Annie Hall

It's probably the feminist in me that took issue with the way gender stereotypes were portrayed in this movie. The one that stuck out the most to me, and one that seems more and more common, is when Annie was in a rather "bad mood" towards the beginning of the movie. Alvy pestered her on if something was wrong to which she told him there wasn't. He asked if she was on her period and a part of me groaned. By perpetuating this stereotype, we're essentially disregarding a woman's feelings to "Oh, well, she's probably just on her period." instead of addressing something that could potentially be wrong. I felt like this highlighted the communication problem in their relationship and ultimately, why they ended up falling apart. Neither one of them really understood the other, but at the same time, it's clear that at least Alvy didn't bother enough to try to understand how she was feeling.

Something else that jumped out at me that further endorsed this negative connotation women hold in general society was when Annie called Alvy over to get rid of a spider in her apartment. He tries to rationalize this by saying that it was just a spider and that she could've killed it herself. Yet, when he actually saw the spider, he was at least a little frightened of it to. This plays into the idea that women need a man to take care of them and further says that this is the reason why relationships continue to happen in the first place.

In fact, throughout the movie, there was numerous instances of how these traditional roles were upheld. The only one that I can think of that disregarded these roles a bit was the fact that Annie, towards the beginning as well, wore what is typically thought of as "men's clothing." This was brought to the viewer's attention by Alvy, actually. Even though she was in a shirt and tie, the clothing still looked feminine in a way. Yet, throughout the movie, she wore progressively more and more "feminine" clothing which leads us to believe that she was changing while in the relationship.