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Dr.Jayshree Singh, B.N.P.G.College, Udaipur 1
Women and Ecology at Work A Critical Study of the Movie Erin
Brockovich (2000)
Presented by Dr. Jayshree Singh
Senior Faculty(Lecturer in Selection Grade)Deptt. of English, Bhupal Nobles P. G. College
Mohanlal Sukhadia UniversityUdaipur – 313001
Email: [email protected]
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The Film Erin Brockovich (2000): Women and Ecology at Work
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Theme of the paper
• The research study in my paper attempts to focus on the self-perception and the right perspective of human existence. These are the attributes of expressions, emotions and experiences. They involve the values of dignity and desire to live healthily and happily. These are the inherent and natural rights.
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Components
• The study also investigates that self-inquiry, self-knowledge; self-awareness and self-enhancement are the necessary ingredients for ecological and environmental balance and to live life with dignity.
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Challenges in the theme
• the dream of utopian human rights society is interrogated in the selected films,
• the study of the film questions the forbidden areas, prohibited spaces through the signs and signifiers relationship,
• to examine the universal and unhistorical contexts that construct emotions of self-dignity and self-enhancement in the cultural process of human condition.
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middle-class woman in the American patriarchal humanist society.
She is divorced twice and has three kids to rear. Her earlier two husbands were financially not sound to look after the family and they proved useless in raising them.. As she is married and divorcee, she is granted welfare payments by the federal state, yet these are not enough to lift her family out of poverty. She lives in public housing. The film text narrates the story of a woman’s journey to self-sufficiency, self-esteem and self-reliance against the odds of her being unskilled, half-educated, three kids to feed, to negotiate her home affairs with the strangers and to win the suffered victims as clients in large number against the $ 28 billion dollars PG&E Company.
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Tension of poverty gets more severe than the adversity
of being single, married, divorced mother of three kids.
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Her constraints and encounters
• Her emotional stress is reflected in the shots – she picks up her kids from the daycare. She is told by the daycare in charge that she will not be able to look after the kids as she has been bought a house at some other place by her daughter. She has no one in the house to take care of her kids. She goes through employment newspapers to mark the jobs that may suit to her ability. She contacts the employers through her residence phone and through telephone booths. Nobody considers her necessity.
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Breaks gender stereotypical office norms
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Center of Controversy and internal grumbling among the staff of Ed Masry’s office due to her skimpy and immodest outfits and
conversational style
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Counters a stranger
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The gender representation regarding conduct, conversation and code of dress is shot in the camera.
Ed Masry: In a law firm you may want to re-think your wardrobe a little.Erin: Well as long as I have one ass instead of two I’ll wear what I like if that’s
all right with you. You might want to rethink those ties. • The filmmaker here captures woman’s expression of her own
subjectivity as an effective galvanized woman, who is not bothered by the gaze of other’s especially the males.
• The logic of this perspective in the narrative structure is to base social-cultural context in radical manner that explicates substantive change in the women mindset, consciousness-raising towards the egoistic perverted attitude of mankind towards womankind in the workplace and at home.
• The director presents the truth in pleasant disguise, it is for the spectators to derive the meaning of the production.
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What is significant to note the political consequences of gender difference here? It is the political objectification of collective fantasies and desire.
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The filmmaker indeed adds mise en scene to connect screen-spectator relationship
The film radically drives on the liberation aspect of mindsets from duality as regards women. It is this style of dress that got enabled her to procure details of the records of sale deed and purchase deal as well as the medical records of Hinkley’s water supply resources from the Lohatan Regional Water Board at Hinkley’s desert town. But it is important at this juncture to view the image of women not as site/sight of object of exchange between men, but it also reflects the society’s choice and the social construction of women.
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conditioning and control of women in films.
• Here the heroine appears as insubordinate and confident to construct her identity and image. Some critics say that she used her cleavage to attract and get the records from the remote office of water board at Hinkley town. On screen it constructs the affirmation of her awesome sexuality , but it is the orientation of viewers through film art and industry.
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Through the inquiry of Erin, the film debates the spectatorship vis-à-vis environmental issues
• Donna Jensen as a common person ignores the intensity of contamination of drinking water on human body, she is seen to be worried more about the insurance and pay bills. She avoids the reality of the Chromium effects and PG & E company’s corruption in misusing her property rights. At the same time she is unaware that protection of natural resources is included in property rights. She like other Hinkley town people does not want to involve herself in this problematic issue of materialistic power-plays.
• This film envisions a paradigm shift in the narrative by positioning the desire and the right to live with dignity. It vindicates that women, children and nature are the vulnerable factors to be exploited and misused by men.
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emotional outbursts and emotional pressures on her and on her kids,
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New situations and challenges constantly threatens her emotional strength as mother
They are looked after by a stranger George, because he loves those sweet kids. Erin in her crusade misses the first utterance of her baby girl i.e. ‘Mom’. Her son and daughter get angry at her late night shifts at work, this consciousness is all the more gets tensed when her new boy friend leaves her place as he feels that she is too erratic and personal to the work and the environmental issue and neglecting all in the family for the other’s sake. She utters:
• Erin Brockovich: For the first time in my life, I got people respecting me. Please, don't ask me to give it up.
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overwhelming toughness
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Her concern for humanity’s welfare
• Through her resourceful enterprise and networking, she gets as many as 654 victims as clients against the company’s irresponsible action towards the common people’s right to have sustainable natural resources. Later her boss, who seems baffled at her work, joins in the deal.
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Erin Brockovich: By the way, we had that water brought in especially for you folks.
Came from a well in Hinkley.
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The film centers around the axes: Erin’s realization of strength and self-esteem in her work and the realization of disrespect towards nature and human values. The inter-textual meaning
that nature and woman nurture and care humans, but both are dominated by men.
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the beauty pageant Miss Wichita• There is parallelism in the text and subtext. One text is embedded in another
text. Erin, who was declared as the beauty pageant Miss Wichita in her young days, realizes the significance of the words that she spoke on the stage. She took at that moment the oath to save the world from environmental disaster and to do service for the welfare of humanity. She forgets that memorable moment of her life, while being in family life. The work that she undertakes in law firm to help the victims reminds her long-forgotten promise.
• The filmmaker coordinates her memory, desire and dignity with this beautiful symbolism. She leaves no stone unturned to accomplish her task and her dream. She gets success, money and esteem all together after her hard work for the values.
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the precondition of human dignity and ecological harmony in the world.
George as the auxiliary support shows radical alternatives to emancipate both men and women by way of exercising the full range of their human capacities i.e. love, cooperativeness, trust and a nurturing emotional life in general.(Biehl 50) George, as caretaker of kids dismantles the logics of gender stereotypical roles.
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Interrogating personal subjectivity against universal consciousness
• Human nature and human condition are indeed reflected by this film, yet the benefits , income along with dignity are the attractions that have been conversely dealt as the necessity. The utopia of social-ecological order is based on human concern and outlook, but the question is : Can nature and women in this material world be saved from exploitation? Can they survive man’s greed? The movie answers a little of this query, that tragedy of natural resources and commons can be prevented by people working together and be collectively conscious about the misuse. The market value cannot sustain longer, unless the human nature eliminates imbalances against the natural laws of humanity and nature.
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