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IN YOUR SHADOW RESEARCH
When talking about her BBC drama series Killing Eve (2018), British writer, director and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge recently described watching female characters acting violently as ‘refreshing and oddly empowering’ (Quinn, B, 2019). Violence is not a trait that most people would associate with femininity and Waller Bridges statement has caused many to accuse her of double standards. I would argue that such a statement is a sign of the oppression of females in the modern world and agree with Waller-Bridges assessment that she is ‘exhausted by seeing women being brutalised on screen’ (Quinn, B, 2019). This is clearly a sign of a modern day need to rebalance the scale of depictions of female characters as victims. Point in fact, what many believe to be the first ever graphic depiction of onscreen violence occurs during Battleship Potemkin (1925), where a defenceless mother is shot in the eye. It’s very clear that this character was created to be a victim of not only the political kind, but also of the male soldiers that oppress her and administer her fate. As a result of this need for rebalance, we are now starting to see female characters in TV and film that are more multi layered, their psyches containing the same dark, sometimes violent urges that male characters have been depicted with since the birth of film. Although I couldn’t purely state my intentions behind the creation of The Shadow at the time of her conception, Waller-Bridges words have helped solidify The Shadow’s purpose within the narrative and the motivations of the character. While The Shadow can be viewed as a symbol and creation of male desire and oppression that is originated from a male character, she also vocalises what I believe to be a female point of view in questioning the ideologies of the male gaze that created her. Her act of violence against Matthew in the films closing moments is an act of female empowerment and a refusal to be viewed as a victim of the objectification of the female form perpetrated by him. It is my intention to keep the ending of the narrative ambiguous, in order to let the audience make up their own minds as to if such an act against Matthew is justified or not. REFERENCE LIST Battleship Potemkin (1925) Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein [Film]. Soviet Union: Goskino. Killing Eve (2018) BBC One, 8 April. Quinn, B. (2019) 'Phoebe Waller-Bridge 'empowered' to see violent women on TV', The Guardian, 10 March. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/mar/10/phoebe-waller-bridge-empowered-to-see-violent-women-on-tv-drama-killing-eve (Accessed: 13 March 2019).
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AuthorMy name is Clay Sandford and I am currently studying an FDA in Film and Media Production at University Centre Weston. I have a keen interest in directing, writing and cinematography. ArchivesCategories |