How Audiences Perceive Strong Female Characters, Oppenheimer, Goodman, Adams ‐ Price, Codling, And Coker

For this paper, I am going to be discussing gender in the institution of films. Specifically, I am going to be discussing femininity in coming of age films. Coming of age movies set an expectation for teens and young adults because it lays out what they should fear and what they should thrive achieve in order to transition into adulthood successfully. The media defines cultural and gender norms that are often very stereotypical. The cultivation theory suggests that exposure to stereotypes in the media can lead to adopting these beliefs in their real lives (Giaccardi et al., 2016). In the media, masculinity is often portrayed as aggression, power, dominance, status seeking, emotional restraint, heterosexuality, and risk taking. (Giaccardi et al., 2016) In most films and media it is hegemonic masculinity that is displayed rather than other types of masculinity (Giaccardi et al., 2016.) In regards to femininity, it is often constructed as white suburban and focused on consumerism (Bickford, 2015). When portraying women and young girls in films and TV shows a common narrative is often the woman deciding between her career and personal happiness, because women can not have it all (Bickford, 2015). In coming of age movies young people in some way often tell the narratives of trying to achieve some form of femininity or masculinity. I will be analyzing the characters in two movies, The Duff and Dope. I would like to discuss and analyze the differences in how gender is portrayed in

In today’s film culture, superhero films are a very popular genre. Yet, women are objectified, hypersexualized, and given roles with little to no real merit within this genre, such as the “damsel in distress”. These issues within our film culture are evident in movies such as Catwoman, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 1 & 3, Superman Returns, Suicide Squad, Man of Steel, The Amazing Spider Man, the Fantastic Four series, the X-Men series, and the Avengers series. In fact, these films are evidence that physical appearance, clothing, and sex appeal of the female characters have more importance than the actual characters themselves.

Many people view women as weak in hopeless and males as strong and heroic in films. Male characters are seen to be more physical, functional, sexual, smart, and independent. Female characters are seen as dependent, weak, quiet, graceful, and innocent (Planned Parenthood). For example, in the movie Tangled (2009) Rapunzel is seen as a

The wide ranging harmful representations of women have now achieved a new level in popular culture. Every medium (television, movies, magazines, games) has the problems of their own of depicting women. Whereas there are various other issues related to the way women are repented for viewers, for the purposes of this essay it is useful to explore gender stereotypes and negative depiction of women in movies, which also include overly sexualized and unrealistic images in movies. All together these issues shore up the idea of portraying women negatively which results in erroneous representation of women by oneself and cultures as well. Movies are widely viewed medium around the globe and thus, have a huge effect on the way women perceive

It is undeniable that socially constructed gender norms reinforce the ingrained patriarchal ideology that runs rampant throughout society. Indeed, our society has established strict roles which essentially determine how individuals are expected to act, speak, dress, and conduct themselves based upon their assigned sex. These films highlight the societal impact of gender norms and gender stereotyping that is internalized early in life and continues to be entrenched within society through generational customs as well as various forms of media and entertainment, such as advertisements, movies, video games, and so forth.

In today’s films, perceptions of women haven’t changed much. Nancy Signorielli has a case study that looked at popular films today and how young girls are portrayed in them. Signorieilli coded the top 25 films for girls 12-17 in 1995 to look for traits that the characters were portraying and the situations they were in. She found from her study that girls in these films were 20-30% more likely to be talking about romance, doing gender stereotyped chores, dating, talking about friends and clothes, on the phone, grooming, talking about the opposite sex, in class, shopping and working out. The men in these movies are 25% more likely to be working. In addition to looking at what these characters are doing, they also looked at the type of behavior they exhibit during the films. From the study they found that girls were 10-20% more likely to be honest, crying or whining, flirting, compromising, follow intuition, and be seductive as Signorielli found in her research. From this they found that the men were more intelligent, more threatening and intimidating, more hardworking, more risk taking, and use physical force more. From this study it can be seen that these negative perceptions of women are still similar to the period of

I have chosen to focus on how Hollywood movies have the power and influence in creating and changing the perceptions of the female audience worldwide, through character roles. Specifically, the article touches upon powerful female characters in powerful films. Based on Part 2 of the HL L&L course, this task aims to prove how mass media uses language and images to inform, persuade or entertain. This will be demonstrated through the format of a BuzzFeed article.

Almost all films made in America are made for, by, and about dudes. Last year, only 12 percent of film protagonists were female, and only 30 percent of all speaking characters. Women were also far less likely to have an identifiable motive, a job, or be a leader of any kind. Their primary roles were how they were related to men, usually as a wife or girlfriend.(1) With women taking a back seat, we should be able to glean a carefully refined and positive image of maleness from each film, since that is what they seem to be about, right?. Each new blockbuster should be a showcase of a message of modern masculinity distilled from a century of the cinematic image.

Three themes describe how media represent gender. First, women are underrepresented which falsely implies that men are the cultural standard and women are unimportant or invisible. Second, men and women are portrayed in stereotypical

The portrayal of women in the media affects women and young girls but this issue can be solved. In many movies, music videos, ads, etc. we see sexism between males and females. According to Gender Issues In The Media, “There are many fewer females than males in almost all forms of mainstream media and those who do appear are often portrayed in very stereotypical ways.” This shows that if women are seen in the same position as men they are stereotyped and

In film and media, there are “a slew of stereotypical roles for girls and women to

Character in Comic book History” and the presence of wonder woman in the movie batman versus superman in 2016, have indirectly shown that there is a surge in the demand for more female superheroes. These female superheroes are so distinguished by some characteristics which are peculiar to them. These projected characteristics include but not restricted to; Freedom, dominance and loudness. These characteristics undeniably express the idea of feminism (Erikson & Eric 1968).

The cinema conveys representations of race, gender, and class that indicate the development and cultural ideologies of society. Motion pictures illustrate and are depicted from real life settings, and it is for this reason that the cinema plays a vital role in shaping and sustaining cultural normalcies. Socialization of gender and identity are mirrored through sexist media depictions that convey the relative positions of women and men in modern western democracies. There are substantial quantities of motion pictures that ascribe traditional gender roles to both men and women that continue to perpetuate social constructs of inequality. Contemporary media places men and women in defined categories, and

Frequently, most superheroes in cinema are portrayed by male characters rather than women, creating a distinction between gender roles. Indeed, through the passage, “These results may suggest to viewers that women are less important, knowledgeable, and capable than men – and less likely to be a hero” (Miller et. al) women are much less likely to be featured as the hero within the film, and more likely to be featured as the “damsel in distress” of the story. Furthermore, women are much more likely to be depicted in a sexualized fashion, even when displayed in the role of hero. This feature of women with a lack of dominance defies feminism, as they lack roles in superhero films and they are portrayed with the sole purpose of boasting

Filmmakers use traditional gender stereotypes to produce characters audiences can easily identify with by portraying conventional images of a person with identifiable characteristics. In previous years, the dominant representation of a women in film has been the passive, subjugated protagonist. However, through the development of female empowerment and added feminist representations of film, the female heroine transformed to become strong and independent women in her own right, as an individual character.