Easy A

Introduction:

I would like to share about my review upon Feminist film theory. I had watched a film about feminist theory and it named Easy A. It was published on 17 September 2010 in United State and it is directed by Will Gluck and written by Bert V. Royal which is American director and scriptwriter. The film is an American teen comedy film.

Theory Discussion:

Modern Feminist film theory was started by Laura Mulvev in 1975, she talk about men and women are differently positioned by the cinema, “men as subjects identifying it agents who drive the film’s narrative forward and women as an object of masculine desire and fetishistic gazing” (Freeland, 1996).The gaze only focuses on males’ point of view call The Male Gaze, the character development and camera movement is directed by a male to pleased the male audiences. Within this theory, women often being objectified to visually pleasure the males.

In the early Hollywood movies, there are a lot of negative impacts to female audiences because women often get stereotyped through the film.  For example, the male is always portrayed as strong, powerful, brave and masculine but the female is just weak and powerless in many kinds of film. It does have improvement of decreasing the stereotyping on women representative but subtle one still remains in the contemporary film industry.

Synopsis:

Olive Penderghast was dated with a young guy and she lied to her best friend, Rhiannon about her losing virginity and the rumour spread widely in the school. Things drive to the worse situation when people search for her help by lying to have a sexual relationship with them in order to get rid of certain reputations or rumours.

Film Analysis:

In this film, Olive Penderghast is a strong, independent girl. Olive is also a smart and talkative girl. Her reputation was affected by losing her virginity has become the hot topic in her school, she becomes hatred to other girls and become impressed to other boys in school. Olive got verbally bullied by her classmate and the gossips about her but she doesn’t fight back because she received warning from the principal. This show how strong of a character when facing bullies by other people. Besides that, Olive is a kind and soft-hearted girl. It is shown on Brandon case which is one of her best friend asking her for help. Brandon requests her to help him in lying to other people that he is not a gay by sleep with each other. At first, Olive was rejected his request, then Brandon start to cry and she feels sympathetic to Brandon gets bullied due to his sexuality. Then, she accepts his request to lend a hand to him. During weekends, she lied to Rhi that how enjoyment to her date while the truth is she just sings ‘Pocket Full of Sunshine’ at her house and talks to her dog. As she facing all these pressures on her about being a slut in the school, she decides to portray as what other people think and she sewing an alphabet A on her exposing clothes that she rarely wears to school.

Before the end of the film, Olive no longer stays in this situation because her ideal man, Todd was confessed to her. Therefore, she opened up a live broadcast by revealing the truth and she also apologised to her favourite teacher Mr Griffith upon she had broken his marriage. This action shows that she is a responsible girl on what she had done.

Moreover, Rhiannon and her nickname are Rhi, the only best friend to Olive in this film. Her personality is very much different compared to Olive but they still stick together. Rhi is an outgoing and open-minded girl in contrast with Olive. She always swanks about her dates with her boyfriend, and how her weekends passed with the enjoyment which makes Olive feel pressured. Therefore, Olive made a lie in order to feel better to her friend for the first time but it didn’t end well. In the conversation between her and Olive, Rhi noticed words which are no longer a virgin as Olive said. After she knows Olive no longer virgin anymore and then she says ‘Now you’re a slut like me too’ to Olive.

Furthermore, there is another character named Marianne Bryant, she is the typical good student in other people’s eyes. She is the president of Student Council and holds several clubs membership. When she heard about Olive was slept with other guy and her immediate showed her hatred towards her without any acting because she is very directed to her own feelings towards other people. However after Olive treats her nicely when she cried about her family problems, Marianne immediately change her previous bad attitudes towards Olive. Other than that, she is a religious person and she is the president of the Christian society. Therefore, she often held meeting with her club members and asks them to believe in their God like she does. Besides that, she was the one who spread out the rumour about Olive losing her virginity to the whole school and she was the one who leading everyone to boycott Olive as she convinces and bad-mouth her; she also never listens to Olive’s explanation due to she has a bias towards her.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this film are very interesting because have a lot of comedic scenes via conversations. This film shows that not all females need the approval of men and the society doesn't only have one kind of female. Although the society nowadays said that men and women are equal right in making decisions, but women were treated as a burden and only silence in some situations in most of the time. In this film, Emma is showing her strength although the people beside her diminish her but she doesn’t give up on what decision she make.