Problem
Read chapters 4 and 5 of Gender Rules. Choose one of the films (listed at the end of this assignment) to watch. As you watch it, pay close attention to the ways in which gender is depicted within the particular imperial moment the film portrays.
How did what you learned in Gender Rules help you better understand the gendered aspects of the film? What concepts from the book's historical examples, regarding how Europeans enacted and imposed (or circumvented) their gender norms on themselves and on the colonial subjects do you see in the film? And what about the colonized? How do they adopt new gender norms, reject them, or synthesize them with their own culture's gender norms? What assumptions are made in the film and who is making them? Where do you see gender cut across lines of race and class in the film, under the umbrella of imperialism?
Prompt:
How is gender deployed in the film you choose, and what historical concepts and/or examples can help us interpret the film's gender portrayals?
One of these movies:
• Clive of India (1935)
• The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
• Gunga Din (1939)
• Black Narcissu (1947)
• The River (1951)
• Jhansi Ki Rani/The Queen of Jhansi (1952)
• Bhowani Junction (1956)
• Something of Value (1957)
• Northwest Frontier (1959)
• The World of Suzie Wong (1960)
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
• The Battle for Algiers (1966)
• The Wind and the Lion (1975)
• Shatranjke Khilari/The Chess Players (1977)
• Junoon/The Obsession (1979)
• Manganinnie (1980)
• We of the Never Never (1982)
• Heat and Dust (1982)
• Utu (1983)
• A Passage to India (1984).