Women’ hot itching for Self-worth and Equality

[1034873732]

Xie Ting

For a long time, both men in the West and in the East have a higher status and right to speak in the family and society, and women are on the subordinate position. Additionally, many women have been instilled in the traditional and conservative ideas since childhood, to keep the virginity before marriage, learn to do all housework, and take good care of their husbands and children. Apart from these daily chores, they seem to be no use any more. However, with the development of the time, women began to fight for the right to speak and their social rights, break the constraints of old customs and backward ideas, and strive to become an independent human. This phenomenon of women's pursuit of freedom and self-worth is vividly reflected in the two films of “Smile of Mona Lisa” and “ And the Spring Comes”.

In both films, men's status and right to speak are reflected, while feminism requires a mode of equal coexistence between men and women. In And the Spring Comes, Wang Tsai-ling faces men with more courage than ordinary women. On the train to Beijing with Huang Sibao, she said without hesitation after being refused to confide her true feelings: "You treat me like a friend because I am ugly! I don't think I'm ugly, just a little weird." This sentence shows the hidden rules of men's choice of spouse, and the strong eyes also destroyed the hypocrisy of men immediately. She is resisting the potential desire of men as an alien. In Smile of Mona Lisa, Catherine's boyfriend left her to join the army after Pearl Harbor broke out. In the course of the war, their feelings changed somewhat, and they no longer loved and understood each other, so they separated. But Catherine did not resent these things, but continued her dream. At Wesleyan University, Catherine has many similarities with her students. They gradually attract each other. But then she found out a lot about joining the army, so she couldn't stand cheating and broke up with him. Based on her independent pursuit, Catherine chose a mode of getting along with her men and women equally.

Secondly, the two films also show women's struggle against secular marriage and fate. Most people think that women should accept the fate of marrying men and become fetters of secular families. Resistance is tantamount to throwing eggs at stones. Because once a woman enters a powerful male-dominated society, she will become the object of men's desire and the victim of traditional marriage. In And the Spring Comes, Wang Tsai-ling also wavered, but when she rejected Zhou Yu and Hu Jinquan, we can see that she still sticks to her ideal. This shows that she has abandoned the influence of the existing cultural awareness and male voice and has become an independent woman. After Wang Tsai-ling's dream was shattered by lies and her love was buried, she chose to adopt a child, which showed that she still rejected the invasion of male society with strong female self-consciousness. In Smile of Mona Lisa, Betty, a student of Catherine's, once firmly abided by the traditional morality and ideas, and also used male voice to set up a certain degree of representation for her own value in her heart. She made sharp remarks in the school newspaper, and also criticized as harshly as possible those men's voices and women's ideas with challenging characteristics. However, the feminism taught by Catherine greatly influenced her thoughts. After getting married, Betty became a good woman according to the requirements of society. But she can speak for herself from her own standpoint and live on her own. She has established the female's self-consciousness and has also learned to argue for herself from the standpoint of women.

The feminist theory is in the final analysis a word: to achieve equality between men and women in all mankind. For a long time, women have always been a vulnerable group deprived of their right to speak, and their fate is dominated by a male-dominated society, which cannot be shaken off. Driven by this fate, the awakened are succumbing while resisting, which has a tragic fatalistic philosophical meaning. A small number of awakened people want to awaken the sleepers, but their efforts have resulted in alienation and failure. None of them won the perfect victory, and the mediocrity was the final winner. However, they will not give up the pursuit of gender equality and truth.

Changes in social material conditions and production relations have made gender inequality unnecessary and outdated systems and concepts. Therefore, there has been a criticism of traditional social gender concepts and male chauvinism. Nowadays, gender equality is a general trend that no one can stop.

[2057230076]

Hello,
Xie Ting, We have already read your essay.
Generally speaking, we think that it's better for you to rethink the meaning by watching these two movies again and searching some information like movie comments to help you recreate the structure and content of your movie essay. We still think that you have some room for improvement. Besides, your title is not proper for we can't find the meaning of hot-itching either in the online dictionary or offline dictionary. If you want to express your idea, you'd better use another word like "desire". Even so, feminism has no connection with And the Spring Comes. So, we think you'd better change a title after getting the right understanding of these two movies and finding their real similarities.
Xu Xinyue
Tang Zirui

[aqh5662]

Hi Xie Ting, your analysis was thorough and enjoyable. I especially liked your first paragraph detailing the conservative ideology. It seemed passionate and relatable. While I feel like your analysis in “And the Spring Comes” is a little far-fetch due to the feminism theme, I can see your point of view. If you want to keep the feminism theme, perhaps you could explain in the beginning that this was a side theme in that particular movie and detail the main overarching theme. This would allow the reader to understand your argument better. I also would try to avoid generalization. In the third paragraph you said, “Most people think that women should accept the fate of marrying men and become fetters of secular families.” Generalizing to an audience often does not work well because “who are these most people”? Perhaps you could say “Throughout history, the theme is…”. The same could be said in the final paragraph: “Nowadays, gender equality is a general trend that ‘no one’ can stop.” You could work on adding some quotes to support your ideas. Your thoughts are well established but the reader needs a primary source to be able to trust your analysis.
Hope this helps!

[mts5487]

Hi Xie Ting!
It's a pleasure to work with you on this project and I hope you are well. I very much appreciated your analysis of the two movies. It's clear you understand the movies well and your essay definitely reflect this. I liked your choice to identify feminism as the central theme of the two films. You maintained a very clear focus throughout the essay, and I thought this made your writing particularly strong. I see where the other commenters are coming from in saying that feminism is not as prominent of a theme in And the Spring Comes as it is in Mona Lisa Smile, but I disagree with the sentiment that it is not present at all. I agree with you that the theme of feminism is certainly present enough to analyze in And the Spring Comes. Since this is the main focus of your essay, perhaps you could consider comparing how feminism is presented in each film a bit more and consider what significance, if any, your findings show. Lastly, I would suggest re-working your title to better reflect the subject matter you deal with.
Best of luck!

[2057230076]

Hi Xiao Junqi and Xie Ting, we’ve already read your reply. Thank you for giving us advice on how to revise our essay. Actually, we made mistakes like Chinglish, word expression and structure. We will revise it at last according to your sincere suggestions. But here I want to explain why we didn’t expand the analysis of thesis for themes of movies can be directly seen from stories, scripts, expressions and so on. We don’t need to explain it. If we have to do so, it should just be “the analysis of movie themes”. But when we put this aspect into a movie essay, we should let it be short and clear. Thank you!
Hope hear from you soon!
Xu Xinyue
Tang Zirui

[2057230076]

Hi Xiao Junqi and Xie Ting, thank you for your great suggestions on how to develop our movie essay well and we will employ your suggestions into our modification. However, we have two questions about essay. Many students use quotes or examples to enrich their content, but we seldom find one which seems really logical and most of these examples seem to be like cause-and-effect and simple explanation instead of real, deep and locial analysis. How can we locially connect aspects we analyze? How can we find a balance between structure and content? Meanwhile, we also have a question about your essay. We are left wondering why you mention gender equality and woman rights in And the Spring Comes? How do you find these perspectives that we didn't find? We hope that you can give examples or use quotes to analyze locially in your essay to let us know your correctness.
Hope it helps!
Xu Xinyue
Tang Zirui

[2057230076]

Hello，Xie Ting and Xiao Junqi. We've already read your reply. Thank you for your detailed explanation. But we want to know how to develop an essay well and you didn't answer this question. Many students use quotes or examples to enrich their content, but we seldom find one which seems really logical and most of these examples seem to be like simple cause-and-effect explanation instead of real, deep and locial analysis. How can we locially connect aspects we analyze? It bothers mant students and also deserves our thinking. We are looking forward to knowing your great ideas!
Hope hear from you soon!
Xu Xinyue
Tang Zirui

[2057230076]

Hello, Xie Ting and Xiao Junqi. We are glad to hear from you and know how you consider the method of developing an essay well. Thank you for your great reply! Now we have get constructive suggestions from you. You suggest that we can use a concrete example to tell others our thoughts and regard it as an argumentation to prove a point. We think this idea is great for you emphasize on expressing for attracting. Also, you also think that we can quote famous quotes, slogans, or some existing filmmakers’ and scholars’ words to enhance the persuasion and logic of the article. We think this advice is great for quoting these words can really give readers strong persuasion. You almost solve most of our confusions and we appreciate that! Here we have a question about language. You know, in a subjective perspective, we seldom find faults we made during a short time except problems of singular and plural nouns, tense, but others can easily find them. Could you share us with your ideas of how to completely jump out of such a subjective limit and find your faults in language after finishing your work within a short time?
Hope hear from you soon!
Xu Xinyue, Tang Zirui

[aqh5662]

Hi, Xie Ting and Xiao Junqi. Thank you for your advice. I completely agree about my lack of analysis for "And the Spring Comes". This was most likely done subconsciously due to me not connecting as much as I did with "Mona Lisa Smile". I need to go back and watch it again and perhaps maybe I can get a greater understanding of the movie so I can analyze it better. In terms of the word count, I have seen film reviews as long as 2000 words or as little as 200. I think as long as I am able to explain the film word count will not matter. However, you are right that "Mona Lisa Smile" is much longer and I will go back and fix this. Thanks for tips!

[1034873732]

Final Essay

Appreciation of Smile of Mona Lisa and And the Spring Comes from Feminism

For a long time, men in the west and the east have a higher position and voice in the family and society, while many women in subordinate positions have been taught traditional and conservative ideas since childhood. However, with the development of the times, women began to fight for their right to speak and social rights, breaking the shackles of old customs and backward ideas and striving to become independent. Feminism is gradually forming and developing. From the movies Smile of Mona Lisa and And the Spring Comes, we can find women's dissatisfaction and resistance to male chauvinism from the content and details. Although the two films have other connotations, this time we intend to analyze the two films from a feminist perspective.
In both films, men's status and right to speak are reflected, while feminism requires a mode of equal coexistence between men and women. In And the Spring Comes, Wang Tsai-ling faces men with more courage than ordinary women. On the train to Beijing with Huang Sibao, she said without hesitation after being refused to confide her true feelings: "You treat me like a friend because I am ugly! I don't think I'm ugly, just a little weird." This sentence shows the hidden rules of men's choice of spouse, and the strong eyes also destroyed the hypocrisy of men immediately. She is resisting the potential desire of men in an aloof way. In Smile of Mona Lisa, Catherine's boyfriend left her to join the army after Pearl Harbor broke out. In the course of the war, their feelings changed somewhat, and they no longer loved and understood each other, so they separated. But Catherine did not resent these things, but continued her dream. At Wesleyan University, Catherine has many similarities with her students. They gradually attract each other. But then she found out a lot about joining the army, so she couldn't stand cheating and broke up with him. Based on her independent pursuit, Catherine chose a mode of getting along with her men and women equally. From these two fragments, we can find that both protagonists have awakened feminism and are pursuing equality between men and women. They are not afraid of other people's strange eyes but insist on being themselves.
Then, the two films also show women's struggle against secular marriage and fate. Most people think that women should accept the fate of marrying men and become fetters of secular families. Resistance is tantamount to throwing eggs at stones. Because once a woman enters a powerful male-dominated society, she will become the object of men's desire and the victim of traditional marriage. In And the Spring Comes, Wang Tsai-ling also wavered, but when she rejected Zhou Yu and Hu Jinquan, we can see that she still sticks to her ideal. This shows that she has abandoned the influence of the existing cultural awareness and male voice and has become an independent woman. After Wang Tsai-ling's dream was shattered by lies and her love was buried, she chose to adopt a child, which showed that she still rejected the invasion of male society with strong female self-consciousness. In Smile of Mona Lisa, Betty, a student of Catherine's, once firmly abided by the traditional morality and ideas, and also used male voice to set up a certain degree of representation for her own value in her heart. She made sharp remarks in the school newspaper, and also criticized as harshly as possible those men's voices and women's ideas with challenging characteristics. However, the feminism taught by Catherine greatly influenced her thoughts. After getting married, Betty became a good woman according to the requirements of society. But she can speak for herself from her own standpoint and live on her own. She has established the female's self-consciousness and has also learned to argue for herself from the standpoint of women. For many women, it has become their obligation to marry and have children, and after marriage they can only become slaves to their families. However, it is obvious that feminism requires women to have their own rights, so they can choose not to get married and can continue to do what they like after marriage instead of becoming housewives.
In addition, there are many places in And the Spring Comes that can reflect the unequal status of men and women. First, Hu Jinquan pulled Song into the men's toilet to try to rape because he was laughed at by Song's husband. This shows that when men are insulted, innocent women are often the targets of vent and revenge. And it shows that women's status is subordinate to men and society, and that men and women are not equal. Second, teacher Zhang has a good face, which is in line with the aesthetic requirements of "male-dominated society" for women. But she still didn't get the love she wanted, and her husband ran away with all the money. She said to Wang Tsai-ling, "What should I do in the future", which also shows that women are subservient to men and that her self-consciousness is not awakening. Third, Gao Beibei went to the competition because her boyfriend wanted her to be famous. So she even sold her conscience through cheating and other means. This can reflect the effect of male voice on women and thus contrast the weakness of female voice. Almost every woman in the movie can deeply reflect her desire and demand for equality between men and women and women's rights, thus extending to feminism.
In Smile of Mona Lisa, the damp and cold basement is no longer Catherine's stage alone. The students are filled with sunflowers painted by themselves, which are full of vitality and courage as gifts to the teachers who will leave soon. Catherine said in her letter to Betty, "If you want to change here, you have to change yourself first." As a result of one year's education, Betty chose to end her unhappy marriage, Connie rushed into the boys' dormitory to save her true love, Giselle decided to develop in new york, etc. When Catherine left, the students rode bicycles and ran after miss Catherine's car for a long time. The last scene of the film is fixed on Catherine's charming, calm, relieved and touched smiling face, which is meaningful. The liberal feminine spirit illustrated in the film makes women seem to find self-worth and re-examine their self-orientation under the equal education system and political system. It also makes many women in the new era find a window to break through the traditional soul. The free spirit in the film is far from stopping, and it is further deducing and changing with the changes of the times.
The feminist theory is in the final analysis a word: to achieve equality between men and women in all mankind. For a long time, women have always been a vulnerable group deprived of their right to speak, and their fate is dominated by a male-dominated society, which cannot be shaken off. Driven by this fate, the awakened are succumbing while resisting, which has a tragic fatalistic philosophical meaning. A small number of awakened people want to awaken the sleepers, but their efforts have resulted in alienation and failure. None of them won the perfect victory, and the mediocrity was the final winner. However, they will not give up the pursuit of gender equality and truth.
Changes in social material conditions and production relations have made gender inequality unnecessary and outdated systems and concepts. Therefore, there has been a criticism of traditional social gender concepts and male chauvinism. Nowadays, gender equality is a general trend that no one can stop.