Course Description

At the core of the course is the question how feminism has become a demonized and ridiculed “F-word” in an age when issues of gender and sexuality are at the center of constant, often explosive political debates. These debates often connect media representation and political representation but tend to do so in simplistic ways that bypass or distort decades of sophisticated feminist theory and practice. We will trace back such representations through the decades around case studies that encompass film, video, television and new media practices. The case studies come from the United States and beyond, taking into full account the global interconnectedness of media production and consumption as well as the transnational travel of feminist ideas. The main goal of the course is to evaluate how useful feminist thinking is to understanding the relays between media and political representation; and to develop a lasting critical apparatus to analyzing the politics of gender and sexuality in the media.


Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Rating Female Roles

A recent article in The Week stated that cinemas in Sweden have introduced a rating system for female characters. This system rates how properly rounded the female characters are. In order for a film to receive an A rating for it's gender equality, there must be at least two female characters that have names and have a conversation about something other than a man.

This does not sound like particularly high standards, but the article states that most blockbuster films fail to reach this rating. All of the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars films and all but one of the Harry Potter series fall short of this. I found this really interesting as I love all of these films and they are generally considered to be great stories that are very well made. This limited female representation is usually overlooked by moviegoers.

I am wondering as to the reasons behind this - why are women shown as only being able to speak about men? Is it because, as Michael said in his presentation, that women on the screen have less credibility then men and can cause a show to not be considered 'quality'? All of those films listed are action oriented, and in most action films female characters are placed in the story as an accessory to add an element of sex and excitement. Is this why their roles are based entirely around men? It also got me thinking about the stand-out female role in Harry Potter - Hermione. She is great figure who is not sexualized and advocates strength, intelligence and disregard for other people's opinions. However, if there are no scenes of her talking to other females about anything other men, this makes her a token character in the series. She is not representative, she is rather an intelligent character who is made female for the sake of having a female in the group; she could just as easily have been male.

Overall, I wonder what impact this has on society, especially due to the fact that a large majority of people who go see blockbusters are rather young and impressionable. If they are repeatedly shown women who are represented as only concerned about men, this must leave a lasting impact in the minds of teenagers and children.


Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)