Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Portrayal of women in movies
Sexism in movies essays
Sexism in movies essays
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Portrayal of women in movies
After doing some research about superhero movies that have been created I couldn’t help but notice that there are a lack of superhero women. A few articles I found talked about the reasons why certain companies are worried about making a superhero film, especially with a female main character. There are lots of female superheroes and I’m sure many of them would make successful movie characters. It just hasn’t been done yet. …(something more here)…
There have been questions about it for quite a few years. Why hasn’t DC/Warner Bros made a show about Wonder Woman? She’s the third most popular of all of the company’s characters. Then I saw an article Spinoff Online which talks about how they almost made a Black Widow movie. Buy why didn’t they?
…show more content…
We had Tomb Raider and Kill Bill, which were the ones that worked, but then we had BloodRayne and Ultraviolet and Aeon Flux. Aeon Flux didn’t open well, and three days after it opened, the studio said, “We don’t think it’s time to do this movie.” I accepted their logic in terms of the saturation of the marketplace, but it was pretty painful.” (Cronin quoting David Hayter)
Well at least someone one in the movie business was interested in giving the females some time on the big screen. For most people, I’m sure, it’s not uncommon to think that a male should save the day because that is how it has been for centuries. All of the fairy tales you hear are like that. The girl is in trouble, her hero comes and saves her and they run off into the sunset. But think about what is popular now. What about the Hunger Games or Divergent? They both are both female leads in their own film and they save the
…show more content…
What about all of the other thousands of manly action movies that come out every few min? There have been successful movies, with the same type of theme that have come out in the season. So why can’t there be more than one type of superhero movie? It would only make sense to have one male superhero movie and one female superhero movie come out in the same year. That way the companies can get both male and females viewers. And more than likely both male and females viewers would be interested in viewing both. If that happens the rates would go up. So why not just do it?
The main reason why producers seem to be afraid of creating a female superhero is the worry that boys and men won’t go see a superhero movie, or an action movie, starring a woman, but that isn’t true at all! There are plenty of men that would want to see a good movie based on any of the female superhero characters that exist. And from what research has shown, lots of guys want to see them. There should be a lot more female superhero movies because good characters are good characters no matter what gender they
Men are looked at as brave, selfless people and are perceived as heroes all throughout society. Johnson addresses this point saying, “The idea of heroism, for example, has been appropriated almost entirely by patriarchal manhood. From movies and television to literature to the nightly news, our ideas of who and what is heroic focus almost entirely on men and what they do” (548). Since men have power in this world, they have generated a society that pleases them. Superhero movies are a huge money maker in today’s world. But, the most popular superheroes are exclusively men such as Batman, Superman, Captain America, The Flash and The Hulk. This media only feeds into the ideology that men are the heroes in the world and they are the ones making sacrifices for others. They see a world that appeals to them and do not see a reason to mess with the system. Kilbourne writes, “When power is unequal, when one group is oppressed and discriminated against as a group, when there is a context of systematic and historical oppression, stereotypes and prejudice have different weight and meaning” (499). Men now see patriarchy as natural and how life should be. They can look back at previous generations and see that they succeeded with patriarchy and feel they should do the same. Men see absolutely no reason as to why they should relinquish their position of
Modern day superheroes still reflect the misogynistic and chauvinist society in which they were first created and this will be argued with reference to two of the films studied.
In the 1930s, Disney’s first full length animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was released. This movie set the pattern for future Disney movie plots, which continues for decades. In the 1940s, Disney released 3 animated movies: Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Bambi. However, these movies did not feature a main female character. In the 1950s, the two main movies that were released were Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. These movies picked the passive heroine trend back up and had a prince to rescue the princess from her troubles. In the 1960s, Disney brought us 101 Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, and The Jungle Book, none of these with a female heroine. The 1970s brought about The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The only significant female character is Maid Marian from Robin Hood, who waits for Robin Hood to “sweep her off of her feet.” In the 1980s, The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver and Company, and The Little Mermaid were released. With The Little Mermaid, Disney got back to the fairytale storyline. The 1990s brought us Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Tarzan, Pocahontas, and Mulan. This is where Disney movies start to evolve with new, women-favoring, storylines. In the 2000s, Disney laid off the fairytales for a while and
These movies allowed female characters to embody all the contradictions that could make them a woman. They were portrayed as the “femme fatale” and also “mother,” the “seductress” and at the same time the “saint,” (Newsom, 2011). Female characters were multi-faceted during this time and had much more complexity and interesting qualities than in the movies we watch today. Today, only 16% of protagonists in movies are female, and the portrayal of these women is one of sexualization and dependence rather than complexity (Newsom, 2011).
This was evident in the findings of the research when it was demonstrated that even when a female superhero was considered empowering, this could nonetheless have a negative impact on how the participants’ viewed their bodies and make them prone to placing more value on their self-image. This proposed that even when talent and strength between the sexes are similar, if the importance of the female character relied on her appearance, women will also place an unnecessary amount of value on their own appearance. In this case, the fact that these female superheroes where as strong as male superheroes could be perceived as a method used to confront men’s power because they tried to be equal, yet, because the female characters were nevertheless being hyper-sexualized, it did not counteract in a positive way. Instead, more unfavorable and resentful emotions toward women were developed simply because now female superheroes not only had unrealistic physiques, but their level of competency was also impossible for real women to attain. Therefore, this demonstrated indications towards hostile
There have been major changes to the superhero archetype in comics in these recent years as compared to the past. Along with that arises controversy on the subjects like the new female Thor or a black kid as Spiderman. Many are zealously against such changes for reasons like sexism or racism. While many others are fervently behind such changes because they use it to empower their own political views on today’s topics. These topics are important to today’s society however they should not be so important in comic books because comic books should be value-neutral and gender, ethnicity, sexuality and things of this nature should not matter.
When it comes to movies, you are less likely to see a woman with a starring role. In fact, women are underrepresented in all media. Studies on prime time television programs show an alarmingly low number of women on television. Thirty-Eight percent of women play doctor or heath care roles. That means a whopping sixty-two percent are played by male actors. “In music videos drawn form five music-oriented television networks, male characters outnumber females by a ration of 3 to 1,”(Collins, 2011). In video games, the odds are the worst. Only
male audience. Although there are notable exceptions, women in mainstream comics are often represented in the same way. According to Kelli E. Stanley, Wonder Woman emerged at a time when women were being encouraged to join the workforce as part of the war effort (149). Early publications of Wonder Woman comics present her as strong, powerful, and independent from men. In the post-war period, however, Wonder Woman’s storylines, focus more on domestic virtues and romance, as women were being urged to leave the w...
Marvel has been releasing blockbuster after blockbuster for over the last decade. Marvel movies have action, a great story line, and even some comedy. Some of my favorite movies that Marvel has released are: the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Amazing Spiderman. DC movies, on the other hand, are awful and boring. Most of them don’t have a story line, they’re slow in telling the superheros story, and they aren’t based off the comics. Some disappointing DC movies that I thought would be great but weren’t: Green Lantern, Man of Steel, and the Dark Knight Rises. While the future of Marvel movies are looking bright (Dr. Strange, Captain America 3), the DC movies will probably crash and burn (Batman vs Superman, Suicide
Switching the gender roles in such a way would be comical because that's not the way it's done. When we read about, watch, or listen to our fictional heroes and heroines, we expect certain behaviors from them. We have a set of rules by which we define male and female characters, and characters that don't adhere to the general rules are anomalies and misfits.
From the inception of comic books to the current age of superhero movies, strong female characters are few and far between. The strength referred to here is not the ability to bench press a bus, but the characteristic of being able to stand alone without support from a male character. Why aren't there more strong female superheroes? With the sex ratio in just the United States at 96.99% (which means that for every 100 men there are 103.11 women) showing that there are just a few more women than men (StatisticTimes). Would it not stand to reason that this statistic would show up in comic books?
In western culture, heroes are the one who gave us positive power to fight for the bad things until the end. And those heroes are always presented by Male. Batman and Iron Man are strong in muscle but the power that they can save the world is based on they have money or not. Because they are the rich people and they have their own company, they hav...
Among the highest-grossing movies of all time are numerous landmark films, such as Titanic, Avatar, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Taking their place alongside these cultural touchstones are mammoth blockbusters of a new breed: action-packed superhero epics. Each year, the number of superhero movies due for release seems to grow exponentially. One glance at a list of upcoming movies for this year reveals that the box office is absolutely saturated with superhero films. Some highly-anticipated installments feature heroes already well-acquainted with the big screen, such as Captain America and the X-Men, while others are introducing relatively unfamiliar characters to contemporary movie-going audiences, as in the cases of Doctor Strange and
Women have made progress in the film industry in terms of the type of role they play in action films, although they are still portrayed as sex objects. The beginning of “a new type of female character” (Hirschman, 1993, pg. 41-47) in the world of action films began in 1976 with Sigourney Weaver, who played the leading role in the blockbuster film ‘Aliens’ as Lt. Ellen Ripley. She was the captain of her own spaceship, plus she was the one who gave out all the orders. Until then, men had always been the ones giving the orders; to see a woman in that type of role was outlandish. This was an astonishing change for the American industry of film. Sometime later, in 1984, Linda Hamilton starred in ‘The Terminator’, a film where she was not the leading character, but a strong female character as Sarah Connor. She had a combination of masculine and feminine qualities as “an androgynous superwoman, resourceful, competent and courageous, while at the same time caring, sensitive and intuitive” (Hirschman, 1993, pg. 41-47). These changes made in action films for female’s roles stirred up a lot of excitement in the “Western society” (Starlet, 2007). The demand for strong female characters in action films grew to a new high when Angelina Jolie starred in ‘Tomb Raider’ in 2001 and then in the sequel, ‘Tomb Raider II: The Cradle of Life’ in 2003 as Lara Croft. Her strong female character was not only masculine, but was also portrayed as a sex object. Most often, strong women in these types of films tend to fight without even gaining a mark. At the end of each fight, her hair and makeup would always be perfect. The female characters in these action films, whether their role was as the lead character or a supporting character, had similar aspects. I...
Women in comics Women comics today show too much nudity and are showing the wrong example to little kids. Today’s superheroes should use a different way to send a good image to little kids. But other superheroes participate in non stop violence, is aggressive, sarcastic and never talk about doing good for the humanity. Those are the superheroes that little kids should not look up too.