In today’s world, movies play a major role in entertaining people. They are appealing to all age groups. Particularly, in Pakistan, where recreational activities are very less for Pakistanis, watching films is one entertainment even the poor class can afford. Saving few rupees for an evening once a week or a month in a cinema, is a cheap retreat for most of the poor Pakistanis.
Gerbner’s cultivation theory suggests that media can affect beliefs of people regarding the social world. He states that ‘television, among modern media has acquired such a central place in daily life that dominates our symbolic environment, substituting its distorted message about reality for personal and other means of knowing about the world. He also states that ‘Television is the cultural arm of the established industrial order which serves primarily to maintain, stabilize and reinforce rather than to alter, threaten or weaken conventional beliefs and behavior.’
All the respondents profile shows that, with the exception of eight young girls aged under eighteen, all other were adult women of age twenty five to thirty five while the oldest was forty. The younger batch was fifteen to eighteen years of age.
The results of this study are unequivocal about the negativism in the image of women in Pakistani films. Almost all the respondents said that the image of women and the roles they play are predominantly negative. All of them seemed to consider the effects of films as an issue for the first time which took considerable time in explaining what media can do and how we can use it.
When asked if they think women roles in Pakistani films are satisfactory, most of them answered that they were unsatisfactory and vulgar. Most of them said that the Pakist...
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... and dresses in Pakistani films
• Film censor board should censor foul language used for women in films that depicts them as sex symbols.
• Children under 18 should not be admitted in cinema halls without family members.
• Movies available in market should not be sold to adolescence.
• Parents should keep a check on their children for what they are watching and educate them about the difference between reality and portrayal in films.
• Families should stress on strong values of our culture and religion.
• Adults should ban Pakistani films at home that are obscene to keep them away from
Children and also not watch such content themselves.
FUTURE SCOPE OF THE STUDY
• Research can be carried out in other cities of Pakistan.
• Research can be carried with men being the sample.
• Research can be carried out with a large sample of women in Rawalpindi.
Led by Laura Mulvey, feminist film critics have discussed the difficulty presented to female spectators by the controlling male gaze and narrative generally found in mainstream film, creating for female spectators a position that forces them into limited choices: "bisexual" identification with active male characters; identification with the passive, often victimized, female characters; or on occasion, identification with a "masculinized" active female character, who is generally punished for her unhealthy behavior. Before discussing recent improvements, it is important to note that a group of Classic Hollywood films regularly offered female spectators positive, female characters who were active in controlling narrative, gazing and desiring: the screwball comedy.
Although Valenti and the Rating System's advocates claim that parents should have the final choice in what their children view, the system may, in practice, obstruct that purpose for parents who decide that their children should see some films. For films with the controversial NC-17 rating, the theatre is prevented from letting young John Small and his under-aged ilk from seeing a film despite his parents' permission. In fact, had John actually been accompanied by his parents, the theatre would have had every right -- some would even say responsibility -- to refuse his admission. The printing of the NC-17 rating often does not read -- as would be reasonable -- "Intended for Adults Only" but rather the more rigid "Not to be Attended by Children Under Seventeen.
...not restrict violence in movies as much as it restricts sexual content, it allows children of young ages to be exposed to violent content, which could have serious consequences in the child’s future.
Smith, Jeff, and Chloe Beighley. "Normalizing Male Dominance: Gender Representation in 2012 Films." Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy. N.p., 12 Feb. 2013. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Movies, one can argue, are one of America’s greatest pastimes. Unfortunately, after 9/11, films have become increasingly prejudiced against American Muslims. In movies Muslims are frequently portrayed negatively. According to James Emery, a professor of Anthropology, Hollywood profits off of “casting individuals associated with specific negative stereotypes”. This is due to the fact that viewers automatically link characters with their clichéd images (Emery). For Muslims, the clichéd image is of the violent fundamentalist, who carried out the terroristic attacks on 9/11. As a result, the main stereotypes involved in movies display Muslims as extremists, villains, thieves, and desert nomads. An example of a movie that has such a negative character role for Muslims in film is Disney’s cartoon Aladdin, depict...
modern media is objectified and put on the screen for male viewers. Films are a
Gender and the portrayal of gender roles in a film is an intriguing topic. It is interesting to uncover the way women have been idealized in our films, which mirrors the sentiments of the society of that period in time. Consequently, the thesis of this essay is a feminist approach that seeks to compare and contrast the gender roles of two films. The selected films are A few Good Men and Some Like it Hot.
In her essay, “Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema”, Claire Johnston proposed a path to creating Women's cinema to counter the numerous dominant male-oriented mainstream films. In it, she argues that you must first understand the ideology that is found in mainstream movies, and the ways that women are portrayed within it. She determined that there were two principle concepts to understand: how women are visually represented, and the effect that women have upon the creation of meaning within the film. The how refers to all the film techniques used in the creation of the image: lighting, hair, makeup, choice of lens, choice of wardrobe, and the framing of the camera shot are some examples. These are often done to increase the attractiveness of the female character, and creates a sign for the audience to accept and decode. The effect of the female character is limited to her physical traits and the impact that her presence has on the male protagonist, typically to send him off on an Oedipal journey.
Also, the film revealed women empowerment and how superior they can be compared to men. While demonstrating sexual objectification, empowerment, there was also sexual exploitation of the women, shown through the film. Throughout this essay, gender based issues that were associated with the film character will be demonstrated while connecting to the real world and popular culture.
... sexual and violent content should not be censored to any extent because censorship impedes societal progress by giving opportunity to hidden agendas and creating unnecessary boundaries for the film industry.
Feminism is a movement that supports women equality within society. In relation to film, feminism is what pushes the equal representation of females in mainstream films. Laura Mulvey is a feminist theorist that is famous for touching on this particular issue of how men and women are represented in movies. Through her studies, she discovered that many films were portraying men and women very differently from reality. She came up with a theory that best described why there is such as huge misrepresentation of the social status quos of male and female characters. She believed that mainstream film is used to maintain the status quo and prevent the realization of gender equality. This is why films are continuously following the old tradition that males are dominant and females are submissive. This is the ideology that is always present when we watch a movie. This is evident in the films from the past but also currently. It is as if the film industry is still catering to the male viewers of each generation in the same way. Laura Mulvey points out that women are constantly being seen as sexual objects, whether it is the outfits they wear or do not wear or the way they behave, or secondary characters with no symbolic cause. She states that, “in traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote it-be-looked-at-ness.”(Mulvey pg. 715). Thus, women are nevertheless displayed as nothing more than passive objects for the viewing pleasure of the audience. Mulvey also points out through her research that in every mainstream movie, there is ...
During a review by Vox, of the gender biases in Hollywood that were reported by the data visualization website Polygraph, over 2,000 movies underwent scrutiny in determining why men have more dialogue in movies, even in those that are supposed to be focused on the lead female characters. In what was stated to be one of the largest analyses of script reviews of all time, it was determined that the male characters within the study overrule women in over 78% of the analyzed films. This was concluded through a cross-analysis of character information such as name, gender, and age, with the information reported by the popular movie database, IMDB. The results of their study are astonishing. In the 2,005 screenplays across all movie genres that were reviewed by Polygraph, only two movies were delivered 100% by the lead female character. Conversely, the male dominated list has not only the largest number of results;
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...
While watching movies, we are not simply relaxing or enjoy a leisure period of time. What’s more, we are learning things at the same time, such as how people from other ethnicities are like. In this way, movies formatting our concepts of people even before we actually know them. For example, even though a mysterious Asian woman character who acts as a sexy allurement may escalate a movie’s enticement and exoticism, it leads to a misrepresented image of the Asian women which are portrayed to be submissive, low self-esteem, and “eager for sex” (Hagedorn, para. 5). In the movie The World of Suzie Wong (1960), the Asian female protagonist is described as a prostitute who is a “cute, dancing sex machine” (Hagedorn, para.3), and eagerly wants a man’s love, which describes Asian women as sexuality objects and tragic individuals. Unfortunately, these stereotypes of Asian female will lead to the discrimination and disrespect to them which even result in insult and sexually abuse again Asian women. Thus, movies are definitely not just entertaining methods but are responsible in forming people’s conceptions and understandings, which will bring numerous societal
The representation of violence exacted upon women in cinema is inextricable from being projected upon all women. To provide a scene that objectifies the female is to reduce the feminine form to its non-dual state, e.g., a sexual object providing a vessel for male gratification (hubris and sexual) rather then being defined by its duality of sentient and physical forms. Those who construct scenes of violence against women are bound to a moral responsibility to subjectify the woman’s perspective, thus reestablishing the female as a victim rather then an object and rendering the act of violence intelligible (deplorable, open to interpretation).