A: "Kelly and Smith evaluated the 101 top-grossing G-rated films from 1990 to 2004. Of the over 4,000 characters in these films, 75% overall were male, 83% of characters in crowds were male, 83% of narrators were male, and 72% of speaking characters were male. In addition, there was little change from 1990 to 2004.This gross underrepresentation of women or girls in films with family-friendly content reflects a missed opportunity to present a broad spectrum of girls and women in roles that are nonsexualized."

http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualizationrep.pdf


Me: Wow. Gotta love the research they did.

Are there comparative statistics on the number of male and female actresses available to act in films?

I must note possible selection bias though. These are top-grossing G-rated films. Perhaps they did well because they played to popular notions and stereotypes (eg About 75% of characters being men). And what about PG films and 'worse'?


A: You're missing the point. The point is that if it's always men speaking, doing, being, even just hanging out incidentally in a crowd, then from a young age women don't see identities available to them as women except as ornamental objects of romantic attention. Or if they do desire other identities or more multidimensional identities, they find it portrayed as deeply atypical or in conflict with being a woman -- why should amounting to anything other than a toy have to be the province of men only? I can assure you there are many young girls who experience that feelings and even some who at a young age understand it enough to articulate it almost the same way (almost as far back as I can remember I have voiced in some form the complaint that "Everyman" characters are in many instances of mass produced culture invariably, well, men).


B: What Andy Ho means is summarised thus:

1. Gay men are weak and effeminate.
2. But they patronise gay porn, which glorifies the hyper-masculine male.
3. Therefore, gay porn adds to their marginalisation, since the hyper-masculine is the antithesis of the gay male.
4. Therefore, gay men should not support gay porn, by supporting the censorship of it.

This would all be very tralala (2, 3 and 4 are similar to many feminist critiques of porn) but for the fact that 1 is wrong.

Point 2 is also confused, although not necessarily. Porn is not like art. When I go and watch Macbeth or whatever, I can say that I am 'supporting' it and certainly I am adding to the propagation of it/its message in society (or at least if I regularly watch Macbeth or Shakespearean plays or whatever). But when someone consumes porn, he does not think 'I am watching this movie because I agree with its message'. The thought process is more like 'I am watching this movie because it will help me get off' -- i.e. there is something in it which represents for me, sexual titillation.


Me: For that matter, G-rated films are not like art. When I go and watch the Lion King, I am not thinking 'I am watching this movie to be sexist and reinforce the oppression of women in our society through the perpetuation of unhealthy stereotypes'. I am thinking more like 'I want to see dancing animals and singing lions'.

In fact, your argument could be used to rebut feminist spiel about how pornography brutalises women, glorifies violence blah blah.

But then this is where the multiplicity of meanings comes in. You can always find something to say. For example, if you highlight the top performing minority students in Singapore, you can be making it more obvious that the rest aren't succeeding and that this is racist and discriminatory. And if you don't highlight any good minority students, you are ignoring the minorities, not providing positive role models to them to counter negative stereotypes, reinforcing their sense of inferiority and eo ipso are being racist and discriminatory.

I love meaning mining! You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.