“How do I look?”

: #MeToo and the cinematic representation of a woman’s inner life-themes of myth and power

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate how the objectionable symbolic arrangement of gender, power, and image brought to light by the #MeToo movement, first emerged and became legitimated. And most importantly, this thesis proposes a way forward. This dissertation’s central thesis is that a certain idealised view of Ancient Greek myth contributed to the embedded abuse and harassment of women in the Hollywood and Australian film industries, on screen and behind the camera, from the 1970s until #MeToo. It shows that through the use of early twentiethcentury European imaginaries of Ancient Greek patriarchy, the Hero’s Journey’ model of myth, commonly used to access structure and imagery in these highly masculinised filmmaking industries, privileged a masculine subject position and advanced a solid symbolic reality of masculine sexual entitlement. This emphasises an image of woman as indifferent to the vitality of her inner life and a lack of concern for the complexity of its expression. This dissertation also claims that in its attempt to challenge and change the male defined cinema, the demythologising approach through academia and Second wave feminism was not only unable to dismantle the filmmaking environment, but in fact further limited feminine expression. This thesis explores a combination of visual and narrative analyses and historicisations of gendered themes in a corpus of more than one hundred films, alongside a cultural analysis of the politics of the #MeToo movement. Most importantly this thesis proposes a symbolic way forward by integrating the perspectives of a small number of theorists and filmmakers who are reimagining Hero’s Journey myths to be of more creative value to women, and by recognising those filmmakers who have attended to the negative narration and representation of women on screen.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Supervisor	Alison Downham Moore (Supervisor)