Feminist American Teen Comedy Film: Easy A (2010)

     Aha! The movie for this week back to our 21st century which the film called Easy A directed by Will Gluck in 2010. When watching this movie, I found out that the main actress was actually the actress (Wichita) from Zombieland. She impressed me by her acting in Zombieland. The purpose of this movie wants to strengthen the idea of feminist.






Synopsis
     They story began with a young girl, Olivia's university life. In the beginning, rumor spread throughout the university quickly once a person did something bad. So, it happened to Olivia which said that she had a sex with Bryant because Bryant laughed by other people that he had no dare to have sex with girl. Due to this incident, many people started to ask Olivia for helping them to solve problem like Bryant's problem and for girls were like asking her to take the responsible that they should take but all pushed towards Olivia. After that, people started to think of how bad was the Olivia did because of the rumor. Olivia started to feel stress that she took from these rumor and she considered as scapegoat to the people. What will happen to Olivia? How does she overcomes these problems? Does she gives up or not? 

Theory Discussion

Feminist
     For the whole movie, there is a only thing which touched about was feminist. Feminist itself was defined as the right of a female. From the book Cinema Studies: The Key Concept by Susan with page 137 and line 34-38, she stated that feminist started in the 1920s by looking at women's expression of her own subjectivity and matured in 1960s. The term get matured because of quick evolution of feminist movement. 

     There are several themes which reflected the term of feminist which they are discrimination, stereotyping, objectification, oppression and patriarchy. For the first two themes, they are similar with each other but the only difference is one of them is more serious whereas the other one will be normal. 

     For the term of discrimination, it is something that judged people then used action to do it. For example, a Chinese and a English man tried to apply job in a company. Although company listened for what strength were they both, company straight away rejected Chinese man because they think that the ability for both of them were different and English man will have more creativity than the Chinese man. In Easy A, Olivia got humiliation from other people by throwing things to her.  

     However, stereotyping also judged people but it did not used any action. For this, it only stick to the mind most of time. For instance, people in Malaysia will think of Chinese as selfish person, Indian as a drunker and Malay as a lazy person. This theme should be taken away in our mindset because not every person just like the example I mentioned before. This theme can be seen when how Marriane used word to describe how bad was Olivia was. 

     Next, the theme in feminist also included objectification which means people considered female as an sexual object. In the movie itself, Olivia was told by other people to say that how dirty she was after agreeing fake sex with other boys. She lost her own image by helping other people. After that, she felt oppression or we called it tension under her as well because the rumor around her was getting bigger and bigger. Also, the rumor had became terrible and terrible after she helped people. 

     Moving to next point, most of the society lived in patriarchy style which male played important role than the female. Just like most the movies, the main focus to most of the scenes were male during early generation. After the term of feminist pointed out, the position of the female would slightly increased nowadays when compared to old time.    


The Gaze
     Nevertheless, the position of female became stable after introducing the term which is called 'the gaze'. For what I knew about the gaze, it means the view from someone to another one. There are 3 perspectives of looking which they divided into male character looking at the female character in the film, audience in the cinema looking at the female character in the film and audience in the cinema looking through the eyes of the male character who is looking at the female character. 

  

     In Easy A, the first perspective can be seen when Todd was seeing Olivia to experience the terrible situation after the rumor spread throughout the university she studied. 

     Secondly, this can be seen when the scene only showed different Olivia which audience was looking and focusing at Olivia.


     

Lastly, Easy A did not included this perspective but it was a extreme close-up for just eye only like the photo shown on the right hand side. 




Representation
     For representation, we can look at 3 type of components which they are gender, sexuality and subjectivity. How do they link with each other? To explain this, gender divided into two different sexuality and they are male and female. As in the Easy A, there are 2 different gender and how they wore were different with one another. For example, female's long hair versus male's short hair, female's make up, female's fashion and etc. Feminist for female was subjectivity just like I mentioned before which also call as objectification. This is because of the old time stereotyping when people started to judge female as sex object but it became better after introducing theory of feminist.   

Character

Olivia
     She was a kind character in Easy A because she sympathised other people in order to step on the way which fulled with humiliation. Not only that but also she was smart in solving problem like she chose to step out to point out what other people did to her and she knew what is the thing that needs to do and who does she wants to be.   


Marriane

     Since his father was Godfather, it made her became a close-minded person like anything must follow the rule set by God. She was also a person who loved to jealous that what people had then she must had it with same quality, value, perfect and etc.  


Rhiannon
     This was Olivia's best friend who loved to get attention from boys. From what she wore, it showed the sexy female characteristic which most of male loved to see and pay more attention to it. Unfortunately, she lied to Olivia said that she dated Todd before. At the end, she sent a text for apologize to Olivia.

    

Mr & Mrs Penderghast  
     They were parents for Olivia and both of them were open-minded which allows what Olivia chose to do and support her all the time even the rumor spread throughout the university. This kind of parents usually needed for society nowadays because children will know the way they be so they can perform well in everything.


Conclusion
     After watching this movie, I felt that the movie was really awesome and got the point that support the term of feminist. As a boy, I don't think I able to know feminist well because what a female experienced was totally different from me. Through the movie, I learnt a lot of lesson in feminist. Thanks for reading my blog and have a nice day! 

Reference
S.Hayward (2013), Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, Fourth Edition, Routledge, London and New York