EXTENDED ESSAY (34/34) ON FILM STUDIES FOR THE IB DIPLOMA: PORTRAYAL OF MOTHER-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIPS IN CONTEMPORARY CINEMA
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Module
IB Diploma
Institution
IB Diploma
Book
Extended Essay for the IB Diploma
This extended essay in film studies got full marks (34/34) on the 2022 IB examination and is therefore a very good example to follow when writing your own. It revolves around the question: "what role does social and economic status play in the depiction of relationships
between young women and th...
Portrayal of mother-daughter relationships in contemporary cinema
What role does social and economic status play in the depiction of relationships
between young women and their mothers in Pride and Prejudice (2005) and Lady
Bird (2017)?
A shared circumstance ........................................................................................................... 3
Individuality of the characters ................................................................................................ 7
POST-EPIPHANY ................................................................................................................. 11
A mother’s shoes .................................................................................................................. 11
Women as complex human beings ....................................................................................... 15
CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 18
The depiction of relationships between mothers and daughters in film is a subject
that was left understudied for a long time.1 It wasn’t until “the rise of the women’s
movement […] in the early 1970’s”2 that the topic, which after all encloses an
experience exclusive to the female gender, started to be seriously discussed by scholars.
The immense richness and consequent potential of it was also soon understood by
different filmmakers, such as Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, who believed that the
bond was “the most mysterious, complicated and charged with emotion [of all human
relationships].” 3
Consequently, it should come as no surprise that the theme continues to be vastly
explored to this day and that it has been subject to many different interpretations. In that
sense, there are two modern works that come as especially relevant to me: namely, Pride
and Prejudice (Wright, 2005) and Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017). Both films avoid a
“simplistic” depiction of the relationship, understanding by this that they don’t regard
the mother figure either as a plainly “good” or “bad” object, 4 but as a complete human
being. By following the story of two young women’s (Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bennet, and
Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson) shift in perception towards their female progenitors,
they offer the viewers an opportunity to re-discover the bond along with them.
1
Lucy Rose Fisher, Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996), 10, https://archive.org/details/cinematernityfil00fisc.
2
Fisher, Cinematernity, 10.
3
Frederic Brussat and Mary Ann Brussat, “The Joy Luck Club. Directed by Wayne Wang,”
Spirituality Practice, accessed September 23, 2021,
https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/4428/the-joy-luck-club.
4
E. Ann Kaplan, Women & Film: Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983), page
number, https://archive.org/details/womenfilmbothsid0000kapl/page/n3/mode/2up.
1
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