Two heist movies of different national origin, Nine Queens and The Bank Job, both appeal to male audiences through a variety of tactics. Objectified gender roles, dark mise-en-scene; even the genre type itself attracts men to these movies. Both movies are about con men that are robbing for money. In Nine Queens the focus is just on two con men that are basically robbing people for their every day income. The difference in this movie and The Bank Job is that the con men in The Bank Job are actually hired by the government to rob a bank. The fact that The Bank Job uses the government it quiet interesting. Nine Queens uses citizens to represent the corruption within their government and The Bank Job actually shows the corruption of the government. Both of these movies show women in a very objectified fashion to draw attention to a male audience. There is also a certain usage of lighting and wardrobe that is also used to lure the attention of males.
"It can be said with no exaggeration that without women there would be no cinema. Sadly, this is so not because the natural concerns of genuine womanhood have been addressed in film, but because from the very beginnings of cinema a woman has been made the centerpiece of attraction, an object of desire"(Wagner). In the film Nine Queens, there is also a true focus on one female and her name is Valerie. Valerie works in a very up scale hotel and her uniform is an extremely fitted suit that is sure to show off all of her curves. She has her make up done perfectly to accentuate her beauty. I think the filmmakers did a very good job of drawing attention to Valerie by the wardrobe and make-up that was chosen. I also find it very interesting that Valerie is the only female wearing this uniform in the hotel. Contrary to Nine Queens, The Bank Job just uses women to try and draw the attention of men to the film by have partially nude women walking around in the strip bars. The Bank Job has many scenes that take place in strip bars. This definitely portrays women in an objectified fashion because it is only focusing on their looks and their body, it is almost as if they are presenting these women as if they do not have a brain; they are just something to look at, like trophies. The Bank Job goes so far to show its objectification of women, they even have what Puccio and Shainline refer to as a "porn king" which should be enough said for how women are presented in this film.
These films, unlike a "chick flick" which would use very warm and girly colors to grab the attention of women, are trying to grab the attention of men. In order to do this, the lighting used is very harsh and the wardrobe that was chosen is very dark. The lighting resembles florescent light bulbs, which tend to bring out darker features in a person because of the shadows they create. The actors tend to wear leather jackets and dark pants a long with dark shoes. Even the color of the actors' hair, eyes, and skin tone are very dark. I feel that these characteristics make men appear more "tough" and this also helps to draw the attention of other males. There are also other "dark" moods other than actual color that occurs in these two films. In a film review by Warren Curry, Nine Queens is referred to as a "maze of backstabbing and coincidence." Both of these films have very dark scenes, and possibly the fact that most people would refer to robbing or stealing as un
According to Men's Journal,
"great guy movies are distillations of the male experience, reduced to the essentials. For good reason, nearly all of them tend to be about soldiers, athletes, cops, and every kind of loner. They are unapologetically male, and often politically incorrect...guy movies do have a moral, and it's always straightforward: If you're a cop or a criminal, a team player or a lone wolf, all that matters is being brave and honorable, no matter the consequences"(Chute and Horowitz). These characteristics are shown throughout Nine Queens and The Bank Job. The consequences of the choices that the con artists make would seem to be getting caught by the police. However, Nine Queens has a twist and it almost as if one con artist gets caught by the other, and in The Bank Job, members of the government are not arrested but the media exposes them. Continuing with the use of the characteristics form Men's Journal, the use of criminals in these films leads to fast action. Nine Queens uses many fast takes when the con men are running around the city trying to recover the lost stamps. Using this type of filming makes the scene come across more intense than it would if it was just in walking speed. The Bank Job has many more fast action scenes than Nine Queens, but I feel as if this goes back to using the government as the main criminal. Using government officials as the leaders of this bank robbery come across as more intense just because of the mere fact that these are officials and people are looking up to them.
It is quite obvious that these two films fall directly under the male category. They include all characteristics that are most commonly used to grab the attention of most men. The usage of women also falls under a global issue. Wagner claims that "This systematic cultivation of women as objects of desire has been akin to the gradual process of drug addiction: at first, the effects were rather mild and pleasantly stimulating - and thus considered not only harmless by both men and women, but even liberating - however, as time went on and doses increased, a feverish state of dependency set in. What has started out as a quest for liberation from convention ended up being a different form of enslavement." This mimesis of women has now evolved into our everyday lives. It has been proven that the more a person comes in contact with something, the more likely they are to start portraying what they have witnessed. This is scary because the more movies that continue to portray women in this objectified fashion, the more enslaved women will become to men in our society. It could be said that since movies are becoming more risqué in the usage of women as objects as desire that this could possibly relate to sexual violence in our society.
Bibliography
Chute, David. "The 50 Best Guy Movies of All Time." Men's Journal 01 12 2003
11 Mar 2009 <http://www.filmsite.org/guyfilms.html>.
Cornelius, David. "The Bank Job." Rev. of The Bank Job. DVD Talk. 2009. 4 Mar.
2009 <http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/33937/bank-job-the/>.
Curry, Warren. "Nine Queens." Rev. of Nine Queens. filmcritic.com. 2002. 4 Mar.
2009 <http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/reviews/Nine-Queens>.
Puccio, John J, and Tyler Shainline. "The Bank Job (Blu-Ray)." Rev. of The Bank
Job. DVDTOWN.com. 2009. 4 Mar. 2009 <http://www.dvdtown.com/reviews/
bank-job-the/6106>.
Wagner, Maria. "Women in Film:In Search of TRUE Liberation for Women." 2007 11 Mar 2009
<http://users.hal-pc.org/~questers/womanhood/women_in_film.html>.
No comments:
Post a Comment