Monday, March 26, 2012

Hollywood for the Male Consumer

It has been discussed in discussion that movies tend to be geared towards men. It is actually shockingly true how many movies have surprisingly little female interaction that is not about men. Here's an excellent litmus test to see whether a movie is male biased, which proves the point that many of the movies that even I like seem to be biased towards a man's perspective.


http://www.genderacrossborders.com/2010/03/17/the-bechdel-test-for-women-in-movies/


Yet why is there no uproar from the women? Better yet, why has the female cinema viewer market not been tapped? Many would say that so-called 'chick flicks' that guys roll their eyes over are geared towards women. Indeed, females seem to be the majority of the audience through those features. Yet they don't depict much more than the same story of hopelessly falling in love.


On the other hand, many family-oriented movies don't purposely degrade women. However, by having male characters be consistently in lead roles, society is getting accustomed to this and would find it odd if such genders were reversed.


Such teaching of gender roles through movies starts incredibly early, it seems, with 'harmless' Disney movies. And this teaching is continued throughout adulthood. One fascinating website that shows this continuous brainwashing of every girl desiring a fairytale wedding with Prince Charming coming along is http://www.disneybridal.com/ where customers can choose which Disney princess they desire to imitate. It is a very frightening thought that such obvious training is going on within culture, and it seems as if there is no end to it in the near future. The question to ask, though, is whether such gender training from early on is actually such a terrible thing if it does not interfere with one's health. More to come on this next week!

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