignore the oppressive qualities of commercialized competitive sports and instead use sports to their advantage.

While the film itself does not center around sports (although it is interesting to note that Dr. Peterson is characterized as a frustrated gymnast and avid swimmer during her introduction to Dr. Edwardes), the article becomes relevant to Spellbound if one approaches the work environment of Green Manors as a place not of competitive athletes, but of competitive intellectuals. Obviously there are differences between physical and mental competition, but in many ways the environments created by the competitive attitude are remarkably similar. The treatment of Dr. Peterson played by Ingrid Bergman is extremely similar to the atmosphere that Carty argues many female athletes encounter in today’s culture. While it appears that Dr. Peterson attempts to obscure her sexuality by wearing glasses and a baggy and unflattering lab coat in her work environment, a move that would find favor with radical feminist ideology, she also builds and nurtures strong relationships with her male coworkers, which according to post-feminists is one way to reinforce one’s heterosexuality and appear less threatening to the in-control males. Dr. Peterson constantly is forced to play within the boundaries that society has set up for her, case in point is her later encounter with the hotel detective. While she is portrayed as a strong female through out the film, she can never escape the behavioral expectations that force her altar her action and strategy in order to conform to the laws of men.

This article remembers Satyajit Ray as a "lyrical chronicle of rural poverty" and reflects upon Ray's accomplishments as a master in his field. The importance placed by Ray on the story and plot of a film elevated him to be the sole representative of Indian cinema for the Western world. Although this might have been a false representation of all films being churned out by the Indian movie industry, Ray truly stood out as an anomaly in the sea of directors from his own home country. The author speaks of Ray's ideas of "feminism" and how his movies were the perfect combination of a traditional Indian woman with moral bales and the contemporary strong willed independent woman who fought for her rights. The author also mentions Ray's final film, The Stranger, alluding to the transformation Ray underwent as a director and the renewal of humor in this film, which had always been a strong element of Ray's sensibilities. This film was ‘lighter' that his previous works, prompting critics to believe that it gestures a renewal of his personal self and health. Finally, paying the due respect to Ray by calling him "The Last Great Man of the Indian Renaissance" the author respects the elegance with which he left the world - on his death bead, smiling, while accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award.

After watching Pather Panchali, and reading an article like this, it becomes evident that a Satyajit Ray injected aspects of his own personality when molding characters for his movies. The elegance and calmness with which he viewed the world seems to be reflected in the father's character in the movie. Also,  Durga seems to be the quintessential example of Ray's view of Indian women of the time, as he shows a young girl full of life, yet extremely responsible towards her family. Therefore, in order to understand Ray as a person, it is of paramount importance to watch his first, and possibly last film.

This article stresses upon the differences between the portrayal of women in Indian popular cinema and India's art film circuit. The author has used examples of films made by Satyajit Ray, and particularity those that were adaptations of short stories by Rabindranath Tagore. She suggests that Bollywood uses its women as metaphor's for suffering of the downtrodden or for India, or alternatively as the stereotype of a restricted Indian woman's life. Art films, she claims stray from this stereotype and revert back to classic Indian literature and try to explore the themes of marital relationships and steer clear of motherhood. She argues that Indian audiences in the past have preferred the stereotypical image of a woman and her ‘place' in society. But recently a growing appreciation has begun for the realistic portrayal of modern women in popular cinema. Finally, she argues that over time, women have adopted the dominant ‘subject' in all types of Indian films.

This article is very pertinent to Pather Panchali because although it is meant to be a story about a young boy Apu, the dominant characters of the film are played by two women - Durga and her mother. Apu is brought up in a household of three women who are at different stages in their lives. Thus overall the movie has a very comprehensive and real take on women of all ages, living in poverty in a small village in Bengal. Ray's depiction of women here is a mixture of the two ideas of the portrayal of women in Indian cinema. Although the mother seems to be more wary of her relationship with her husband, she is the sole caretaker of her two children, thereby stressing her role as both mother and wife. This is a realistic depiction of women in cinema, and came about at a time where people (Indian audiences) were not ready to accept such a strong reality. Thus, the movie was termed as an art-house film in India, although it received worldwide recognition.

Info on the annual Women of Color celebration at Penn

Excerpt from the wonderful poem read at the 2006 Women of Color lunch

Friedberg introduces her article with a look at the twin birth of psychoanalysis and cinema and argues that "Freud's theory of the unconscious. . .was, from the start, a theory in search of an apparatus. Yet the cinema, an apparatus which could reproduce and project specular images, from its beginnings, an apparatus in search of a theory" (41). Drawing on Chodorkoff and Baxter, Friedberg offers a reading of the history of the making of Secrets of the Soul, including Freud's rejection of the project. She calls the film the first 'that directly tried to represent psychoanalytic descriptions of the etiology of a phobia and the method of psychoanalytic treatment" (45). Friedberg points to the various ironic name puns having to do with Freud's lack of involvment in the film: that Pabst, the director of Joyless Street--Die FREUDlose Gasse (my emphasis) was asked to direct a film "mit Freud," when Freud refused to be involved; and that the actor who plays the pshychoanalyst in Secrets, Pavel Pavlov, shares his name with "Freud's mightiest theoretical opponent, the physiologist Ivan Pavlov" (46). Friedman goes on to describe and analyze the film, which she notes is separated into five parts: Pre-Dream; The Dream; Post-Dream; Analysis; and Cure. She notes that the happy ending of the film works as a kind of advertisement for psychoanalysis, arguing that Abraham and Sachs in consulting on the film, intented to "extol its curative virtues" (51).

Wood examines how Disney uses his film Cinderella to “civilize” his viewers by presenting models of proper behavior while entertaining them. Snow White, like Cinderella, sings while she does her household chores. In analyzing Disney’s conservative ideology, she touches upon how his views affect his other works, such as Snow White.

            To keep his films entertaining, Disney reworked European marchen. He included well-loved romantic plots and added comic relief through subplots involving animals and secondary characters, such as the dwarves in Snow White. Marriage is based on love, rather than family constraints. “Love’s first kiss” wakes both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty from their slumbers. Disney used realism in his animated films to present a sense of immediacy to his audience. He included a solid plot and clear personalities to the characters so that viewers would feel a deeper connection with the story. The seven dwarves in Snow White each have their own unique name, temperament, and appearance. The recurring gags, often in the form of handicaps, also keep children viewers interested. For example, Dopey is mute and clumsy while Doc has a stutter and is absent-minded.

            Disney supports wish-fulfillment, as is evident in his films. Dreams in Cinderella are similarly important in Snow White. While Cinderella sings of “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” Snow White opens her story with “I’m wishing / For the one I love / To find me.” Disney reassures viewers that with good effort and self-control, one will get the desired result. According to him, the ultimate wish for girls is to marry the rich and handsome Mr. Right.

Shortsleeve tries to articulate the fear that Disney inspires in critics, and from where this fear originates. He views it as a slippery slope process. Beginning in the 1930’s, criticism of Disney’s corporate, artistic, and public influences worsened with time. Disney’s personal ideology, reflected in the way he worked with people, appears in his films.
            Walt Disney elicits a range of complaints from critics. The primary one that appears is of the “Disneyfication” of fairy tales, the simplification of stories. Many critics view the Disney versions as patronizing and overly sentimental. Disney has created a form of entertainment that restricts thought-provoking expression. Others argue that the racial stereotypes Disney shows in his films encourage racism in viewers across the world and further US imperialist agenda. Feminists claim that depictions of Barbie-like heroines give young girls negative body images. Some say that Walt Disney has unacceptable labor practices in his studios and that he displays a false innocence to the media.
            Shortsleeve believes that what frightens people is that the Disney Company has remained unchanged from its glory days in the 1930’s. After bitter arguments with his animators in 1941, Walt Disney lost his confidence, and the company ideologically stalled in the “magic” of the ‘30s. The company still exhibits contradictory values, with heavy-handed management of employees, yet support for the common man in its films. The incongruity of its totalitarian tendencies with its democracy attractions at its amusement parks leads to confusion from critics and the general public alike. This confusion has led to tension, suspicion, and paranoia.
            Despite his criticism, Shortsleeve acknowledges the positive impact Disney has had on America, especially during the Great Depression. Audiences wanted to escape their dreary lives for two hours, to enter a fantasy world where everything ends happily. When Disney decided to create his first full-length animated film (Snow White), even his oppressed employees regained new hope and excitement at the thought of being involved in such a ground-breaking project.

Snow White exhibits the “Disneyfication” about which so many critics complained. It diverges from the original Grimm version toward simplification and sentimentality. Disney’s clear belief in self-reliance and hard work are evident in the dwarves’ “Heigh Ho, It’s Off to Work We Go” song, as well as in Snow White’s agreeable temperament while doing chores. Disney expected his animators to work just as willingly, but they were unhappy that they would not receive screen credit for their efforts, and so began the strike in ’41 that destroyed Walt’s confidence and locked the company in its ‘30s mindset.

Stone argues that Walt Disney has created household names of heroines in his films, but in so doing, is encouraging passivity and inaction from female viewers who are influenced by the pretty-but-dumb characters. Disney has changed the role of women from the original stories for the worse in his films. The Grimm brothers have 40 heroines in their tales, and not all are passive and pretty. Their villains are not always women, either. While Grimm heroines are often not rewarded for having spirit, Disney females are even less so. The three Disney films based on other fairy tales (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella) all star an innocent, beautiful girl who is victimized by a jealous, evil villainess.

            Disney encourages the image of a perfect housewife in his heroines. They all exhibit patience, obedience, passivity, diligence, silence, and beauty. To become a heroine for Disney, one must have all those qualities. To mute the heroine inside oneself, one must simply don dirty rags. While in Disney, Cinderella is only a heroine when properly cleaned and dressed, in traditional fairy tales, the heroines may be unattractive and disheveled. Their appearance does not affect their success. In Snow White, it is her beauty that eventually leads to her success. It is because of her face that the prince falls in love with her and frees her from sleeping death with love’s first kiss.

            In recent tales, there is great disparity between hero and heroine characteristics. Heroes are judged on their ability to overcome difficulties. They succeed by acting. Heroines, on the other hand, do not develop throughout the story because they start out perfect, without defects. All they need is their beauty and passivity to succeed. This is apparent in both the Grimm and Disney versions of Snow White. Snow White’s beauty is emphasized, as is her kindness toward others and chipper attitude toward housework. She does nothing in either version, except clean house and look pretty, qualities that Stone believes Disney is encouraging in women throughout the world.

Because this article takes a methodological approach, it is not very accessible for the average film scholar. It also talks about trends as a whole, leaving out the detailed scene analyses that those interested in films often enjoy. But the article does a good job of trying to examine what the medium of film might have to say about our culture, and its strength lies in its ability to offer empirical evidence of trends, such as an explosion of romantic comedies in the 1990s, as opposed to individual examples. In this way, we can look at the trends of particular decades. When Sabrina was released, in the 1950s, for example, romantic drama was more popular than romantic comedy, a reversal of what is currently true. Other subsets that are popular now, such as teen romances or romances that feature supernatural elements (like 1990's Ghost), were nearly nonexistent in the 1950s.

The study also found that cultural conditions have effectively killed many formerly popular plotlines of romance movies. Couples in different classes, for example, no longer offer a "convincing dramatic impediment." Movies that feature these aging romantic conventions," then, can only remain popular today as "relics of an earlier era." This statement serves to justify Sabrina's ongoing popularity despite its perhaps hard-to-swallow plotline. All in all, romantic films, even the current ones, do continue to reinforce some of the more conservative romantic tendencies in our culture, namely the importance of marriage and fidelity, and this has not changed since the days when Sabrina was released.

All three versions have the same essential Cinderella story skeleton. The "Cinderella" terminology that is often used in describing them is not quite apt, however, because the character of Sabrina is self-reliant and never depends on a man to save her. How strong she is does vary from version to version, though.

Wood argues that in the original play, Sabrina is autonomous, politically active, and well-educated. She returns from Paris not because she is in love with David Larrabee, but to escape a marriage proposal that she doesn't want to be tied down to. She doesn't need to be rescued, and her relationship with Linus becomes one of mutual companionship. Gender and class issues are sidestepped when Sabrina declares herself as self-supporting and her chauffer father comes into a windfall of money.

In the play's original adaptation for the screen, Wilder and his associates conceived Sabrina as a teenager in puppy love. Though her time in Paris leaves her sophisticated, this Sabrina is not educated or assertive, like her predecessor, and becomes an object to be passed between the Larrabee brothers. She chooses Linus, in the end, because she wanted to care for him. Wood argues that this allows the movie to become "a dark study of gender," because "Sabrina feels strongest when she is helpful to others, when she denies her own needs and desires." Wood refers to the theories of developmental psychologist Nancy Chodorow, which state that while boys develop intimacy problems, girls learn to doubt their identities. This can lead to passivity and vulnerability to manipulation in women like Sabrina.

Wood reasons that the 1995 film version, while not without problems, is instilled with better representations of gender politics. The Sabrina character is in the fashion industry, less domestic than cooking, and while in Paris she "finds herself." This autonomous description is at odds with her actions, though, as she still displays a tendency towards caretaking.

All three versions are at fault because class and gender problems disappear without explanation during the happy ending. The film versions, though, let Sabrina be manipulated by men and lose her own identity.  Wood's analysis of the role of gender in the play and films gives readers a way to understand these ingrained cultural messages, rather than just consuming the film as entertainment.

"Images, information, and discussion about these inexpensive novels marketed to women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Includes lists of writers (some with biographical information) and publishers, an overview of the dime novel series, a cover galley, and links to articles and stories. Discusses libraries with dime novel collections. From the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University." (via LII)

"Timeline of major milestones achieved by women throughout American history, such as Elizabeth Blackwell (1849), the first woman in the U.S. with a medical degree; Belva Ann Lockwood (1879), the first woman admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court; and Effa Manley (2006), the first woman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Includes links to additional information for selected women. From Information Please." (via LII)

Barry, Kathleen Morgan.  NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 2002 Dissertation.

Kolm, Suzanne Lee.  BROWN UNIVERSITY 1995 Dissertation.