In Harrington's Defense

There was a lot of contention in class this Tuesday regarding Professor Harrington's claim that Song of the Sea features a strong feminist message. While I don't agree that the film has any strong female characters in it (I think all of the characters are...fine), I agree that it supports feminist ideals. The film is really about dismantling the notion of toxic masculinity. It's about embracing your emotions during hardships, rather than shutting out the ones you love and becoming cold. The men in the film lash out constantly due to their sorrow and loneliness, ignoring, even hating their own emotions like the antagonist. However, the film ends with the antagonist, and the men, realizing that becoming distant and cold doesn't resolve anything. All it does is push those you love away, and makes you lonely and bitter. This is a direct commentary towards the steryotypical "men shouldn't express their emotions, men should always be tough" trope we see in films all the time. 

Comments

  1. jasonhDecember 13, 2018 at 1:03 PM

    Hey, thanks! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 13, 2018 at 2:42 PM

    this is exactly what my group talked about today. while I agree that the way it handles masculinity and emotion is definitely aligned with feminism, the treatment of the female characters isn't particularly making a feminist statement

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jackson GallatiDecember 14, 2018 at 1:22 PM

    I think you make a strong argument, but I'm still with Harrington on the notion that having the female lead become the LITERAL messiah as the film's climax pretty much makes her a powerful female character, seeing as she becomes, like, the most powerful being in the world of the film.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownDecember 15, 2018 at 8:08 PM

    See that's where I disagree. While it certainly is more conventional for the males to be the ones to shut out their emotions, the film actually subverts this stereotype by have Macha, a female, quite literally bottling up all of her emotions to cope with her one grief and going a step further by forcing this same treatment onto others. I don't think this is a feminist film because you could swap the genders of everyone in this film and it would play out largely unchanged. Nothing in the film happens explicitly because of a person's gender. I don't think there are any "strong female characters" in this film, but rather there are strong characters. Saoirse is written as a character, not as a female character. Her gender has absolutely no effect on the story. I loved this movie and I loved all the characters in the movie. I just don't agree about the whole feminist aspect of the film. But this is obviously a very interpretive film and I didn't see any message about feminism in the film. If you did, that's great. I'm glad you were able to see something were I didn't

    ReplyDelete

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