미국학과 영화 텍스트를 통해본 미국 여성 = The American Woman's Image Through Film

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The primary purpose of this study is examine the American woman's image through film. In so diong, this paper reviewed over twenty films. Each film review includes an essay on the history of American woman. It also explores the gap between images and realities about the American women. This study is divided into five major parts; American women's history, gender issue, family values, job experience, and minority women in American society.
The historical experience of the two sexes was in many important ways progoundly different. It has been relatively easy for historians to see that economic and political developments affected men's lives. The women's actiities, however, has often been discounted and rarely been understood. For the discussion of American woman's history, this part examined five major movies: 〈The Scarlet Letter〉, 〈The Cruciable〉, 〈Gone with the Winds〉, 〈The Little Women〉, 〈The Great Getsby〉, These movies were about various subjects such as puritanism, witchcraft, civil War, and new woman. For women, puritans had special expectations and understood there to be special punishments. If the most cherished values of the Puritan community were hierarchy and order, then it was an easy step to the condemnation of those who did not accept their place in it. Witchcraft prosecutions were endemic throughout the Puritan colonies in America and exploded into the famous outbreak in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, during which nearly 200 people, three-quarters of them women, were executed. It was definitely gender specific, a woman's crime. To American women who lived through it, the Civil War was the most traumatic experience of ninetheenth century. As the "flapper"-the new woman of the post-war decade-changed her attitude toward the consumption of alcoholic beverages, so she also rapidly changed those pertaining to courtship of the twenties demanded the same social freedom for herself that man enjoyed.
The second part of this study discussed about the gender issues such as sisterhood, lesbianism, sexual violence, and abortion.〈The Thelma and Louis〉,〈The Bound〉,〈The Dolores Claiborn〉,〈The Accused〉, and〈If Thes Walls Could Talk〉are the major movies. Sex refers to biological differences that are unchanging; gender involves the meaning that a particular society and culture attach to sexual difference. Because that meaning varies over time and among cultures, gender differences are both socially constructed and subject to change. Unerstanding the difference between sex and gender provides a key to understanding the differences in men's and women's historical experience. Sexual violence is violence, not sex, and it si a public, not private matter. Rape crisis centers, battered women's shelters are expressions of their insistence that government respond to male violence against women. Feminists also attack directly the notion that female victims of violence are in some measure to blame by virtue of provocative dress and behavior or prior sexual experience. On profound questions of birth, death, and human choice that were raised by abortion. The abortion debate in the United Satates involved all Americans in complex questions of sex and power, and competing social values.
The family values have been one of the most important political issues. The movies -〈Icestorm〉,〈The American Beauty〉,〈The Bridges of Madison County〉,〈Mrs. Doubfire〉, and〈Stepmom〉-provide the idea about the various problems of the American family. Gender differnces in life cycles and family experiences have been a central factor in that divergence. The films about the American women in the workplace-〈Erin Brockvich〉,〈Courage Under Fire〉,〈Working Girl〉, and〈The Associate〉-show economic hardships, discrimination, and glass ceiling. One of the greatest barriers to an accurate assessement of women's role in the community has been the habit of assuming that what women did was not very important. Housekeeping has long been women's work, and housework has long been regarded as trivial. Most adult American women worked to feed and shelter themselves, their children, other members of their families. In the workplace, women and men were assigned jobs that reflected the employers' beliefs about the kind of workeach sex should do. In a society, female wage earners were persistently channeled into jobs that corresponded with the kind of work done in the domestic sphere or with characteristics long associated with women. Once a form of work has been identified with women, it has invariably become associated with low pay and inimal prestige.
Differences of culture, nationality, and historical memory are exacerbated by distinctions of race, class, ethnicity, and sexual preference. The experience of the minority women in the American society were very different. The movies-〈The Joy Luck Club〉,〈The heaven and Earth〉,〈Set It Off〉,〈Dances with Wolves〉, and〈The Long Walk Home〉-show the idea that differneces among women were also multiple.
Most of the information we receive about the world around us does not come from direct experience. Our Knowledge about human life si gained secondhand from the mass media, especially the film. The tremendous noramative power of the film has often distorted the image of women insociety. It also both reflect and help create and alter social and cultural values. It is one of the most important channels for achieving social change. For this reason, it is important to study the film for understanding the American society.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ.서론
• Ⅱ.미국 여성의 역사
• Ⅲ.미국여성과 젠더문제
• Ⅳ.미국여성과 가족적 가치(Family Values)
• Ⅴ.미국여성과 일
• Ⅵ.소수계층의 여성(흑인여성/이민여성)
• Ⅶ.결론