The three films we watched and discussed in this unit, Metropolis and Periphery, are three particularly different pieces of cinema with a variety of character types having different relationships to Tokyo. The settings of these films were a particularly important topic in our class discussion, which is fitting given the title of the unit. Tokyo is the metropolis, and the periphery can refer to what is on the edges of the metropolis. Most often in our discussions, what appears on the periphery of the metropolis are the characters and how they are affected or reflected by the metropolis. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayWoman in the Dunes does not show Tokyo at all, but describes it through words as an urban city contrastingly juxtaposed with the desert landscape in which the characters are inserted. Niki desperately wants to return to Tokyo to make a name for himself, and he finds himself constantly baffled by the new environment from which he cannot escape. In It's Tough Being a Man, a specific neighborhood in Tokyo, Shibamata, which had not yet been transformed into modernity, compliments Tora's characteristics of being stuck in the past. His motivations, framed within an examined traditional role of masculinity, clash with the other characters' vision of the future. Finally, The Man Who Stole the Sun depicts Tokyo as the urban context for Kido's manipulation of the government, which gives nuance to Kido's desire to bend Japan's will to his own intentions, whether for the entertainment or power. Because Kido considers itself a nation, the environment in Tokyo – particularly because the National Diet, the bicameral branch of the Japanese government, is housed in Tokyo – causes Kido to be presented as a nation threatening another nation. In conclusion, our class discussions about the environments in these films revealed how well they mirror the characters, and I noticed that now the effects settings reflect characters from other films more. Another constant topic of discussion regarding these films that we have been looking at are gender roles. Once again, the three films present three different representations of male and female roles. Woman in the Dunes depicted a young widow living in the desert, left anonymous to the audience, which created an interesting nuance to her role in the film. She has a certain character and identity, and yet she is repeatedly objectified throughout the film, particularly given the scene Keira highlighted of her sleeping naked in limited lighting, which frames her in Williams' pornographic framework. The issue of masculinity was the main concern of Tora, who repeatedly fails in his role of masculinity due to his problematic history and current, brutal nature. He desires, in his own way, to be a good male role model (as shown by his verbal oath to support and do right by his sister during a yakuza meeting), but is continually an unsympathetic character due to his overbearing and odious. rudeness. This stifles the film's female characters, and although the sister and aunt repeatedly display their opposition to Tora's actions, the sister does not particularly fulfill a female empowerment role by being too lenient towards Tora's nefarious actions. . female from The Man Who Stole the Sun, who had a sense of independence from the men in the film. She..