Film Noir - Contextual Awareness.

I recently finished reading Amelia's essay on gender and feminism called:

"Do you agree with Jeffreys (2005) that gendered practices associated with beauty fit the UN’s concept of harmful cultural practices?"

It was a really good read, although I'm not a sociologist and I don't know much about Jeffrey's work, I understood the essay fairly well.

One part I liked in particular and find applicable to my Film Noir short is the part about fashion and appearance:

"The purpose of inducing women to concern themselves with their appearance is to instil a belief that women are defined by their outer appearance (Erdman in Callaghan, 1994). Jeffreys cites Dellinger and Williams: women felt that to lack makeup in the workplace was to appear not ‘credible’ or ‘healthy’ (1997: 151 in Jeffreys, 2005). Silvermann observes that men’s fashion, particularly the suit in the workplace, has become uniform. Whereas women’s fashion has many more fluctuations and possibilities (1986, in Finkelstein, in Davis 1997). This indicates that women must prove their functionality through appearance (Haug 1983), there is no such requirement for men, his functionality is unquestioned. Fashion is often portrayed as being inherently linked with women... Further, many items of women’s fashion are seen to be directly indicative of their personality...Therefore, Valentine’s proposal, that a woman’s appearance reflects her moral worth, seems reasonable (in Callaghan 1994). There does not seem to be any items of male clothing with such explicit connotations, indicating man does not need to prove his morality, suggesting he is regarded to have inherent worth...

...Valentine explains that morality is characterised through compliance and deviation from rules. It has been shown that women’s personalities have been associated with their bodily appearance (Erdman in Callaghan, 1996) and their appearance is controlled by the instigation of rules (primarily in the form of norms). So by controlling women’s bodies, in this way, is to control their personalities (Turner 1984, in Valentine, in Callaghan 1994). Women are obliged to prove their worth through their appearance but this is a fruitless task because the norm presented to women is largely unachievable, so women become preoccupied by a constant striving. Leaving men free to act, make decisions and concern themselves with issues of importance while women’s energies are diverted to the task and role of appearing (Berger n/a in Radner, 1995). However, this oppression commonly goes unnoticed."

So for example with my characters, the pro-tag will only have one set of clothes whilst the female lead will always have a new outfit. And through her outfits, it will connote her self-worth and moral worth as well as her personality. This will be worked more on than the Pro-tag's ensemble, seeing as how Man is commonly linked with mind rather than body, we will be concentrating on the pro-tag's thoughts and ideas - which links in well seeing as he's our narrator. I'm liking that I have these links to my work now, it makes it more justifiable and generally seem better researched (and hopefully more believable).

Big thank you to Amelia for lending me this essay and generally helping with this aspect as it's helped an awful lot for my character structure.

TTFN

Jamie