Even one hundred years after women have gained the right to vote, it disgusts me how we are still represented in the media. Advertisements featuring passive females, female characters being depicted with stereotypical “women” qualities ….the list goes on and on. In class we focused on the media’s suppression of the progress of women’s representations, but not on the media that has evolved women’s representations positively. The prime example that comes to mind is one of my favourite shows, ABC’s Once Upon a Time. The show features fairytale characters under a curse where they live in our modern world and don’t remember who they are. Fairytales—and more specifically, Disney’s portrayal of them—are often criticized for downgrading women by making the female characters “helpless” and dependent on men. Once Upon a Time, however, takes classic fairytales and manipulates them so that more often than not, it is the woman who is the saviour of the male character. A classic example of a passive fairytale character, Snow White, is portrayed as strong and independent, but also has very human emotions. This differs from some female characters in the media whose only redeeming quality is being “badass”, but has no emotion, making them a very inhuman and unrelatable character. Snow White in Once Upon a Time saves the prince even though he was holding her against her will, showing strength but at the same time good morals, great qualities in the hero of any classic story. All of the other female characters in this show demonstrate these traits to some degree, making them great role models for children growing up with fairytales. Taking previously passive female characters and redefining their roles into strong, identifiable heroines is an example of the positive progress the media’s representation of women.
Snow White in ABC's Once Upon a Time
I really agrre with you that women are represented generally poorly in the media. But, i do believe that society is moving in the right direction to change this. Another great example of strong female characters is in video games. In the game Half Life 2 specifically, there exists one of the strongest characters in history, a woman named Alyx Vance, who helps the player character (a male) and is pretty much the reason that the plot moves forwards. In my opinion, i think that more strong female roles are needed in movies and games
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reasons women are represented poorly is because we have changed the definition of women empowerment. What used to be about gaining rights, has turned into, "if i look beautiful i'll feel empowered".
ReplyDeleteToo true Darci. Sexuality = power. sad really.
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