Gender homework

My initial thoughts on this clip are that it shows the male character to be quite sort of emotionless and tough where as the woman is quite emotional and fragile. You can see when the woman holds the mans hand it is so much bigger than hers which shows a form of dominance and this is backed up by the woman being quite sort of passive and apologising to the man. You also see that the woman has to ask the man to do things, instead of being able to tell him to do things, for example, instead of her telling him to wait outside, she asked him. All in all, from my first look, I think that the two are in a relationship that the man is the head of and the woman is going to get her results back from a health check where she presumably had cancer.

Gender is not about biological gender, it is about the social norms that someone can associate as a womanly thing to do and a manly thing to do that differ in each society. What would stereotypically be done by a man would be masculine and what would stereotypically be done by a woman would be feminine, this isn't to say men can't be feminine and women can't be masculine.

At the start of the clip we see a medium shot of two people (a man and a woman) in the back of a taxi. The man picks up the woman's hand and kisses her ring twice, as he does this, you see that the woman is wearing a bracelet and some earrings and the man is wearing no other jewellery other than his wedding ring. Because it's only the woman wearing it, we can say the gender is represented in this part of the clip by using jewellery to represent feminine.

There are close up shots of the man and the woman after the man says "or didn't fin count?", this helps portray the emotions of the characters at the time and we can see from these shots that the man looks indifferent but the woman looks quite sad as she is looking down a lot. This shows us that they have represented being emotional as a feminine thing in this clip.

In the next part of this clip, I think the characters gender has swapped because the man starts acting a bit more feminine and the woman acts a bit more masculine, firstly the man looks shocked and a bit upset when the woman reveals that she "knows about Melissa" and the woman holds the mans hand to comfort him. Usually it would be the man (being masculine) that would comfort the others because they are strong and tough but in this clip it is the woman doing it which shows that the gender is represented by showing that the woman is strong and tough, not the man. I think this is backed up when she goes on to speak about how she might die and because it's a sad subject the man doesn't want to think about it and rejects it as a possible outcome but the woman is being strong and knows what could happen so she is taking control and telling him what she wants of him if she dies. Usually, it is a very masculine thing to be in control and to be strong but this clip shows the woman doing it so she is being quite masculine at this point.

You then find out that the woman has deceived the man and has planned for them to go to see her consultant instead of where they were actually meant to be going. The woman was quite deceptive so we can say that the representation of gender was shown through the woman being deceptive which is quite a feminine thing. From the mis-en-scene, you see that the taxi driver is a male which shows that it's the masculine thing to be working.

The woman then asks the man to wait outside while she gets her results. This shows the man is the dominant person in their relationship because instead of the woman telling the man to wait outside, she had to plead for him to wait outside. Representation of gender is shown through the use of dominance and shows that masculine is more dominant than feminine.

As the clip swaps between the man waiting for the woman to come out and the woman receiving her results you can see two things, firstly that the woman is crying which we have already established that being emotional is a feminine thing to do so that's one way the gender is represented. We can also see from the mis-en-scene that her consultant is a man. Throughout the whole clip so far, all people that have been working are men so going back to my previous point that working is a masculine thing to do, we see that the masculine gender has been represented through the use of working.

The woman then exits the building, walks out into the middle of the road and get's hit by a car. At this point, there is a lot of effects and editing involved. Firstly all sound is removed except a heartbeat which is gradually getting louder and everything goes slow motion. I think what they were trying to do was show what it was like from his perspective, all he could hear was his heart, everything else was drowned out and it all seems to go in slow motion.

The man runs over to the woman that is now laying on the ground and starts to comfort her which as I have said before, is a masculine thing to do. The woman dies and the man begins to cry and although he is showing emotion, I wouldn't call this feminine because he has just witnessed the death of his partner, there are exceptions. I just think from this part of the clip, we see the man holding the woman and comforting her which shows that gender has been represented by showing that the man is the one that looks after other people because he is the leader.

In conclusion, I think that the representation of gender has shown us that the masculine traits are usually strong, tough, emotionless and dominant where as the feminine traits are passive, emotional and fragile. I think this clip follows most of the stereotypical masculine and feminine things but it contradicts a few.