Notes and Quotes updated (23/11/2016)
Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction (2nd
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)
·
“ 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)
·
“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)
·
“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”
·
“ ..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”.
·
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”
·
“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]
·
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)
·
“Thus
the woman as icon…. Page 90
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)
Gender Trouble
Judith Butler (First Published 1990)
·
“I read Beauvoir who explained that to be a
woman within the terms of a masculinist culture is to be the source of mystery
and unknowability for men” (Preface
1990) {Page 29}
·
“For the masculine subject of desire,
trouble became a scandal with the sudden
intrusion, the unanticipated agency, of a female ‘object’ who inexplicably
returns the glance, reverses the gaze and contests the place and authority of
the masculine position” (Preface 1990)
{Page 30}
9 Female
Movie Stereotypes that we should kick to the curb
·
“Read it and weep: The gender ratio of men to
women in film is 3.4 men to 1 woman”
·
“For every female character that appears in a
movie there are at least three male characters in the same movie... Upsetting
right?”
·
“It’s hard to find a female character that
doesn’t fit into some type of degrading feminine stereotype”
·
“It’s time to cut the crap, Hollywood. We want
female movie leads that are clever, strong, independent and real... here are
nine female movie stereotypes that should be nixed immediately”.
·
“The cold
heartless boss, Miranda Priestly in The
Devil Wears Prada she’s callous, detached, and the main antagonist...
However, this can’t be the stereotype for all women in positions of power.”
“Instead we should portray female bosses as motivated or brilliant, which most
are in real life”
·
“The
damsel in distress, a broken woman with a troubled past and/or dark
secret is completely lost until she is often saved by an often shirtless male.
The problem with this stereotype is that it perpetuates the idea that women
need to be saved”
·
“Woman are completely capable of solving their
own problems without the help of a hunky man”
·
“The
sleazy journalist, most movies portraying female journalists
doesn’t do the career justice; these characters will always have some sort of
relationship with their male sources. Sometimes it’s a flirtation, but other
times it’s a sex-for-secrets trade-off. Trainwreck, Amy Schumer’s
journalist character has sex with the subject of her story after knowing him
for less than 48 hours”
·
“The
workaholic, she’s an
intelligent, ambitious, and driven working woman, she’s landed her dream job
doing something she loves and so she spends most of her time at the office. When
she finally falls for Mr. Right, her job interferes with the relationship, and
she’s forced to make a decision. Referencing The Devil Wears Prada once
again, Anne Hathaway’s character is the workaholic. After her career takes off,
her relationship with her boyfriend suffers. Why is it so unimaginable that a
woman can be as dedicated to her career as her significant other?”
·
The
Transformation Girl, The female character starts off wide-eyed and
innocent, but as soon as she meets her Prince Charming, she completely changes
her appearance, personality, and values in order to become the version of
herself she believes her man will want. (Sandy – Grease) This can have
detrimental implications for younger viewers, for the overall theme of these
movies is “don’t be yourself if you want someone to fall in love with you.” A
better option would be to have a female character that stays true to herself
and still gets the guy.
·
The
dead mother, the mothers that do appear in Disney princess
movies are usually the villain trying to covet the youth and beauty of our
young heroines.
·
The
forever single all-knowing best friend, while the main heroine
of the movie navigates through her own dark and twisted romantic adventures,
her best friend is always on the side-line giving out life-changing advice.
·
The
high school bitch, this stereotype is the most farfetched…
newsflash; pretty, popular girl isn’t always a soulless demon (Mean Girls & A Cinderella Story). High
school can actually be a positive experience.
·
The
desperate city girl, (He’s
Just Not That Into You) This female stereotype is desperate for a date,
although casual dating never seems to work out for her.
(Word Count - 2,121)
(Word Count - 2,121)
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