Gender in the Movies

The website polygraph looked into the issue of gender equality and film. Here's how they describe their methods: "We Googled our way to 8,000 screenplays and matched each character’s lines to an actor. From there, we compiled the number of words spoken by male and female characters across roughly 2,000 films":  Link to the data here: http://polygraph.cool/films/


The authors use the example of Disney films (Image Below). The site also featured in interactive graph, you can look at 2,000 of the screenplays, search for a specific movie title, and look at the difference in gender dialogue breakdown by genre.

The interactive features make this a great tool to use in class. You can also push your students to discuss the quality of the methods.

Manifest and Latent Functions of Alcohol Ads [Video]

I asked my students to find video clips that demonstrated both the latent and manifest functions of the media.  One student found this South Park 'commercial' that showed how clearly these lines often get blurred. Are alcohol ads simply designed to sell us beer & liquor?  Or are they trying to tell us something else about status and lifestyle?
Check out the video and ask students what they think.

Messages about gender, bodies, and health on magazine covers [Activity]

This activity could be used in any course about gender, media, or bodies.  Before class, I conduct a search for magazine covers online from the current year (I use a Google Image search).  I use fitness and health magazines because I pair this activity with a reading about gendered fit body ideals (a chapter from Body Panic by Dworkin and Wachs*), however, any type of magazine could be utilized.  I usually use one cover from each of the following magazines: Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Fitness, Shape, and Self.

I put each image on its own PowerPoint slide and I also print out copies to hand out to groups of students: each group should have a different magazine cover (or set of covers) that they are responsible for describing to the rest of the class.

I ask students to identity what messages are communicated about gender on the magazine covers.  Of particular interest to my class are the body-related messages, the cover model, and the similarities and differences between magazines intended for men and magazines intended for women.

Students are often amused by this activity and surprised to see what we have been learning about reflected in magazines they actually might read.  This activity also gives students a chance to show off their mastery of the material and to teach one another.

Here are a few of the magazine covers I have used:

 

 

*I use the chapter "Size Matters: Male Body Panic and the Third Wave 'Crisis of Masculinity'" from Dworkin, Shari L. and Faye Linda Wachs. 2009. Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness. New York: New York University Press.