Vertigo - Social Context and Gender representation (A LEVEL FILM EDUQAS)

This pack contains a 62-slide PowerPoint and accompanying 20 page student booklet. The lesson offers a comprehensive analysis of Vertigo’s post-WWII cultural context with a focus on Post War Gender Relations.

The lesson covers:

• Starter - breakdown of exam / types questions students will face
• Students to discuss their response to the film and list adjectives for key characters (to be used later in assessments)
• Analysis of the opening scenes (credits and roof-top chase)
• Introduction of key themes: voyeurism, women under scutiny, castration anxiety/loss of masculine status
• Historical Context: the cold war, 1950s as ‘Age of Anxiety’
• Gender roles and gender anxiety in post war America
• Image analysis: compare images of Rosey the Riveter / WWII propaganda that promotes women with 1950s advertisements that position women as domestic, passive, in the home - reflects change in attitudes toward gender roles post WWII
• How were traditional gender roles reinforced?

Psycho-analysis - introduction of key concepts

• re-analysis of opening sequence - explore castration anxiety in post WWII USA
• Analysis of Midge’s apartment scene: castrated males, powerful women
• Repetition compulsion
• Ernie’s - the feminine ideal / Madeleine = the ‘ideal’
• The Bell Tower - phallic image / Scottie’s trauma prevents masculine duty
• Second Bell Tower scene - the return of the traditional, untraumatised male

Assessment included with a plan