UCLA Gender Roles In Film And Short Stories Questions

Length: (no less than) 750 words/ 3 pages ~ (no more than) 1000 words (4 pages) total, for all 3 questions together. (roughly 250 words per page) Double-spaced. 25% of the final gradePlease submit your papers electronically on Canvas under Assignment. No late papers will be accepted.Please respond to all 3 parts. (In Part I, choose only 1 question.)Part I: Choose either # 1 OR # 2 (Approx. 1 page)1. Public Cemetery in the Moonlight, The HousemaidCreed writes, “….the concept of a border is central to the construction of the monstrous in the horror film… that which crosses or threatens to cross the ‘border’ is abject…” Comparing this idea and the more detailed notions of “border” and “the abject” in her article to the two film, Public Cemetery in the Moonlight and The Housemaid, please analyze the ways in which the two respective main characters, Myongson, and the maid, are represented as crossing various borders and as “abject.” Please cite at least 2 short examples from each filmic text(Public Cemetery in the Moonlight, The Housemaid), a total of 4 examples. You don’t have to cite Creed but you can certainly refer to it as you prepare and you can cite her article as well. The Housemaid –the maid, Kyong-hui’s crossing of the class borderliterally, their intrusion into the bourgeois householdKwak’s “confession” of her romantic/sexual desire for the music teacherthe maid’s sexual advancesher pregnancy”rats” and rat poisoning: vermin/parasite as metaphors for working-class women (There are multiple scenes, where there are clear linkages between these two “characters,” rats and working-class women. Visually and verbally/aurally, are they linked to each other? You can analyze this series of scenes, for example.) What happens to them in the course of the movie, both the rats and each of the factory girls? –the abjectAs a result of crossing the class border, how does the maid become abject? What kind of borders does the bourgeois wife cross in the movie? What price does she pay for crossing the borders? (to upper middle class and to working class) How does she become abject herself? What kind of borders does the music teacher/bourgeois man cross in the movie? How does he become abject? –Borders: the interior of the house plays an important role in the movie, the stairs, Western-style rooms, walls, doors, cabinets, etc. Can you relate the interior borders of the house to the abstract, ideological borders crossed in the story, such as class and gender? Public Cemetery in the Moonlight

2–Class border crossed by Nanju: desiring a man above her station–Nanju as the undisputed villainess: a murderess, ultimately a victim of an avenging ghostHer abjectness at the end of the movie as a punishment for the crimes/sins she committed. Another reversal like The Housemaid. –Myongson: wrongly accused, wrongly dead, committed suicideHer return as a ghost: her supernatural power, to right the wrong. (good vs. evil She crosses the border between the living and the dead. The physical, visual dimension of her as a ghost: the ghost’s emergence from the tomb in the beginning and her ascent into the heaven at the end.You can analyze the visuality/sound effects/aurality of the scenes where she appears as a ghost.2. Mother, Barbara CreedDiscuss the character of Dojun’s Mother by comparing and applying Creed’s idea of “archaic mother” to the filmic character. Please cite at least 2 examples from each text (Mother and Creed), a total of 4 examples. Find examples for the following ideas: –Mother as the origin of all life –Mother as a devouring/destructive/deadly force (murder-suicide)–Mother as the monstrous (murderous)–Mother’s narcissism vs. Mother’s narcissism for her son (i.e., surrogate male narcissism) Refer to lecture notes on Creed’s article on “archaic mother.” Part II: “The Rainy Spell” (Approx. 1 page) Analyze Paternal Grandmother and Maternal Grandmother, from the story, “The Rainy Spell,” in relation to the Confucian notions of motherhood. Cite 3-4 short examples from the story, analyze them and explain how they illustrate Confucian motherhood. –uterine family (limited empowerment within patriarchy) –unity of mother and woman–Three Ways of Women: Grandmothers and their subordination to their sons–Ambivalent motherhood: sacralized mother and debased mother–women/grandmothers/mothers-in-law as guardians of patriarchal ideology and system. –Grandmothers/mothers as non-ideological, following men’s ideological leads.Part III: “Three Days in That Autumn” and “Chinatown” (Approx. 1 ½ to 2 pages)In “Three Days in That Autumn,” the story of the abortion doctor revolves around 3 rapes that she has dealt with in her life, while “Chinatown” tells the story of a pubescent girl’s sexual and emotional maturation into womanhood. Connecting these two stories to each other, discuss how the potential and real sexual violence the characters experience in the stories are related (and possibly un-related) to possible and impossible (or potential and absent) sexual pleasure for female characters. Cite at least 2-3 examples from each text, a total of 4-6 examples. Sexual pleasure

3“Chinatown”–the narrator’s sexual attraction to the young man: her look inside the Chinese young man’s garden (racial othering, gendered othering and alliance between the two)–Ch’iok’s dream of becoming a sex worker? (ironic representation)–Absence of sexual pleasureGrandmother’s lifeGrandmother’s chest of valuables/mementos: symbol of both presence and absence of sexual pleasure? Mother’s continuous pregnancies: leading to physical, bodily pain and violence of birth/labor“Three Days in That Autumn”–Moments of homosocial pleasures among women, not necessarily sexual pleasure–getting rid of unwanted pregnancies as freedom, and a pleasure. Again not necessarily sexual pleasure. –Having sex but not being reproductive: sex for pleasureSexual violenceChinatown–Maggie: prostitution as a commercialized sexual violence. Economically coercive sexual violence–Mother’s pregnancies as violent (not necessarily sexual violence)Three Days in That Autumn–3 rapes in the story–Not being able to abort the fetus from a rape (as in the case of Hwang’s daughter). She was forced to raise him as a younger brother and be reminded of the rape that produced him. –the doctor’s musings about the stirrups.