Feminism Media Theorists

 

It so happened that the most part of our history had the world being ruled by men and women had got theequal rights with men only in the beginning of 20th century when a lot of changes in society happened. However if talking about films, some theorists are of opinion that patriarchal society hasn't vanished yet. Today's blog is about three main feminist theorists in movies.

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist, author of idea in which women in the media are viewed from the eyes of heterosexual men. This idea is also known as ''Male Gaze Theory''. In this theory it's written that products assume the audience is male and presents women for their pleasure. Men in media are often at the centre of action/plot and they're represented as dominant while playing an active role in a storyline. While women in films are often passive playing minor roles in the narrative and they have things done to them rather than doing anything themselves.

Another important feminism theorist is American Gloria Jean Watkins commonly known as bell hooks. Unlike Laura Mulvey bell hooks's point of view is far more global. bell hooks says that feminism is the struggle to end patriarchal oppression. She also thinks that it's not enough to say ''I'm feminist'', you have to be active in your ideology, feminism is a political committment. She also believes that there is not only one way of discrimination and it has many different levels. For example a woman from a high-class may be discriminated less as the woman from working-class. Except class the discrimination can be different when talking about ethnicity. For example European race women are discriminated less than women of other races like Black, Asian, Maori, native American etc.

The last theorist is Dutch Liebset van Zoonen, the author of ''Discourse Theory''. Her main idea is that discourse equals communication from the media which means that we get our ideas about gender from the media. She believes that our ideas about gender can change depending on historical and cultural context. In historical context the attitude to women in 1950's can extremely differ from attitude to women in 21st century. In cultural context attitude women in Europe can be different if comparing for example to Middle East. If talking about media van Zoonen believes that women are objected in which means that they're seen as nothing but an object without any personality.

In this advert of perfume we can't fully see woman, we see only her legs which means that she is not important and she's just needed only to be an instrument which makes people interested in buy perfume and the absence of woman's lacks the individuality of her.

Van Zoonen thinks that all described above is happened because we still live in a patriarchal culture, the culture which is dominated by men. Another thing that she marks is the representation of each gender. Women are represented often as emotional and domestic while men are represented as individuals that are suited to politics or business.