The issue of gender has always been important in defining individuals in our societies and unfortunately in many cases in the world, gender is being used to create inequality. Men and women are divided among themselves in accordance with their gender roles and men are almost always favored over women. This is also true for the modern day media which acts as a force of mediation between people and unfortunately it fails to provide equality for the mentioned genders in the process. In this assignment, this issue with gender equality will be considered through the ideas of David Gauntlett as they were presented in his book “Media, Gender and Identity: An introduction” in the sector of movies where the author provides useful information about not only the sector itself but the role of gender in it. It is the paper’s assumption that there is discrimination in the business of movies in our world and the movies in this sense give a wrong message to their audiences that as if men and women are totally different from each other in every aspect of the word. Although significant change has been observed in movies and the role of men and women in them, it is understood that the discriminative element remains and probably will remain in this business in the years to come as well.
Gauntlett states that “men in Hollywood films today tend not to be the seamlessly macho heroes which we saw in the 1980s” but rather “combine the toughness required of an action hero with a more sensitive, thoughtful or caring side” while “female roles have definitely become tougher”, combining the “traditional thrills of the action genre” with the “sight of Angelina Jolie in shorts and a tight top”. (Gauntlett, D. (2005)ö. p. 52) It is understood that the producers of these films are trying to present women in a more aggressive and dominant/macho way to encourage gender equality. The author gives the example of “Charlie’s Angels” which is a movie where female agents are working to eliminate criminals in society and therefore fulfill a job assigned originally for men. Gauntlett states that “Charlie’s Angels seemed to be a making some valiant attempts at role-reversal within the blockbuster mainstream” and that “the women are hardly shown as brainless – on the contrary, they are amazingly multi-skilled” who can “defeat their enemies without using guns”. (Gauntlett, D. (2005).ö p. 55) He also states that “the film does knowingly showcase the women’s physical attractiveness, but their success comes from their use of their brains, and their fighting skills” and that “with Charlie’s Angels there may be more of a fear that the film will feed existing stereotypes”, but we are hardly rolling our eyes at the number of women on screen who can hack into high-security computers, speak several languages, skydive, re-program missiles, and beat up a posse of henchmen single-handed”. (Gauntlett, D. (2005).ö p. 54) Again, movie makers are very well aware of the fact that men and women are assigned roles which fit or not fit with their personalities and therefore are using movies to make up for the emerging inequality. The girls of Charlie in this sense are the true bosses of their game and they dictate to men and therefore society what and what not to do; a characteristics assigned to men only in our societies.
In conclusion, we see that there exists a significant element of discrimination against women in modern day movies due to gender differences. Although film makers are trying hard to eliminate this inequality what is observed is that it is seemingly impossible to do so because the audience’s mindset about the issue is far from tamed. The media and the movies reflect to their audience what they can accept and unfortunately in the case of our existence, men are expected and accepted to be macho characters and women are expected and accepted to be naïve and submissive characters.