Women In Music Videos - A point made by bestactionheroines.com

Blogger Audrey M.Brown (bestactionheroines.com) makes a point about women portrayed in music videos and in film. She goes on to say how action heroines don't offend people by the way they dress such as Milla Jovovic in 'The Fifth Element'


and Angelina Jolie in 'The Tomb Raider',


but women in music videos and in Playboy can offend.


* The part about women in music videos is exactly half way down the page on the link

Strong female roles in contemporary TV dramas/sitcoms & Films

TV Dramas/Sitcoms:

1. Bionic Woman (2007)

Bionic Woman surrounds a woman who was saved from death after receiving experimental medical implants. She gains bionic powers and agrees to work with a quasi-governmental private organization who also carried out her surgery. The Bionic Woman was a spin off series from the 'Six Million Dollar Man'.

2. Private Practice (2007-present)

Medical Drama starring Kate Walsh, centred on a woman doctor (Dr. Addison Montgomery). From this advert, the main female character stands in the foreground proving the importance of her role within the cast. While the other cast sit and lounge in the background, Montgomery stands in a confident body position with her arm firmly on her hip proving her dominance.

3. Cashmere Mafia (2008)

An American drama series set in New York focusing on four successful female executives who have been friends since college turn to each other for guidance as they juggle their careers with their families.

4. Ugly Betty (2006- 2010)
The series surrounds around the character 'Betty Suarez', who is a Mexican American working as a personal assistant to the editor -in-chief of high fashion magazine, 'Mode'. 'Ugly' Betty is a unfashionable, curvy woman who sports bushy eyebrows and braces. This image of a woman is put in a (fashion) workplace surrounded with highly fashionable, flamboyant 'pretty' people. In the end of the series, Betty wins the heart of her boss Daniel who is known to be a womaniser.












Films:

6. Resident Evil
The horror/action film, based on the same titled video games, follows an amnesiac heroine Anne (Milla Jovovich) and a band of commandos as they attempt to contain the outbreak of the T-Virus at a secert underground facility. The film stars Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez, both known for their action roles in various other films including 'The Fifth Element' and 'Machete'. Jovovich has been dubbed the title by VH1 the "reigning queen of kick-butt". According to the blogger of bestactionheroines.com Jovovoic "appears in more action films than probably any other actress or character on my list at this blog. Whether you like any of them or not is beside the point. Jovovich consistently performs as an action heroine, in fact, you could easily call it her specialty".

7. Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 (2003)
Uma Thurman plays The Bride who is a mother and former member of an assassination group. Being a killer and being a woman is an extreme opposite to a mother stereotype. The film shows that there can be a 'vicious' side to motherhood, which may derive from the feeling of having your child taken away from you. bestactionheroines.com claims on the movie; "Mothers are often relegated to certain roles, even in today’s far more diverse films and television shows. They are typically secondary characters or women with stereotypical emotional problems who are clingy and unbalanced."










8. Salt (2010)
Angelina Jolie's role in Salt was originally a man's role. The role was offered to Tom Cruise who turned it down as he felt the role was too similar to his Mission Impossible role. Jolie has been a female heroine in her first action role in 'Tomb Raider', at a time "when sexy absolutely had to be a part of the equation in order to make bank at the box office". Though in Salt, Jolie's character "never seduced anyone for secrets. She never used her appearance or looks to get anything done and she also never had to take on any maternal roles over the course of the movie. She was just a spy. Not a sexy spy, not a Bond girl, just a spy."

Media Portrayal of Women

Female Stereotypes in the Media:

http://www.suite101.com/content/media-portrayal-of-women-a189870 -

Representations of women in advertising:

http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/your-life/big-issue-representations-of-women-in-advertising/v1

Notes on The History of Social Networking with Rory Cellan-Jones

• Wedding reception - modern twist:- The wedding, set up as a FaceBook event. Promoted via Twitter and FaceBook.
• Bride's family able to look at photos as they were unable to attend the event: all thanks to social media
• People take to social networking sites to share and announce births, jobs, exams (passed or failed) and news
• Computerised version of paper bulletin boards. People used terminals to post messages, others would search them (San Francisco)
• People were amazed at the word 'computer'...people used the terminals to find dates
• 1973 - first opened public access computer system - the door to cyberspace was opened for the first time
• Computer technology was changing fast - rapidly growing market for businessmen
• Personal computers began
• The Well - source of information, a cross between a telephone conversation and a letter...online message board, filled with topics (California)
• Larry Brilliant founded The Well - the Twitter before Twitter
• Godfather of Social Networking - Stuart Brand (editor of original hippy Bible)

Perceptions of Women in Media

The Sun article (10/2/2011)

This article shows a young girl who recently died after undergoing an illegal cosmetic surgery which would enhance the rear using injections and fillers. The reason behind the surgery was to improve the girl's chances to become a hip-hop star. The ShowBiz editor Gordon Smart of The Sun suggested that "It's a status thing for glamorous girls in hip- hop. And it looks like they will go to extreme lengths to get it. "

A related video which shows Sexual Violence and Objectification of Women in Music Videos

Although a direct link has not been proven between hip hop music video messages and women going to extremes to live up to the these expectations (of dressing provocatively, having 'big booty's' and breasts and being used as sexual objects), women and young girls can be influenced by these music videos and the artists, whose audience, may idolize.

Notes on usefull videos on representation

Notes on: Collective Identity - Stuart Hall on Representation and the Media

• Visual Representations
  
• Kind of cliche - our culture is saturated by the image
• A still is transimitted in a variety of media
• Late Modern Culture - advanced industrial society
• The saturating idiom of communication world wide
• Cultural studies - pays attention to centrology of representation
• Variety of different texts, visual texts transmitted by media
• Double meaning - To present, to image, to depict
• Representation - connote soemthing is there already, through media it is re-presented
• Represents a meaning that is already there - common idea
• Another understanding - e.g. political figures who represent
  
• Notion of images and depictions
• Representation is the way in which meaning is given to the things depicted

Notes on: Collective Identity: Women

• Advert about birth control - works the way a woman thinks
• The boxes represent a day of a week e.g. Monday a washing day, tuesdayis ironing day [stereotypical image of a "woman's job"]
• Beauty, image -> power...BUT short living and unfulfilling
• Advertising has increased from $20 bn a year (1979) to $180 bn a year (1999)
• Average American exposed to approx. 3000 per day, and will spend 3 years of his/her's life watching TV commercials
  
• Everyone in America feels personally exempt from influence from advertising
• Advertising is the foundation of mass media
• Used to sell value, image, concepts and the product
• Advertising tells us who we are and who we should be
• Advertising tells women the most important thing is how they look (and hasbeen telling them for 30 years)
• Surrounding us with images of ideal women, trying to make people reach this flawless image of a woman
• Computers retouch images of women and create idea women
• Gives people false hope that 'we can look like this' one day, we're just not trying hard enough
• Research clear that ideal image influences women's self-esteem
• Women's bodies turned into objects, creates a climate, creates violence against women
• Turning women into 'things' lead to violence and abuse
• Women of colour, dressed as animals e.g. animal prints - looking as if they are not fully human
• Women's bodies continue to be dismembered in advertising over and over again - one part of the body is used to sell a product - dehumanising
  
• Focus on breasts, American culture obsessed with breasts
• Women are told to increase breast size, advertising makes it look like women's breasts are not perfect if natural
  

Media Diary