Gender Identity Health Check

Gender is represented in the media in various different ways, for example males will be wearing suits and women will be wearing dresses, this is just one example of many. Gender doesn't mean male or female, it is nothing to do with the biological gender, it is the gender identity that has been created by humans themselves. There is no law that says women have to wear makeup and men can't wear skirts but because of the way gender is represented in the media, we are influenced and therefor chose to conform to the expectations of society.

The camera shots in this clip is one of the ways that show how gender identity is represented. They do this right at the very start at around 0:15 in the clip by having high angle shots of the male worker looking down at the women. This shows that he has higher status than the women that he is talking to as he is looking down at her and she is looking up to him. This status may be because of money but while this shot is taking place, you don't know that the woman cannot afford the dress, it is merely a status shown through gender dominance. Even though this woman may not be able to afford this dress, she still wants to look nice for her daughter. This sense of women wanting to look their best has been portrayed by her saying herself that it's her daughters wedding and she wants something "nice". This shows that it's the woman's job to look good for other people.

During the confrontation of the shop worker and the woman, the camera shots are placed so you can see that the male has a height advantage over the woman. There are a few master shots that show how close they are and how much taller he actually is, for example at 0:30 when he is mocking her when she says "nice" you can clearly see him towering over her, looking down at her and intimidating her. This represents gender identity by showing that men are superior to women and have more power.

After the woman leaves the shop, the male focusses his attention to the other woman in the store. There are come close ups on the woman to show her accessories like her watch and ring which look expensive. The male notices this and heads over to her and engages in conversation. Even though we see she is a wealthy woman, the camera shot is still high angle which shows it doesn't matter about your class in terms of money, the status and power levels are shown to focus on the gender of the person and the male worker will have higher than any female. This woman is dressed a lot differently to the previous woman, she is wearing a blazer and a knee-length skirt made out of suit material which shows she is more professional and wealthier.

There is a tilt shot after the man gets the dress for the woman which shows the whole of the outfit. I think this objectifies her as more of a sex object now as before the camera was focussing on the accessories that made her look wealthy but now it is focussing on the woman herself. This point is backed up as she says "oh yes, oh yes!" in, what some might think, a seductive tone and the camera tilts up to show the dress is a backless and braless dress. This just adds to the objectivity of the woman as it is showing off a lot of flesh and portraying her in a sexy way. Even in the outfit she was wearing prior to trying on the dress she was still showing some cleavage which backs up the point that she is being shown as a sex object. The reason she is buying this dress it presumable to look good for her man which shows that it's the women that are trying their best to look their best for others.

After the woman agrees to buy the dress, the shot then transitions into a different scene where there is a medium shot of two men. The men are at what is presumably a bar drinking an alcoholic beverage and smoking cigarettes. The Mis-En-Scene in this scene is a very strong, visual portrayal of the gender identity that men can just sit around without a care in the world and it's perfectly acceptable for them to be smoking inside and drinking during the middle of the day. One of them is wearing suits which shows that they are in a position of power and the other is wearing casuals. They are both however, wearing trousers, which is completely normal but in the whole clip you see women wearing skirts and men wearing trousers. This shows that the gender identity is shown through the clothing, the males are expected to wear trousers and the females will usually wear skirts or dresses.

The next scene is back to the shop, where the woman has realised she has lost her ring, she gets really stressed and panicked about it but the male shop worker stays calm and in control instead of losing his head like the woman. The representation of gender identity is quite profound in the scene as it shows that to be masculine you can't be stressed about things, you have to stay calm and the feminine side would be to get really stressed out over everything. She also says that her husband will kill her if she loses it which shows that she is scared of what her husband will think because he is the "leader" in the relationship and she doesn't even care about the value of the ring, just what her husband will think of her. This shows that feminine people care more about what others think of them and less about money. We could generalise this to why more females spend lots of money on clothes, because they don't care about the price of them, they just want to look good for other people.

Then next scene is very short, it is a male doing some manual labour, he is wiring an alarm system. With just this very scene we are shown that it is a masculine thing to do. They could have used a woman to be doing this work but instead a man was used to portray the fact that it is more of a masculine thing to do than feminine.

When it transitions back to the shop, you see a man has entered and a tilt shot is used so you can see his full suit. It then swaps to a high angle shot of the new man looking down at the shop worker who is on the floor. I think this is because it is to show that the new man is now more masculine and therefor has more power so he is given a higher position of power. I think he is more masculine because the shop worker is now starting to feel a little bit stressed while trying to look for the ring because he really wants the reward and we have previously established that getting stressed out is more feminine than masculine.

After this scene it goes back to the two men at the bar, there is no dialogue in this scene, it just shows them sitting and laughing together. I just think it enforces the idea that they don't have any cares in the world, they can just sit and have a drink together while other men are reading newspapers and stuff.

I think the scene after is very interesting. It shows the two men (the male shop worker and the new man) having a heated discussion about the ring that the new man had just found. What I found interesting is that neither of them really wanted to return the ring back to the women just to be a good person, they were both just hooked on the fact that will get a reward if they return it. This shows that masculine people are quite money hungry and greedy.

The last scene in this clip shows that the new man and the woman that lost her ring had met up in a café and new each other and the new man reveals that he got "one and a half" thousand pounds from the shop worker to which she responds with "you did ok". This shows us that they were working together and had set the whole thing up to get £1,500 from a (I'm guessing) worthless ring.

Throughout the whole clip all you see are men working, for example, the man in the shop and the man behind the bar, which shows it's the mans job to be the worker and not the woman's. However, this idea is countered at the very end when you see a glimpse of a woman working in the café.

The editing of this clip is pretty similar throughout. They don't tend to use cuts, instead they use transitions, like swipe left or swipe down (where the picture moves left or down to reveal the next shot). They also used a freeze-frame at 1:54 while playing the jaunty music of the scene in the shop as it transitioned into the scene at the shop which allowed it to look seamless and smooth.

In conclusion, I think the gender identity in this clip is represented through things like clothing, actions, emotions, camera angles etc. and I think it is used so effectively that unless you are actively searching for it, it would be hard to notice.