Women, Sport and Film :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

Women, Sport and FilmOut of all the material we cover in this course, the ones that bear most directly on this question I think are the documentary about women in sports, and the movie Girlfight. However, I felt that both of these films focussed on the issue from womens point of view. This is not to say that it isnt important or necessary to do so, but I started thinking about how men are also greatly change by gender stereotyping. Being in a womens college, I nip like we focus a lot on the ways in which women are forced into certain roles, but we neglect to also seek at how men are forced into certain roles. Last semester I watched the movie he-goat Elliot, about a young boy evolution up in Newcastle, England, during the time of the miners strike. I think the movie illustrates really well the costs and benefits of breaking gender stereotypes. Billy grows up in a mining family and his family consists of himself, his father, and his elder brother. He is surrounded only by male r ole models, and that too men who engage in manual of arms labour. His father and his brother are both very masculine in the traditional sense of the word. The basic plot of the movie is that Billy wants to be a ballet dancer. His father wants him to learn boxing, but he sees a group of girls having ballet lessons at the same time and he starts winning ballet lessons on the sly. He turns out to be very talented, and his teacher wants him to apply to go to ballet school on a scholarship. The inhabit of the movie follows his progress and his struggle to be accepted by his family formerly hes been discovered. At first his father prohibits him from doing ballet, and calls him a pouf, but Billy persists and is finally accepted by his family and community. I found it interesting that eventide though Billy is pre-pubescent, the mere fact that he wants to learn ballet induces people to question his sexuality even at such an archaeozoic age. At an age when children arent supposed to be sexual beings yet, Billy is infra constant pressure to decide what his sexual orientation is, both by his family in that he has to defend himself, and by a friend of his in school who fits a certain stereotype of homosexuality and is romantically implicated in him.