Stephanie Trinidad

Opposites Attract: Gender Roles in Early Cinema Abstract Nothing shocks an audience as much as a character who intended to be one sexual orientation is played by the opposite sex. For them most part in Hollywood the reason why a studio would hire a male actor to play a female role or a female actress for a male role would have various meanings. An actress might be paid less, or the role is physically impossible for a male or female actor to play. This is something that is easily noticed in the earliest of cinema when Charlie Chaplin played the wife in the silent film A Busy Day , or when Betty Bronson played Peter Pan for the first time. Both characters are easily distinguishable for who they’re supposed to be, male or female, but their roles were played by the opposite gender. This paper is meant to study how Hollywood used male and female actors to play roles for the opposite sex in order to understand sexuality in film. Where these characters meant to be portrayed...

The Modern Girls: Japan’s Generation of Change The modernization of the world that began during the industrial revolution slowly made its way across the word throughout the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. The Modern Girl or the Modern Woman was spreading throughout the world in the early twentieth century. When Western culture made its way to Japan the young girls no longer saw a need in their parents traditional ideals, they saw a freedom in clothing and self-expression that had once been frowned upon. Women wanted the right to vote, they wanted to work, and they wanted the ability to choose what they were able to do with their lives. Yet in Japan the Modern Girl, also known as modan gaaru or moga, became a subject of concern from those who valued traditional roles. Japan as a country wanted to preserve their national identity from industrialization while they adapted to the change that was sweeping the world. When the Modern Girl began to r...