A2 Feminism and the Media part 1

<< Media Studies >>
Feminist perspectives & the
Media
MS3 Research Investigation:
Critical Perspectives - Feminism

Aims/objectives
• Understand relevance to media studies
• Understand key feminist concepts and terms
• Apply some feminist perspectives to set texts

What is Feminism?
On a post it note, write down 2 words you associate with this term?

Feminism is concerned with the ‘analysis
of the social/historical position of women
as subordinated, oppressed or exploited
either within dominant modes of
production [such as capitalism] and/or
the social relations of patriarchy or male
domination’.

Why study it for AL Media?
You will ALL need to understand these concepts to apply them to your A2
exam case studies.
However, it does not only apply to looking at the representation of women in
the media.
For example:
• If you are looking at a particular genre or the narrative in a music video,
you might consider how it chooses to represent women
differently/similarly to men?
• If women are not present, why? Does the text contain any information
about male attitudes to women?
• If you are looking at another area of representation (age, issues,
national identity) are there gender related patterns that could relate to
these ideas?

In media and cultural studies, the central drive of feminist
perspectives is analysing how representations of women are
constructed in the media: what messages and values
(ideologies) are created, how, why and what their effect is?
Feminist film theories attempt to show how this view of women
is reflected and consolidated by the way they are represented in
film and to try and consider the effects of this on male and
female spectators.

The Patriarchy
 Male dominated society
 Most powerful roles in society are occupied by
men: politicians, business owners, media
producers, etc
 Therefore male perspectives dominate public
discourse
 In other words, the views of men are given most
prominence in discussion and representation of
gender, especially women

Representation of Women
 Historically, this has meant that women have been represented in the
media in the following ways:
 Underrepresentation aka “Symbolic annihilation”: Women are not
represented as often as men
"Representation in the fictional world signifies social existence; absence
means symbolic annihilation."
(Gerbner & Gross, 1976)
In other words, if a minority group is not represented in the media, their
status and power in the real world diminishes

Representation of Women
Where women are represented, it is usually in a narrow range of
stereotypes.
 Fragile: vulnerable/weak – “Damsel in distress”
 Soft
 Irrational
 Emotional
 Dependent (on others, especially men)
 Subordinate, passive
 Domestic: family/home, housewife, mother
 Valued for beauty/appearance
More frequent representations of men allow for a greater diversity of
representations
Campaigning by feminists has led to some changes in the way that women are
represented today. But there are still significant inequalities

51% of population are women, but…
 Women are disproportionately under-represented
in Hollywood, both on camera and in the workforce
“behind camera”
 In 2018, New York Film Academy produced a
content analysis of gender representation in recent
Hollywood films
https://www.nyfa.edu/img/nyfa-news/headlines/women-in-film-2018.png

https://www.nyfa.edu/img/nyfa-news/headlines/women-in-film-2018.png

Origins: First Wave Feminism
• Started in the early1900s
• Concerned with creating equality between men and
women.
• Based upon A Vindication of the Rights of Women by
Mary Wollstonecraft, which was written in 1792.
• Focused on legal inequalities such as voting rights and
property ownership
• Brought to public attention through the suffragette
movement.

Origins: Second Wave Feminism
Started in the 1960s.
Women now had equal voting rights
Feminists were interested in ensuring equality elsewhere
in women’s lives, such as the workplace and family.
Some second wave feminists were concerned with the
impact of pornography on women since the mass media
was becoming a bigger part of people’s lives.
Associated with the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Origins: Third Wave Feminism
Began in the 1980s and continues to the present day.
Laws are now supposed to ensure equality for women in the areas
the second wave feminist were concerned about.
Concerned with
• negative stereotypes of women,
• their right to control their own sexuality (including how they
dress) and reproductive issues such as abortion and the
availability of contraception.
The most recent example of third wave feminism can be seen in
the SlutWalk movement.

Types of
feminism
Marxist feminism takes a Marxist approach to
the study of women and women’s interests, and
emphasises the way in which women are doubly
exploited – both as workers and as women
Radical feminism tends to focus on the
problem of patriarchy – the system where
men dominate in every way in society such
as the family, the workplace and politics.
For radical feminists, the main focus is on
the problem of men and male-dominated
society
Liberal feminism wants to
ensure that women have
equal opportunities with
men, through steps like
changing to law to stop
sex discrimination,
removing obstacles to
women’s full participation
in society, and better
childcare measures to
allow women to be fully
involved in work.
Black Feminism is
primarily concerned with
black and Asian
women’s experiences of
oppression and
exploitation. It combines
ideas about capitalism,
patriarchy and anti-
racism.
Post modern feminism is
associated with third wave
feminists. It acknowledges the
diversity amongst women and
encourages individual women to
find feminist ideas that combine with
their own experiences of life to
create a brand of feminism suitable
for them.

Early feminist ideas
•Early perspectives suggested that representations of women polarised around two
stereotypes reflecting central cultural values.
•Madonna (as in Mary, the mother of Jesus - not the popstar): saintly, asexual, virgin,
maternal, pure.
•Whore: highly sexual (– sex but not love) dirty, prostitute,
This has roots in Freud’s theory “the Madonna/whore complex”.
It is now seen as reductive by many critics.

Key feminist ideas
Other perspectives include a study of the representation of women in
specific genres: the way in which women are most often passive in the
narrative with the male characters having most narrative agency.
Stereotypes of women?
Are they “passive” or “active”?
Where women are proactive (film noir being an example) it is usually in
a negative way (femme fatale) and ends in control and punishment.
Horror films may sometimes be read in this way.

What is ‘The Gaze’?
•A highly influential idea, particularly in feminist film
theory.
•It describes how the viewer gazes upon (views) the
people presented and represented.
•The term ‘The Male Gaze’ was popularised by
Laura Mulvey.

Who is Laura Mulvey?
 A Professor of Media and Film at University of
London.
 A successful screenwriter, producer and director,
 She has written and edited many books and
articles on contemporary film and feminist theory
and practice.
 Her most famous work to date is her seminal essay
‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ published
1975
 It has since been highly influential in film criticism.

Who is Laura Mulvey?
 The theory assesses the representation of gender
and the relationship between the text and the
audience from a feminist perspective.
 It is based in a lot of the psychoanalysis work of
individuals such as Sigmund Freud

The Male Gaze
Dominant cinema’s codes and conventions construct specific ways for women to be
looked at.
Put simply, the typical audience member is assumed to be male.
- or “The Camera is Male”
The typical audience member becomes aligned with the film’s male protagonist, by
identification, admiration or aspiration.
Hollywood cinema organises the spectator into the male position so that the spectator
has little choice but to identify with the male protagonist and become complicit with his
objectification of female characters.
Female spectators can either identify with the passive female role, or more often take
the male view.
In films, men look and women are looked at.
Women in film are simply objects for ‘the gaze’ of the protagonist/male audience.

The Male Gaze
Examples:
Megan Fox in Transformers (car breakdown scene)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0V8hDBEVPU
Constructed by The Gaze
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GsRK43Td0U
Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher (Car Wash scene)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYhaRcfCEkI
The Bond Gaze
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfL09c4cw2I

Criticisms of The Male Gaze
Mulvey’s work was based on her own conceptual analysis, rather than
empirical research.
Her work looked at the traditional mainstream films of Hollywood from
1920s-1960s.
Despite being hugely influential, the idea also has many critics. What
problems can you see with the theory?
Critics say it means that female viewers cannot derive any pleasure from
watching Hollywood films.
But critics claim that women can and do enjoy watching films from a male
perspective and Mulvey does not take into account the complex variety of
ways in which audiences consume and enjoy films.

Other types of ‘Gaze’
Progress has been made since Mulvey’s work in the 1960s and we now
see a much more diverse range of gender representations in the media.
As women have gained more political, social and economic status, media
producers have identified them as a valuable market too, leading to the
development of what some call ‘the female gaze’
Diet Coke Advert: The gardener
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuHV4gwSXn4
Others have gone further to identify a ‘queer gaze’ in some media forms.

Kilbourne, Women and Advertising
In Killing Us Softly Jean Kilbourne discusses how advertising sells not just
products but also the belief that the most important thing about women is
their appearance. We are shown unattainable images of flawlessness that
are presented as the ‘normal’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85HT4Om6JT4

Kilbourne highlights how adverts and and other media create unrealistic
idealised images of women, overly sexualize women’s bodies and
“objectify” women, turning them into things rather than people, especially
through the use of dismemberment when just the parts of a women are
shown.

Kilbourne states that dehumanizing women in this way increases the
chances of emotional and physical violence against them, damages their
self esteem and distorts men’s views of women.

Naomi Wolf & The Beauty Myth
Naomi Wolf goes further in her book ‘The Beauty Myth’ stating that the
notion of beauty is an entirely patriarchal, social construction. In other
words, men in any given culture set rules about what is considered beautiful
and acceptable.
We can tell that these are constructed because they vary between different
cultures and different times.
She notes that the more social and legal equality women have gained, the
more they appear to be oppressed in other ways, especially body image.

Further feminist readings of the media
“The more legal and material hindrances women
have broken through, the more strictly and heavily
and cruelly images of female beauty have come to
weigh upon us. During the past decade, women
breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating
disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery
became the fastest-growing specialty. More women
have more money and power and scope and legal
recognition than we have ever had before; but in
terms of how we feel about ourselves physically,
we may actually be worse off than our unliberated
grandmothers.”
The Beauty Myth (Introduction), Naomi Wolf.

The Bechdel Test
 A way of assessing a female character's "narrative agency"
 Started as an ironic joke/social comment in a 1985 comic by Alison
Bechdel - has since become widely used metric because of its
simplicity.
Alison Bechdel

The Bechdel Test
For a film or TV show to pass the Bechdel Test, it need to meet 3 criteria:
 Have at least two named female characters
 The 2 female characters should talk to each other
 They must talk to each other about something other than a man.
A surprising number of major Hollywood films do not pass these simple
requirements.
…and the original Star Wars trilogy, entire Lord of The Rings trilogy, most Pixar, all Harry Potter films except
Deathly Hallows Pt 1 and 12 out of entire 22 MCU Infinity Saga films (Iron Man to Endgame) FAIL

The Bechdel Test: Criticisms
The test is reductive (over-simplistic) and ignores potemtial nuances in film
A ‘pass’ doesn't guarantee a positive representation of women or a good film
A ‘fail’ does not mean a negative representation or a ‘bad' film.
Look up your
favourite film.
Does it pass?
But used statistically to look across multiple films at the 'bigger picture' it does reveal
a pattern of underrepresentation for women in the media.
Greater awareness in recent years has led to improvement, as seen on the
website http://bechdeltest.com/

• Response to Backlash against 60s & 70s fem.
• Recognition of diversity of women black, post-colonial perspectives
• Rejection of dogma (including feminist dogma)
• Gender – less rigid, more fluid; idea that traditional notion of gender is
constructed and imposed by social cultural context
• Empowerment & celebration of femininity
• Women can wield sexual power
• Men have lost essential aspects of masculinity and have become more
vulnerable
• Fuelled by advances in abortion, employment and fertility laws
• Moderation of discourse on oppression
• Traditional feminism perpetuates the idea of women as victims, post-
feminism concentrates on ideas of empowerment and liberation
• Emphasis on choices and freedom of choice
Post feminism/Post Modern Feminism

Feminism and
Masculinity
 More recently, feminists have sought to analyse the way
in which men and masculinity are represented in the
media, the potential negative impact on men and women
and the way in which the two issues are intertwined.
 The HeforShe campaign invited men to join the
conversation.
 Emma Watson Speech UN 2014
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Dg226G2Z8
 Campaign Videos
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZptgM-jhZo
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFHU32WuDzk

A2 Feminism and the Media part 1

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A2 Feminism and the Media part 1