Sexism in the Media

Sorry folks, but part 2 of the Crew post will not be taking place right now, as I have other things to write about and crew's not in season.  But you will indeed be privvy to all of our rowing secrets! Just give me until next week.

In the meantime, I would like to discuss something a lot heavier: sexism.  For those of you who've been living under a rock for the past 40 years, but sexism is discrimination against a person based on their sex or gender.  Again, talk to Becca about the subtleties between gender and sex, but as this is really about how the victim is perceived, there's a grey area.

I decided to talk about this after reading this article about the editor-in-chief of the Niagra Falls Reporter who apparently will not allow the newspaper to publish "reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta."  He then tried to defend it, but the original email is appalling.

Let me say one thing first: sexism is so entrenched in human society, entire languages would have to be remodeled to break free from it.  Does this make it ok? No.

Another thing: there are many views on how to solve this issue, and it is not within my power or desire to judge such views.  I am just here to point out blatant sexism in media, Hollywood especially if I can, to prove this misogynistic editor false.

Now, I don't have much time, so I'm going to employ a simplified (and remarkably accurate, for something so simplified) way of measuring female presence in a movie.

There is a test, called the Bechdel Test, to see if movies are sexist or not.  To pass, there has to be a conversation between two named female characters that is not about men.  Simple, right?  Yes.  Easy to pass, right?  Apparently not, for Hollywood.

To sum up the video linked to above, of the nine movies nominated for the 2011 "Best Picture" Academy Award, only two clearly pass.  Two more technically pass, due to one brief interaction per movie with no significance to the plot in either, but still have next to no female presence in them, so I'm not going to count them.  (Of the two grey-area passes, the first movie, Hugo, has a five-second scene that passes; the second, Midnight in Paris, has one that also involves male characters.)

Even Pixar films, by far my favorite group of movies, fail more often than pass.  None of the three Toy Story films passes; neither do Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up, or Cars 2.  The only Pixar films that pass are A Bug's Life, The Incredibles and Brave.

I'm going to break a major rule of Tumblr, and mention it outside of Tumblr.  A major section of Tumblr is devoted to "social justice" blogging, determined to fight racism, sexism, cissexism, homophobia, ableism, and related injustices.  I don't consider myself a social justice blogger, but I do reblog occasional commentaries and discussions that I think merit view.

Of eight posts tagged "sexism" on my tumblr blog, I would like to quote six.

"'Women are more likely to be attracted to personality and men are more likely to be attracted to physical appearance'

[W]oah[,] maybe that’s because we teach women to see men as people and we teach men to see women as objects"  I'll come back to this later.

"Being a feminist doesn't mean suddenly no longer liking problematic things.  If you stopped liking everything that was sexist in media and entertainment there would be no media or entertainment left.  Being a feminist, to me, is being aware of what it is you're liking, and of its problematic aspects."

The third is not very good for quoting, but inhabitants of the internet will likely have seen it by now: the two-panel comic where a guy approves of another guy wearing a shirt of a comic book character, but when a girl walks by wearing a similar shirt, he demands to hear her credibility as a comic book geek.  Skepticism based on gender?  I think I call that sexism.

A fourth is a side-by-side of two Angry Birds Halloween costumes: one for men, one for women.  The one for men is a round fabric representation of the ubiquitous red "angry bird."  The one for women is a red cocktail-length dress with the bird face on it, with black tights and, of course, high heels.

Perhaps the scariest - and most credible - is from a book called The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard.  "Princeton University psychologist Susan Fiske took brain scans of heterosexual men while they looked at sexualised images of women wearing bikinis. She found that the part of their brains that became activated was pre-motor - areas that usually light up when people anticipate using tools. The men were reacting to the images as if the women were objects they were going to act on. Particularly shocking was the discovery that the participants who scored highest on tests of hostile sexism were those most likely to deactivate the part of the brain that considers other people’s intentions (the medial prefrontal cortex) while looking at the pictures. These men were responding to images of the women as if they were non-human."

The last, and most disappointing to me, is the straightforward statement of the blatant sexism in one of my favorite television shows, Doctor Who.  When the show was restarted in 2005, the writers were pretty good about writing realistic, strong characters of many skin colors, sexes, sexual orientations, and the like.  But when Steven Moffat took over in 2010, that pretty much flew out the window.  The only female characters you could call "strong" are all from the same mold: she can fight, she's sassy and sexy, but she has a soft side that really translates to "Save me, Doctor!"  I enjoy the existences of River Song and Amelia Pond as much as anyone, but I can't ignore the sexism that went into the writing of their characters.  The worst was shortly before the start of season 7, when a controversial promotional picture was released of an unconscious, makeup-wearing Amy Pond, the female lead of the show for seasons 5-7, carried in the arms of the Doctor while explosions and evil Daleks fill the background.  This did not go down well among the fans.  One blogger put it best when analyzing a snippet of dialogue from Amy's debut episode:

"Rory: How can he be real? He was never real! It was just a game. We were- we were kids. You made me dress up as him!

"Right here, with this quote, I knew the characterization of Amy Pond was going to go seriously awry.

"Kids love to play pretend, don’t they?

"Moffat was a Who fan as a kid, right? I bet he played Doctor Who pretend. Yet somehow I don’t think he assigned the role of Doctor to others. I mean, the Doctor is the hero! You don’t assign that role to another kid! You fight for your right to be the Doctor! Maybe you take turns with who gets to be him. Maybe there’s three Doctors running around at the same time and it gets a big squiggly. But whatever you do, you don’t freely abdicate the hero role.

"Unless you’re a girl.

Apparently.

"Steven Moffat could not conceive of a little Amelia Pond who would look at the magical Doctor and his blue box and want to be him. He assumed she would want to be with him instead.

"Actual little girls, however, are well-versed in this problem. I know I had a lot of contradictory feelings about Indiana Jones. (“He’s so dreamy!” “I want to be an archaeologist when I grow up!” “Mom, can I have a whip for my birthday?”) Most of the heroes- the characters it’s most fun to imagine being- are dudes. If you also happen to find some of those dudes attractive, you’re going to develop the “I want to be you/I want to be with you” duality. This is something that straight guys like Moffat have not needed to deal with, as characters for them were nicely divided into a binary of those they want to be (male heroes) and those they want to be with (the hot ladies male heroes get).

"So when Moffat created Amelia he projected this binary on to her, but reversed it. She’s a girl! The Doctor is a dude! Obviously she wants to be with him! I’m not even sure he realizes it’s possible for Amelia to want to be the Doctor. Yes, if someone asked him directly if he thought little girls wanted to grow up to be the Doctor he’d probably agree, but the point is it didn’t occur to him when he was actually writing her character.

"And so she becomes The Girl Who Waited, waited for the hero’s return, and not The Girl Who Dreamed, dreamed of being the hero.

"Amelia Pond, drawing Doctor fanart in crayon- are you our on-screen fangirl cypher? Dreaming of what male creators think we want: romance! With an awkward, unnecessary love triangle! Uh, girls love that, right?

"Enter the series 7 promo still.

"I look at this and think- what fantasy does this appeal to? That’s no hero shot, not of Amy Pond.

"The girl who waited, carried away.

"It’s everything that’s been there from the beginning, that we’ve tried to put aside. The misconception of Amy Pond. As the love interest, the sidekick, and not the hero. In the hero’s arms and not the hero.

"Where is the image of Amy Pond, hero? Why can’t that sell the show? Why a damsel in distress shot?

"Ah, but we don’t want to confuse the little boys, the mini-Moffats, by making them want to be her, instead of just be with her. How weird that would be!

"So Amy will stay as she is, in the Doctor’s arms, safe."

And another blogger replied to that:

"While I love Amy Pond a lot, and while she is more heroic, seeing as she saved Eleven [*] and Rory a BUNCH of times over two seasons, I found myself agreeing with a lot of this. Moffatt’s Who is problematic in all the important (to me) respects, which I could ignore when Eleven, Amy, and Rory first started because I loved them all so much, but it’s becoming more and more obvious that it’s going to get to the point where I can’t ignore it and just enjoy the show anymore. He keeps [expletive] up the amazing women I fell in love with and nothing about the seventh season makes me want to watch it.

"Starting with this graphic, which fundamentally misunderstands Amy’s relationship to the Doctor. She isn’t his damsel in distress, she isn’t his sidekick, she’s his equal, his conscience, and, at times, his savior. She should be walking beside him, not being carried by him. This is why the graphic upset me so much, because that’s not the Amy and Eleven I had fallen in love with."

*"Eleven" refers to the eleventh regeneration of the Doctor; if you like, the eleventh actor to play the Doctor.

In conclusion, sexism is an integral part of our daily lives.  It is especially prevalent in the media, where we're still trying to get the biggest blockbusters to have women as protagonists, where there has always been a male hero/female romantic interest dynamic, where "Conventional TV wisdom has it that girls will watch shows about boys, but boys won't watch shows about girls."  (Source: NPR)  Well, boys don't have to watch shows about girls, because every genre will have shows starring boys, and they can always find something about a character of their own gender.  Girls can't be so picky.

Well, what do I recommend?  Some high-quality movies/television that is centered around girls.

Movies:

Brave.  It centers around a Scottish princess who just wants to "stay single and let my hair flow in the wind as I ride through the glen firing arrows into the sunset," as her father puts it.  It also focuses on the relationship she has with her mother.  A heartwarming, funny, intelligent, action-packed, beautifully-animated film.  

Tangled.  A refreshing take on the classic story of Rapunzel: this time, she takes her fate into her own hands.  When a handsome rogue climbs into her tower to hide on her 18th birthday, Rapunzel seizes her chance. She knocks him out with her signature frying pan, tricks her "mother" into going on a three-day trip, then persuades the Aladdin-esque thief to be her guide to fulfill her lifetime dream.  They have crazy shenanigans, a couple of music numbers, and a pet chameleon.  What's not to love?

Television:

The Legend of Korra.  I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again: Korra is awesome.  The story is a spin-off of the wildly popular Avatar: the Last Airbender (Avatar: the Legend of Aang in some countries), which takes place in a world where some people are born with the ability to "bend" one of the four classical elements: water, earth, fire, or air.  Korra is the Avatar, the only one who can master all four elements and bring balance to the world.  She's headstrong and fearless, and can't wait to take on her duty as the Avatar - she just has to learn Airbending first.  Add a steampunk-1920s-Shanghai-meets-Manhattan metropolis, a popular sport utilizing the already martial-arts-centered bending and a devious scheme that threatens all benders, and you've got yourself a compelling action series.

Kim Possible.  "Dad, I'm off to save the world!" "On a school night?" "I'll be back by midnight!" Kim Possible may be marketed towards young children but it is probably the best example of a lack of sexism in any mainstream media.  In this show, the lead is the girl - a good student, excellent athlete, and all-around good person - and the sidekick is her dorky guy friend.  Kim Possible saves the world on a regular basis, and the only competent villain she faces is her shadow archetype, Shego.  Kim uses her cheerleading skills, high-tech gear, and sheer awesomeness to keep the bad guys on the run, but she still has to deal with normal high school problems, like dating and homework.

Rizzoli & Isles.  This is for those too dignified to watch animated shows.  A crime drama focusing on a detective (Jane Rizzoli) and a medical examiner (Dr. Maura Isles), who investigate crimes in Boston.  I enjoy the dynamic between savvy, tomboyish Rizzoli and reserved, bookish Isles - they always make me laugh.

I realize that media is getting better about sexism.  But we still have a long way to go.  Suggestions?  Critiques?  Favorite female-centered movies and TV shows?  I'd be happy to put them in - right now I probably don't have many of the best examples, just my favorites.