Loverboy

According to Jean-Anne Sutherland and Kathryn Feltey one definition of the most commonly understood notion of power in women’s films is Power-To. It is a when a woman can recognize the extent to which her actions determine her fate, and she cane come to know her own sense of agency and recognize her autonomy (120). After watching Loverboy (Micklin Silver, 1989) I decided to apply this concept to the male character of the film. Randy Bodek is a pizza delivery boy, who discovers himself through showing love to rich unhappily married women and gets paid for it in return. The film has three prominent features that apply to women’s films regarding the power-to notion, and were discussed in Sutherland and Feltey’s book.

First feature is to separate from his life, culture and traditions. Randy drops out of college and is back to his hometown where he works at a pizza place. After one woman asks him to spend the night with her he realizes his power of satisfying other women, and above that he is getting paid for it. The second feature is waking up from years of unconscious living, and finding agency where there was little. Given that he was always in bad relationships with women. He finds his power after interacting with older women. What pushed him to go in that direction is the need for money. The third feature is discovering himself through the discovery of his sexual self. After “delivering pizza” to over 40 women, Randy discovers his performing and emotional skills that he never knew he had, and uses his maturity to get back his girlfriend. He lacked the real knowledge of his personal empowerment until he recognized the control he has over the consequences of his life.

Gender Based Power In A Company

Thinking about our society and gender, gender polarization is evident in nearly every aspect of our lives! Power is also polarized by gender. From a very young age, we are socially constructed based on our sex and gender, which is also known as gender socialization.

Keeping this in mind, I decided to take a different twist to this matter and visit CENTCOM Projects to analyze the power within the employees based on their gender. CENTCOM Projects is a construction company based on steel, aluminum, joinery and interior fit outs. Therefore, majority of the staff in the labor section were men and barely had females in the office. This may be because women consider sex-appropriate positions such as the secretary and choose occupations that will not require them to relocate and work in unpleasant environments such as the factory.





From a sociological perspective, I examined the concepts of power-over, power-to and power-with while visiting the company’s office and factory in the industrial area. The notion of power-over was greatly evident as the foreman’s, manager and the director had the ability to get the workers do jobs when they didn’t want to. According to Weber, he defined power, as the ability of one actor to carry out his will against another. Clearly, this is was evident. While I was there, the foreman was achieving his goals by making one of the labor workers do his work. In this case of master/subject relation: the foreman is powered (master) and the worker is not (subject). At most times, this could possibly be a problem, as power is seen as an abusive force, unequal and the ability to force your physical strength and ideas over other employees in a workforce.



Luckily enough, I got to observe a power-to situation. One of the experienced workers came in and asked if he could either higher his position in the company or leave. From a sociological perspective, he recognized the control he has over his life, saw results of his actions and utilized his power. In other words, this could be described as self-control and self-efficacy.



In addition, the notion of power-with was not evident. However, it may be applied to labor workers if they come together as a group to challenge the system and ask for a change. In this case, if the workers struggle against the oppressive system, they would collectively work together to change it. This could happen if the workers need a rise in salary, new housing or even higher positions.



All in all, we could possibly say that the social construction of gender socialization goes back to social stratification and ethnic backgrounds.

Types of Women-Power in Mirror Mirror

We discussed last class the topic of the power of women in movies. Many people think that there is a shortage of the representation of powerful women in Hollywood movies, and others like Sutherland & Feltey think that there is a shortage of the right representation of powerful women in movies, which is, in their opinion, a power-with, which is a collective power of women who come together to influence social change.
Last Friday I went to the movies and watched Mirror Mirror, directed by Tarsem Singh, and staring Lily Collins, Julia Roberts, and Armie Hammer. The movie features the classical story of Snow White.



At first it is evident how the movie highlights the aspect of power-over in its representation of women. The Queen in the movie is the antagonist. She gets rid of the king, takes control over the kingdom, locks snow white in the castle, oppresses the people, and raises the taxes to spend the money on her parties, which leads to extreme poverty in the city. The movie reflects how this is a negative, oppressive form of power that women hold, and ends with the death as a consequence for the evil she does throughout the movie.


On the other hand, this movie had a twist in power distribution from the original plot in the classical Snow White movie by Disney. In the original movie, Snow White gets poisoned by the apple she gets from the evil queen while she pretends to be an old lady using magic. Snow White passes out, and she comes back to life when the prince gives her a true love’s kiss that breaks the spell of the evil queen. In the new movie Mirror Mirror, the roles are flipped. The queen gives the prince a puppy love potion to love her and marry her. The news both surprises and disappoints Snow white, since she shared a moment with the price where they showed interest in each other. Snow White ends up saving the prince from the situation, where she kidnaps him, and then gives him a true love’s kiss that breaks the spell of the evil queen. Moreover, Snow White saves the prince and the whole country from the queen’s oppression when she destroys the queen’s beast, which turns out to be her father under a spell. It is also important to mention that Snow White saves the elves while she lives with them from the fighting gigantic puppets the queens sends to kill Snow White and the elves.


This change in the plot of a major classical story in the movie industry to empower women is very interesting, where it gives agency to Snow White to be able to save men, which is the opposite of what usually happens in Disney movies. moreover, Snow White is portrayed with this kind of power-over without being portrayed in an masculine, oppressive or sexualized way as Sutherland & Feltey argue in Cinematic Sociology.
Snow white also shows a form of power-to, when she realizes her interest in changing the bad situation in the country. So, she goes against the rules of the queen, confronts her, and then defeats her.


Yet, many people argue that there isn’t enough good and powerful representations of women in movies as well as in the film industry, where men keep on dominating the field.