The cinema book:2nd edition (Pam Cook) *Blog Buddy Task

Laura Mulvey
questions about the place of women in the media in terms of broadcast and production and also the place of women in films and their role.

Chuck Kleinhan(1978)
argues that, in the piling on of domestic conflict and disaster, in its concenration on the personal sphere, home, family and womens problems and its closeness to real life

Kleinhan see's the family as a product of capitalist social relations residing in the split betweenproductive and reproductive life

Mulvey: it is in patriarchy that the pertinent and irresolvable contradictions lie. Ideologial contradiction is the over mainspring and specific content of melodrama, not a hidden, unconcious threat. The patriarchal need for coexistence with women which produces the crisis melodrama seeks to alleviate.
"She insists on the real contradictions of patriarchal ideology or women, rather than theirmetaphorical signifiance for menMulvey begins to show how melodrama can both function for patriarchal ends, bringing about a narrative resolution of its contradictions and at the same time perform a quite different function for women: offering a satisfaction of recognising those conradictions, usually suppresed"

Leads Mulvey to distinguish between those films which are coloured by a female protagonist's dominating point of veiw and those which deal with male Oedipha problems by examining tensions in family and between sex and generations

Womens pictures variousy known as 'Weepies', 'Sudsers', 'Four handkercheif pictured' etc.., were tailored to the female matinee audience, generally deriving from womensmagazine fiction or novelettes and had a tangential relation