Archetypes in the movies

You've probably seen this already. The film morphs images of female movie stars from the beginning of the technology to the present (to the Bach cello piece that is on the Master and Commander Soundtrack - Yoyo Ma does a nice version of it) I find it interesting because it is not until near the very end that a black woman emerges.

Though I'm not militant about it I find the representation of women in media potentially destructive. I worry for my seven year old daughter when she is spoon fed images in movies, television and advertising that have nothing to do with her. The other day she told me she wants to be a vegetarian because she doesn't want to get fat. Zoe is the nearest thing to a string bean possible without becoming a snow pea. In part the fixation comes, I believe, from obsessive media messages about how 'we' are all becoming obese (taking a statistical average then reapplying it to the sample as something generaly applicable doesn't make any sense). But I digress…

What is positive (putting aside the absence of black or Asian women in the mix) is that the women seem to develop character towards the end of the piece. It may be my own bias but actors like Sigorney Weaver and Susan Sarendon are plainly not in the mold of the starlets or ingenue (stock character) of the past. I find that encouraging.

Character is beautiful.

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