Gender Norms in Films Male

Gender Norms in Films

Male and female relationships in cinema: How much has changed since the 1970s?

Powers, Stephen, David J. Rothman, & Stanley Rothman. (2003). Transformation of gender roles in Hollywood movies: 1946-1990. Political Communication, 10 (93): 259-283

Some film scholars have suggested that the ways in which women are conceptualized in cinema has undergone a profound shift in recent decades. According to Stephen Powers, David J. Rothman, & Stanley Rothman's article entitled "Transformation of gender roles in Hollywood movies: 1946-1990" the ideology of mainstream Hollywood films has changed from one which views women who succeed in traditionally male occupations as unnatural to an aesthetic which is far more accepting (Powers, Rothman & Rothman, 2003, p. 268).

Powers and Rothman argue against the thesis of voyeuristic cinema, the most notable proponent of which is Laura Mulvey. Mulvey wrote a seminal essay arguing that eroticization of the feminine subject was built into the voyeuristic nature of cinema itself: Mulvey argued that both men and women as viewers are forced to adopt a male, objectifying gaze and are forced to see the female body as an object of desire. This view of women has defined the visual evolution of the cinematic medium (Powers, Rothman & Rothman, 2003, p. 216). The authors argue that such a perspective is overly simplistic, and that Mulvey's mise en scene approach ignores the wider narrative of contemporary American films, which allows for a wider range of roles for women in films than in previous decades. Moreover, women are no longer punished by the screenwriter for seeking a purpose in life other than marriage.

Article Review II

No Oscar for gender balance in Academy Award 'Best Pictures.' (2008, Spring). Media Report

to Women, 36(2): 1-2.

According to 2009 Media Report article "No Oscar for gender balance in Academy Award 'Best Pictures" there are three speaking roles for males for every one female speaking role in prestigious, Oscar-caliber films in the present era. These images of women also tend to be more highly sexualized than male roles: a scant 28% of characters in G-rated films are female and women are more than five times more likely to remove their clothes than their male counterparts on-screen.