WST3305
October 5th, 2024
Midterm Feminist Film Analysis: The Wizard of Oz and Eve’s Bayou
In films, gender roles being portrayed by the main characters is essential because they are what
carries the plot and tells the story to the audience. Two films I’ll be analyzing for this essay that
play a huge part in representing gender roles is Eve’s Bayou (1998) and The Wizard of Oz
(1939). I’m choosing these films because they have an interesting and outstanding portrayal of
strong, female characters that go through lots of obstacles, but still carry their feminism
within them. Some of the characters in Eve’s Bayou I’ll be doing an analysis on is Eve, her aunt
Mozelle, her mother, and grandmother. For Wizard of Oz, I’ll be shedding light on the Wicked
Witch, Glinda the Good Witch, and Dorothy. All of these characters represent strong
womanhood and femininity, so I’ll be excited to take a deeper look into them and to explain why
they hold such significance in these films.
To start off with Eve’s Bayou (1998), the film is a story about a 10-year-old middle-child girl
named Eve, living with her family in a rural Louisiana Creole community in the 1960s. Her life
growing up had always seemed perfect, practically porcelain, up until Eve accidentally walks in
on her father having an affair with a married family friend, Matty Meraux. This changes her
image of her father and the perfect family she once knew, with her mother also having to accept
her own husband’s adultery and failure to be committed. Throughout the story, Eve finds solace
by seeking comfort in her psychic aunt Mozelle, who has the gift of second sight, which is also
passed down to Eve. Both Eve and her aunt hold power because both have the ability to see
events before they actually happen. An example would be that Eve had a dream that foretold her
, of the accident that killed Mozelle’s third husband. Although Eve was passed down second sight
from her aunt, she didn’t predict her own father cheating on her mother, she takes that as a
lesson into how she can’t predict everything that happens. Mozelle on the other hand, was able to
predict the violent deaths of all three of her past husbands and believes she is cursed with her
gift. She takes it into account to show Eve the pros and cons of having second sight and how
obtaining the truth before others can come with pain. The hero in the film would be Eve herself,
because she starts off as an innocent child, then due to the trauma she endured, she decides to
mature and step into adulthood. As stated in the article “20 Years Later, Eve’s Bayou Is Still a
Stunning Portrait of Black American Life”, “Lemmons (director of the film) utilizes Eve's story
to explore several topics, including the value of intergenerational relationships, the
ambiguity of memory, the fact that the individuals we show are frequently not the real versions
of ourselves but rather the people we wish we were, and the significance of folk magic in Creole
culture. The film thoughtfully examines the crucial moment in every child's life when they
realize how human their parents are, which is crucial to the plot.”. This heavily relates to the
outcome of the situation, where Eve learns to accept the truth of her father’s betrayal to her
mother and realizing that after all he’s just a man, besides being a father. In Eve’s Bayou, the
themes of sexism and racism are present, as well as the strong appeal of male gaze. This is
mainly due to the setting being in the 1960s and the family living in a rural, black community in
the south of Louisiana. During this time, society was heavily patriarchal and tensions between
races was higher than ever before, so lots of communities were segregated, especially in the
South. The film portrays the difficulties Eve, and her community faces during that time, as well
