Gender and Popular Culture- The Portrayal of Women in Fried Green Tomatoes and Other FilmsPersonal thoughts about the subjectIn our class about gender and popular culture, most discussions, either they dealt with literature, music or television, ended up with the conclusion that women are always being looked down upon, that we are being oppressed, that soceity is built by men for men, on their premises, and that women have to play by the rules set up by men. Very often, it was said that men and women are theoretically identical and that the differences between us have developed due to the imposing by society for thousands of years. What women of today have to do is to continue the fi ...view middle of the document...
It is fantastic to be a woman, and we should strive for the right to develop our femininity and make it become more valuable in society, but not at the expence of men, since they are just as important.This is my view, and when we were introduced to this task, I immediately got the thought that I wanted to investigate if my thoughts could be found as basic ideas behind a popular film. The first film that came to my mind was Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, so I decided to use it and see if it applied to my point of view.IntroductionIn this essay I will examine Fried Green Tomatoes; I will give an account of its plot and characters, and I will give my personal view of it as well as that of the people in an audience study I have done. I will also look at another genre of films with women having the leading part - action movies with their heroines - and discuss what has been said about the role of women in these films. I have done a lot of research in order to find written material about films similar to Fried Green Tomatoes, but the film seems to be quite exceptional, so I could not find any critics who had placed it within a certain genre. What I have had to look at has plainly been reviews of the film.Fried Green Tomatoes - the plotThe story is enacted in two separate eras, which are well joined together, and is centered on the lives of four women of different age. This enables women of all ages to identify themselves with at least one character, and everyone recognizes the other women as well since they are quite ordinary women that we may meet in real life. The whole story is consistently told from a feminine perspective.We are first introduced to Evelyn, an over-weight housewife, and her menopause problems. She makes vain attempts to make her husband more interested in her and their marriage than in the sports on TV, and goes to classes to find out what is wrong with her and what she can do "to put the spark back" into their marriage . At a nursing home where she goes with her husband to visit a relative of his who hates her, she meets Ninny, an 83 years old lady, whose stories about the lives of Idgie and Ruth in the 1920's make her spellbound. The talks Evelyn and Ninny have result in her thinking in new, considerably more positive ways about herself as a person and about her future. During the more and more frequent visits, Ninny tells stories about the two women in the small railway town Whistle Stop, somewhere in the deep south; how they open a small cafe where they serve fried green tomatoes to whites as well as blacks, which results in visits by the KKK, and how the murder of Ruth's ex-husband brings suspense to the small town.In a series of flashbacks we are told a fascinating story about the lives of two young women, who in spite of their different natures become very close friends and develop strong bonds. Idgie is the fearless and always self-confident of the two, a madcap with clear traits of a tomboy, while Ruth...
