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Shaping Identity: Male And Female Interactions In Cinema, Jonette Lauren Lagamba

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Since the inception of cinema, women have been portrayed with the typical identities of emotionally and physically weak characters; this portrayal led to their subsequent dependence on men. Men were usually the protagonists and/or the heroes, following their archetypal journey. Thus, women's position in early cinema was to exemplify what men were not, placing the former in the diminutive position of the Other. One may conclude that men were often defined by what women lacked, and the women were defined by their relationships with these heroic men. As time progressed in the history of cinema, women's images retained part …