Don Jon Analysis
Media Text:
Don Jon
The film Don Jon is a perfect example of the affect media has on personal expectations of relationships and gender roles. Jon Martello is a very typical “New Jersey Boy” raised in the quaint suburbs of an American town. Working as a club bartender in the same town as an adult, his friends call him Don Jon due to his ability to bring home and have sex with a different girl every weekend. However, even the most beautiful women will not satisfy him like watching pornography does. Barbara Sugarman is a good, old-fashioned girl seeking the perfect match to her Hollywood-based criteria of a man. The two meet and immediately enter a very binding and restrictive relationship. While images of candle-lit dinners, children and white picket fences dance around in her head, Don Jon remains lost in trying to figure out what the meaning of love and sex even is. The film contemplates the expectations of the opposite sex and the false fantasies media creates for twentieth century relationships. . The gender construction follows very closely with the traditional expected roles of men and women in a young, middle-class society. Not only are men portrayed as the dominant and powerful members of the household, women are portrayed as the strong yet submissive ones whom hold together the domestic ground. The film revolves around the main male character’s obsession with his “body, pad, family, church, boys, girls, and porn,” stating those are the only things he cares about in life. Women’s roles are also laid out in a manner relating to the expectations we discussed in lecture. Connell Raewyn says, “Many women dedicate their lives to making a family and seeing it through the life-cycle. A sense of being desirable, having an attractive or at least presentable body, is an important part of our culture’s construction of womanhood.” 1 The main female personified these expectations by her open wishes to build her life modeled around Hollywood romance
Don Jon
The film Don Jon is a perfect example of the affect media has on personal expectations of relationships and gender roles. Jon Martello is a very typical “New Jersey Boy” raised in the quaint suburbs of an American town. Working as a club bartender in the same town as an adult, his friends call him Don Jon due to his ability to bring home and have sex with a different girl every weekend. However, even the most beautiful women will not satisfy him like watching pornography does. Barbara Sugarman is a good, old-fashioned girl seeking the perfect match to her Hollywood-based criteria of a man. The two meet and immediately enter a very binding and restrictive relationship. While images of candle-lit dinners, children and white picket fences dance around in her head, Don Jon remains lost in trying to figure out what the meaning of love and sex even is. The film contemplates the expectations of the opposite sex and the false fantasies media creates for twentieth century relationships. . The gender construction follows very closely with the traditional expected roles of men and women in a young, middle-class society. Not only are men portrayed as the dominant and powerful members of the household, women are portrayed as the strong yet submissive ones whom hold together the domestic ground. The film revolves around the main male character’s obsession with his “body, pad, family, church, boys, girls, and porn,” stating those are the only things he cares about in life. Women’s roles are also laid out in a manner relating to the expectations we discussed in lecture. Connell Raewyn says, “Many women dedicate their lives to making a family and seeing it through the life-cycle. A sense of being desirable, having an attractive or at least presentable body, is an important part of our culture’s construction of womanhood.” 1 The main female personified these expectations by her open wishes to build her life modeled around Hollywood romance