How is Paikea
a female counter-stereotype? Use the "female gaze" theory to describe
how the film and the character fit this model of the female perspective and
female “voice”. Use the web link provided in Week 11 module on the Female Gaze
(the Rubaiyat
Hossain article, “Female Directors,
Female Gaze”).
Paikea
is a female counter-stereotype because she wanted to do all the things that the
men were allowed to do. Paikea wanted to learn the same thing all the boys were
learning. She didn’t just be another one of the women who would chant and cook.
The
female gaze is used in this film because it’s a story told to you by Paikea.
You are getting everything from her perspective and through her eyes. From
Paikea you get to see her actions and hear her thoughts. As it says in the
article Female Directions, Female Gaze: The Search for Female Subjectively in
Film “Men and women don't live the same reality. They belong to
different plains of power and are meant to see different versions of the same
images as they both stare at one single object, or truth, or reality.”
How is Whale Rider
a statement of empowerment for women and girls? How does Paikea challenge
gendered expectations? Use scenes/characterization/dialogue from the film to
give examples.
Paikea
challenges gendered expectations by trying to learn how to be a chief although
that is something reserved only for males because women cannot be leaders. She
does all she can to learn the old ways by going to her uncle Rawiri who use to
be a taiaha tournament winner. In the movie Paikea would stand behind the boy’s
school listening in on their lessons and practicing alone so that she could
learn what they are learning rather than just sitting in the back watching
quietly. At the end of the movie when Paikea gets on the whale and saves it
from being beached, it shows that women to have the power to be leaders and can
do things alone without relying on men and being able to do things that men can’t.
How is Whale Rider
an example of “counter-cinema” and the “female gaze”? Use the 1990’s Lecture
notes in Week 11 Module to help with this answer and the “Hollywood” article by
Kord and Krimmer in the course package.
This
is an example of counter-cinema and the female gaze because the director of
this movie is a female which makes this movie have a more real view, for
example the “Lady Sings the Blues” was directed by a male so the director made
the film following his masculine ideals, meanwhile, this movie is directed by a
woman, about a woman. This is
counter-cinema because as the week 11 notes say it “stands in opposition to the
dominant forms of Hollywood."
