Film Noir - Social context.

I've re-read another book recently 'Ways Of Seeing' By John Berger. I read this originally during my Foundation year at Chelsea Art College, but when I recapped it a week ago, I really understood more of it.

It's a good read, I recommend it, it talks about gender particularly well, and has some interesting points.

They talk about how Women are made solely to be viewed, and to be born a woman is to be born in the alloted and confined space into the keeping of men. Some quotoes:

" And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman."

"Men survey women before treating them."

"One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women,. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight."

These are really good points to consider for my female lead in my Film Noir film, seeing as I'm going for an almost exaggerated character roles for both leads. So to follow these suits for the female would strengthen the character basis very much so.

Jamie