Female Empowerment

This week our class focused on the idea of women empowerment, which is something I find really interesting for a few different reasons. Obviously, being a woman myself, I believe women empowerment is a great thing and is something that needs to be talked about. But I realized that a lot of the conversations I’ve had in other classes involving women empowerment have been about the roles of women in society today, not the roles of women in the past. I really appreciated that we were able to talk about and analyze women’s roles in society in the past by looking at different films. For the most part, women used to be portrayed as housewives who were nothing without a man in their lives. But the films we viewed this week showed women in different and powerful roles. It made women seem less helpless without men, and I really enjoyed seeing this in these films. Watching these films made me realize how far we have come as a society to accept men and women in different roles.

One film that really caught my attention was Michael Curtiz’s 1933 film titled “Female.” The film follows the life of Alison Drake, who is a hard-working business woman who is the head of a large automobile company. She seems extremely selfish in terms of her wealth and treats the men in her life as useless objects. After she seduces the man she wants at that moment, she just tosses them to the side the next day and pretends as though nothing happened. Although she makes it appear as though she only cares about herself and her company, the film later reveals that she does want a man in her life and that she doesn’t want to be alone. I was kind of disappointed that we only got to see a few scenes from this film because I was really enjoying it, but I would really like to view the entire film and see exactly how it plays out in the end.

I found it very interesting that Curtiz decided to make a movie that portrayed a woman with so much power at this time in history. Obviously, not a lot of films at this time showed women in powerful, executive positions, but I think it was a great way to show America how women can have just as much power in a corporate setting as men and do just as good of a job. I wish I could have a chance to talk to Curtiz to see why he wanted to make this film. Actually, I find it really interesting that a male director made a film that revolved around the idea of women empowerment. Why wouldn’t a woman want to direct this kind of film? Or were most film directors at this time men? I guess the vast majority of film directors today are men, but still! Why wouldn’t a woman want to direct this film? And what would make a man want to direct a film like this? Just some food for thought I suppose….