Gender Roles
The Million Dollar Protection Plan
Women: soft, emotional, loving, motherly, and a supporter. Men: aggressive, hard-working, fatherly, leader, strong, and inexpressive. These two genders are very different and are in fact opposites. When women try to break the stereotype, it does not typically go well. There is a borderline within gender that should not be crossed. In a 2004 film entitled “Million Dollar Baby” directed by Clint Eastwood he is trying to define the rules of gender. Eastwood creates a movie where the main character is a female and the female is trying to dominate a male dominated sport, boxing. The movie “ Million Dollar Baby” portrays that Clinton Eastwood is trying to protect male masculinity in the sporting world by showing the rise and fall of women in a male dominated sport. In the movie Maggie is a single poor woman who lives in a trailer park by herself. Her family is also poor and is struggling to get by. Maggie’s only focus is to get to the top of the boxing charts. She is someone on the bottom that is trying to come up. She tries to get the trainer Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) to train her but Frankie Dunn does not want to train her because she is a girl. Dunn thinks that Maggie is incapable of being great at a male dominated sport and he feels like taking her on would be a mistake. When Frankie Dunn is giving his speech about how things are going to be he says, “God I feel like this is a mistake already.” She keeps interrupting him while he speaks and he feels that she will not listen and be submissive to his will. After Maggie comes to the gym everyday for about a week or so and she trains on her own Frankie Dunn decides to help her out and train her. After Frankie accepts, Maggie gets really excited and ditzy, while Dunn is just standing there as if nothing big just happened. This implies that women are lower than men and they need a man’s help to become successful. Frankie Dunn says, “I’m going to try and forget the
Women: soft, emotional, loving, motherly, and a supporter. Men: aggressive, hard-working, fatherly, leader, strong, and inexpressive. These two genders are very different and are in fact opposites. When women try to break the stereotype, it does not typically go well. There is a borderline within gender that should not be crossed. In a 2004 film entitled “Million Dollar Baby” directed by Clint Eastwood he is trying to define the rules of gender. Eastwood creates a movie where the main character is a female and the female is trying to dominate a male dominated sport, boxing. The movie “ Million Dollar Baby” portrays that Clinton Eastwood is trying to protect male masculinity in the sporting world by showing the rise and fall of women in a male dominated sport. In the movie Maggie is a single poor woman who lives in a trailer park by herself. Her family is also poor and is struggling to get by. Maggie’s only focus is to get to the top of the boxing charts. She is someone on the bottom that is trying to come up. She tries to get the trainer Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) to train her but Frankie Dunn does not want to train her because she is a girl. Dunn thinks that Maggie is incapable of being great at a male dominated sport and he feels like taking her on would be a mistake. When Frankie Dunn is giving his speech about how things are going to be he says, “God I feel like this is a mistake already.” She keeps interrupting him while he speaks and he feels that she will not listen and be submissive to his will. After Maggie comes to the gym everyday for about a week or so and she trains on her own Frankie Dunn decides to help her out and train her. After Frankie accepts, Maggie gets really excited and ditzy, while Dunn is just standing there as if nothing big just happened. This implies that women are lower than men and they need a man’s help to become successful. Frankie Dunn says, “I’m going to try and forget the
Cited: Boyle, Ellexis1 Millington, Brad Vertinsky, Patricia Sociology of Sport Journal Jun2006, Vol. 23 Issue 2, p99 18p Dirty Baby: The Gender Politics of Million Dollar Baby Richard Letteri Quarterly Review of Film and Video Vol. 28, Iss. 3, 2011 http://movieclips.com/Ge6U-million-dollar-baby-movie-the-way-its-going-to-be/ “Million Dollar Baby” moviedeaths.com n.d.