You wrote: > snip >I am beginning to research a paper on the question of moral ambiguity in male >and female characters in film, dealing with the primary issue that this >quality has been allowed in male characters (hero/anti-hero), and not in >female characters. snip >Does anyone have any thoughts on the subject that they wish to share? > >Thank you, > >Justine Sawyier ([log in to unmask]) > I agree this should be an interesting thread and I look forward to seeing how it develops. My suggestion to you in terms of your query with the group as well as your own research is to define more clearly what you mean by moral ambiguity . I mean, is it your view that it is a thing that a character has more or less of? Or is it a sensibility embedded in the narrative itself, one which males and females might respond to in different ways in different eras? And is there such a thing as a single type of moral ambiguity, or does it differ over time and by gender? If I might be permitted to trade in two-bit archetypes here, I would say that a lot of cultural products (films, folktales, fiction, you name it), in the course of telling similar stories, create certain standard characters and roles which often break down by gender. Now I hold to the somewhat old-fashioned and reprobate view that gender is not *just* socially constructed, but is also tied to biological, hereditary and behavioral differences. And, to simplify, part of that view is the centrality of the female and the extraneousness of the male--metaphorically, the extra chromosome thing. So men tend to occupy the hero roles with the upside of valor tempered by their one-dimensionality; it is the female who carries with her the more complex earthy stuff. That being said, I know the old saw about there are just no good movie roles for females and need to think some to try to reconcile the fact that women are often morally complex in cultural imagery with the notion that there are no good roles . Certainly the earlier posting was correct in pointing out lots of female film characters from earlier decades with lots of shading and nuance--a lot of the noir genre is built on the image of the lady with a dark character. And think of Preston Sturges (Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, playing one complex, cool customer to Henry Fonda s straight-arrow male). Or Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray in Chinatown, a neo-noir. So my instinct is that you won t find a straight-line development (e.g., old movies, no female nuance; newer movies, female nuance), but rather different depictions of archetypal male/female characters depending on period and genre requirements. Jeff Apfel ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]