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by Meabh Aine Broderick Picture this:
A young child hunkers down in the velvet chairs of a dimly lit theatre, her miniature figure barely filling half the large space. She sits patiently, popcorn in hand, waiting to be plunged into darkness. No sooner do the lights go down than a spectacle of colour and sound erupts onto the screen. Before her eyes, she sees a world beyond imagination unfold. A powerful woman dominates the screen, fighting the bad guys alongside her team. In her ear she hears the voice of a woman in a lab coat sitting at a computer, frantically analysing the screens. Meanwhile, the action cuts to a hospital where a mother operates on her injured son. When the lights go up, she offers a sideways glance to her mother and feels a sense of familiarity between her and the characters she had seen on screen. As she skips out to the car holding her mother’s hand, she feels like she could take on the world and be whoever she wants to be. That child is me, but her experience is something I could only dream of. For me, the doctors, scientists and heroes were replaced by princesses and damsels in distress. As it faded to black and the credits rolled, I began to scan the room for a real-life incarnation of the figures on screen, to no avail. When I returned home, wanting nothing more than to be like the women I had just come to know, I stood in front of the mirror, desperately searching for ways in which I could transform myself to achieve this goal. While this may seem like a bleak outlook on the experiences of a young, naïve child, I know that everyone can identify with it in one way or another. Ever since I was a young girl, I have dreamed of being a part of the wonderful world of film. However, this dream has always been shadowed by a series of unattainable goals that I felt must be achieved before I could do anything else. They are not random or irrational. They have been subconsciously forced upon me from the very first time I sat through a film and have stuck with me until this very day. Films have the ability to teach us and can leave a lasting impression. Unfortunately, they can also leave a nasty mark. For me, films have led me to believe that in order to succeed in life, I must look and act a certain way. That there are a limited number of roles I can fill in life and that the highest praise I can ever get will always end with the words, “for a girl.” While I have learned that the real world has a little more to offer, a part of me can never shake these feelings that have lingered in me since childhood. Representation of women in film is severely lacking when compared to what we see of men. Positive representations are even fewer and farther between. The Geena Davis Institute of Gender in Media has undertaken several studies to analyse the inequality that currently exists in the film industry. The results offer a clear explanation for the way women, including myself, feel about their position in the world. In an analysis of Family Films, it was revealed that only 13% of films featured a balanced or slightly female centric cast. This means that growing up, young women have very little opportunity to find and relate to characters on screen. To add to this, even within this lack of representation, it has been found that female characters are far more likely to be hypersexualised and valued for their beauty than male characters. While R-rated films emphasised thinness in its female characters, G-rated films heavily featured women with tiny waists and unrealistic body types. In the same study of family films, it was found that only 20.3% of female characters were employed while male characters occupied 79.7% of all jobs. This means that women of all ages are constantly being fed ideas about what they should look like and what professional roles they can fill in an ideal world. However, my ideal world looks a lot different. In today’s world, films that feature a predominantly female cast or a female director garner a heavy amount of praise for their inclusivity and equality. Featuring a woman of size 12 is considered revolutionary and a diverse cast is deemed extraordinary. However, while this is well deserved, films that do not offer this are not chastised. When watching a film, the average audience member does not bat an eyelid when the credits roll and only one female name appears for every ten males. For this is the norm. We have grown to accept and even expect this so much that when a film strays from this and goes out of its way to embrace equality, we are taken aback. But why should it be considered a feat in filmmaking to do something that should have been happening since the very beginning? I am not belittling the achievements of those who have embraced equality and diversity up until now, because in the current climate of the film industry it really is something to be proud of. However, in my dream world, every billboard and poster we see features one woman for every man. Every heroine is just as powerful as any hero on screen. Everybody tall or small, young or old, man or woman can see themselves represented on screen. I dream of a world where we do not commend films for achieving this because why should we expect anything less?
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By Meabh Aine Broderick In every aspect of culture, trends come and go. In the early noughties, the velour tracksuit took the fashion world by storm while blonde frosted tips seemed to be sprouting from men’s hair everywhere. Thankfully these trends were short lived and have since been long forgotten. However, in the world of film, some trends are not so easy to say goodbye to and one particularly stubborn trend is that of nostalgia. The use of nostalgia manifests itself in several different ways. It may be a remake of a decade’s old film or a long-awaited sequel released a dozen years after the original films release. It could come in the form of an adaptation of a beloved comic book or novel from your childhood or simply possess countless references to fond memories of the past littered throughout. No matter how it is used, there is no denying that audiences, young and old, seem to respond. Of the top ten grossing films worldwide of 2018, it can be argued that each of them benefitted from nostalgia in one way or another. Whether they are frontrunners in the age of comic book adaptations like Avengers Infinity War or Black Panther, a call back to the glory days of historic music legends like Bohemian Rhapsody, or additions to beloved childhood franchises such as Fantastic Beasts, The Crimes of Grindelwald, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and The Incredibles 2, they all managed to climb their way to the top by tapping into that longing for the past that resides inside all of us. However, as is to be expected when dealing with something so near and dear to our hearts, the slightest misstep can spark a wave of hate and outrage. To explore this, I am going to discuss the initial reactions to the trailer for the upcoming remake of beloved Disney classic The Lion King. In 2017, Disney announced all the upcoming remakes and reboots they had planned to release in the coming years. While the whole list seemed to inspire both excitement and fear, the one that seemed to spark the most discussion was The Lion King. Since the initial release of that list, anticipation only grew, until finally, Disney eased the pain that accompanied the agonising wait for its release by giving us a taste of what to expect with a teaser trailer for The Lion King in November 2018. Admittedly, after one watch of this trailer I could hear my inner child scream with excitement and I have to say that, for a moment, I was sold. However, when my anticipation came to be too much and I craved another viewing, something seemed to change. There was something all too familiar about what I was watching. Maybe it was simply the sound of the frequently referenced cry that opens the Circle of Life or the iconic image of the lion cub lifted up to the heavens. Or maybe it was linked to the voice of the Mufasa we all know and love from the original making a reappearance. Whatever it was that was sparking this feeling, I decided to take a look back at the trailer for the original The Lion King from 1994. It was there where I found my answers. The reason it felt so familiar was because I had seen it before. The trailer for The Lion King (2019) is really nothing more than a shot for shot remake of the original. Of course the animation style was vastly different as this newer version was made to replicate a ‘live-action’ remake of the original. However, apart from this, the trailer offered nothing new to excite me about the film. The whole point in remaking beloved classics is to add to what we already loved and offer new and interesting developments to aspects that may have been absent from the original. This is why the 2016 remake of The Jungle Book proved to be such a success. The original version was made in 1967 and only had a runtime of 78 minutes. This meant that for a modern audience, who had become accustomed to a runtime above 90 minutes, a lot was left to be desired, calling for a modern reincarnation of the classic. This is where I take issue with the decision to remake The Lion King. The 1994 version is arguably Disney’s greatest animated film to date. I was not born until years after its release, yet the love for the film remained as strong as ever and was passed onto me in my early years. It continues to garner praise and appreciation from both the public and critics today. Therefore, no matter how well-made the remake is, it will always be held in the shadow of the original. Despite my scepticism, I was shocked to find, the very evening following the trailers release, an outpouring of love surfaced online as audience members could not contain their excitement. It appears as if nobody cared that they had seen it all before. In fact that is what excited them the most. They rejoiced at the idea of reliving their childhood and likely did not want to see anything new. While the trailer alone is certainly not enough to truly judge the film, Disney appears to be intentionally building it in the exact same image as the original to incite this very reaction. With nostalgia as its driving force, I have no doubt that audiences will come out in their droves on the film’s opening weekend and no matter what their response is, the film will likely be a huge financial success. Therein lies our answer for why studios seem to be relying more and more on nostalgia to promote their films. Money, which comes as no big surprise, is the driving force behind all of this. As long as audiences keep showing up and nostalgia remains as successful in its production of profits, studios will continue to pump out this content until there is nothing left to remake.
But why exactly do modern audiences relentlessly crave this warm feeling of nostalgia? While it has been around for decades in films such as Big (1988) and Stand by Me (1986), which remind adult viewers of their young carefree days, in the last decade, nostalgia seems to have dominated Hollywood to the point where it is has become difficult to find fully original content. It is easy to criticise the trend and say its existence is due to Hollywood's loss of ideas but if this were the true reason, audiences would likely not respond so positively. There is no real way of knowing the exact reasoning, but it is possible that the growing demand for such content suggests that the desire may not lie in the longing for the past but the disdain for the present. The current political climate is filled with negativity as the future is filled with uncertainties. While America is under the power of a heavily criticised leader, Europe sits in fear of what Brexit may mean for the future. Meanwhile, global warming is threatening our future while war endangers the lives of millions. In a world filled with uncertainty, the only thing that remains unchanged and certain is our past. Therefore, the increasing demand for nostalgic content may stem from this. Frequently, the memories retained from the past are positive, either because the subject was too young to have been aware of the problems or has chosen to forget them. Either way, the desire to reflect on the past does not indicate that the present is in a worse state than the years prior to it. It simply suggests that audiences seek to escape the uncertainty of the future by reflecting on the unchanging, fond memories of the past. |
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