Analysis Of The Documentary ' Miss Representation '

Throughout today’s society, media contributes to almost everyone’s daily life. From informative news channels to comical television shows, media proves to be effective in advertisement, releasing messages and informing the audience. Although media proves to be wildly effective in advertising, releasing messages and informing the audience, periodically destructive and misleading messages are provided to the audience and directly influencing women. Cultural critics widely agree that media tends to negatively influence women and all the critics point to research which supports the belief that women are portrayed as subordinate to men, having no

media in today’s society and culture. The documentary is arguing that women in the media are not

“Miss Representation” is a documentary film that is made by Jennifer Seibel Newsom. This film talks about many issues from the roles of females in politics, and the ways in which media negatively impacts women. The film examines how the media have contributed to the underrepresentation of women. Therefore, eventually, the film is persuading people to be open-minded, and study how media affects our perception, judgment, and behaviors. The targeted audience of this film is all people who live in America. People should be convinced to change their mind about stereotypes on women. Jennier effectively convinces the audience that the mainstream media has mainly contributed to the under-representation of women through the use of statements claimed

The Miss Representation documentary film by Jennifer Newsom explores how media contributes to the under-representation of women in influential positions. This message is portrayed by delivering content through media and technology as well as advertising partial and/or often degrading interpretations of women. The consequences are becoming more and more dreadful. In today’s world, composed of a million stations, people will tend to do more and more shocking things to break through the crowds. They resort to violent, sexually offensive, or demeaning images. Jean Kilbourne, EdD, filmmaker, Killing Us Softly Author and Senior Scholar Wellesley Center’s for Women states, that “it creates a climate in which

Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s documentary, Miss Representation, shows that the media’s impact on the American discourse of women’s bodies, women in power, and the same standards of what women should be. Newsom effectively convinces the audience of Miss Representation that how mainstream media contributes to the misrepresentation of women in influential positions by having limited portrayals of women through the use of interviews from influential people, several statistics, and appealing to emotional sense.

In Miss Representation, many female actresses, news anchors, politicians, directors and producers talk about how females suffer a lot of social, political and economic inequalities in today’s society. There are double standards against women in magazines, on TV, in movies, the news, politics, and the workplace. The media is an influential part of modern culture. When women are portrayed as objects for men to use -- never as the protagonist or president -- and when female news anchors are objectified, this will cause girls of all ages to begin viewing themselves as objects. Girls grow up in a world where their voice does not count; where our culture does not embrace them in all of their diversities, where

Women are deemed as a “minority” yet make up 51% of the world population and in 2014 made up only 12% of protagonists in films. And that is just on-screen, the percentage decreases as you go farther and farther into behind-the-scenes positions such as directors, cinematographers, and writers. Add race and ethnicity and those characters' percentages decline even more (Lauzen, 2015.) Women in film and television are often portrayed with emphasis based on their body type and in advertisement are largely objectified. The large objectification and misrepresentation of women in the media has led to an offset psychological view of women from growing up to adulthood.

Gender and the Media by Rosalind Gill addresses gender stereotypes that are brought onto women and men through the media resulting in objectification and subjectification. Gill discusses how the representation of gender is altered as a result of the media in Western societies. Gender and the Media is aimed to address the rapid transmission of media and how those changes affect the construction of feminine and masculine gender roles in society. Gill uses her interest in the contradictions of gender construction by society, to analyze gender and the media. Using feminism as a backbone for her research, Gill and many commentators support the idea that feminist ideas are common and may even affect the media. Gender and the Media addresses multiple forms of media: postfeminism in advertising, gender in the news and journalism, and gender in magazines. Gild aims to address the construction of gender representations, elements for gender analysis, and feminist culture with Gender and the Media.

This week, I watched the movie “ Miss Representation”, it is a documentary in 2011 and Jennifer Siebel Newsom is the director, producer and was written by her. I watched the film on Thursday, July 30, 2015, I watched it on my computer and I was watching it at home. The documentary is about we human are failing to see the real world that we lives in. It talks about that media is a very powerful tool of delivering messages to the world. The documentary starts with some numbers of information that tell us that American teenager: “spend 31 hours a week watching TV, 17 hours a week listening to music, 3 hours a week watching movies, 4 hours a week reading magazines, 10 hours a week online, and that is 10 hours and 45 minutes of media consumption a day” (“ Miss Representation”). Nowadays, people are going to learn more from media, then any other things because each of us has just spent too much time on it, and everyone does have their own ways to have the interaction of the media. And the media are just everywhere around us.

“People learn more from media than any other single source of information” (Missrepresentation). This quote exemplifies how society learns and creates their standards about people, places, and things. All sources and mediums of media impact billions of lives every day. The media holds this power over society and it’s time to change that; especially when it comes to the media’s view of women. Women are constantly being misrepresented. This misrepresentation of women in the media is negatively impacting America by corrupting both the youth and adults. This is occurring because of the hyper-sexualization of women, wrongly portraying women in leadership positions, and creating stereotypes of women in movies and television.

Miss Representation conveys that media is derogative to the most powerful women in the United States. People learn more from the media than any other source because it is the message and messenger. Americans devote about 10 hours and 39 minutes daily to consuming media (Howard). The media’s misrepresentation of women in movies, television shows, and advertisements negatively shapes politics, our national discourse, children’s inquisitive minds, and ultimately society. The danger behind these stereotyped images of women is that their effect is subconscious, meaning we slowly become accustomed to a sexist portrayal of women without even immediately realizing it. To cease our unrealistic, prejudiced expectations of women, a culture change is necessary.

The media has become an essential part of men and women’s lives for years, dating all the way back to before World War II in the late 1930’s. It was said to be that the media during this time injected “values and morals into society” (Jade). In today’s society, there are several different types of social groups. Some of the social groups may be effected by the media and how they portray the perfect woman and some may not be effected because they may “reject the messages that are not consistent with the values of that group” (Jade). There are also several different types of people in this world, some of whom have very low self-esteem or confidence and are therefore affected more by what the media says than others with a higher self-esteem.

Our world is surrounded by media. Media plays an enormous role in affecting the way we perceive gender and gender roles. Media as well as communications are known to be the key elements of how people live their life in the modern age. The media can be a very inviting place, since it has so many things inside of it that appeals to people worldwide. At the same time, the media can be a cruel, judging and corrupt area that can be scary to involve yourself with. That being said, the mass media has had its history with harsh stereotyping, particularly when dealing with women. Many people within the media view women as a gender that is only allowed to be at home, whether it is cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, or being a slave to their male counterpart. Even with women who work inside of the media are usually overlooked, bashed by their appearance and do not get an equal opportunity as men do in order to succeed in life. This has been the case for hundreds of years, but there are still a myriad of problems that women face today, whether in the media or life in general.

Thesis: The media, school system and the parents are mainly responsible for the gender stereotypes and gender roles among women today. The have the biggest influence on women and how society views them, and how they view themselves.

The message that was presented in the video “Miss Representation” was that the media is a powerful tool to shape the world. However, the media has been utilized not for the benefit of human being instead in the most negative way that anyone can possibly think of. It has indeed shape the representation of women globally in this generation. It degenerated the name of woman and what they are capable in this world whether they are use for political, and/or economical. The trailer for Miss Representation presented this powerful message through the usage of a video of selected people being interviewed about feminism and the cruelty that they endure during the twentieth century. This highly sensitive message in the video of Miss representation is