Project Proposal

Working title
To what extent is the way that woman are represented in Furious 7 affecting the health and well being of woman watching the way in which their celebrity idols are portrayed?  

 Angle
Should there be better regulation among Hollywood films to better the way in which woman are represented in the films? 

Hypothesis
Do Hollywood movies have a negative impact on audiences in terms of gender roles and expectations?

 Linked production piece

 - Newsnight/Question Time: Debate on the representation of woman: positive and negative

MIGRAIN

Media Language

  • Natural lighting - Outdoor shots
  • Low key lighting, high key lighting
  • Key & Filler lighting 
  • Parallel sound - Upbeat & attention grabbing tracks - at the races
  • Casual attire - Cargo trousers & vests, leather biker attire
  • Long shots, medium shots, close ups, a few over the shoulder shots

Institutions

  • Distributors- Columbia Pictures, Universal Pictures, United International Pictures, Toho - Towa, Andes Films, Westec Media Limited, China Films Co, Filmostrada, Home Box Office, KVH Media Group, NBC Universal Entertainments, NOS Audiovisuais and SBP.
This list of distributors is very long, as the film was distributed worldwide and was distributed by particular companies accordingly, however the main distributor of Furious 7 was Universal. For example, Universal distributed the film in Spain & the UK among other places whereas the film was distributed by Columbia Pictures in the Philippines. 

  • Production Companies -  Universal Pictures in association with MRC, China Film Co in association with China Film Co Limited, Original Film, One Race Films, Dentsu, Fuji Television Network, Quebec Production Services Tax Credit 

  • Special Effects
-- Weta Digital, Digital Domain, Scanline VFX, Moving Picture Company (Visual Effects)
-- Gentle Giant Studios (3D Scanning)


Genre
  • Action
  • Crime
  • Thriller
Does the text feature a star, a director, a writer etc who is strongly associated with the genre? What meanings and associations do they have? 

All of the cast are notable stars strongly associated with the above genres. Vin Diesel is likely the most notable as he has acted in every film that is part of the furious franchise but in addition to this he has helped with the production of the film alongside James Wan (Furious 7)   


Representation

  • American men 
  • American woman
  • Ethnic minority groups
Audience

  • 50% male
  • 50% female
  • B, C1, C2
  • Mulvey (Male Gaze) - Camera lingers of the curves of the female body

Ideologies

  • Self Importance - The crew's need to ensure they are known and well respected within the road racing industry


 Narrative

  • Linear Narrative  - Beginning, Middle, End



SHEP

Social

Historical

  •  Malala Yousafzai Woman's Rights Movement (ongoing)
Malala fights for woman's right to education in her campaign, and covers how woman are considered as weak and not worthy of getting a good education for which she was shot by the Tailban. This relates to my topic of the negative representation of woman because I too will cover how woman are perceived as weak in the world of film, and therefore exploited as sex objects in many films across a variety of different genres.   
  • The Fawcett Society (ongoing movement) fighting for woman's equality and rights at home, at work and in public life. 
  • The work of the suffragette's - fought for woman to have a more prominent role in society in all walks of life. 
Economic
  • Woman in lead roles of films are statistically paid less than men and considered as second class citizens, which is advantagously used to expliot woman as sex objects in films. 
Political
  • ?

Issues/Debates
  • Representation and stereotyping
Furious 7, reinforces negative stereotyped grouping titles of woman? 
Does the film follow the many set out stereotypes that follow women actors in film?
  • Reality TV
Reality TV relates to my study because there are some shows in which woman are represented in the same way that they are in Furious 7 (in bikini, short skirts etc) which is a negative wide netted representation over females as a whole. However, in some cases woman on these reality TV shows want to be seen the way that they are so it is self representation. For example, 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians'. 
  • Ownership and control
Are men the puppet masters, are they holding the strings to how woman are presented in the film as they have the more prominent role? Or in some instances, are woman wishing to be seen in this way, as being controlled by the men? Are woman capable of looking after themselves? ("DID YOU BRING THE CAVALRY?" "WOMAN I AM THE CAVALRY?" - Furious 7) Are woman there own puppet masters and using their sex to get the attention to their character? (EXAMPLE BELOW FROM FAST 5 - of last question)





  • Regulation and censorship
Like the news are there enough gatekeepers in the world of film to control the level of exposure of the woman characters, is it regulated to a good standard? Furious 7 was rated a a 12, which according the BBFC website constituents for nudity to be displayed but in a sexual content in must be brief and discreet. However, I think the film should have been rated a 15 as nudity was displayed which is fine but I think it was in a sexual context which was not discreet or brief as scenes kept getting changed back to them.   

 Theories
  • Gender and ethnicity
-- Laura Mulvey - Male Gaze
-- 
  • Marxism and hegemony
-- Feminist Maxism 
  • Audience theories
-- John Berger  - "Men look, women appear"
  • Genre theories
--  The Fast & Furious franchise is very well established within the action, crime and thriller genres and once this happens audiences hold certain expectations of the films that are produced within the genre. Are audiences expecting woman to be presented in the way that they are?

-- Gives audiences a familiarity to the genre. 
Research plan (media texts, academic texts and websites)

Media texts
Main text - Furious 7

 - Keeping Up With The Kardashians

Other media texts

Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model. - Cameron Russell (American Model)


This talk links with my topic, because I'm looking at the negative representation of woman and how looks of others and just looks in general are not everything. I am looking at how we are presented with negative role models in the media and in films which I think many woman idolise to much. In my opinion, woman should just be themselves and not try to change for anybody,which is something that Ms Russell is touching on. 




TV documentaries

 Miss Representation - 2011 (Documentary)
Explores the under representation of woman in positions of power and influence in America, and challenges the media's limited portrayal of what it means to be a powerful woman. 

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2011/10/miss-representation-doc-shows-ugly-side-women-media

The above link, talks about the film 'Miss Representation' and basically why it was created and what they wanted to achieve from creating such a documentary.

My study fits this film, because it too looks at the other side of woman representation in the media. It shows probably how woman would actually like to be seen. It puts woman in the leading role and shows the differences with them in power.
Academic texts/books

 David Gauntlett: Media, Gender & Identity

https://www.questia.com/read/102713786/media-gender-and-identity-an-introduction


Internet Links

 Donald Trump mocks Miss America (1996) for gaining weight

 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/us/politics/alicia-machado-donald-trump.html?_r=0

 Malia Obama - Festival Madness

 http://hollywoodlife.com/2016/07/30/malia-obama-dancing-lollapalooza-festival-2016-watch/

 London Feminist Film Festival - Statistics & More

 https://londonfeministfilmfestival.com/women-film/women-on-screen/representations-of-women/

 Gender roles
http://www.american.edu/soc/film/upload/gender-roles-in-disney.pdf

 The woman fighting sexism in the media - from Page 3 to politics

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Notes and Quotes updated (23/11/2016)

Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction (2 nd Edition) David Gauntlett MEN AND WOMEN TODAY ·          “If there is 'a battle of sexes' who is winning nowadays?” (Page 3) ·          “The sexes today are generally thought to be ‘equal’, to the extent that the cover of Time Magazine wondered if feminism was ‘dead’ in June 1998”.  (Page 3) ·          “A noisy minority argue that feminism has ‘gone too far’ and that it is now men who have the worst deal in society” (Farrell, 2001; Nathanson and Young, 2001, 2006; Hise, 2004; Ellis, 2005). (Page 3) LAURA MULVEY AND THE ‘MALE GAZE’ ·          “ Male viewers identify with the (male) protagonist, and the female characters are the subject of their desiring gaze.” (Page 41) ·          “Female viewers, Mulvey says ...
Read more

Critical Investigation Tutorial (23rd November)

  Notes & Quotes document currently around 2-3,000 (work spread over different blog posts) – meets previous deadline but probably not the latest 4,500 requirement. Largely due to lost work needing to be re-done – frustrating! Always back your work up somewhere – blog, school drive etc. In terms of what you’ve got so far, fantastic selection of academic texts – this is one of the best N&Q documents I’ve seen so far in terms of book research. We now want to develop this with web sources and academic journal articles on the M: drive. In fact, we have some brilliant PDF articles on the M: drive regarding women and film so this will potentially give you another 5-10 excellent academic sources of quotes/statistics/arguments.   Textual Analysis – this was Task #1 and was due last week. You’ve got something for this but in my view not quite enough. You’ve picked two key scenes from the film and identified aspects of media language. However, you don’t appear to have discu...
Read more

DRAFT 2 - Critical Investigation

“The media has always been overwhelmingly in the hands of men” [1] Barbara J. Berg, PhD Author: Sexism in America How are women represented in films such as Fast and Furious 7 and what impact might this have on wider society? Over the years, women have faced many challenges when it comes to the issue of equality in the film industry. We struggle when it comes to being treated equally with men; they were and still are seen as the superior ones, which reinforces Berger’s quote that “Men are active and women are passive”. [2] Despite the reports and claims about the developments in equality for women over recent years big Hollywood franchise films still present numerous negative stereotypes of women. This is particularly evident in the Fast and Furious franchise films and the James Bond franchise films where the female actresses are objectified and presented as meaningless sex objects. The way that female characters are presented is simply to please the male eye both in ...
Read more