The above-provided photo (taken in the movie-theater) features the poster of the 2015 film Trainwreck. The film itself tells the story of Amy Townsend, a young woman who works as a journalist for the men’s magazine S’nuff, while defying the patriarchal conventions about what it assumed to account for the ‘proper’ pattern of a woman’s behavior (‘emphasized femininity’). As Ritzer noted: “Emphasized femininity is a set of socially constructed ideas that accommodates to the interests of men and patriarchy and involves the compliance of females” (340).
Given the film’s discursive significance, concerned with exploring the theme of women’s emancipation, the poster’s explicitly and implicitly conveyed semiotics do make much sense. The most notable of them is the image of the character of Amy, who drinks some hard liquor straight from the bottle, wrapped in a paper bag – in the same way that it is being usually the case with hardened alcoholics/homeless bums. Right behind Amy, we get to see the image of a man wearing a tuxedo (presumably Amy’s boyfriend) with the expression of emotional shock on his face.
Apparently, the director deliberately strived to emphasize that the twists of the film’s plot explore different aspects of what happens, once a particular individual goes about rediscovering its sense of self-identity in the manner inconsistent with his or her gender-based social role. In its turn, this was meant to increase the film’s value as a comedy. In this respect, the poster’s main comical effect is concerned with implying that that the physiological particulars of one’s gender-affiliation are not always reflective of the specifics of his or her ‘mental wiring’ – something that brings about the notion of ‘transgender’.
According to Ritzer: “Gender identity (of transsexual individuals) does not conform to the sex to which they were assigned at birth and move across the gender line in behavior” (340). After all, there is indeed a clearly defined dissonance between Amy’s strongly feminine looks, on one hand, and her emotional comfortableness with indulging in drinking (as if she could not care less about the fact that this was making her less attractive in the eyes of men), on the other.
Moreover, it is not only that the discussed poster depicts Amy as a woman who used to give very little thought to whether she is being perceived as the legitimate object of men’s sexual desire or not, but also as someone who does not want to be interrupted, while in the process of experiencing the ‘alternative state of consciousness’, induced by alcohol – something that has been traditionally considered one’s ‘masculine’ existential trait.
Therefore, in the aftermath of having been exposed to the poster in question, one will naturally come to conclude that Trainwreck is essentially a feminist movie. The reason for this is that what has been mentioned earlier can be interpreted as such that fully correlates with the feminist idea that the specifics of a woman’s physical appearance should not have any effect on her ability to attain social prominence.
Essentially the same line of argumentation can be used, when it comes to identifying the discursive significance of the way, in which Amy’s boyfriend is being represented in the poster. The reason for this is quite apparent – despite being a man, in the formal sense of this word (his tuxedo emphasizes the person’s formally ‘masculine’ status), he is depicted naturally predisposed towards allowing emotions to affect his stance in life. Given the fact that addressing life-challenges in the emotionally charged manner has always been considered the psychological trait of women, viewers are being prompted to assume that within the context of both depicted individuals pursuing the romantic relationship, it is namely Amy who ‘wears pants’, in the allegorical sense of this word.
There is, however, even more to the poster in question – either willingly or unwillingly, its designers succeeded in prompting spectators to grow increasingly affiliated with the values of neo-Liberalism (the dominant political ideology in the West). The foremost of these values is concerned with the idea that people should be allowed to pursue with the highly individualistic lifestyles – even at the expense of remaining socially alienated (DuRand 28).
In its turn, this has a negative effect on the society’s overall integrity, because as sociologists are being well aware of, the self-centered ‘feminine’ men and ‘masculine’ women often prove incapable to enter into the long-lasting marital relationship with each other, which consequently results in lowering the birth rate within the society. Apparently, it is not merely incidental that throughout the film’s entirety Amy is shown favoring the so-called ‘one-night stands’ (as opposed to the long-term sexual relationships), while being clearly unable to think of sex as anything else but strictly the mean of satisfying her animalistic instincts.
Thus, it will not be much of an exaggeration to refer to the movie-poster in question as such that contains certain clues, as to what can be considered the main symptom of American society becoming increasingly degenerative – the fact that the social dynamics in America are being influenced by the factor of gender-differentiation to an ever lesser degree.
Work Cited
Berlet, Chip, and Matthew Lyons. Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press, 2000. Print.