Background
The sexual objectification of women is just about everywhere, permeating all forms of mass media. Advertisement, movies, TV, music videos, and even (gasp) the Internet. It seems that everywhere you look there's a cookie-cutter-sexy lady whose presence seems to do little more than make something else more interesting or attention-getting. In fact, it would be a safe bet that you were exposed to sexualization at least once in the time it took you to navigate to this website.
So how do sexualization and the film industry fit together? Let's get ourselves a nice scientific definition so we can find out. According to a summary by the American Psychological Association, sexualization has four conditions that set it apart from healthy sexuality:
• A person's value is based solely on his or her sexuality;
• A person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness with being sexy;
• A person is sexually objectified, meaning they are made into a thing for others' sexual use rather than an independent person;
• Sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.
The summary goes on to state that only one of these conditions needs to be met in order for sexualization to have taken place, and that the fourth one is especially relevant for children. It also points out that self-motivated sexual exploration and age-appropriate exposure to information about sexuality do not fall under this definition.
So how do sexualization and the film industry fit together? Let's get ourselves a nice scientific definition so we can find out. According to a summary by the American Psychological Association, sexualization has four conditions that set it apart from healthy sexuality:
• A person's value is based solely on his or her sexuality;
• A person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness with being sexy;
• A person is sexually objectified, meaning they are made into a thing for others' sexual use rather than an independent person;
• Sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.
The summary goes on to state that only one of these conditions needs to be met in order for sexualization to have taken place, and that the fourth one is especially relevant for children. It also points out that self-motivated sexual exploration and age-appropriate exposure to information about sexuality do not fall under this definition.
History
Behind the cameras, Hollywood is very much a boys' club, even today. So, it's not hard to imagine that eighty years ago, when the cultural legitimacy of filmmaking was still in its infancy, the movie industry was fixed in a male perspective. A 1975 essay by British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey suggests that since classical stories predominantly featured a male protagonist with a female character to serve as his motivation. This meant that women in early movies served more as plot devices, raising the stakes for the protagonist, rather than legitimate characters whose lines and actions contributed to the more literary aspects the film. Or as Mulvey states, women are the "bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning." As is often the case with male-dominated aspects of culture, movies were soon bound to norms of voyeurism, with women's otherwise vapid presence onscreen serving as an excuse, if not an obligation, for filmmakers to indulge our "primordial wish for pleasurable looking."
Of course, there have always been exceptions. Who could argue that Clarice Starling (The Silence of the Lambs) or Marge Gunderson (Fargo) are not examples of strong and well-rounded female characters whose worth comes from their personalities and not their looks? It's easy to imagine that, with our society slowly but surely moving closer to gender equality, sexual objectification in films would be well on its way to being a thing of the past.
. . . right?
Of course, there have always been exceptions. Who could argue that Clarice Starling (The Silence of the Lambs) or Marge Gunderson (Fargo) are not examples of strong and well-rounded female characters whose worth comes from their personalities and not their looks? It's easy to imagine that, with our society slowly but surely moving closer to gender equality, sexual objectification in films would be well on its way to being a thing of the past.
. . . right?