Objectionable portrayal of women in films.

- Obscenity in films becomes accepted and imitated when it is considered normal. Hence the vicious cycle of sexual harassment and violence continues unabated

The clip of the film is from a highly regarded creator whose film has won several awards and has been praised by the audience regardless of the objectionable portrayal of women.

An important issue has been left aside from the rant on the heroine's orange bikini in one of the songs of the upcoming film. The issue is the portrayal of women as sexy or desirable objects in films to satisfy men's lust.

Recently screened at film festivals, Nina Menkes' documentary Brainwashed: Sex, Camera Power has become the center of discussion and is also receiving several awards. The same point is central in the film that the heroine is portrayed as a passive object while the male is the active doer. These scenes are filmed in such a way that people find it natural and as if unconsciously it becomes a rule.

Based on the creator's discussion of the visual language of cinema, the film explores the fundamentals of storytelling—subject definition, framing, camera movement, and lighting—that often film men and women differently and create problems for women off-screen as well. is A visiting artist stated that if the camera is a predator, then culture is also a predator.

The documentary is structured like a discussion in which Nina Menkes explains her theory with several film clips and interviews with filmmakers, heroines, film experts and psychiatrists.

The clip of the film is from a highly regarded creator whose film has won several awards and has been praised by the audience regardless of the objectionable portrayal of women.

In Alfred Hitchcock's films, his white heroines were always portrayed through the male gaze, and the audience came to see them in the same way. Even in many such acclaimed films, the way women are filmed, the way the lighting is on her body parts, the camera always stops on the woman's chest and sides and seems to give a hint to the audience. Menkes says that women have always been portrayed in films where the men are fully clothed while the women are scantily clad or half-naked.

Prominent filmmakers like Spike Lee, David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard have also been criticized in this regard.

Such portrayal of women in films not only leads to sexual violence but also discrimination against women in the film industry.

Close-ups of the men's faces are also taken in such a way as to give them a 3D effect, highlighting wrinkles and blemishes, but the woman's face has a 2D effect that makes her skin look unrealistically beautiful, suggesting insecurities among normal-looking women in real life. The spirit awakens.

When the men are filmed in slow motion they are almost action scenes but the woman is filmed in slow motion as a sex object as she walks off a bridge wearing a bikini.

In several of the clips Menkes showed, women were shown initially refusing sex but then being aggressively persuaded. After such scenes, students are shown dialogue saying that no means yes.

When people start to consider such perversity shown in movies as normal, it becomes accepted in the society and then a vicious cycle of sexual violence and harassment starts. The recent Meetoo movement was just a glimpse of this problem.

The term male gaze used by interviewer Laura Mulvey in the Mankes documentary was influenced by the theory of the male gaze. Mainstream cinema deliberately or knowingly films from a male perspective. One of the reasons may be that most of the directors and cinematographers are men. The interviewer says that the sexual language of the film has become so accepted that some of us don't even pay attention to it.

In today's age, women have progressed in all the male-dominated fields. But still very few women have become directors in the film industry. This is despite the fact that film schools have equal numbers of female and male students. Also, women directors rarely make films with a bang. They also almost exclusively make male-dominated films. It is worth mentioning that Kathryn Bigelow, the female director who won the Oscar award as the best director in Hollywood in 2012, made the war film Zero Dark Thirty. There was no woman in the crew who worked on the creation of the film.

Menkes showed a clip from the film Lost in Translation by female filmmaker Sofia Coppola, in which the camera pans over the heroine's back. The heroine is wearing transparent underwear. Every film industry in the world, including Hollywood, makes male-dominated films.

Interestingly, many of the earlier silent film directors in Hollywood were women. But then when voice was introduced and money market capital was invested in the film industry, women were sidelined.

This issue is equally present not only for commercial films but also for superhero films. Even in such films, the heroine is depicted as living in a man's fantasy. Rarely does a film like Chloe Zhou's Nomadland come along, where the story is told from the perspective of a 60-year-old woman. Menkes also mentions other films that have been made in contrast to Male Gaze, but such films have been few and far between. It is worth mentioning that this documentary only talks about American and European films, but this applies to all the world's film industry, especially Bollywood.

One film critic has recommended Brain Wash as a must-see for film students, teachers, industry insiders and audiences alike. This film will make the male audience aware of how women are objectified in the real world through films.

Female viewers will find that because only white women are considered beautiful in movies, a woman who is not less white in the real world feels insecure.

The documentary has also been criticized for being too simplistic. It is said to show a single vision. But the film has achieved its purpose. Movies accurately show how women are made targets of sexual impulses and how it affects real life.

Nina Menkes quotes James Baldwin as saying that unless something is fixed, it cannot be changed. Maybe now is the time to understand so that something worth changing can be changed.