Preview

Frida Film Analysis

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1159 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Frida Film Analysis
Frida and the Role of Women During the 1930’s and 1940’s, women of the world held virtually one role and one role only…homemaker. This was no different for the women of Mexico, except for one woman in particular, Frida Kahlo. Frida refused to accept the current ideals of society and the accepted social norms by engaging in things that few women in history ever had. Frida was involved in politics, she was promiscuous with men and women, she painted pictures of herself in ways that had never been done before, and she wore the clothes of her indigenous people as opposed to the current fashions of the world. The movie Frida showcases all of these qualities. The director, Julie Taymor, uses the symbolism of these things to show how Frida was not a typical woman of her era. Politics during the early 20th century was a man’s game. It was considered to be no place for women; it was “too complex and complicated”. However, Frida Kahlo did not agree with this stereotype, she inserted herself into the inner circles of high profile politicians from Mexico and around the world. Frida associated herself with the Communist party and shared the views of other Communists such as Leon Trotsky, whom she and her husband, Diego Rivera, welcomed into their home when he was exiled from his home country of the Soviet Union. Communism was a very feared and frowned upon political view of the time period, yet Frida openly associated herself with it. Unlike most women of her time period, Frida immersed herself in politics and felt strongly about her points of view. Frida’s involvement in politics is also displayed in the movie, especially during the scenes where Trotsky and his wife move in with Frida and Diego. Also shown in the movie is a scene where Frida is at a party with Diego and everyone is involved in a heated discussion about politics while sharing drinks. Frida immerses herself in the middle of the discussion and blatantly shares her opinions. Throughout the movie,


Bibliography: "Flappers in the Roaring Twenties." About.com 20th Century History. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2012. <http://history1900s.about.com/od/1920s/a/flappers.htm>. "Frida Kahlo Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2012. <http://www.biography.com/people/frida-kahlo-9359496?page=1>. Frida. Dir. Julie Taymore. Perf. Salma Hayak and Geoffrey Rush. Miramax Films, 2002. DVD.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Mexican Border

    • 1599 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The movie depicts the maquiladora workers in Tijuana, Mexico to balance life working in these factories with their struggle for justice in the system that governs their place of work. This reiterates how machismo affected gender relations in Mexico and how woman are devalued.…

    • 1599 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Frida Kahlo Essay

    • 1402 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Frida Kahlo was a strong revolutionary female artist that emerged out of Mexico during its time of turmoil and growth. By examining her unique upbringing as a child, to her outlook on Mexico’s quest to situate an national identity to their masses without any influences from European ideologies, I feel that Frida Kahlo was an early feminist that help pave the way for women in Mexico to achieve equal opportunities, not only in a cultural sense but also political. She was able to express her aesthetic views through portraits depicting social and cultural taboos that were still plaguing the Mexican women after the socialist and muralist movements.…

    • 1402 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Frontera Movie Analysis

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Frontera is a movie about two illegal immigrants, Jose and Miguel who are trying to cross the border between the United States and Mexico. Upon entering the United States the two meet Olivia, the wife of a former sheriff and the owner of the land they were attempting to pass through. Olivia gives Jose in Miguel water in a blanket and departs after telling them there is a highway not too far where they can try to catch a ride. Later on, they run into a few local boys who are out to shoot at illegal immigrants. After firing a number of shots in the direction, Olivia shows up on her horse to see what's wrong. The boys shoe again only this time scaring the horse. Olivia falls off as the horse is spooked and is later pronounced dead. Olivia's husband Roy shows up investigating…

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frida Kahlo Analysis

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Frida Kahlo was a Mexican surrealist artist born on July 6th 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico. Kahlo is best known for her self-portraits that were usually created with the purpose of depicting her physical and mental struggles. Kahlo is also known as one of the first feminist icons. Her unconventional characteristic and behaviour, that would have been seen as rebellious in the early 1900’s, inspired countless other female artists and influenced feminist movements around the world.…

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Through these two women, the modern reader can achieve a sense of understanding as to two of the primary roles that women played during the revolution in the early 20th century. Camila is a young women who embodies a primarily domestic role, providing comfort, care and shelter to the rebel soldiers as so many women did during this time in Mexican history. War Paint provides a stark contrast to the mild Camila; as her name suggests, she is a fierce and hardened warrior, a soldadera.� Her role in the revolution is much different: she actually joins the ranks of the rebel band led by Demetrio Macias, and fights alongside the men. While the two women are highly developed characters who accurately represent the portion of society from which they come, there are many women who participated in the revolution whose roles did not fall into the "domestic" and "warrior" categories. Many women were journalists, lobbyists, and propagandists; some were nurses, tending to the wounded…

    • 2405 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frida Kahlo was described as “the first woman in the history of art to address with absolute and uncompromising honesty, general and specific themes which exclusively affect women” by life-long lover, Diego Rivera. As a Mexican female artist in the 20th century, Frida’s themes expressed in her artworks were considered highly explicit at the time. She was fine artist who used autobiographical through her extensive output of self-portraits. They are evidence of her need for self-expression and her exploration of identity. She overcame many difficult events including polio, long recovery from a serious car accident, two failed marriages, and several miscarriages some having a direct influence on her art. She used these experiences, combined with Mexican and Native American cultural and stylistic influences, to create highly personal paintings. Kahlo used personal symbolism mixed with Surrealism to express her suffering and anguish through her work. A viewer might classify her paintings as Surrealism, but she considered her art to be realistic.…

    • 1623 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Brief facts about artist Frida Kahlo’s childhood and adult years introduce her complex life of the mind and spirit.…

    • 1789 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    There were times when women were seen as people who take care of household chores and bear children. They were not allowed to participate in politics, military, official jobs; the status of women has changed over time. Many women are responsible for this change in the society where women are treated equal to men these days. One of such community is the Mexican women during the 1920s. Many of these women leaders were responsible for bringing the other women out of their homes to accompany men in all walks of their lives. Julie Leininger Pycior has explained the heights the Mexican women of the 1920s reached, in the essay “Tejanas Navigating the 1920s.”…

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frida Kahlo

    • 707 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Frida Kahlo is an artist in many ways. Besides her talent to paint surrealist thoughts on canvas, she also was an artist in her mind and body. She was artistic in the way she portrayed herself and with her dressing. She appeared full of spirit, however, she often covered her real with her work, only letting everyone see the imaginary Frida. The world was unaware of her agony, and of what she felt. Many people are fascinated with Frida Kahlo's artwork because of emotional background. She kept all her emotions in her, eventually expressing it out on her artwork. She painted her rage, her unhappiness, and physical sufferings.…

    • 707 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Film Analysis

    • 1817 Words
    • 8 Pages

    ← Shot and Camera Proxemics: What Type of shot? How Far away is the camera from the action?…

    • 1817 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Frida Kahlo

    • 1302 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Frida was born into a good family, Mexican mother, Matilde Calderon, and German-Jewish father, Guillermo Kahlo, (who was a famous photographer) and three sisters. She was the third of the four daughters born of their marriage. Frida was more close to her father than she was her mother because they shared the same creative interests. Her mother's obsessive piety may be what got in between her and her mother’s relationship. It has been believed that Freda was born with Spina Bifida and at the age of 6 she contracted polio, which left her right leg thinner than the other. On September 17, 1925, a horrific trolley car accident that left her broken from the lower back and below. She was in traction and spent most of her life in braces and medicated. That was when her father, Guillermo, encouraged Frida to paint after her accident. She needed to help out financially so went to Diego Rivera who was a commissioned muralist to view her works. Her first painting she took to him was a portrait of her sister Cristina. In 1929 Frida married Diego and they moved to Detroit. She was unhappy to be so far from home, she lost her mother, and battled between the Mexican culture she knew and loved and her new life in America. Married less than a year he had his first affair. They both continued to have affairs and Frieda being with both men and women. Four of the men she had been with were Leon Trotsky, Heinz Berggruen, Andre Breton, and Isamu Noguchi. Diego also cheated on her with her sister Cristina after she suffered a…

    • 1302 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The infamous Frida Kahlo was born on July 6th, 1907 at her parents home (known as La Casa Azul or ‘The Blue House’) in Coyoacan, a town around the outskirts of Mexico City. She was incredibly proud of her heritage often dressing in bright, unique Tehuana costume. She later became famous for her facial hair that she embraced, not caring for social norms. Frida would have a difficult life ahead of her, and the obstacles started early. When she was just six years old she contracted polio and was bedridden for nine months, giving her her first look at life in a hospital bed. She was encouraged to practise traditional male activities such as swimming, soccer, and wrestling to help her…

    • 941 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    By the 1930s, María del Refugio García, also called Cuca García, was a leading figure in both the Communist party and a leader in the women's rights movement. Women played a significant role in the complex and destructive Mexican Revolution; it brought women out of the home and into the streets and battlegrounds. Cuca states that even though women fought on the front lines, they “expected much from the revolution but received few rewards.” Olcott quotes one of Cuca’s most famous quotes when she states that “the gunpowder from the battlefields passed through our hair many times without making us turn back, but our country’s Government had taken advantage of our services, sent us home, saying that the place for a woman is in the home.” As a result of this passion, the Frente Único Pro Derechos de la Mujer (FUPDM; Sole Front for Women’s Rights) was formed. She became the secretary-general of the FUPDM and organized a variety of different kinds of women to oppose fascism with a broad list of demands: labor reform, women’s suffrage, equal rights for the indigenous and the poor, civil code…

    • 582 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Evita Peron’s life is a testament to the innate ability to craft ourselves into the people we want to be seen as. Although her morals, beliefs, and politics were not things everyone agreed with, they became irrelevant in the face of the recreation and metamorphosis that Evita was a representation of. Furthermore, despite what Navarro describes as the myths in regards to Evita’s rise to power, and the fact that ultimately she gained notoriety from her husband, Evita’s ability to shape herself into a woman of tremendous influence despite is no doubt her ultimate empowerment.…

    • 439 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Many women from high and lower class of the Mexican society managed to be part in high positions of Mexican politics despite of the inequalities they had to face during this period, gaining the respect of many men and of the society in many parts of Mexico. Many of the women who got to be in high positions of Mexicans politics become to be important political figures and inspiration for other women to believe in themselves. A woman who became an important figure in during the Mexican revolution was Hermilia Galindo. She was born in 1896 in Laredo, Durango Mexico (Mitchell, “Women’s Revolution,” p. 17), when the Mexican revolution began she was only fifteen year old. During Galindo’s political carrier she wrote many political disquisitions, was a public advocate for Carranza in many states and was the editor of the journal “Mujer Moderna” She rose quickly due to her intelligence, excellence speaking skills, and because she had skills and abilities that Carranza was shrewd enough to recognize and exploit.…

    • 1275 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays