Depictions of Traditional Women in Fascism Unlike many fascism films barely illustrate about the female (Rentschler 15), both the Italian historical film 1860 directed by Alessandro and the German melodramatic feature film La Habanera directed by Detlev Sierck are united by their portraits of traditional women like Carmeniddu’s wife, Gesuzza in 1860, and Astrée in La Habanera. These two films depict the women’s images in two forms. First, both 1860 and La Habanera directly portray the women as the family keepers. Second, both the Italian film and the German film use the set designs to reflect the females’ feelings.…
In the 1953 western-musical parody Calamity Jane the butch heroin, Jane Canary (Doris Day) undergoes a makeover, by imitating Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie), to become a feminine female; thus engaging into a heterosexual romance with Bill Hickock (Howard Keel) (cf. Mizejewski 185). Katie Brown an aspiring, burlesque singer and dancer, whom Jane mistakes as the famous hyper feminine Adelaid Adams (Gale Robbins), helps Jane to transition from a masculine cowboy into a real and proper woman, by confronting Jane with her own inadequate gender performance. Bill Hickock as the embodiment of a hyper masculine male authenticity shames Jane “to consolidate [a] normative, ‘feminine’ identity” (Savoy 169) in order to shape her character specifically to a “gradual conformity to heterosexual expectations of the feminine”, according to “what her culture regards as the ‘real woman’ (Savoy 165). I claim that Jane Canary’s object of affection is an arbitrary choice, according to gender normativity and that in fact Jane’s secret love is Katie Brown.…
1. Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales was born on June 18, 1928 in Denver, Gonzales did not had it easy on life. He grew up using his fists. In 1963, Gonzales organized Los Voluntarios a group that protested against police brutality. After two years he become a director of Dever’s War on Poverty youth programs; however, because of his involvement in the Albuquerque EEOC walkout, he was fired.…
Chicano/a/xs in the United States experienced racial discrimination through regional segregation, marginalization in suburbia, and construction of a selective fantasy past. This relationship between space, cultural citizenship, and race relations were apparent in the unequal opportunities and the marginalization Latinos faced in racialized suburbia. An imagined Spanish fantasy past was constructed through mission revival and Olvera Street in Los Angeles that placed the Mexican people and their culture in the past. It was implied that the only place for them in modern day Los Angeles was in the past, supporting the belief that the Mexican immigrants in the present were not a part of the Los Angeles community and were just a temporary workforce in America. This further emphasizes this racial segregation they faced from the Anglo community who constructed a physical…
Miguel Calbillo tells of his upbringing in Houston. Although Miguel’s parents were intelligent and creative people who were involved in many worthy causes, his father was a multi-substance abuser. When Miguel was 4, his mother divorced his father and Miguel and his sister spent much of their time with their maternal grandmother. While Miguel mom worked two and even three jobs to support the family, Miguel’s dad, a TV cameraman, kept losing jobs due to his substance abuse. Following both of his parents’ examples, Miguel became an enthusiastic reader, but as skinny, bookish Hispanic kid, he was picked on a lot by his peers.…
“Huelga! Huelga! Huelga!” grandma screamed alongside Cesar Chavez and hundreds of other protesters outside the Delano, California vineyards. The rays of the burning sun, searing their skin were the least of their concerns.…
What she does, in this respect, is present identity as fluid. One of the challenges of immigrating to a new country is often the internal or familial conflict of the “correct” combination of assimilation and preservation of culture. The Garcías struggle with this when the girls start to lose their Spanish and their Dominican accents. In an essay about her own experience coming to America, Alvarez discusses a phenomenon and a saying, “Entre Lucas y Juan Mejía,” that is hard to translate into English, but that people in the Dominican Republic all understand (Alvarez 1748). She says that it is an alternative way to say “between a rock and a hard place,” although it does not exactly express being between two equally bad alternatives, rather it describes being in between in general.…
Both Oscar Zetas Autobiography of the Brown Buffalo and Ana Castillo’s Novel So Far From God are examples of the use of magic realism and mythology in Chicano/a literature. However, both pieces of Chicano/a literature display their own unique interpretation of self-identity. Beginning with the plot of the Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Oscar is a lawyer at the East Oakland Legal Aid society. He drives to his office in downtown San Francisco only to discover that his secretary, who usually does most of the work for him, has died over the weekend.…
Through the experiences of Puerto Rican author and narrator Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria, exemplifies misconceptions and stereotypes Latin women face, as well as how American and Latin cultures differ. “You can leave the island, master the English language, and travel as far as you can, but if you’re a Latina, the island travels with you” (par 1), when being at the other side of the world, Judith witnessed a man kneeled before her, performing for her a rendition of “Maria” from West Side Story, while this gathered other people’s attention, it did not amuse the…
Films are universally known to generalize individuals especially in relation to their gender. Though they contain different themes, movies follow a similar pattern; the beautiful, innocent woman is recused by an attractive, strong male. In Carol J. Clover’s article, “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film”, she explores a new emerging pattern in horror cinema where the woman herself becomes the hero. Clover’s purpose in writing her article is to help her audience become familiar with the idea of cross gender identification. This is where the male audience is compelled to associate themselves with the strong independent female.…
“I was silent as a child, and silenced as a young woman; I am taking my lumps and bumps for being a big mouth, now, but usually from those whose opinion I don 't respect.” - Sandra Cisneros (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sandra_cisneros.html) Sandra Cisneros, famous author of works such as The House on Mango Street (1989), was born in Chicago in 1954, to a Mexican father and Chicana (Mexican-American) mother (Encyclopedia of Hispanic-American Literature, “Sandra Cisneros”). Cisneros was the last child of seven children and the only female of the children, to which she states made for a very alienated childhood (Erickson, “Sandra Cisneros: Biography) which she made up for by writing in a spiral notebook which only her mother could…
Theme There are actually several themes that are central to this book. One reason is that there is so much that made this movement a success. One central theme was the leadership role that the three main subjects of the book played during this movement. Raul Ruiz, Gloria Arellanes and Rosalio Muñoz were three key activists of the Chicano civil rights and empowerment struggle.…
Legally Blonde: A Meditation of Stereotypes Gender stereotypes are simplistic. Stereotypes do not bother to take account of the thoughts, behaviors, and individual desires of a person, merely taking interest whether or not the person is male, female, or nonbinary. In film franchises, such as Legally Blonde, writers and directors insist on propagating stereotypes despite the ongoing evolvement of archetypes in current society. Although in the final moments of the flick, Elle Woods surpasses such stereotypes and displays aberration, the number of cliches in the movie serves to reinforce negative gender identities.…
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel is a fictional novel focusing on the women of the De La Garza particularly the conflict between Tita and Mama Elena her mother. Right away the conflict between traditions of what a woman should be, Mama Elena telling Tita she could not marry until she died, and Tita desiring to be with the man she loved. There are many other relationships important in the story for example Tita and Rosaura pointing out the difference between desirable and undesirable woman. The novel also goes into male roles and the difference between the roles they possess and how they are different and at times similar. The main male roles are that of Pedro, Dr. John Brown, and the soldiers in the revolutionary army.…
Paradigms “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” introduced Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm theory. Paradigms describe the scientific observations of a natural phenomenon or theory (Kuhn 2012, 41). Thomas Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” provides a philosophical look into the scientific process and an understanding of how theories change and progress over time. Paradigms help explain theories, concepts, and observations so they can be learned from (Kuhn 2012, 43).…