Notes and Quotes - (1)

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 are also compelled to take the viewpoint of the central (male) character, so that woman are denied a viewpoint of their own and instead participate in the pleasure of men looking at woman. (‘Men look at women; women watch themselves being looked at’, as John Berger had put it (1972: 47).) (Page 41)

·         “The female character has no importance in a film Mulvey says, except as a spectacle” (Page 41)

·         “Heroes that drive the story are always male, whilst female characters are passive erotic objects”  (Page 42)

·         “… value in the idea that women come to learn  to view themselves and other women through the ‘male gaze’ given the dominance of male produced media, but to deny the female gaze altogether does little service to women”.  (Page 42)

WOMAN AND MEN IN MOVIES

·         “In the 1950’s the most popular films included High Noon (1952) and Rear Window (1954)… focused on male heroes… these men typically made the decisions which led the story… assertive, confident and dominant”  (Page 50)

·         “Woman had important roles… far more likely than men to be shown as frightened, in need of protection and direction and offering love and support to the male lead characters” (Page 50)

·         “In 1960’s… all women characters cast as inept or were always housewives” (Page 50)

www.onepoll.com/the-portrayal-of-women-in-film-and-tv/

·         “ Often the female characters function only to serve the male lead”

·         “… or are gender stereotyped as the dumb/ unintelligent character or just there for their looks”.

·         Polled over 1000 young women aged 16-30; over half agreed that women are not accurately represented in TV & Film.  A further 37% also believe women are not even shown in a positive light.

·         Poor representation of women could even be specific to genre. 42% stated that horror films tend to portray women the worst, with romantic comedies not far behind on 36%.

·         “… pressure on young girls today to look a certain way, be a certain weight and copy the perfection they see on the cover of magazines and online.”

·         68% of women polled agreed that women in TV & Film do not promote a realistic body image and 59% believe that for women in Film & TV looks are the most important thing.

·         “Storylines should have a heroine (as opposed to a hero) and shouldn’t involve a romantic relationship”.

MEDIA MAGAZINE 34 à THE CHANGE ISSUE: ENGENDERING CHANGE

·         “Men active: woman passive” – John Berger à (Page 65)

·         “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female”.  – Laura Mulvey à (1985:306) (Page 65)

·         “a generation of women who wanted to rebel against male dominance”  The Female Eunuch (1969)à (Page 65)

·         “The first appearance of a ‘girl’, in Dr No (UK, 1962), when Ursula Andress emerged from the ocean in a bikini, emphasised that these women were sex objects”.  (Page 66)

·         “… names were sometimes sexual puns – for example, ‘Pussy Galore’ and ‘Honey Ryder’. “ (Page 66)

http://www.slideshare.net/naamah/how-are-women-represented-in-the-action-movie-genre

·        “Representation of women across all media tends to focus on the beauty, size/physique, sexuality, emotional (as opposed to intellectual) dealings and relationships”

·        Laura Mulvey quoted as saying “Narrative fiction film created images of women used for the gratification of men”.

MEDIA MAGAZINE 32 à THE HUMOUR ISSUE: IS NESSA BAD FOR OUR HEALTH

·        “...Characters body weight was linked to narrative lines – fat people less likely to be shown having romantic relationships and their plot lines generally had a negative narrative outcome” (Page 22)

·        “ bad things happen to fat people and good things happen to thin people” (Page 22)

·        “ One believes that representations are constructed in order to fit with mainstream hegemonic values” (Page 22)

http://media.edusites.co.uk/article/wjec-ms1-representation-of-femininity/  - Rob Miller

·        “Identity is complicated, everyone’s got one” – David Gauntlett

·        “Influential women in public life continue to be sources of inspiration, but how much does the media challenge hegemonic constructs of femininity”.

·        “Practice stubborn sexism and misogyny that fails to recognise or hold up any mirror on society, choosing instead to reinforce prejudice and maintain unequal gender divisions”

·        “Reinforcing and celebrating sexism”

http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC29folder/HalpernOnKaplan.html  - Sarah Halprin

·        “ ..Analysing the dominant discourse of Hollywood cinema, concentrating primarily on the notions of images of women as spectacle and as fetishized object”.

http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc54.2012/RothlisbergerBabel/text.html - Leisa Rothlisberger

·         …”women are victimized in association with their national labels”.

http://scholarworks.uark.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=jouruht

·         In 2013, women comprised less than a third of speaking parts in the top grossing domestic films

·         Women only accounted for 15% of protagonists

·         “ A growing disconnect… between what we might perceive as being the current status of women in film and their actual status” – Dr Martha Lauzen (Executive Director of The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University)

·         “Truth…latest films… female characters are two times more likely than males to be identified only by a life related role rather than work related role… rarely portrayed as formal leaders” (Lauzen, 2015)

·         “Recent popularity of female heroines like Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games series  and Tris in the Divergent series may lend to the impression that women are represented equally and fairly”

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

·         “I feel like with young women, their bodies are constantly objectified and used in a sexual context.”

·         “ With older women [their bodies are] constantly the butt of a joke… seminal scene that illustrates that is in About Schmidt, when Kathy Bates gets into the hot tub and Jack Nicholson is horrified and the audience is supposed to scream. … deeply offended by that scene”

[Melissa Block (2012) Sarah Polley: On Love, Desire and The Female Body. NPR]

·         In the top 100 grossing films of 2008 young women were sexualised more often than men.  39.8% of women were wearing sexually revealing attire compared to 6.7% of men.

·         30.1% of women were shown partially naked compared to 10.3% of men.

[Stacy L. Smith and Marc Choueiti: Gender inequality in cinematic content? A look at females on screen and behind the camera]

https://www.nyfa.edu/film-school-blog/gender-inequality-in-film/

·        2007 -2012: 28.8% of women wore sexually revealing clothes as a opposed to 7%  of men

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/women-in-film-underrepresented-hypersexualized-report_n_3273398.html  - Emma Gray - 2013

·         “Women are shown on screen, they’re often portrayed in a hyper sexualized way”

·         “31.6% of females were shown wearing stereotypically “sexy”  clothing”

Feminist Media Studies

Liesbet van Zoonen (First Published 1994)

Spectatorship and the Gaze

“…display of woman as spectacle to be looked at, subjected to the gaze of the (male) audience.” (Page 88)

“Pornography is the most obvious genre built on the exhibition of women’s bodies as objects of desire, fantasy and violence” (Page 88)

“The incorporation of women’s bodies as decorative ingredients in advertisements of drinks, tools and - most notoriously – cars in common practice”   (Page 88)

“… In TV game shows the assistant to the quiz master is the predictably attractive, scantily dresses blonde” (Page 88)

“Hollywood cinema has a long standing tradition of constructing women as a spectacle for voyeuristic pleasure” (Page 88)

“  This common feature of popular and high culture alike – for in ‘art’ women’s bodies have been exploited in similar ways  - suggests that in western society to be looked at is the fate of women , while the act of looking is reserved to men.” (Page 88)

Men looking at women

·         ‘Scopophilia’ is defined as a basic human sexual drive to look at other human beings, a conscious and concentrated way of looking that causes particular feelings of lust and satisfaction that are not directly related to erotogenic[1] zones’  (Page 88)

·         “In mainstream Hollywood film, women function simultaneously as erotic objects for the male audience who can derive scopophilic pleasure from their presence, and as erotic objects for the male protagonists with whom the male audience can identify” (Page 89)

https://mic.com/articles/118624/5-ways-hollywood-s-gender-problem-isn-t-solved-by-putting-women-on-screen#.IJOIt0tyR  - Marcie Bianco

·         “Cinema undermines women’s intelligence... they don’t see us as a powerful economic force, which is incredible ignorance” – Salma Hayek (Mexican – American actress)

·         “We must commit to equalizing the playing field for women in Hollywood” – Jennifer Siebel Newsom (Director of documentary Miss Representation)

---

[1] originating from or causing sexual stimulation; erogenous