Essay: Stereotypes of women in film

WRIT 102
Bennell, Hillary, and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz. “The Empowering (Super) Heroine? The Effects of Sexualized Female Characters in Superhero Films on Women.” Shibboleth Authentication Request, 11 Mar. 2015, link-springer-com.umiss.idm.oclc.org/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-015-0455-3.
In this article is explains about a study conducted to see the positive and negative reactions of women in superhero films. The main people interviewed were eighty-three female undergraduates from the Midwestern region of the U.S. The main objective of this study was to find out the effects of sexualized female characters in superhero films and how they affected a women’s self-esteem, self-objectification and gender role belief. The study showed that women had lower body esteem when exposed to sexualized female characters. It also showed exposure to sexualized-victim images of women in films lowered equal gender role beliefs. But in addition to all the bad effects, there was one good one that popped up. The positive effect was when women were exposed to superheroine figures, they believed in themselves more and valued the importance of their body. The study showed how when women are exposed to sexaulized female charcters in superhero movies, it may affects one belief on gender roles, self-esteem and body objectification.
Grundhauser , Emma. Women in Film: The Effects Abroad of Hollywood Stereotypes. 10 May 2016, takefiveblog.org/2016/05/10/women-in-film-the-effects-abroad-of-hollywood-stereotypes/.
In this blog it describes the second-highest grossing film worldwide in 2015, Jurassic World. In this movie one of the main characters is a female named Claire Dearing played by Bryce Dallas Howard and represents women terribly. In the film the character is professionally incompetent, emotionally distant and is seen running around in white skirt and heels. Then when things turn bad she turns to Owen Grady who is played by Chris Pratt for help. Owen Grady is tall, muscular, smart man who knows how to stop the problem. Dearing represents women in a awful light when it comes to major situations. The USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism conducted a study that examined Hollywood films and found that female character were either underrated or oversexualized. The study found that women made up less than one third of speaking characters and when they were portrayed 31.6% of them were in explicit clothing. With these horrible portrayals, it damages women’s personal views on themselves and how other countries view America.
Holt, Nathalia. “The Women of ‘Star Wars.’ (It’s Not Who You Think.).” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Feb. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/movies/star-wars-women-visual-effects.html.
In this New York Times article it discusses the women power behind some Hollywood’s most biggest movies. Rachel Rose is a women who graduated with her doctorate in computer science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. When she started taking her basic computer classes she found that she was the only women in her class and all the men had been coding for a very long time.. She then did the camerawork and virtual production of the movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Women account for 60 percent of studio leadership and have created all the special effects for movies like “Jurassic Park”, “Star Wars”, “Indiana Jones”, and so many other of our favorite blockbuster movies. Women also represented 19 percent of behind-the-scenes employment in 2016, and 5 percent of visual effects supervisors in 2014.
Klein, Rachel. Wonder Women: Working Toward Equality in Film. 7 Aug. 2017, www.premiumbeat.com/blog/wonder-women-equality-film-industry/.
In 2017, the movie Wonder Women hit theaters and holds the best box office holdings for a superhero movie in fifteen years. In the D.C. and Marvel universe, this is the first female superhero movie to come out in twelve years. Not only is there a female lead, the movie was also directed by a female named Patty Jenkins who is one of only three women to date to receive a 100 million dollar budget. In 2016, the Geena Davis Institute found that women only occupy 7 percent of directors, 13 percent of writers and 20 percent of producers.
M. Emmers-Sommer, Tara, et al. “The Impact of Film Manipulation on Men’s and Women’s Attitudes Toward Women and Film Editing.” Shibboleth Authentication Request, May 2005, link-springer-com.umiss.idm.oclc.org/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-005-3735-5.
In this article it discusses a study that was conducted to see the effect of film manipulation on both men and women’s perspective towards women and film editing. There were four groups made out of one hundred and seventy-four participants. Only three of the groups saw a manipulation called The Accused based on a true story of gang r**e. The fourth group ended up being the control group. Women reported higher level of empathy whereas men reported higher levels of traditionalism and r**e myth acceptance. Throughout the study men’s views and attitudes remained the same while women rose higher viewing the treatment film. Then when the study concluded mens views increased as sexual violence increased whereas women’s views decreased as sexual violence increased.
Ossola, Alexandra. “The Media’s Effect on Women’s Body Image – News.” Hamilton College, 1 Sept. 2010, www.hamilton.edu/news/story/the-medias-effect-on-womens-body-image.
American culture is made up of so many things and people. American culture also holds certain standards for people. For example, women in America have to have high beauty standards. These standards are enforced with social media and unfortunately adolescent girls are the most strongly affected. Young girls at the age of age twelve are going on diets because they believe their weight is their source of self-worth. Women are making media literacy programs to help combat these unrealistic standards for women and young girls. But unfortunately they do not target women from different ethnicity and socioeconomic backgrounds. They only mainly target white women. These beauty standards also portray upper to high class white women. So females who have different ethnic backgrounds are the most affected.
R. Mullin, Charles, and Daniel Linz. Desensitization and Resensitization to Violence Against Women: Effects of Exposure to Sexually Violent Films on Judgments of Domestic Violence Victims. web.a.ebscohost.com.umiss.idm.oclc.org/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=a88693cf-3f50-4c7c-a160-0fbbb76a1c7c%40sessionmgr4010&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=1996-01685-001&db=pdh.
In this article an experiment was conducted on domestic abuse survivors to study the effects of exposure to sexually violent films and emotional desentization. The study showed that after three days of repeated amounts of exposure to these sexually violent films the participants started feeling less and less more sympathy towards the victims on screen. After five days they virtually felt nothing towards domestic abuse victims and downplayed their injuries. Finally after the last film exposure, the participants felt absolutely no emotional or physical attitudes towards the victims whatsoever. So basically the study proved that after repeated amounts of film expsoure to sexaully violent movies, the particpants would eventually stop feeling sympathy and any sort of emotional attitude at all.