THE MOVIES MIRROR OUR AGE

Gilad Stern, management consultant and lecturer

This two-lecture course explores how the movies, and the people who watch them, have changed over the past half-century. It will consider how films often both mirror and shape real life. In the 1960s, Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music informed our image of what the ideal woman was. By 2010, the ‘hero’ of The King’s Speech, was shown coping with a debilitating stammer. The first of two lectures, both illustrated with movie clips, shows the changes in what it was and is to be a woman, a man, or a lover. The second lecture examines heroes and villains, then and now. 

LECTURE TITLES

1. It’s complicated: woman, man, lover

2. Heroes and villains get confused: so do we

Recommended viewing

Pretty Woman, 1990. Dir. Gary Marshall.

Black Panther, 2018. Dir. Ryan Coogler.