When choosing a film to analyze in terms of gender inequality and the representation of female and male characters, I decided to find a film with female protagonist. It is a tendency that women are given less recognition in the movie industry as well as in other media ("The Problem"). Generally, women characters in films are often not fully developed and given less screen time than their male counterparts. It turns out that, according to the study conducted by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, female protagonists appear in only 12% of the top-grossing films in 2014 (Lang). The situation seems to be a bit brighter in early 2000s; therefore, the film that is going to be analyzed in this paper is Mulholland Dr., which was released in 2001. The main reason I chose to analyze this work of David Lynch is that it features a female protagonist in a male-directed film, which gives some hope that the film does not portray women in a widely accepted manner and, instead depicts deeply developed female character.
A closer look reveals that the movie features not one, but two female protagonists, who are equally important for the story and are, actually, the driving force for it, as all the key turning points in the movie feature either both or each of them. Although female characters are the most important for the story, the film features an abundance of male characters, and the rough ratio of women to men in Mulholland Dr. is 1 to 3. This, however, does not mean that David Lynch has taken the common path for underrepresentation or objectifying of women in films, and, in order to better understand how female and male characters interact, one needs to analyze their characters and define their place in the story.
The first person to appear on screen is Laura Elena Harring’s character, who is at the same time the first key female character in the movie. She has one line, just before the car crash, which is the first key point of the story. It can be argued that this line is not important for the story in general, but the way it is structured and the demanding intonation of it manage to convey to the audience that the woman, whom this line belongs to, is a strong person with a firm character. This very line is repeated close to the end of the firm by the second female protagonist. Despite the fact that it is absolutely the same, it clearly defines her character as mentally unstable and weak at that moment. After the car crash Harring’s character loses her memory and is forced to wander the night city until she finds a refuge in an apartment an older woman has just vacated. She does not utter a single word during this time, but this hardly has anything to do with gender representation issues, it is rather a way to convey the mood and an unsettling atmosphere.
As far as the screen time goes, women and men in Mulholland Dr. occupy almost equal amounts of it. The female and male characters are not always represented together simultaneously, because there are some sections fully occupied by one gender, but when added up, it cannot be said that women are awarded less screen time. The same is true for the dialogues; female characters get to speak as much as male ones. There is, however, a difference in how the lines are distributed. Because of the reason that the film is saturated by male characters, more of them get to speak, however, generally, in short parts, while the majority of female lines are said by two female protagonists.
There are a few suggestive scenes in the film, in one of which the second female protagonist (Naomi Watts) is auditioned for a role in a typical Hollywood movie. The scene she is auditioning with a male actor is a cliché about lovers breaking up with each other, and it features a certain degree of ‘screen passion’. The movie from where the said scene is taken surely does look like the one which would objectify women and place them within boundaries of a flat character with questionable intellectual level. Although Watts’ character in Mulholland Dr. may at first make the very same impression of a young naïve aspiring actress (a very typical archetype in the movie industry), as the story progresses, she is presented as a totally different and much more complex individual. She plays her audition part brilliantly, but the whole scene is presented as a very sophisticated irony and, in fact, mocks the way women are represented in most films.
There is a disturbing fact about the way female characters are represented in terms of their identification. Of course, it can be argued that no character in Mulholland Dr. is sane because of the nature of the film and the style of David Lynch; however, it is often so that women are given attention in the works of art, especially in literature and films, when they significantly differ from regular people: insane, disturbed, hurt and hunted. While the works on their own may be masterpieces, they certainly do not exhibit any concern about gender equality.
Works cited
Lang, Brent. "Study Finds Fewer Lead Roles For Women In Hollywood". Variety. N.p., 2015. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
"The Problem". Womensmediacenter.com. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
