Gender Roles - Billy Madison

Billy Madison For this assignment I chose to watch and analyze the film Billy Madison, a film I have watched throughout my youth. The film stars Adam Sandler, as the main character Billy Madison. Although many people criticize Adam Sandler for his acting and type of humor, I find him to be extremely hilarious and entertaining. The film is a classic and has brought many laughs to individuals my age. Throughout this paper I am going to provide you with a brief biography on the director of the film, Tamra Davis, Quickly summarize the film, and give my opinions on the gender roles in the film. Tamra Davis is most known publically for the film Billy Madison, Half-Baked, and Crossroads. However, she has also directed music videos. Some most notable artists she has worked with are Cher, Lemonheads, Sonic Youth, and Hanson. Her most popular videos were with Cher and Hanson. In 1992 she made her feature-length debut with the film Guncrazy. The film earned major praise and got a Golden Globe nomination for the main star in Drew Barrymore. After a return to the music business directing music videos she signed on to direct Crossroads, starring Britney Spears. The teenage film was a major flop at the box office and perhaps put a damper on her film directing career. She is now back to directing music videos. In 2002, she directed a music video documentary starring her husband Mike D from the Beastie Boys called Keep Your Eyes Open. The film Billy Madison is about a young man who wishes to inherit his father’s megamillion dollar company, when his father retires. The young man and main character in the film is Billy Madison, a troubled young man who wanders through life not doing anything but living off his father’s money and causing trouble around the community with his friends. His father has seen what his son has become and is embarrassed at Billy’s behavior. When a decision has to be made as to whom the company goes to, Billy’s father makes the decision to give the company to Eric, the movie’s “bad guy” character. Billy hates Eric with every ounce of his soul and doesn’t want to see the family company go to such an evil person. When faced with this issue, Billy comes up with the idea to go back to school, since his father had to pay off his teachers when he was in school in order for him to get decent grades, and prove to his father that he is capable of something other than drinking beer and causing trouble. His idea is to go through each grade, one through twelve for two weeks each in order to prove that he is smarter than what his father thinks. Adversity sets in when Eric decides to sabotage Billy’s bet with his father and get him disqualified from the bet. Of course this never goes through all the way and Billy defeats Eric in the end of the movie by beating him in a competition over knowledge at the high school level. Billy wins the company in the end and even wins the girl, but decides in the end that he would rather become a teacher, so gives the company to one of his loyal friends Carl a person better capable of running the company. Female gender roles were hard to come by in this movie. However, the girlfriend to Billy, Veronica Vahn was the most notable female character to analyze. She is the third grade teacher for Billy, and it’s at this point in the film were most of the time is spent. The character of Veronica is a sexy young woman with a soft, mature voice. She has soft lighting throughout the film to get the focus of the audience to her and her beauty. The camera angle for her always seems to be low so not only her face is shown, but also her chest and legs. Also, the focus on her is a shallow focus. They director wants the audience’s attention to be on her and not anything else. The thing that grabbed my attention the most was the way Veronica was portrayed in the movie. At the beginning of the movie she is dressed conservatively, however towards the end of the movie she shows more skin to gain more sex appeal to the male audience. Also, she is not only young and beautiful, but also smart, educated, and capable of making decisions on her own. She doesn’t listen or care what other people think of her, something not often seen in movies. She is a completely independent woman. Another female character is Wauneta, the maid to the Madison family. She is a large black woman with a strong opinion about everything and yet another strong female character in the film. Although Wauneta can be very outgoing and say some things that will make you cringe throughout the film, she is by far one of the funniest characters in the film. The camera angle for Wauneta is always a high angle. Since she is a bigger woman and not the most attractive one in the movie, the only part of her the audience sees is her face and chest. The focus on Wauneta is a deep focus. Everything in the background is in focus along with Wauneta and her upper body. Something I also noticed is that Wauneta is always dressed in her maid outfit. The costume, is of course, black with the white trim and doesn’t show a whole lot of skin. For this character, the costume fits perfectly because the director knows that there is no sex appeal that Wauneta has to offer the audience. She is in the film only to provide some comedic lines for the audience to laugh at. The character Billy Madison provides some sex appeal to the female audience at this time. He is a young man that not only is funny, but also good looking. Since he is the main character in the film, there are some shots that are shot in his point of view. An example is when he is chasing the penguin, at the beginning of the movie, during his drunken rampage. The focus on Billy is a shallow focus so the attention of the audience goes to him and his funny lines. The angle on Billy is a high angle so that every part of his body is in the view of the audience. His dress fits the character perfectly. Since he is not a high class male, his dress does not match that. He wears raggedy jeans with holes in his t-shirts and dirty hats. He is more of a comic character but still has the sex appeal. This creates mystery to the audience at too what kind of character he really is. Another character that I noticed is Ms. Lippy. She plays Billy’s first grade teacher. Though she is not in the film for not very long, she still provides some weird comedy to the audience. She seems to not be there mentally; mostly caused from the kids she works with everyday. She dresses mostly in loud colored dresses that don’t show a lot of skin. She does not have any sex appeal to the audience. The focus seems to be deep focus so the audience can look at her and get her comedic lines. She is shot with a high angle most of the time, mostly so the audience can see the crazy things she does throughout the film. The lighting is a soft lighting on her, but once again I believe so the audience’s attention can go on her and the things she says. After I analyze this film and the gender roles in it one thing really came to mind. Since it was directed by a female director, of course the females in the film are going to be strong and outgoing characters. They think and make decisions for themselves and don’t succumb to the typical female roles in movies of the past. I really enjoyed the roles of these characters because not only were they funny and out of the normal, but also played key parts in the film. Not only is this a personal favorite movie of mine, but also opened my eyes to the different gender roles it has to offer.