![]() ![]() His thesis is that women watch themselves being looked at by men, and this not only determines their relationships with them, but also the relationship between women and their own self-image. In his influential study, Ways of Seeing (1962), John Berger discusses the conventions of depicting the female body in Western art. Far from resisting them, as a superficial reading of the film would suggest, Stella invites these male and foreign gazes. What's more, the feminized characters and places in the film not only accept their fate willingly, but have been assimilated into believing their narrative situations. Ultimately, she is punished for her lifestyle, a recognition that these two divergent aspects of female sexuality cannot be reconciled. In exoticizing Greece, she represents the antithesis of the 1950s American woman, while at the same time upholding long-held beliefs about women's fate, from classical literature. Where the American stereotype of women in the 1950s was quiet, submissive, asexual, and domestic, Stella is loud, defiant, controlling, and sexual. "Paradise" is the place where we see Stella singing, dancing, and seducing the patrons. In Stella, though there is no Western tourist present in the diegesis, there are many opportunities for the Western viewer to fetishize Greece, as in Zorba. #Hand of fate 2 kallas full#It is full of contradiction: Why does he kill her if he loves her? Does she want to die? Why doesn't the community step in? The scene is also eerily similar to the death of the young widow in Zorba the Greek. Within these conventions, the message is clear: unwed women pose a threat to the patriarchical tradition and must be eliminated by the end of the film. The confrontation at the crossroads draws on traditions as different as the classical Greek tragedy and the American Western (Shannan-Peckham and Michelakis, 74). The tragic ending, where Mercouri's face is shown in a tight close-up, as she dies in her lover's arms, is also both a convention of the intimate death scene in classical literature, as well as a trope of the modern film melodrama. ![]() Stella can be said to embody the harmartia, or tragic flaw, because she refuses to define herself by the social standards of the town. A traditional narrative structure is used, complete with exposition, climax, and denoument. The melodramatic conventions, handed down by the classics are all in place in the film. His damaged ego is avenged by her death at the crossroads when he stabs her with a knife. Miltos, a celebrated soccer player who is himself desired by many women in the film, cannot understand his rejection, and in his fury to possess her, murders her. ![]() The thought of having to fulfill society's expectations of her as a "wife" is too much for Stella, and she rejects Miltos on their wedding day, by avoiding the wedding and instead having an affair with a young delivery boy. Relinquish it even to marry Miltos, the man she loves. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |