Deconstruction of conservative cinematic narratives on women’s identity: an urging necessity

Abstract

Feminist film theory, with its focus on the representation of women in cinema, sets the stage for feminist film critics to address the distortions on women’s identity in cinema. Little wonder that discourses in feminist film criticism attempt to suggest ways of deconstructing the distortions which are assumed to have resulted from the manipulative influence of male filmmakers. Their efforts in drawing the attention of film scholars to the perpetuation of the negative profiling of the woman’s image in cinema result from the notion that early filmmakers were males who anchored their narratives on a male’s world view. Therefore, to present an objective perspective, there is urging need for a re-definition of women’s roles in cinema. Consequently, they surmised that the lopsided representation of women in cinema by males requires a deconstruction of this trend that undermines the best side of the other sex so as to accommodate a woman-centred ideology: this is in order to harness women’s experiences. This work therefore, encourages the less-favoured sex to take up the fight with more determination to re-write history and change the ordering of regular but infamous dictates of culture and gender themes in film narratives. To this end, the “theory of deconstruction” will serve as the frame work for this study.

Keywords: Cinema, feminist film criticism, women filmmakers, manipulation, Stereotype, deconstruction