Monday, February 24, 2020

Who is She, Do You Know Her?: Representations of Women in the Media

For this week’s assigned material students were asked to watch the film Miss Representation. The film is a cultural critique that exposes how the media functions as a patriarchal construct to influence and control women. Through instigating self objectification by women, the media is able to utilize the rhetoric of empowerment (through physical beautification) to completely distract and disempower women resulting in lower political efficacy and oppression. For this prompt we ask that you consider your thoughts and reactions to Miss Representation while making connections between the film itself and the roles that you’ve witnessed the media play in the representation of women.
  1. Provide an example of a recent media portrayal of a female and analyze its effect on the character or figure. Be sure to mention if your chosen example reaffirms or resists the cultural critiques offered by the film.
  2. It has been roughly 9 years since Miss Representation was released. In this time do you believe things have changed or not? Explain.


While writing your responses, keep in mind some of the following terms used in the documentary:

Self-Objectification: when girls/women internalize an observer’s perspective on their physical selves and learn to treat themselves as objects to be looked at and evaluated for their appearance; studies have shown that self-objectification is much more prevalent in girls/women than boys/men 

Symbolic Annihilation: the way cultural production and media representations ignore, exclude, marginalize, or trivialize a particular group

“Fighting Fuck Toy:” Caroline Heldman’s term for the manner in which female superheroes are depicted in the media, which she defines as follows:
 “hyper-sexualized female protagonists who are able to “kick ass” (and kill) with the best of them. The FFT appears empowered, but her very existence serves the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. In short, the FFT takes female agency, weds it to normalized male violence, and appropriates it for the male gaze.”
Source: https://drcarolineheldman.com/2012/04/05/the-hunger-games-hollywood-and-fighting-fuck-toys/


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