Many may be wondering why these two films have been chosen to be compared and contrasted. Both films are from different eras, different countries, and have very different interactions between the characters, they do have something in common, which is their envisioning of what and who a woman is from a far off perspective. Which brings about the question, have men changed since the late seventies or has pop culture continued to shape the idealized view of a woman.
’10’ and Man, Woman, & the Wall (MWW), are both considered to be romance/sex comedies, though MWW and the wall at times seems to border on the Japanese genre of Pink Eiga (Pink Movie, softcore pornographic scenes found in film). ’10’ centers on an older man who has a love interest, though he is also going through a mid-life crisis. He then happens to find a woman who he considers an ‘11’ out of ‘10’, on the attraction scale. This leads to him becoming obsessed and creating a fantasized idea of whom she is, which then leads to him following her around the world. In MWW, the main character is a twenty-something who lives in a small apartment and has no girlfriend, but happens to have a thin wall between himself and his next-door neighbor, whom he begins to fantasize about who she is and what she looks like. This leads to the main character devising different methods in which to become a part of his neighbor’s life.
First, let us dissect what women of desire represent in each film separately, by the end there should be a mutual relationship that is shared amongst them. Bo Derek, the woman of desire in ‘10’, is in actuality a very liberal woman who envisions sexual freedom and individualism, according to Barker she would fall under raunch culture. Her position in raunch culture is explained best by Barker, “Raunch advocates sexual provocativeness and promiscuousness by women as women…women identifying within this ‘culture’ speak of their rights to objectify sexuality like a man…” (312). This is not to say that she is a woman who embodies anything evil or wrong, but because she embodies this idea, the main character begins to find her less attractive as he begins to learn more about her. This is because the main character still holds the concept that for a woman to be beautiful she needs to represent, the good wife. The good wife according to Barker is a woman who embraces the ideals of being a domesticated, passive, well-mannered woman (307).
In MWW, the desired woman is imagined before she is ever seen by the audience and the main character. Because of this, the audience is given the chance to be truly connected to the main character and to see what he sees through his imagination. Similar to the film ‘10’ the audience and the main character learn the personality of the desired woman only at the end, only to find they are somewhat disgusted by the woman’s nature. Though the difference between the two films are that the protagonist in MWW meets and befriends his love interest fairly fast, whereas in ‘10’ the protagonist doesn’t befriend his love interest until a little past the half-way point of the film.
The scene in question in the film is where the protagonist is spending time with neighbor, after her boyfriend had left her. From there she begins to get drunk and tries to seduce the protagonist into coitus, the main character views this action as not fitting his idea of who this woman is or what he would like her to be. The woman in this film does not represent raunch culture as did Bo Derek’s character in ‘10’, though both women are the subject of a man’s interpretation of what an idealized woman would be. Both men seem to view the women as having the personality of, the good wife, but as each film progresses we learn neither of these women share this ideal, thus forcing the men to reject them.
This aspect of how men from two different cultures are able to come up with the same idea of what a perfect woman should be is very intriguing. It proves the point that pop culture over the past few decades has created an image of what the perfect woman should envision, in opposition to who they truly are. Because of this media control, we can see a clear trend of how women are being viewed, whether it be the interpretation of the late seventies or that of the 21st century, there seems to be very little that has changed in the man’s mind of what a woman is.
- Barker, Chris. "Sex, Subjectivity, and Representation." Cultural Studies Theory and Practice. London: Sage Publications, 2007. 301-13. Print.
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