Introduction: A woman's incompetence is not due to her gender, but to her situation in the family.
The German drama film The Glass Blower tells the story of a small village called Thuringian in the winter of 1891 in Germany, which happened to the two sisters. His father, Steinmann, who supported his family by blowing glass, died suddenly, leaving behind two lonely and incapable adult daughters. The younger sister Mary inherited her father's craft and knew a little about glass blowing, but because women were not allowed to do glassblowing, they had to give up. The two sisters were adopted as female workers by another glass factory in the village, and the sister Johanna wanted to leave the glass factory to support herself, leaving the village to start another livelihood in the town, and the sisters had their own different lives.
1. The emotional appeal behind women's choices
At the beginning of the film, the sister Johanna and the sister Mary have very different character personalities, the sister's strong independence and personality and the sister Mary's quiet and introverted, resulting in the unexpected death of the father, the two people have different choices for the future. The younger sister, who likes glassmaking and wants to continue to inherit her father's glass craft, because in the social environment, some types of work do not allow women to enter the society and are rejected by society. In the working class, economic oppression abolished gender inequality and at the same time robbed individuals of all opportunities, "women are not allowed to blow glass", and glass blowing became the profession of men. Unable to make ends meet, her sister willingly accepted becoming a hand-painted female worker in another glass factory and enjoying the life of working in a glass factory. Compared with her sister Johanna, her sister Mary is a traditional woman with no ideas and ambitions, who wants to have a good husband in a good marriage, inherit her father's craft, and live a life that is easy to satisfy with her husband and godson.
The different choices between the two sisters, behind which they can not get away from the attachment to men, leaving the glass factory Johanna chose to enter the town, stayed in a shop where she once had a friendship with her father, and became the boss's assistant. As a female assistant, Johanna felt that she was no longer disliked by rude men in the countryside. In essence, the two sisters did not get rid of the shade away from the patriarchal society, and Johanna was finally considered by the boss to provoke authority and was raped and beaten because she was too assertive. Behind the fact that her sister Mary was violated by the glass factory owner's son, she chose to swallow her anger and suffer in silence, which was an connivance for male evil. Sister Johanna married the two on behalf of her sister. The younger sister found a sense of belonging in her life by clinging to marriage.
The film shows more about the situation in the 1980s, after the awakening of women's independent consciousness, they wanted to fight for labor status and personal status, and women's lack of experience in consciously arousing consciousness showed the existence of women's unequal status. Stereotypical female identities are "happy and joyful girls or tender water mothers" or "male foils, disasters or shelters". Johanna seems to have independent femininity and resists the male authority order, but in the film, the boss gives a reward to johanna to buy new clothes, which is out of a male view of passive female objects as the subject. Johanna thinks that the pleasure of being treated with respect and equality, and gaining self-identification, is actually a temporary power control given by men. When the boss chooses to withdraw her indulgence of Johanna, Johanna becomes the orphan girl who is helpless and useless.
2. Self-help under the patriarchal society
The men in the film, in addition to the neighbor brother who is obsessed with his sister, the boss Johanna who has created a more negative image, Mary's husband and the father-in-law of the glass factory owner, all show a gaze at women. The connotation of this "gaze" perspective is to depict the state of female existence from the male standpoint. Sister Johanna has passed the marriageable age, but still has a good face and exquisite figure, stubborn personality seems to be difficult to tame, more attractive to men's desire to conquer. The gentle and lovely, young and beautiful sister Mary makes her dare not refuse and her inner hesitation after losing the protection of her strong sister, so that she has become a sexual object that provides pleasure to men, and she has no choice but to marry after pregnancy.
The men in the film have male ills that belong to that era, but at the same time there is an undeniable shimmer of ethics and morality, and the glass factory owner, after confirming from Johanna that his son caused Mary to become pregnant, his first reaction is to rebuke his son and demand that his son immediately marry Mary and take responsibility for marriage. After Mary married, in this family without women, the owner of the glass factory became Mary's father-in-law, who would ridicule the woman's weakness and uselessness, but at the same time did not force the macho to arrange work for Mary. Pregnant and gave birth to a daughter in a patriarchal society, Mary was reprimanded by her father-in-law.
After Mary was abused by her husband, she was angrily reprimanded by her husband for "doing what a wife should do", and together with a group of village men, she lit torches and threw bricks at the family's small workshop. The conversation between Mary and her father-in-law mentions that "you are making daily necessities, we are making crafts, and we will not form a competitive relationship." The father-in-law bluntly said the current situation of the patriarchal society, "the fact that men can occupy a favorable position by monopolizing resources by unscrupulous means", but in the end, they left a self-reliant way for the sisters to live, leaving a certain respect and room for women. Mary was able to go back to live without being harassed, but chose to take the child alone, seriously make glass to support the family, and concentrate on her career with her sister.
The film does not deliberately uttle and smear the shaping of male characters, and the father-in-law's thinking is only the subconscious attitude of general men, male characters in line with the current situation of the times. In contrast, the younger generation, Mary's husband and Johanna's boss, showing the ugliness of men, is the intuitive disrespect for women. Women are treated as objects of desire, in a passive subordinate position, under the violence and pressure of men, gradually consume the original awakened female consciousness, the active desire of the two female characters in the film is diluted, more is the acquiescence and bowing to the male society that cannot change the resistance. Mary was not respected after marrying and having children, and chose to abandon her marriage and return to her former home, continuing to regain what she really wanted to do and becoming a glass-blowing woman. Although at the end of the film, the two sisters seem to have a bright future, starting their own business and being tolerated by the villagers, and the younger sister is also favored by young businessmen from the big city.
The film shows a kind of reflection and change, without a particularly obvious display of female consciousness awakening, the sisters' silent and gentle resistance is a self-struggle for personal destiny. The film does not show the possibility of seeking ways to break the gender system under the social reality of the 1980s, and objectively moves the difference in the status of men and women. Mary and Johanna did not embark on the road of the big heroine, and behind the hasty choice of independent entrepreneurship, just to support the family, more show the original intention of women's rise and self-reliance.