gender roles in Contemporary films

The representations of women in film. In contemporary film women's roles in films have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and between period settings. These factors contribute to the different representations of women's roles in the film they are present in. These roles are diverse going from the traditional maternal role to that of manipulative murderer. In contemporary media these roles are given higher status, in the pass the highest a female role could be at most was a side-kick or a co-star, they were given the title leading lady if they were at there best and yet they would always be second best. However, in present times in more contemporary times women's roles have been the highlight of the movie being the leading actor. Women's roles in movies can be of almost equal to the male roles and the co-stars are not given the majority of the acclaims just because they are male. Therefore, in recent films, female roles have comes to include the traditional household/ motherly role. Yet this is mainly in contemporary films about periods in the past, in the modernistic films out at the moment women's roles in the films were more dominant and masculine and all the while maintaining there feminine qualities that have always been represented in films. The genre can affect the role of the female character as for example in film noir there is always a femme fatal get in a science fiction there maybe no femme fatal iconology get there maybe a sci-fi connection to a femme fatal yet the genre of it alters it completely. This can be seen in the modern film "Kill Bill" where the lead was an aggressive, strong and powerful character and yet this aggression and revenge was steaming from the lose of her child thus the feminine mother aspect can be seen clearly in comparison to a film from the 1980's such as "Little Shop of Horrors" in which the leading lady was a weak, feminine women who had a strong sense of her sexuality and how to manipulate it in order for her to gain the one thing she wanted and her mother taught her to want, a good husband so she could be a mother and a wife. Even from these two examples we can see that there is great diversity within the representation of differing people in film.