Gender Roles In Colin Stokes Tedx Talk: How Movies Teach Manhood?

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The term gender roles are the header to an umbrella of other problems. When most people hear the term gender roles, they think of stereotypes and how women are portrayed. Are they being thought of as housewives? What about the caretakers in the relationship, or the stay at home mom? While all of these have mountains of arguments behind them, there aren’t many arguments behind the gender roles that men have been placed in by mass media. In Colin Stokes TedX Talk: How movies teach manhood, these stereotypes are brought up and argued through the use of rhetoric. Colin Stokes openly uses rhetoric in his talk while using ethos, pathos and logos; and the rhetorical triangle. Stokes opens with an excitedly romanticized story about …show more content…

His daughter became obsessed and her favorite character was Glenda, because who doesn’t want a big sparkly pink dress yet be someone who is still able to get things done?” Stokes was ecstatic about the kind of symbolism it gave to his daughter about what kind of woman it is okay to be. Dorothy, the normal girl next door, who when put into this situation is the hero and saves the day; who wouldn’t want to be like her? Stokes was well stoked about the fact that his daughter had so many great strong female characters to look up to in movies; princess or not. It wasn’t up until he had a son did he realize that women in these movies were strong only when placed in a story with war, while men were almost always objectified as emotionally and physically strong with a stoic nature, who was only shown to be good at fighting for the girl and winning. When his daughter was older they watched Start wars for the first time and his then 3 year old son found his way into the room to watch and he became so enthralled with everything about star wars he needed to have costumes and toys and books to fill his desire. Stokes asked the audience if they thought his son liked it so much …show more content…

The first question asks (1) does it have at least two women in it? (2) Do those women talk to each other throughout the film? (3) Do these women when talking to each other talk about something besides a man? The use of this test really makes you think about interaction in a film. I know that when I watch a movie I notice if and when there are women in the film, but I feel like a lot of the time people do not generally think about whether or not these women actually communicate back and forth. He uses the logical reasoning behind why this topic is worth talking about while backing it up with statistics. It is much easier for people to follow and believe something if it is represented in numbers and have a measuring system. With that being said a lot of changes are happening in todays society to change how women are treated and portrayed in media, but are we going about it

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