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Women, Sport, and Film - Fall 2004
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Women in sports are a topic that is not always as heavily discussed as men in sports. Even less discussed, however, are the films made about women in sports. In this class, we watched many versatile movies depicting different women and the role of sports in their lives. Each director clearly chose certain actresses to convey the parts, but even more importantly are the images in which the director portrayed them. A very different effect is put upon an audience when you see a woman playing a sport and looking dainty and pretty versus a woman playing a sport that is sweating and possibly bleeding or crying. Some would say that the directors have presented images like this to affirm that women are equivalent to men. That is true but instead, I think that they are included in the movie to show a woman competing with herself and not the opposite sex. "I believe in me more than anything in this world", said by the Olympic gold medal runner Wilma Rudolph, which sums up what the directors try to portray. These women must battle themselves in sports not necessarily battle other people. In the movies Pat and Mike, A League of their Own, Rocky, Girl Fight, Pumping Iron II, and Bend It Like Becham the directors choose to portray women in not conventional, not pretty scenes in order to show the theme of the character's inner competition with defining herself.
In the first movie, Pat and Mike, starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey,
the director portrays Pat in a conventional manner at first. She is a woman
who sacrifices her athletic ability for her fiancée and even changes her clothes
to set the "right" picture with him. Then as Pat realizes she needs to make
something of herself first, before she can be married, the audience rarely sees
her in a skirt. She starts to become this different person. She wears slacks
throughout most of the movie, which was quite a big deal for Katherine Hepburn's
time. The audience also gets to see Pat's injuries. She becomes sore and experiences
pain. Her struggle to become this great sports woman reflects on Pat's personal
need to find out who she is. She is competing with herself to see if she really
can become this amazing woman she wants to be. The harder she works at her athletic
ability, the closer she is to becoming the woman she knew she could be. She
even solidifies the new her by choosing Spencer Tracy over her fiancée since
Tracy was the man who also always knew she could be this great woman. At the
end of the film, Pat truly is a winner. Having competed with herself on what
kind of woman she wanted to be, her involvement in sports lead her to become
a stronger one, as depicted by her transformation of clothing and soreness from
athletics throughout the movie.
A League of Their Own is another movie in which the depiction of women in non-conventional
images portrays the theme of inner struggle. The women of the leagues are shown
in scenes where the sweat, get huge bloody bruises, and even get into fights
with each other. These women are fulfilling a dream of theirs and taking it
to new levels. Each woman struggles with being a lady and being an admired baseball
player. In the film, the players take an etiquette class. A few scenes later
they are punching each other in the dirt. These images convey the struggle each
player felt between being a woman of her time, who was waiting for her husband
to come back from the war or trying to do more with her life, and a talented,
chosen athlete who has something to offer the sport. To these women it meant
more to play the sport, than to play each other.
Rocky and Girl Fight also express the theme of non-conventional images used
by a director in order to show personal struggle. Though Rocky is about a male
boxer, his brutal beatings and the scene were his eyelid needs to be cut open
depicts just how hard he needs to prove to himself that he can go the distance.
In Girl Fight, the character of Diana is not that different. Instead of Rocky
needing to prove to himself that he can go the distance in this one fight, Diana
needed to prove to herself that she could go the distance in life. Each time
Diana hit the punching bag, or took a jab at someone, she was struggling with
herself to prove that she can have a better life. Her bleeding and multiple
bruises that the audience witnessed were reminders that she needed and wanted
to do this for herself. She needed to believe that she could have that better
life like Pat and the women of the ABL when she put her mind to it. In Girl
Fight it is interesting, because at the end of the movie, when Diana reaches
that goal within herself, we see the sunlight directly on her face for the first
time in the whole movie, an image that would be used commonly to portray beauty
and gentility in a woman.
In Pumping Iron II, the central theme was this idea of a womanly woman who was
also strong. Each bodybuilder in the film struggled with her own idea of what
the competition was looking for. Bev had to struggle with the fact that she
was strong, but perhaps not womanly enough for the judges. This was depicted
by Bev's dance performance in the movie. She added little hand waves and hip
motions at the end of her dance that was distinctly feminine. Rachel had to
struggle with being pretty and perhaps not strong enough. Each woman had to
define strength and beauty for themselves before they could go out on that stage
and be judged. Some women cried while working out, some women felt foolish while
getting "prettied up". A few seemed to be able to really feel comfortable with
who they were. Bev did settle her inner struggle in the movie after losing.
She knew who she was, and was proud of it as shown by her immediate happiness
at ordering food after an unfair loss. Like the women above, Bev's bodybuilding
struggle and unconventional appearance lead her to define what kind of woman
she is.
Jess in Bend it Like Becham used her struggle in soccer to define what kind
of woman she was as well. She was depicted as a non-conventional girl for her
background. Jess used soccer to help show her family that she was still apart
of their culture, but needed to define her own life a little differently. The
image that depicts this the best is when Jess puts on her sari after a soccer
game. Suddenly all the bruises and sweat are covered by this lovely garment.
The director shows us the two sides of Jess. She can be strong and feminine
at the same time. This is who she knows she is, she just has to convince other
people of it as well. In Jess going against the grain of her culture and playing
soccer, she is able to finally define herself as an adult to herself and to
her family.
The directors in all of these films use non-conventional and sometimes not pretty
images of women to reflect the inner struggles that the characters are dealing
with. For Pat, with her pants and pain, she uses sports as a guide to a better
life and better man. The women of the ABL use their baseball bruises to help
them fulfill a part of their lives that most women were not able to at that
time. Like Rocky going the distance, every bruise and bloody knuckle made Diana
push that much harder for a better and happier life for herself. Bev's struggle
with the definition of femininity helped to define who she was to herself. Similarly,
Jess used soccer as a catalyst to change her life so that she could become the
woman she wanted to be. All of these women suffered pain and hard emotions in
each of their sports. The directors depictions of these two things expressed
to the audience that these women needed to "believe in themselves more than
anything in this world" before they could truly begin living.
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