Tuesday, December 3, 2019
The Irishman
After today's class, I read some reviews of The Irishman regarding the lack of representation of women in the film. Curiously, The Washington Post makes the case that although women occupied limited screen time in the movie, their presence (or absence) is nevertheless very significant to the movie's message. Frank's (played by Robert De Niro) daughter Peggy (Anna Paquin) can potentially even be considered as "the most important character" as her disapproval illuminates the moral bankruptcy of men's empires and how they are built on sand. On the other hand, The Guardian argues that instead of fleshed-out characters, the movie merely uses women symbolically as a moral campus.
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I think this is a pretty sad justification for lack of female representation. The Irishman is just like every other male-dominated film coming out of Hollywood. I don't know much about the Teamsters, but I would find it hard to believe that they had no other women in their lives. No one is thinking about how there are not women in the film as they watch it, at least that has been my perception after hearing about the film so much over the past few weeks.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Arielle, and on the topic of women representation in more substantive characters in film, the movie Bombshell is coming out starring Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, and Margot Robbie. On the topic, this interesting article addresses Theron's experience.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/charlize-theron-says-it-was-hard-to-film-megyn-kellys-santa-is-white-segment-in-bombshell-as-a-mom-to-black-kids-001803714.html
I haven't watched the movie, but I think the quotes you include from The Washington Post and The Guardian articles elucidate the difficulty in trying to keep within the lines of portraying delimiting characters for social commentary, lest it becoming a perpetuation of mere underrepresentation. What points do films need to hit in order to effectively relay that their "unimportant" characters are purposeful, and perhaps even the most significant when it comes to evaluating both the fictional realm of the narrative and the current world we live in?
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