In comparing the films The Blot by Lois Weber and The Wild Party By Dorothy Arzner both films challenge the established discourses that privilege the male and help develop the patriarchal feminine discourse. Through the close study of these two films I found similar narrative lines such as transport, employment and female relationship. It was through the critical analysis of these elements that I find the argument of my essay; That the female characters in these films did not have equal access to public space because of their suppression by the dominant male patriarch.
In The Blot the representation of transport depicts important elements in the main narrative, and at the same time reveals a patriarchal control over public space. In The Blot cars are used as a symbol to reinforce the main narratives of the film of poverty, wealth and class status. Throughout the film Weber compares the poor College professor's family with the sufficiently wealthy "foreign-born" shoemaker and his family next door (Slide 35). At the beginning of the film there is a scene which depicts Mr Olsen (the shoemaker) coming home with a new car for his family. This scene is intercut with shots of Mrs Griggs (the professor's wife) on her porch watching the Olsens enviously. Here Weber is explaining that people who have more money have greater access to items such as cars and therefore a greater access to public space. This is also true in the character of Phil West, the wealthy University student, who by being his father's son not only has a car, but a more prestigious one than that of the Olsens. The only female in the film that is depicted driving a car is Juanita, a wealthy friend of Phil West who is said to have "first mortgage on his affections". The reason that Juanita is represented driving a car is because of her class status, something that the poor professor's daughter Amelia has no right to.
Ken Kesey, a writer and cultural hero of the psychic frontier, is best known as the author of the widely read novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. His works are set in California and Oregon, two locations representing two facets of Kesey's experience that provide the major tensions in his works. ...
