Identities and the Media: Feminism

Are we living in a post-feminist state? Do you agree there is still a need for feminism? To what extent does the media contribute to the identity created for women in popular culture? These are some of the questions we need to consider in this next section of our Identities and the Media unit.

Media Magazine reading

1) Read Playing With The Past: Post-feminism and the Media (MM40, page 64 - our Media Magazine archive is here).

2) What are the two texts the article focuses on?

The first text this article focuses on is Pan Am, which was first broadcasted on ABC in 2011, and it is a period drama set in the early Sixties focusing on the lives of pilots and stewardesses working for the Pan American World Airline. The second text is a Beyonce music video, ‘Why Don’t you Love Me’ Beyoncé parodies the stereotype of the 1950s housewife, clearly intertextually referencing the iconic 1950s pin up girl Betty Paige by taking on the persona of B.B Homemaker, a frustrated housewife.

3) What examples are provided from the two texts of the 'male gaze' (Mulvey)?

"The gaze referring to Laura Mulvey’s seminal article ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ which argues that main stream Hollywood films subject female characters to the ‘male gaze’ of the camera, fragmenting and objectifying their bodies."

"Her star construction perfectly encapsulates the contradictions of post-feminist culture, simultaneously declaring herself as an independent woman, whilst objectifying herself for the camera and the ‘male gaze’."

4) Do texts such as these show there is no longer a need for feminism or are they simply sexism in a different form?

These texts show us that there is no longer a need for feminism as all the examples were from a while ago before any of the feminist waves. 

5) Choose three words/phrases from the glossary of the article and write their definitions on your blog.

Feminism – A movement aimed at defining, establishing, and defending and equality to men.

Post-feminism – An ideology in culture and society that society is somehow past needing feminism and that the attitudes and arguments of feminism are no longer needed.

Nostalgia – A sentimental longing for the past, often only remembering the positives of the time.

Patriarchy – An ideology that places men in a dominant position over women.