The First Wives Club Analysis

Sitting on the couch, waiting for the movie to begin, only having knowledge from what was in the trailer. Girl meets boy. Boy cheats on girl. Girl hatches plan. Girl gets revenge. However what if you meet all his love affairs? Even with all the overdramatised scenes and the cliché ending, “The Other Woman” is still one of my favourite movies from 2014.
Created by Nick Cassavetes “The Other Woman”, seems only to be another typical love film. Based in Westhampton Beach, New York, the film focuses on three women who spend their time “chasing” after a man around the world. However, looking deeper in the film it is clearly evident that the film strongly links to 1996 film “The First Wives Club”. As evident in The First Wives Club, strong women take
forefront in The Other Woman; the foul play and revenge of the men that portray or “disown” their partner. Although foul play and revenge are noticeable themes in The Other Woman, at the end of the day, the women take revenge and use foul play to control and fight for justice and nothing more. However through further analysis that we understand that the true message and reveal the many sides of the women and their ideologies.
Through history and in modern times, women are constantly victims of stereotyping from society.
Particular “rules” have to be followed and “ideal” images for women have to be kept. Women are raised in society to fill particular positions, opportunities are limited for women and the ideas our women’s importance is society are diminishing. This occurs when Kate awaits at home for the arrival of her husband to come home from work or long business trips, only to be doing shopping, cleaning; being a stereotypical housewife. The different characters and events that occur in “The Other Woman” offer a new perspective to tragic circumstances within the film. For example both Kate and Carly feel more than just destroyed after discovering his love affairs. In particular, the women, for the most part of the film, stand together and help to get justice for the cruel
behaviour.
I think this message of strong women is really important in modern society, as people often view women through stereotypical ideologies.
A strong woman is the one who is independent but respects others, and supports other women in the choices they make. She moulds herself to betterment in hard times in her life. A woman still gets emotions but these emotions do not barricade her journey to success in life. Whereas society views women not as the dominant or powerful gender, but as the weaker gender following in the footsteps of their other half, to serve as a “slave”. Once a woman can overcome the fear of the past and realise that being an independent, strong woman, does not take away from being feminine. Being in love and accept being loved by another is still emotionally accepting in her more dominant role as a woman. Given the opportunity a lot of women still thrive in the less dominant roles and like the ideas of being looked after, and looking after a man. However in modern times it is not a perfect life for many women, some men are less accepting of the fact of being with one woman, and look for a spark of romance in another, younger
woman.
I often wonder when did it be ok to continually disvalue women, unlike women in history the world has developed, however as society has continued to accept women and value their contribution to society, women are still not considered as equals to men. Yet we are all capable of change and reflection on the place women stand in society. Although it has been scientifically proven that women do not typically have the same upper body strength, and with that comes sexual and gender discrimination, but with hard work and determination women have overlooked stereotypical views and risen up to the challenges that society have set for men and overlooked the women. However women often stand down in society as believed they are not as good as men , on the other hand women need to justify their place.