Courtney Adams Blog #5

As I was watching Doofy Husbands: Target Women I realized they were showing how the media portrays males in different settings. After showing a series of clips where husbands appear stupid and unhelpful, I was not expecting to see the contrast to a single man.  One way the video portrays a man is as, “A fun single dude driving his awesome car” (Haskin 0:47).  This is visually shown using commercials of attractive men driving nice cars.  This stood out to me because I realized that how something is displayed makes the audience see a subject in a certain way.

After complaining about husbands and how they are no use to women, Sarak Haskin mentions, “You need them around to do three things, barbeque, breed children and take care of the lawn”(Haskins 1:47).  To me this was a hot spot because it is so stereo-typically.  Most husbands are responsible for the lawn and grilling as it is publically viewed that they belong doing these things.  Also, Haskin does give men credit that without them, woman wouldn’t be able to have children, which I found was comical.

In the YouTube video Tropes vs. Women: #1 The Manic Pixie Dream Girl one hot spot I found was mentioned close to the end of the video.  First of all, I had never heard of the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl, who is a girl who plays in movies as someone who has no personality or purpose of her own.  My hotspot was when the narrator sarcastically says that these dream girls must, “Fix these lonely, sad men so that they can go fix the world” (Tropes 4:24).  This truthful description of these female characters degrades the worthy meaning of women not only in a story line but also in society.

Also, the very first movie example of Elizabethtown sticks out to me.  The clip of Kirsten Dunst following Orlando Bloom shows how desperate she is to tend to Orlando (Tropes 1:20).  Kirsten’s sole purpose in the movie is to tend to Orlando’s needs and show the struggle Orlando is going through without showing her as an individual character with her own personal struggles.