So a friend of mine (female) and I (male) just got into an hour long argument about the role of women in Sin City as sexual objects.
She said that all the women in the movie were sexual objects, and that the only power they had was through sex. And that the women couldn't get anything done without the men.
Then she tied it into a grander view on the view of women in society and the movies as objectified by men.
Even if you haven't seen Sin City you can feel free to join in. But I'm curious as to how everyone feels, but more especially how women feel. Some women see no problem with another sexually powerful and in control woman, such as those in Sin City. But others (such as my friend) find it to be degrading and personally defensive.
What do you all think?
Posted by Da_Goat (Member # 5529) on :
I think it all depends on whether the woman is trying to be "sexually powerful", as you called it, and how blatantly she's doing so.
[ April 02, 2005, 11:48 PM: Message edited by: Da_Goat ]
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
It's also worth pointing out that the men in Sin City are uniformly tough, independent, scornful of authority, and unflingingly brutal. Sin City isn't the place to find anything other that extreme noir stereotypes.
Posted by Darth Ender (Member # 7694) on :
Posted by rav (Member # 7595) on :
Don't magazines depict that you have to be super sexy (woman), or that you have to be super buff (aka sexy) (male)?
(Disclaimer: by attraction I don't mean sex appeal, I mean more of something that draws me to that individual)
I have dated women that I didn't really find that attractive, and it seems that I had a harder time the difficulty maintaining the relationship. It's that when I am attracted to someone, I want to be a better me around them for some strange reason.
However, I have also dated women that I can't 'connect' with and no matter how much sex appeal they have, I can't stand to be around them.
Sex does sell. People in general do like eye-candy.
Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
Miho didn't use her sexuality. Miho just kicked ass.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I tried the Miho argument too. I was informed that Miho was the exception to the rule, rather than the rule itself.
Posted by Leonide (Member # 4157) on :
I'd also like to point out that while the directors certainly used Lucille's sexuality, Lucille herself did not.
She was just a hard-boiled parole officer!
[ April 03, 2005, 03:05 AM: Message edited by: Leonide ]
Posted by rav (Member # 7595) on :
I haven't seen it yet.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"I was informed that Miho was the exception to the rule, rather than the rule itself."
She's still a sexual stereotype, I'm afraid.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
Women Use Sex. Men use Violence. These are the stereotypes found in Sin City.
Of these two, the women come off better because a few of them use violence as well as sex. They are more versatile.
Only the hit man (opening/closing scenes) comes close to using sex as an intro to his violence.
Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
And that's really the crux of it, I think. Anyone who is offended by stereotypes in Sin City is purely overanalysing. This is not a movie that is attempting to hold a mirror up to our world, or even our entertainment industry, and show us the way things are. It's just a graphic novel that moves, and a film noir to boot. It's not supposed to be real. Complaining about the women in Sin City is like complaining that "The Muppet Show" doesn't depict frogs realistically. Posted by Eduardo_Sauron (Member # 5827) on :
Verily Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Is there really anything anywhere that doesn't fit into some stereotype we've created?
There's so many, what's the point of even using the word anymore?
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
Uhhhh.... do I have to be the one to point out that the movie was about prostitutes??
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote: Uhhhh.... do I have to be the one to point out that the movie was about prostitutes??
Nancy was not a prostitute at the beginning, yet from the ending it seems inevitable that she should have become one.
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
Hmm, I thought she was just a dancer. But I was pointing it out to show you can't really pick apart the only power of women being sex in a movie that follows a crowd of prostitutes. Prostitutes with guns.
Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
Nancy was an exotic dancer, and possibly a stripper. Despite stereotypes, that's a far cry from being a prostitute.
Posted by Temposs (Member # 6032) on :
To make a general philosophical statement about this sort of thing:
Everyone likes having power(aka getting what we want when we want it), and we all also like it if there is an easy way to get what we want, and this includes power.
Women in society see that men(almost half the population) have a strong weakness for lustful thoughts and actions.
Men in society see that they are stronger than more than half the population (i.e. women).
These are possible routes of least resistance to gaining power; a third is being just slimy, which can apply to either gender, and will usually be accompanied with sex & violence.
However, we know that the more power you have, the more you tend to be corrupted. Consider the example in the Hitchhiker series, where the ruler of the universe was made to not know he was the ruler, so he could be totally pure in his decisions.
In the same way, I would say the only way to gain power without corrupting yourself is to gain power without trying to gain power, and not trying to keep it once you know you have it. In other words, don't pursue actions with intent to increase or maintain your power.
When you do, you end up corrupted(letting yourself be treated as a sex object, or being a violent person, or being a compulsive liar or cheat) like those in Sin City(thus the title).
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
My point geing that at the beginning Nancy was a little girl who was painfully aware of how close she had come to losing her virginity in the worst way possible, yet she winds up being a stripper. It's not the option she should have chosen.
Also comment: It's a strange world we live in when strippers are so common that we think of it as a comparatively virtuous profession because we're comparing it to prostitution, as opposed to comparing it to being a secretary (or some non-sex-linked vocation).
Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
A prostitute actually has sex for a living. The physical act of intercourse is her means of income.
A stripper sells the imagery of sex, just like a nude model or an actress shooting a sex scene. The difference is that her consumers tend to be in the same room with her, whereas models and actresses get to have their magazines and films as a degree of separation from their consumers.
Edit: Unless you think that acting is only a virtuous profession for actresses who refuse to do sex scenes. In which case, I can't argue with that. I don't agree, but I can't argue with it, either.
[ April 03, 2005, 05:52 PM: Message edited by: Verily the Younger ]
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
There was a reason Shakespeare had to operate in a red light district. At the time acting was considered tantamount to prostitution.
I don't think that's the case, but I do think that we can see the logical connection when we know that child actors like Lindsey Lohan and Christina Ricci were destined to do nude scenes as soon as they came of age.
The porn industry is built on the broken dreams of Hollywood wannabees. And don't tell me pornography is "not prostitution."
Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :
Technically, it's not.
Porn is legal, prostitution isn't.
-Trevor
Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
I don't understand what their having been child actors has to do with anything. Presumably they were adults by the time they did nude scenes. I realize that some people like to wax poetic about the tragedy of lost innocence, but the fact is, all the models, dancers, actors, whores, rapists, murderers, junkies, and fascist dictators in the world started life as children. Nobody stays innocent forever.
Besides, the only actresses that do sex scenes or nude scenes are the ones that want to. Kirsten Dunst refuses to do nude scenes. I don't think that makes her inherently more pure or less slutty than Christina Ricci. So I don't know what you meant by "destined". Apparently Christina Ricci doesn't mind doing it, but if she suddenly decided she didn't want to anymore, then she wouldn't.
[ April 03, 2005, 06:20 PM: Message edited by: Verily the Younger ]
Posted by ChaosTheory (Member # 7069) on :
Porn is prostitution with a camera.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
Sometimes porn is legal, sometimes it isn't.
Sometimes prostitution is legal, sometimes it isn't.
When a person has sex for money, it's prostitution. End of story.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Porn is prostitution with a camera.
Except both of the participants(or how ever many participants are involved), get paid to have sex with eachother. So doesn't that make it acting with sex? Where's the line between a sex scene in a rated R hollywood movie or a sex scene in a porn movie? Are hollywood actors prostitutes? If they don't really have sex, does that change anything? Are nude pictures prostitution? What about nude paintings or sculptures?
[ April 03, 2005, 06:31 PM: Message edited by: Strider ]
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote: Presumably they were adults by the time they did nude scenes.
Yes, and it was obvious that they were waiting to turn 18 in order to do so, merely because there is a law against it. Lindsey Lohan did an "apparent" nude scene in "The Parent Trap" when she was about 12, and it didn't cause any controversy.
Flash back about 20 years to Brooke Sheilds and "Pretty Baby." It made the cover of Time magazine, because they used an apparent nude image of a child. The issue wasn't whether she was nude or not, but whether she was a child who had been put in that position by her mother and other adult promoters.
Look how far we've slipped in the past, say 30 years. How far much farther do we need to slip before child porn is just a lifestyle choice?
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote: Where's the line between a sex scene in a rated R hollywood movie or a sex scene in a porn movie?
There used to be one. But it's getting harder and harder to find it now.
quote: Are hollywood actors prostitutes?
They're making a good argument for the Elizabethan view of it.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:prostitution isn't.
Unless you're in Vegas.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Point of order: to my knowledge, Christina Ricci has done exactly one nude scene, and that in a nonsexual manner in an extremely intense psychological movie (the independent film Prozac Nation, where she's sitting completely still, naked, and apparently paralyzed with indecision on a first day of school).
Just wondering why she was named and not any of the other young actresses who have done nude scenes in every appearance.
Posted by Verily the Younger (Member # 6705) on :
I picked her randomly from the two examples already given. I actually don't know who she is, but whether she actually does many nude scenes has no bearing on my main point.
As for the child porn argument, I really don't see the connection. Maybe some actresses were eager to do nude scenes, and were counting down the days till their eighteenth birthday so they could get away with it. Surely that's their own personal issue. They still had to wait before they could do it legally. Having an eighteen-year-old actress do a nude scene in a regular movie is nothing at all like having child pornography being socially acceptable. That would be like saying that because people go out and drink as soon as they turn 21, we're on the verge of having the drinking age abolished altogether.
And it still has nothing to do with prostitution.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote: Just wondering why she was named and not any of the other young actresses who have done nude scenes in every appearance.
The only reason I gave those two names is because it's something that occurred to me while they were still child actors. Given that doing nudes is simply "part of the job" any female child actor must know that that's a decision they must face. In other words I predicted that it would happen.
Kirsten Dunst apparently has enough name recognition to refuse to do nudes, but most girls don't, and the pressure to perform is immense. Which is what I was talking about when I said that the porn industry uses hollywood wannabees.
The casting couch has been around a long time, but we used to at least claim that child actors were exempt. We don't really bother with that anymore, as evidenced by amount of "teen porn" available. Those girls were groomed and recruited before they were 18, and everyone knows it.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Well, not really. There's certainly pressure, but it's entirely possible to succeed in movies without stripping down. The point isn't that Kirsten Dunst has the name recognition to refuse now, but that she refused even when she was a nobody and she still made it. Jessica Alba doesn't do nude scenes either. Ricci has done sex scenes but unrevealing ones; her nude scene mentioned is in a movie that's very personal to her and, as I said, wholly nonsexual.
I understand you and I agree to a point, just requesting you avoid "everyone" statements when it's so easy to refute.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
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