To begin, watch this review of 500 Days of Summer from the perspective of feminist philosophical analysis. While the video is a little silly at times, it's also a great example of what I'm looking for with your projects - a philosophical "reading" of a piece of media that opens up questions about its relationship to reality and our lives.
For now though, I'm curious what you think about her argument after seeing the film. You job is to write a response (worth 25 pts) to her claim, which is that the movie is NOT a romantic comedy and Summer is not a "manic pixie dreamgirl," which is a term cultural critics invented to describe a one-dimensional female character who seems to exist just to make a sad male protagonists happy again. Instead, she sees the movie as a philosophical critique of how too many men see and treat women: as objects for their amusement, not subjects in their own right. This is the same argument made by the great existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir in her groundbreaking feminist work The Second Sex. She sees it as an ontological question: "What IS a woman?" And she thinks a "woman," like a "man," is a social role designed and defined by society, which has typically been controlled by men. Do you think the movie takes a position similar to de Beauvoir's? Or do you disagree? Or do you think the movie DOES take the feminist position but disagree with it? Or think the movie SHOULD take that position but doesn't? Post a full-paragraph response (a paragraph means 6-10 sentences here) for a quiz grade.
16 Comments
|
AuthorArchives
April 2016
Categories |