The Issue of the Portrayal of Women in Film and Media

Almost everyone everywhere in the world has consumed at least a handful of popular Hollywood-esque media products in their lifetimes, be it magazines, television, social media, websites, or – particularly – films, with many of us consuming hungrily on a daily basis. Such forms of media undoubtedly bring us entertainment and far-reaching fictional interests, but they also play a much more profound role in our lives in that they quietly shape many of our subconscious ideas about political, economic, cultural and social issues.

Many of the most successful television shows and films ever produced are laden with messages that silently affect and influence audiences large and small, far and wide. As noted by researches and academics for many years, these messages greatly contribute to our perceptions of the world, and, in particular, our perceptions of women. Of course, there can be no denying that we women-folk have made life altering strides in all aspects of our existence, but our portrayal on-screen (and, sadly, still too often in books) has been infamously pinioned to clichéd patriarchal stereotypes and normative ideologies that rarely to never reflect the complexity or nuanced existence of a modern-day (or, indeed, an any-day) woman’s life.

In particular, Hollywood’s love affair with the genre film has encouraged such narrow-reaching depictions. In romances, comedies and rom-com dramas, fixed, predictable formulas and plot conventions tell comfortingly familiar stories to large, expectant audiences with a lifelong ingrained affinity for such films. And Hollywood is only too happy to profit from it.

Throughout my Masters course in Creative Media, I researched gender theory in the brave attempt to try and better understand the dominant messages that films circulate in regards to females. For one particular assignment, I undertook a mild visual analysis of the semiotics of women’s place in both small and large screen cinema, especially of American origin. I found that, while there are genres – such as action and, increasingly, fantasy/sci-fi – that do often have female characters that can be celebrated as independent, kick-ass and intelligent individuals, most genres ultimately succumb to the usual, unrealistic patriarchal constructs.

Of course, as with all things, the fault lies in our collective history. Since the far-reaching female liberation movements prevalent throughout the 1960s, women’s roles in political, cultural and economic dimensions have drastically progressed for the better and allowed many women an equal footing to men in multiple aspects of life. But the continued male dominance of almost every major industry in the world – including Hollywood –  is still the norm. I recall a quote from Douglas Kellner, who said: “Radio, television, film and the other products of media culture provide material out of which we forge our very identities, our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female…”.

It is these media products that have the power to circulate ideas, convey insightful stories and inform audiences. Because of this, I believe it’s important for people – both women and men – to take steps to understand what stereotypes and clichés films endemically circulate about women. Should they be respected for – at least on some level – conveying the realities of womanhood, or ridiculed for simply promoting normative ideologies? Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hollywood seems to have cottoned on to the criticism. More recent trends suggest a lean towards a masking of such messages under a façade of pro-female empowerment and ‘badass’, independent characters. In this way, certainly, such movies show women what we are, what we were and what we should aspire to be. At their best, movies have the power to birth visions of female freedom while, at their worst, they denigrate women’s achievements, mental fortitude, aspirations and replaced our advancements with phantoms from a past modern-day Western women have long since moved beyond.

In fact, in many ways now more than ever, women – not just in film – are being subjected to unattainable standards of beauty and attractiveness through an ever-harsher male gaze; expected to be the aesthetic mental polymath who is both smart and sexy, successful yet dependent, kind yet fierce, feminine yet edgy. Nowadays, women must have it all, especially the ones on the silver screen – the ones teaching the rest of us what we should aspire to become. While we must accept that the entertainment industry is just that, entertainment, we also must accept its power to produce and promote damaging and demeaning images and ideologies worldwide.

As we all know, encouraged by the ease-of-access to media and social media that our smartphones now give us, young girls – our future women – are the biggest victims. You only need to type “girl’s body issues” into an online search engine to gain access to thousands of articles espousing the damaging intimacy between loud and proud media-rhetoric and the impressionable mind of a young girl. One study I read about had researchers concluding that film and TV programs with increased emphasis on appearance and female-success were affecting the self-esteem of girls as young as five. Another told me that the average teen girl is exposed to almost 200 minutes of media per day, compared to only 10 minutes of interaction with their parents.

Something has to change. Though we have come far in our real and on-screen lives, we still have a long way to go before women are represented in a more realistic and less damaging way. Future Hollywood productions must seriously try to rid itself of the myths its films and TV shows carry in the hopes of creating truly positive and suitably varied representations of women – to show that being you is not only normal but preferable – for the sake of the young girls who will one day be our women.

If you’re interested in reading more on the issue of women on screen then feel free to pop in and loan some of our fantastic books on the topic, such as:

Sexual stratagems: the world of women in film by Patricia Erens

Brave dames and wimpettes: what women are really doing on page and screen by Susan Isaacs

Sisterhoods: across the literature/media divide by Deborah Cartmell

And my personal reccomendation:

From reverence to rape: the treatment of women in the movies by Molly Haskell