Lights, Camera . . .
. . . Action, if you know what I mean.
Let's dust off the old imagination and pretend for a minute that you're a character in a movie. No, not an actor or actress playing in a movie, but an actual movie character. Your life moves at 23.5 frames per second, with tracking shots accentuating your actions and closeups highlighting your emotions. Smash cuts, travel montages, and establishing shots take place of any time you spend doing things that aren't directly related to the plot. While that sounds highly appealing (to me, at least), the downside is that your entire existence is only about two hours long, and that's assuming you appear in every scene.
So, knowing that you only have that much time to convey your complete being to the audience, how would you want to be portrayed? Surely you would want some strong characterization and profound depth for the audience to remember you by, rather than a watered-down version of yourself whose worth is little more than the absolute value of your sexuality. If you're a male character, you probably have nothing to worry about. However, women are far more likely to be misrepresented and sexually objectified, a fact that is not only itself an injustice, but also an indicator of a certain degree of immaturity that we as a moviegoing society can't seem to outgrow.
Though the presence of this trend should hardly come as news to anyone who regularly watches movies, you may not have given it an in-depth look before now. This synoptic webpage will provide you with a foundation of information regarding the sexual objectification of women in film, ranging from a brief background of the trend to an assessment of its current state and an analysis of its various negative impacts.
Let's dust off the old imagination and pretend for a minute that you're a character in a movie. No, not an actor or actress playing in a movie, but an actual movie character. Your life moves at 23.5 frames per second, with tracking shots accentuating your actions and closeups highlighting your emotions. Smash cuts, travel montages, and establishing shots take place of any time you spend doing things that aren't directly related to the plot. While that sounds highly appealing (to me, at least), the downside is that your entire existence is only about two hours long, and that's assuming you appear in every scene.
So, knowing that you only have that much time to convey your complete being to the audience, how would you want to be portrayed? Surely you would want some strong characterization and profound depth for the audience to remember you by, rather than a watered-down version of yourself whose worth is little more than the absolute value of your sexuality. If you're a male character, you probably have nothing to worry about. However, women are far more likely to be misrepresented and sexually objectified, a fact that is not only itself an injustice, but also an indicator of a certain degree of immaturity that we as a moviegoing society can't seem to outgrow.
Though the presence of this trend should hardly come as news to anyone who regularly watches movies, you may not have given it an in-depth look before now. This synoptic webpage will provide you with a foundation of information regarding the sexual objectification of women in film, ranging from a brief background of the trend to an assessment of its current state and an analysis of its various negative impacts.