Kadijah Webster; Blog 5: Women in the Media

First off, I would like to start off with comparing La Noire De to one of my favorite movies Breakfast at Tiffany's.  When watching this film in class, I noticed that Diouana carried herself in a more graceful way.  She liked to be "pretty" and to wear dresses just for the heck of it; it seemed like.  Diouana wanted job and when she finally was hired, she believed it was her ticket to France.  She would be able to roam the streets and observe a new foreign land.  However, she ends up becoming enslaved by her job and never got to explore as she hoped.  Diouana ended up being stuck and the only way she felt she could escape was death.
Although, Holly Golighty was also trapped in a world that she wished to escape to, only Holly did not end up taking her own life.  She used to be a farm girl with an completely different name, Lula Mae Barnes, and left her family to go to New York.  While watching this film, one would think that she was living the life.  This life, however, was only a material one.  You end up learning that she is basically a mistress and survives off of money from different men.  Just like any other typical Hollywood film, love ends up to be her only way off and the audience can guess that she will be fine now that she has found "true love."
These two films were significantly different.  Ousmane Sembene put forth a film that had far more potential of being a true story, while Truman Capote made his story seen more glamorous; at least Blake Edwards directed it to be so.  The films convey women in two completely different ways.  First off you have black versus white.  Holly was able to walk the streets and wear a different dress everyday, while Diouana was stuck in doors cleaning up after others with no freedom whatsoever.  Holly had no job, just her "assets" but she is still a widely recognized woman for her "grace" or "glamour."  Then there's Diouana.  She worked all day nonstop, but was still called lazy by her mistress.  I had never heard of Black Girl until viewing it in class, but I own a copy of Breakfast at Tiffany's.  When comparing these movies, I can't help but to think of reality versus illusion.  Also, I am not bashing my favorite actress Audrey Hepburn.  She did write the film, she was just doing her job.
I would like to end this blog by comparing the two man women we heard from in Who Killed Vincent Chin?.  You have Vincent's mother who was obviously pained at her son's death and did whatever she could to fight for his justice.  On the other hand there was Ron's wife who, as a mother herself, did not even find her husband the least bit of wrong for murdering another woman's child.  She seemed almost naive through the entire documentary and believed that Ron was 100% innocent.  Vincent's mother can be viewed as a strong woman while I believe that Ron's wife seems as a stereotypical housewife who would stick by her husband for anything; not necessarily fight for him, but at least stick by his side.