Well researched and well presented, the "Tropes vs Women" video series focuses particularly on video games and traditional media. Videos exploring recurring "stories, themes and representations of women in Hollywood films and TV shows" include:
- The Manic Pixie Dream Girl
- Women in Refrigerators
- The Smurfette Principle
- The Evil Demon Seductress
- The Mystical Pregnancy
- The Straw Feminist
- Damsel in Distress (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
- Ms. Male Character
- Women as Background Decoration (currently Part 1).
Sarkeesian does a wonderful job presenting well balanced and well organized evidence for each "trope" gathered from both media sources and academic research. I found the identification and naming of specific "tropes" to be an empowering approach as it ultimately offers targeted avenues for change.
The site also links to Ms. Sarkeesian's TEDxWomen talk regarding online harassment, a variety of other videos, and lists of games, TV shows, novels & comics, films, blogs, nonfiction books, etc. that might be of interest. It's definitely worth checking out!
The site also links to Ms. Sarkeesian's TEDxWomen talk regarding online harassment, a variety of other videos, and lists of games, TV shows, novels & comics, films, blogs, nonfiction books, etc. that might be of interest. It's definitely worth checking out!
This post is a few months old now, but the post’s subject, media critic Anita Sarkeesian, was unfortunately in the news yesterday after cancelling a university lecture following a disgusting threat against her life and the lives of attendees.
ReplyDeleteFor one of the many news articles covering the story see here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/15/gamergate-feminist-video-game-critic-anita-sarkeesian-cancels-utah-lecture-after-threat-citing-police-inability-to-prevent-concealed-weapons-at-event/
I plan to devote my next blog post to this and related phenomena, but I wanted to encourage you to watch the videos at Feminist Frequency if you haven’t done so already. Contrary to the comment trolls’ claims, Ms. Sarkeesian’s arguments are well researched, well reasoned, well presented, and strikingly simple. In short: Much of our media employs tropes and conventions that objectify women. At best, this is lazy and uncreative, at worst it reflects our culture’s underlying misogyny. Replacing these objectifying tropes and conventions would generate better media experiences for everyone.
This is an important and uncontroversial message. Surely the majority of people agree, but it couldn’t hurt to add our little bit of WS energy to help support the cause.