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Women represented in movie posters

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A trend I see regularly in movie marketing is, whenever possible, avoid showing a women's entire face on a movie poster. This is nothing new,  the film industry has reduced many women on film posters to hips, legs or lips for decades, dating back to 1967 (in The Graduate) and they're not preparing to stop. 


Without a face, you lose your identity and instead become an interchangeable object to the male gaze. The women's purpose becomes solely that of being looked at by men and her value is only of her sexual appeal, and not identity or personality.

These are a few examples of this trend in the past few years...

KingsmanWhen you are a hero, but also still just lips.Minions
Even in a kids animated film, a women is shown decapitated?? And you can be a superhero, but also just lips..

The list goes on and on, and it's sending children, male and female, the wrong message. Women aren't objects purely for the pleasure of men and men shouldn't think of women as a body rather than a person with their own unique personality, perfections and imperfections.

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I look forward to seeing more examples of women represented in different industries and time periods  during the length of this course as other people's blogs have interested me and what we've done in class so far.

Comments

  1. Miss Fantastic James5 February 2018 at 17:32

    Well done Calum, you have raised some very interesting points in this post and have incorporated some sophisticated concepts and terms such as the male gaze and objectification. Something we saw yesterday in 'Pygmalion' from thousands of years ago.

    I'm looking forward to hearing more of your ideas and reading some of your formal written responses.

    ReplyDelete

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